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The Italo-Ethiopian conflict: A case study in British West African response to crisis diplomacy in the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

S. K. B. Asante
S. K. B. Asante
Affiliation:
University of Ghana
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Extract

This article attempts to examine the reaction of the anti-colonial nationalists in British West Africa to the diplomacy of their ruling colonial power with regard to the Italo-Ethiopian crisis of 1935–6. This reaction was largely influenced by the nationalists' claim to special relationship with Britain and their firm belief not only in British power but also in the British ‘gospel of equity and fair-play’. Consequently, when Britain and France, because of their obsession with the need for security, failed to protect the territorial integrity and political independence of the symbolic and sole surviving black empire of Ethiopia, these race- conscious nationalists rashly concluded that there was a concerted plot among the whites against the black race. This belief was reinforced first by the refusal of Britain and France to supply arms to Ethiopia during the conflict; secondly, by the infamous Hoare–Laval peace pact of December 1935, which would have compromised Ethiopia's independence had it been implemented; and thirdly, by British recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Disenchantment with the League of Nations, coupled with the disillusionment with the diplomacy of the colonial powers during the crisis, led the articulate nationalists to begin seriously to reconsider their relationship with Britain and the whole doctrine of the ‘civilising mission’. Their nationalism shifted from the idea of working within the trusteeship concept to a more militant anti-white pan-Africanism.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 1974 , pp. 291 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 This is clearly reflected in F.O. 371/20154, George London, deputy governor of the Gold Coast, to Thomas, J. H., Secretary of State for the Colonies, 17 Jan. 1936.Google Scholar

2 African Morning Post (Accra), 7 April 1936.

3 The Times (London), 14 Sept. 1966; also Mazrui, Ali, The Anglo-African Commonwealth (Oxford, 1967), 45.Google Scholar

4 For instance, in the Gold Coast, Nnamdi Azikiwe's African Morning Post (Accra) was telling its readers that though the battle was being waged in Ethiopia, it was ‘our own battle, because it is an African battle’. African Morning Post, 14 Oct. 1935. Cf. also, Ikoli, Ernest S., an articulate Nigerian nationalist in the 1930s, in Nigerian Daily Telegraph (Lagos), 5 Oct. 1935.Google Scholar

5 Toynbee, Arnold J. claims that a personal letter he received in London from Accra, Gold Coast, dated 3 Dec. 1935, reported, among other things, that there were ‘very few villages in West Africa in which the war and its causes are not known and discussed…’:Google Scholar cited in Survey of International Affairs, 11 (1935), 110–11. The reaction of the little known bodies to the crisis is detailed in my unpublished London Ph.D. dissertation, ‘The West African Response to the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis, 1934–1942’ (1972), 248–52.Google Scholar

6 For instance, in a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Edward Moore, leader of the 1934–5 Gold Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society Deputation to England, asked MacDonald to be good enough in his 1935 British electioneering campaign to speak on ‘Liberty and Justice’ for the African colonial peoples and the inhabitants of Ethiopia. C.O. 96/723/31135, Moore to MacDonald, Malcolm, 9 Nov. 1935.Google Scholar

7 For example, deputy governor George London in the Gold Coast informed the Colonial Office that attempts had been made in the colony to represent the white races in general ‘as conniving at the despoliation of a black race’. F.O. 371/20154, George London to Thomas, J. H., 17 Jan. 1936.Google Scholar

8 Steer, George, Caesar in Abyssinia (Boston, 1937), 53.Google Scholar

9 The terms of the treaty are available in League of Nations, Official Journal (1935), 1411–1412 and 1601.

10 Baer, George W., The Coming of the Italian-Ethiopian War (Harvard University Press, 1967), 224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 African Morning Post, 6 Nov. 1935. The reaction of Nigerians to the arms embargo issue is contained in F.O. 371/20154, Bourdillon, B. H., Governor of Nigeria, to J. H. Thomas, 27 Feb. 1936.Google Scholar

12 Eden's, Anthony minute of 29 Nov. 1935,Google Scholar cited in Avon, Lord, Facing the Dictators (London, 1962), 290.Google Scholar

13 African Morning Post, 6 Nov. 1935.

14 The text of the plan is provided in the League of Nations, Official Journal, 89 Session the Council, XVII, (1936), Annex 1573, Document C.482, M.258, 1935, VII, 39–41.

15 For details see Viscount Templewood (Hoare, Samuel) Nine Troubled Years (London, 1954), 107–96.Google Scholar

16 African Morning Post, 11 Jan. 1936.

17 Gold Coast Spectator (Accra), 18 Jan. 1936.

18 Comet (Lagos) 21 Dec. 1935. Governor Bourdillon told Thomas that Africans regarded the plan as surrender to Italian aggression: F.O. 371/20154.

19 Wood, S. R., ‘Lessons of the Peace Terms’, Gold Coast Spectator, 18 Jan. 1936.Google Scholar

20 West Indian by birth and Nigerian by adoption, the Shackleford family appeared to be ardent pan-Africanist in their outlook, having played a prominent role in the local branch of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.) in the early twenties. This is fully discussed in C.O. 583/109/28194, confidential memorandum on U.N.I.A. in Lagos prepared by Walker, G. H., Deputy Inspector General of Police, Southern Provinces, Lagos, 26 March 1922.Google Scholar

21 C.S.O. 26/30468 (Nigerian National Archives, Ibadan) ‘Prominent Lagos Women Society’ to governor Bourdillon, undated.

22 F.O. 371/20155, Secretary of Ethiopia Relief Fund Committee, Enugu, to Bourdillon, 22 June 1936.

23 The writer discovered this document entitled, ‘Gold Coast Ex-Servicemen's Union Will Not Fight For Europe’ among the few scattered private papers of E. C. Lartey of Accra, one of the oldest Gold Coast ex-servicemen still living.

24 Conf. C.S.O. 361/38 (Ghana National Archives, Accra): ‘Note of Impressions of Miss Hebe Spaull of the League of Nations Union staff on her visit to the Gold Coast and Nigeria in 1938’.

25 The activities of Wallace Johnson in connexion with the Ethiopian Crisis are fully discussed in my London Ph.D. dissertation, op. cit. 172–5, 214–26, 356–71.

26 C.O. 267/666/32216, enclosure III in Sierra Leone secret dispatch, 28 Nov. 1938.

27 Gold Coast Spectator (Accra), 7 Sept. 1935.

28 Sierra Leone Daily Mail (Freetown), 15 Aug. 1935.

29 Vox Populi (Accra), 11 Sept. 1935.

30 Hoare made this clear at a meeting of High Commissioners in London. F.O. 371/ 20155, 29 July 1935.

31 F.O. 371/19184, minute by Sergent, V. E., 6 Feb. 1935.Google Scholar

32 Ibid.

33 F.O. 371/19127, Sir Clerk, George, the British Ambassador at Paris, to Hoare, 22 Aug. 1935.Google Scholar

34 Cited in Cecil, Viscount, A Great Experiment (London, 1941), 278.Google Scholar

35 The West African comments on the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1941 re-establishing the sovereignty of Ethiopia are available in Comet 24 Jan. and 7 feb. 1942, respectively.

36 Perharn, Margery, The Colonial Reckoning (London, 1961), 34.Google Scholar

37 See for example, Alakija, O. A., ‘Great Britain and West Africa’, West Africa, 31 Aug. 1935;Google ScholarNkrumah, Kwame, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (Edinburgh, 1957), 27;Google ScholarAwolowo, Obafemi, Path to Nigerian Freedom (London, 1947), 28.Google Scholar

38 Nationalist writing of the 1930s is replete with references to the policy of the ‘man on the spot’. J. B. Danquah of Ghana devoted attention to this in his commentary on the failure of the 1934 Gold Coast Colony and Ashanti Delegation to England of which he was the secretary: J. B. Danquah Papers in private custody of Mrs Elizabeth Danquah, Accra. Similarly, Wallace Johnson wrote to tell the Colonial Secretary of Sierra Leone, R. R. Blood, that he was acquainted with the policy of the ‘man-on the spot’ when it came to the point of furnishing reports to the Colonial Office in regard to conditions in the Colonial Empire: C.O. 267/666/32216, Johnson, Wallace to Blood, 15 July 1938.Google Scholar

39 Perham, M., op. cit. 35.Google Scholar

40 Evidence of this can be seen in C.O. 583/220/30159, Nigerian internal and external Intelligence Reports for the year endmg 31 Dec. 1936.