Issue No: 145

No More Leopold II, No More Menelik II

The war against Tigray resurrected Ethiopia’s anti-imperialist discourse, to shame international organizations that criticized atrocities committed by the government of Ethiopia and its allies. Last year the Ethiopian government carried out a successful social media campaign that speciously equated compassion for the Tigrayan people with twentieth century European colonialism. Old photographs of Congolese brutalized and mutilated by Leopold II’s colonial army were posted to falsely convey the idea that external criticism of Ethiopia’s actions abrogated its sovereignty. The campaign was picked up by Twitter activists across Africa. 

Belgian’s King Leopold II was the archetype of African colonial exploitation. His vast rubber empire financed the ornate buildings and colonial monuments that line the streets of Brussels. It is estimated that between 1885 and 1905, the Belgian emperor caused an estimated ten million deaths, through murder, starvation and disease, to fill his bank account

This was the epoch of the scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century. However, King Leopold II and his European cohorts were not alone in their ruthless scramble for Africa. The Abyssinian Emperor Menelik II successfully established his own empire in Africa, after securing the support of the colonial powers in his conquest across what is now western, southern and eastern Ethiopia.

In the north, Menelik cut Tigray into two, with half ceded to Italy. The Afar were dispersed across two countries, and the Somalis across four countries.In the south, Menelik II brutally subjugated the people living there. The Aanolee memorial in Arsi serves as a reminder of the 11,000 Oromo who were killed by Menelik's troops in 1886. Adding to mass murder, Menelik had his soldiers savagely cut off men’s hands and women’s breasts, much like his Belgian contemporary.

Menelik's army committed crimes against the people it conquered that included widespread enslavement. The remnants of slave camps that held captives from the south are scattered throughout the Amhara region. A.K. Bulatovitch, Menelik's Russian advisor, was horrified by the barbarism of Menelik’s troops. But to date, Ethiopian universities seem uninterested in exposing this sad chapter of Ethiopian history.

Collaboration between Menelik and his Belgian counterpart took place based on the strategic interests of their two expansionist empires. Fifty years later, Czeslaw Jesman described how Leopold came up with the idea of forging an alliance with Menelik to establish twin empires that would rule over all of Africa. Adventurer Ruppert Recking wrote that he had commanded an expedition for Leopold from the then Belgian Congo to Kaffa in Ethiopia. The plan was for Menelik and Leopold to establish ownership of Kaffa and its resources through a holding company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with the two monarchs as majority shareholders. The strategy failed, but the collaboration lay bare the true nature of Menelik’s southern conquest.

While Belgium is tentatively coming to terms with its brutal colonial past, Amhara nationalists unapologetically celebrate Menelik II, despite his ruthless subjugation of nations, nationalities, and peoples beyond Ethiopia’s highlands. Amhara nationalism is deeply rooted in the expansionist campaign of Emperor Menelik, which created an empire dominated by the Amhara. Today Menelik II serves as a symbol of this empire at the height of its glory days. Amhara nationalists have erased the dark history of brutal conquest and replaced it with “Ethiopiawinet”— equating the Ethiopian identity with the Amhara identity.

This kind of Amhara nationalism has had disastrous consequences on Ethiopia’s recent descent into protracted and widespread violence. Fano and Amhara militia committed atrocities in Tigray and Oromia in the name of Menelik II. In 2021, ‘Menelik’s campaign’ was organised in Addis Ababa, from which Amhara travelled to Wollo to carry out a mass murder of Oromos at Kamisee.

Belgians have said "no more" to Leopold II. It is time for Ethiopians to say "no more" to Menelik II.