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80 Years Ago in East Africa

Between 1900 and 1904, the French and British co-operated to defeat the rebellion in the Ogaden by the Somali leader Muhammad Abdullah Hassan--the so-called Mad Mullah. (It was and remains a pattern that enemies of Britain, and now the United States, are called crazy or insane.) This could have been bad news for Abyssinia. The negus (emperor) Menelik II had suffered a serious stroke in 1906, and until his death in 1913, the empire was ruled by a council of nobles. In the past decades, the empire had lost its seaboard provinces of Somaliland and Eritrea. The empire was now surrounded by European colonies, but in spite of all of this the Abyssinian government managed to win official recognition of its boundaries in 1908. Britain and France had no real interest in expanding further into Abyssinia, but Italy remained a danger although now temporarily held back by its French and British allies.

After the death of the negus, the empress Taytu ruled. She was a respected military commander, having fought in Abyssinia's wars against the Egyptians, British and Italians. However, a faction opposed to Taytu gained dominance and real power was in the hands of Ras Tafari Makonnen, who ran the government as regent. After disputes with the empress in 1928, Ras Tafari claimed the title negus for himself and was crowned emperor of Abyssinia in 1930, ruling under the name Haile Selassie (which means "Might of the Trinity"). He also had the titles "king of kings" and "the lion of the tribe of Judah".

In 1905, the Uganda railway was completed. This railway ran from Lake Victoria to the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa. It was supposed to have been built with private investment alone, but in the end the British government agreed to pay more than 2.5 million pounds to help finance the project. Thousands of East Indian labourers had been brought in to build the line, and by 1920, there were 23,000 thousand Indians in British East Africa (today the modern states of Uganda and Kenya).

Although the Portuguese had been on the east African coast for 400 years, only now did they consolidate their rule of the interior of Mozambique. The Portuguese, traditional allies of England since the 14th century, were reluctant to get involved in the First World War, but eventually did play a minimal role in the conquest of German East Africa, called Tanganyika. Tanganyika is occupied during the war by British empire troops, after a long and difficult campaign against the much smaller German forces, and is kept under British administration after 1918.

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