The Gambella Enclave

anglo-ethiopian.org/publications/articles.php

The Anglo-Ethiopian Society

Stephen Bell

published 1988

Want of opportunity, not of interest, had prevented me from visiting the westernmost
reaches of Ethiopia in earlier wanderings around the country. When I returned to Addis
Ababa in late 1984 for the conference of Ethiopian studies, the opportunity arrived. I
boarded the weekly flight, via Jimma, to Gambella, former enclave of the Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan on the Baro river almost 400 miles to the west. The 'plane was a DC-3 Dakota, the
sturdy but spartan workhorse still flying the world's more obscure air routes.

The view from the window was an instant and spectacular lesson in the contorted
topography of Ethiopia. First the densely cultivated plateau at 8,000 ft, clusters of
stockaded tukuls amid patchworks of fields and eucalyptus groves. Then the highlands
tumbled westwards towards the fringes of the Nile valley, and there came a vast pristine
wilderness of swamps, ravines and jungle-clad ranges knotted together in long-ago
convulsions of the earth's crust, where an occasional hill-top clearing and a thin wisp of
smoke curling high into the sky evinced the presence of man. And then the diminishing
hills and their ever sparser tree cover yielded to an uneven plain, all yellows and browns,
of scrub, elephant grass and rock outcrops, the hot lowlands of the Nilotic Anyuaa and
Nuer tribes. The Baro river, a serpentine swathe of contrasting verdure, came into view
and the 'plane lost height rapidly. The fierce heat of mid-day caught my breath as I walked
onto the airstrip at Gambella.

In its time the Gambella enclave, 60 miles within Ethiopia at the highest upstream point
of the Baro's navigability (in the wet season), was surely one of the oddest outposts ever to
fly the Union Jack (Note 1).

The Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 15th May 1902, which delimited the Ethio-Sudanese
boundary, provided the legal basis for the enclave existence. Under Article IV, Emperor
Minilik allowed "His Britannic Majesty's Government and the Government of the
Soudan to select in the neighbourhood of Ita on the Baro River, a block of territory
having a river frontage of not more than 2,000 metres, in area not exceeding 40
hectares, which shall be leased to the Government of the Soudan, to be administered and
occupied as a commercial station, so long as the Soudan is under the Anglo-Egyptian
Government. It is agreed between the two High Contracting Parties that the territory so
leased shall not be used for any military or political purpose."

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In a wider context, Articles III and V of the Treaty reflected two major concerns of British
policy in the region at the time, and attracted considerably greater international interest
than Article IV. Security of the Ethiopian headwaters of the Nile, an abiding British
preoccupation, was provided for under Article III, whereby Minilik undertook "not to
construct or allow to be constructed" any impediment to the flow of the waters of Lake
Tana and the Baro river into the Sudan. Article V allowed the construction of a railway
through Ethiopian territory to link Uganda with the Sudan. This truncated version of Cecil
Rhodes's earlier vision could thus bypass the swamps of southern Sudan (Note 2). The
impetus for Article IV was the mutual interest of both parties in fostering a thriving trade
between the peoples on either side of the frontier, thereby enhancing the prospects for
peaceful control over a potentially turbulent border region.

But the British interest extended beyond a desire to administer conveniently and cheaply
the Anyuaa and Nuer on the Sudanese side of the newly-agreed frontier. The enclave
became a pivotal element in an evolving grand design for the region which, as one of its
objectives, envisaged the new Baro steamer route binding the fertile upland regions of
western Ethiopia (where coffee grew wild) into economic dependence upon neighbouring
Sudan, opening up the potential of their agricultural and suspected mineral wealth to
exploitation by British monopoly capital. Ever more ambitious were the hopes of the
British legation in Addis Ababa that the new route would develop into Ethiopia's main
trading link with the outside world, pre-empting the commercial supremacy that
appeared to have been promised to France with the concession for the railway from the
Red Sea coast to Addis Ababa, the new capital (Note 3). British hopes were to be
frustrated on both these counts, and a consistent theme in the enclave's early history is
the yawning gap between aspiration and fulfilment.

The first step in the implementation of Article IV scarcely augured well for a flourishing
future. In January 1904 a site was chosen at Itang (in pursuance of the specific wording of
the Article), only to flood when the Baro river rose in the rainy season six months later.
The enclave's next location, 30 miles upstream at the junction of the river and the Jajjaba
ravine (forming its eastern boundary), was significantly closer to its hinterland (Note 4).
It was to remain here until its restoration to Ethiopia 52 years later, under the charge of
the Sudan customs department until 1919, when it was transferred to the Upper Nile
province and administered by a district commissioner (Note 5).

With hindsight, the British expectations of Gambella's commercial potential seem

unrealistic. Why did this particular manifestation of the new British-dominated capitalist
world order, in a remote and little-known corner of the African interior, fall so far short of
these expectations? The answer is contained in a long catalogue of interrelated seasonal,
economic and political factors, most of them unforeseen when the formulation of British
policy in the Horn of Africa first embraced the idea of the trading enclave. Let us consider
some of them (Note 6). In the first instance, the potential of the trading post was limited
by the fact that the main artery of the new trade route, the Baro river, could only be used
by steamers for five months of the year at the most, between June and November (Note
7). In some years, as in 1914, when the highland rains fell at well below normal levels, the
"open" season could be restricted to a mere three months. Nor, even when the steamers

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were able to operate up to Gambella, did they provide a particularly swift service. At best,
the 880 mile upstream journey from Khartoum took eleven days. Coal being unavailable
in the Sudan, the steamers stopped frequently, sometimes for a whole day, while their
crews scoured the land beyond the river banks in search of suitable wood for fuel (Note
8).

In the "closed" season, therefore, the enclave was effectively cut off from the Sudan, and
the search for some means of communication throughout the year was a matter to tax
many minds in the Sudan administration. An intermittent postal link existed between
Gambella and the Sudanese town of Nasser, carried by Anyuaa runners who had to pass
through territory of the Nuer, their ancestral enemies. A regular caravan route from
Gambella to Macher, a village downstream open to year-round navigation, was not
deemed feasible since, to avoid the malaria-infested riverine swamps to the west, a wide
detour would be necessary through unadministered, and therefore uncontrollable,
regions. Two ambitious proposals - the dredging of the Baro, and a railway alongside the
river to a point of permanent navigability downstream - were rejected, unsurprisingly, on
grounds of cost (Note 9).

If Gambella's links with the Sudan were discontinuous, particularly in the dry season,
what of those eastwards with the highlands that were the very raison d'être of the enclave?
Though beset by considerable problems, these could at least function all through the year.
A temperamental telephone connection with Addis Ababa was put in place before the
First World War, and mail destined for Europe in the closed season was carried by a
weekly runner service to the highland town of Gore, linked in turn by another runner
service to the capital (Note 10). But the difference in altitude of several thousand feet
between the high hinterland and the hot malarial lowlands around Gambella presented
particularly formidable obstacles to the movement of trade between the two. Not least
were the almost precipitous escarpments separating them; and the tsetse fly of the
lowlands prevented highland mule transport from bringing the harvested coffee crop
down to Gambella, an arduous task accomplished only by human porters until the late
1920's, when a road suitable for lorry traffic linked the enclave with Gore. Additionally,
there was the irony that the highland rains, while making Gambella accessible to the
Sudan, at the very same time sharply curtailed the movement of trade within and from the
highlands upon which the enclave depended. As for the trade in imported manufactured
produce (principally American cotton goods), an inhibiting factor all through the year was
the tendency of local rulers to impose their own arbitrary tolls between Gambella and the
highland markets. On top of the official customs levies at Gambella (shared equally
between the Ethiopian and Sudan governments), these could inflate prices to well beyond
those of equivalent goods in Addis Ababa imported via the Red Sea coast (Note 11).
Within the enclave itself, its isolated location and the seasonal changes in the level of the
Baro river stifled economic activity, particularly the turnover of capital. With too few
Maria Theresa dollars in circulation and without access to credit, traders risked
bankruptcy when shipment to their markets was unavailable for at least seven months of
the year (Note 12).

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Some five years after its inception, the enclave's unpromising financial record, added to
the financial burden of its maintenance, encouraged a mood in Khartoum in favour of its
closure. But the wider political priorities of the Foreign Office overrode the doubts of
officials within the impecunious Sudan administration. The Foreign Office professed
optimism in the future of Gambella as the entrepot of western Ethiopia's external trade;
and it further argued for a continued British presence at the trading post as a necessary
centre of influence during the dismemberment of Ethiopia that was expected to follow the
death of the aged Emperor Minilik. For the same reasons, a withdrawal, undermining
British prestige in the region, would be at the expense of any moves that might be
contemplated towards incorporating western Ethiopia into the Sudan.

It happened meanwhile that, to a cautious extent, the growth in Gambella's trade justified
the Foreign Office's optimistic outlook. From £17,120 (Egyptian) in 1906, its value almost
quadrupled to £66,264 (Egyptian) in 1911 when, for the first time, customs dues more
than covered the Sudan government's expenses in the maintenance of the trading post. It
soon established itself as the main channel for Ethio-Sudanese trade, its share, which
varied at between 65% and 70%, surpassing by far the historic routes well to the north,
through Kurmuk and Matamma; in the period before the Italian invasion, the value of the
Gambella trade peaked at £335,990 (Egyptian) in 1925, thereafter to decline over the
following decade. Insofar as Gambella's proportion of Ethiopia's total foreign trade is
concerned, this was to average at around 17% by the mid 1930's, compared with 75% for
the Djibouti route (Note 13).

In hand with Gambella's improving prospects went important capital improvements to its
port facilities, carried out over the period from just before to just after the First World
War. A quay, served by a crane and a Decauville light railway, and commodious
warehouses for storage of produce during the closed season lined the river-front; and a
growing number of Greek and Syrian merchants, trading in particular in coffee, cloth,
ivory and beeswax, set up business in the enclave.

But ambiguities in the legal status of the enclave were recurring causes of Anglo-
Ethiopian friction through this period. Apart from its unclarified northern and western
boundaries (Note 14), the Sudan government was uncertain of the extent of its own
judicial powers within the enclave. And what, moreover, constituted a "military or
political purpose"? In this context it is worth referring briefly to two separate episodes,
the appearance of a gunboat at Gambella and the affair of the wireless station, both of
which highlighted diverging British and Ethiopian interpretations of the wording of
Article IV of the Treaty.

In 1913, at a time of anti-government Anyuaa unrest in the region, the consul requested
the presence of a gunboat in case of possible attack. The gunboat arrived from the Sudan,
allegedly with Ethiopian consent, but if this consent had been received as Walker, the
consul, claimed, news of it had not reached the Ethiopian authorities at Gambella.
Fitawrari Walda Maryam, the official in command of the Ethiopian post at Gambella,
wrote thus to Walker before the gunboat withdrew:

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"You told me before that the ship of war was coming to Gambella and I said that it could
not come without permission and I warned you. Now not even 60 soldiers may come
without permission and I order this in the name of Menelik and Lij Iyasu. The station of
Gambella was for merchants, not soldiers." (Note 15).

In 1915, a newly constructed wireless station connected Gambella with the Sudanese
telegraph system for the first time. The outbreak of war the year before had impressed
upon the British government the need for a means of swift communication with its
legation in Addis Ababa independent of the Italian telegraph system through Asmara that
it then depended upon. In response to an Ethiopian charge that its installation was a
unilateral British act in violation of Ethiopia's sovereignty, Thesiger, the British minister
in Addis Ababa, replied that this was not disallowed by the Treaty of 1902 "for commercial
purposes"; he added that the increased volume of trade through the enclave had made
imperative a swift and efficient means of communication with the Sudan. Lij Bayana,
minister of posts and telegraphs, opposed the installation of the wireless station,
interpreting this as a political act in violation of the 1902 Treaty; he further doubted
whether the Gambella trade had increased so spectacularly as to warrant it (Note 16). The
pro-British faction included the president of the council of ministers, Bitwadad Hayla
Giyorgis, and the war minister, Fitawrari Habta Giyorgis. The German legation, suspected
by Thesiger of influencing the opposition of Lij Bayana, stated in a formal protest to the
Ethiopian government that it would regard permission for the wireless station as "an
unfriendly act". The full and somewhat complex story of this affair cannot be told here
(Note 17). Its upshot was that the wireless station remained in Gambella on the
understanding that the Sudan government was committed, whenever asked, to selling its
apparatus to the Ethiopian government, who would pay the salaries of the staff that the
Sudan government declared itself willing to supply. The affair of the wireless station was
to rest there.

The failure in the early 1920's of two major ventures of British capital in Ethiopia, the
Abyssinian Corporation and the Abyssinian Development Syndicate, dampened British
expectations of a bonanza in undertaking the development of Gambella's hinterland. The
new mood was acknowledged in the notorious Anglo-Italian Agreement of 1925, which
provoked an immediate Ethiopian protest to the League of Nations:

"In the event of His Majesty's Government, with the valued assistance of the Italian
Government, obtaining from the Abyssinian Government the desired concession on Lake
Tana, they are also prepared to recognise an exclusive Italian economic interest in the
west of Abyssinia and in the whole territory to be crossed by the above-mentioned
railway" (Note 18).

Over ensuing years, as the Gambella hinterland came to be included within the
interpretation of "an exclusive Italian economic interest in the west of Abyssinia", the
British government withdrew official support for any of its nationals seeking investment
opportunities in western Ethiopia lest its partner in the Agreement might be offended.

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The enclave, unmentioned in the Agreement, was to endure, to ever vocal Italian
dissatisfaction, beyond the invasion of 1935-36. The economic policies of the new
occupation regime discriminated against the foreign concerns and individual foreign
merchants that had traded in Ethiopia before the invasion, driving many into insolvency
or out of the country altogether. This was accomplished largely through the imposition of
stringent export and currency regulations favouring the businesses of Italian nationals
and the large para-statal trading corporations, such as the Societa Anonima Navigazione
Eritrea (SANE) and the Societa Nazionale d'Etiopia (SNE), both with agencies at
Gambella, which had established themselves in Ethiopia hard on the heels of the invading
armies. Throughout the occupation period, Gambella remained the main entrepot of trade
with the Sudan, but the impact of Italian policy on its pioneer traders was ruinous. In
October 1937 the consul at Gambella, Jack Maurice (of whom more later), reported on
recent measures that had come into effect and stated that prices at which commodities
entering the enclave could be bought had been set by edict at a low rate:

"If any non-Italian offered more in order to attract trade he was liable to a fine. The
Italian firms SANE and SNE consistently offered more and no action was taken against
them. Coffee, etc, could at that time still come into the Enclave directly for sale. That has
now been stopped. All Gallas who wish to bring their coffee direct into the Enclave are
stopped before they enter. They have to report to the Italian Customs where they are
informed that they must only sell to SANE or SNE. To ensure that they do they have to
report on their return from the Enclave with a receipt from either of these two firms. So
we have now arrived at the somewhat humiliating position that the only firms doing
any export trade in a Sudan Government Enclave are both Italian".

The movement of goods out of the enclave was to decline sharply in volume, doubtless
almost entirely in consequence of the Italian monopoly of Ethiopia's export trade and the
effective constraints upon any significant commercial activity by other nationals. The
Annual Report for Gambella of 1938 records that, compared with 1937, the export of
coffee (in bags of 150 rottle) fell from 23,347 to 18,784, cloth bales from 2,076 to 1,751
and, more spectacularly, general merchandise (packets) from 159,731 to 16,012 (Note 19).

Italian seizure of the enclave followed immediately upon Mussolini's entry into the war in
June 1940. Nine months later, in March 1941, a combined Belgian colonial and British
Commonwealth force wrested it back in battle. Fifteen years later, the Sudan was
independent and, in accordance with the 1902 Treaty, the lease expired.

The Baro river trade route atrophied years ago. I was told that the last of the old Sudan
steamers had sailed out of Gambella for ever in the early 1960's. Much of such Ethio-
Sudanese trade as there is nowadays, if not air cargo, is carried by lorry across the frontier
far to the north, close to the traditional routes usurped by Gambella in its heyday.

One of the enclave's officials is particularly remembered to this day by Gambella's older
residents, even after more than 40 years: Jack Maurice, a consul here both before and
after the enclave's brief Italian occupation. A tall, gangling man, he had, according to war
correspondent George Steer, "emerged unscathed from the battle between mosquitoes
and alcohol for the possession of his blood" (Note 20). The generosity of his hospitality

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was as legendary as his ability to remain unaffected by vast quantities of drink; he could
drink a party off their chairs and under the table at one place and do the same somewhere
else in the course of a single evening. When Italy entered the war, I heard, he was
forewarned of orders for his arrest by Captain Praga, commanding the Italian military
post across the Jajjaba ravine, and escaped by dugout canoe downstream to the Sudan. I
was shown his bungalow. Above a doorway, in faded paint, was an appropriate greeting:
"Bide Awhile". In the garden, the graves of his favourite horse and dog were marked by
inscribed concrete slabs.

Many of the buildings of the enclave remain to this day. Most are appropriated to other
uses or are abandoned. The twin masts of the once controversial wireless station,
although long disused, are still in place. They are about 100 ft tall and a prominent feature
of the Gambella skyline. The austere but attractive building alongside, which housed the
receiving and transmitting apparatus, is now a government office. Only one of the
warehouses on the water-front, a solid red-brick structure, is in good repair and retains a
storage function. Others still stand, roofless monuments to the shifting patterns of
commerce. Through the collapsed wall of one of them I saw ancient rusting machinery
choked by luxuriant jungle, a shady haunt of lizards and exotic butterflies.

The quay, still with its bollards, is solidly built. It is hard to envisage the hustle and bustle
of a busy port in this peaceful spot, pleasantly shaded by enormous mango trees planted
60 years ago. I was here in December when, half a century ago, the river would have been
closed to the enclave's seasonal navigation for a month. Its level had already fallen
dramatically and, separated from the distant waterline by a steep expanse of dried mud,
the quayside gave something of the appearance of a beached whale (Note 21).

From the quayside it is sometimes possible to glimpse crocodiles out in the mid-stream or
on the far bank. A quarter hour's walk downriver brought me to a vantage point from
where I saw many more, and from much closer, basking motionless in unblinking menace
on rocks and sandbanks. A once prolific but now threatened species still thrives in a
natural habitat close to man. Haute couture and the handbag industry are far away (Note
22).

The enclave's history is etched on the gravestones of its old and overgrown cemetery 400
yards north of the river. Most of those not lost to view under impenetrable thorn belong to
the long-gone Greek and Syrian communities, once the backbone of the Gambella trade. I
saw a fragment of a marble headstone entangled in briars; it belonged to the grave of
Major-General Sir William Gatacre, a divisional commander in the Boer War and veteran
of earlier campaigns in Burma, the North-West Frontier and the Sudan, who died of fever
in 1906 while hunting elephant near here. Another grave, marked by an iron pedestal and
a low iron railing, the rusty epitaph still distinct, belongs to W G Dawson, superintendent
of customs who died at Gambella in 1916, aged 31. Nearby, cracked and almost swallowed
by the ground, is the recumbent headstone of Lieutenant H Lambrecht of the Belgian
colonial force that fought at Gambella in 1941. A little to the north, beyond the other
graves and on the edge of a group of Anyuaa dwellings, a crumbling memorial bears a

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scarcely decipherable inscription commemorating the soldiers and porters of that same
force who died during the long journey from the Belgian Congo or in the battle for
Gambella. In front, a concrete stump marks where a flagpole once stood.

Gambella stirs to life in the early evening. Fishermen in search of Nile perch row out to
mid-river in slender dugout canoes. Bathers congregate down in the shallow water where
the Jajjaba creek, now almost dry, joins the main stream. A light breeze lifts off the water
and carries the faint fragrance of newly-lit fires. The river gleams orange under the
sinking sun as the far bank darkens. The cicadas strike up a strident chorus. A tranquil
glimpse of immemorial Africa, where Europe has never intruded. It is as if the Gambella
enclave might never have been (Note 23).

Notes:

1 A technicality: the Egyptian flag flew alongside the British flag at Gambella since
the trading post was an enclave of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The Condominium
Agreement of 1899 provided for dual British and Egyptian sovereignty over the
Sudan, which did not comprise a formal part of the British empire. It was
nevertheless a territory as much under direct British rule as most others within the
empire, and the senior ranks of the Sudan government were filled by Britons while
Egyptian participation was limited to some of the subordinate administrative posts.

2 Gambella was presumably seen not only as a trading post, but also as a station on
this railway (which never came to be built).

3 Construction had already started on this railway from the French port of Djibouti on
the Red Sea, but its progress was delayed by financial and political setbacks and
it did not finally reach Addis Ababa until 1917.

4 A twin settlement grew up around the Ethiopian customs post on the eastern side
of the Jajjaba ravine. It seems that the northern and western boundaries of the
enclave were never delineated. The southern boundary was, of course, the river.

5 Throughout the duration of the enclave, the British official appointed from
Khartoum to oversee its day-to-day administration was commonly, if confusingly,
referred to as a consul. In this I have followed suit. Consuls posted elsewhere in
Ethiopia at various times between 1900 and 1950 (in the south and the west, for
example, at Dangila, Gore, Maji, and Mega) were responsible to the British
legation in Addis Ababa rather than, as at Gambella, to the administration of the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

6 Nothing more than a cursory discussion of the origins and subsequent

development of the Gambella enclave is attempted here, For its history up to the
Italian invasion, see Dr Bahru Zewde: "Relations between Ethiopia and the Sudan
on the Western Ethiopian Frontier, 1898-1935" (Ph D Thesis, University of
London, 1976). I found this to be an exhaustive and invaluable study.
Unfortunately there is no similar study of the period beyond: the Italian occupation
and the 15 years between the liberation and the return of the enclave to Ethiopia.

7 The steamers had a draught of 3 - 3½ ft.

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 8 The downstream voyage took a week. The steamers were operated by Sudan
Government Railways, who eventually provided a service of twice-monthly sailings
between Khartoum and Gambella in the open season.

9 A light launch was later to be introduced for postal service, and in 1915 a wireless
station linked Gambella with the Sudan.

10 A letter from Gambella reached London in 37 days by this route. The Sudanese
steamers provided a rather faster service in the open season.

11 To the dissatisfaction of progressive Ethiopians, governors in this region were

unsalaried officials appointed from Addis Ababa and expected to fend for
themselves.

12 This problem was eased when a branch of the British-controlled Bank of Abyssinia
was opened in Gore in 1912, and a sub-agency in Gambella offered credit against
goods to be sold in the forthcoming open season (and meanwhile stored in a new
warehouse on the river-front).

13 A figure to comment eloquently on the unrealistic British hopes of the enclave's

future as Ethiopia's principal route for external trade.

14 See, for example, note 17 below.

15 Bahru Zewde: op. cit., p 136.

16 Here Lij Bayana was more correct than Thesiger. At this moment, the Gambella
trade had in fact declined since 1911, the first year of the enclave's solvency.

17 Bahru Zewde: op. cit. A separate point of issue, to be lost sight of in the general
debate, was the claim of Ethiopian officials in Gambella that the stone to build the
wireless station had been quarried from a hill beyond the northern boundary of the
enclave without Ethiopian permission.

18 The railway referred to here was one that Italy wished to construct which, passing
west of the terminal of the French line at Addis Ababa, would link her colonies in
Somaliland and Eritrea. The "desired concession on Lake Tana" refers to a dam
that the Lancashire cotton industry considered imperative for the expansion of the
Gezira cotton scheme in the Sudan. Neither project materialised.

19 For this information on the Italian economic assault on the enclave, see Dr
Richard Pankhurst: "A Chapter in Ethiopia's Commercial History: Developments
during the Fascist Occupation, 1936-41", Ethiopia Observer XIV I (1971).

20 G L Steer: "Sealed and Delivered" (London, 1942), p 49.

21 The seasonal variation between high and low water at Gambella is around 23 ft.

22 Wildlife of the larger varieties is still abundant around Gambella. There are
colonies of hippopotamus in the river, and herds of elephant roam the nearby
country.

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23 The future will bring change to Gambella. The Baro river is now spanned by an
impressive road-bridge and there are plans for the expansion of the town. A large
irrigation project is underway nearby with Russian aid. As for the immediate
present and its pressing political problems, the refugees from the civil war in
southern Sudan have crossed the border and are sheltered in a large UNHCR
camp downstream at Itang.

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