The Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888-1892:

A New Assessment
RICHARD PANKHURST*

PART ONE

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r | -<HE Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888-1892, perhaps the most
J L terrible natural calamity still remembered in this part of
Africa, was an event of considerable historical interest. Occurring
as it did in an underdeveloped country prior to the existence of
either a market economy or a modern state, the famine is none-
theless well documented by contemporary writers. It therefore
affords us a revealing glimpse of the kinds of problems produced
by economic dislocation at a stage of economic and political de-
velopment which in the more advanced countries occurred well
before the production of records comparable to those available for
the Ethiopian history of this period.
Traditional Ethiopian agriculture, based as it was on a fertile
soil and two good rainy seasons a year, was generally speaking
sufficient to ensure an adequate level of prosperity which may
indeed have helped to engender a feeling of self-sufficiency inimical
to innovation. The agricultural wealth of the country in former
times impressed most foreign observers. Four centuries ago, in
1520, the Portuguese priest, Fransisco Alvarez, travelling through
the Mai Tzada region of Tigre province, exclaimed, "It seems to
me that in the whole world there is not so populous a country or
one so abundant in crops."1 Further to the south in the Farso
area, identified as probably near the Mai Chew of modern times,
he saw "thick maize fields as high as large cane," as well as many
plots of coriander. The inhabitants told him that "they gathered
so much crops of all kinds, that were it not for the worm, there
would have been abundance for ten years. And because I was
amazed they said to me: 'Honoured guest, do not be ama2ed, be-
cause in the years that we harvest little we gather enough for
three years' plenty in the country; and if it were not for the
multitude of locusts and hail, which sometimes do great damage,
we should not sow the half of what we sow because so much
• Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Haile Sellassie I University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
1 F. Alvarez, Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Abyssinia (London, 1881), 66-7.

Copyright 1966 by JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND ALLIED SCIENCES, Inc.
96 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, I 966

remains that it cannot be believed; so it is sowing wheat, or

barley, lentils, pulse or any other seed. We sow so much with
the hope that even if each of the said plagues should come, some
would be spoiled but some would remain, and if all were spoiled
the year before, our produce is in such manner abundant that
we have no scarcity.' "2
Notwithstanding the vast agricultural potential and the ele-
ment of thrift described in the above passage, traditional Ethiopian
society was, in fact, unable adequately to overcome the problem

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of shortages resulting from crop failures, the ravages of locusts, or
the destruction produced by war. It must be emphasised that
though the Emperors and chiefs might possess relatively large
granaries, the people as a whole had evolved no effective manner
of storing to meet emergencies of any kind and may well have
been dissuaded from so doing by the fear that the existence of
such reserves would merely be an invitation to the soldiers to
ravage die area.8 The machinery of the State, furthermore, was
far too rudimentary to provide assistance to the famine-stricken
except in the vicinity of the capital and a handful of provincial
centres where the giving of such relief was, as we shall see,
traditional. The absence of a market economy meant that no
region was geared to produce surpluses, however much they might
be required elsewhere, while the general scarcity of money pre-
vented any area from purchasing the necessities of life. Finally,
the difficulties of communication in so mountainous and far-flung
an empire as Ethiopia would have rendered almost impossible the
transportation of relief supplies even if they had been available.
The result was that prosperity gave way from time to time to
serious famines, in many cases followed by epidemics of one kind
or another. The country's royal chronicles and other historical
sources, which enable us to date events in Ethiopia much more
precisely than in most other parts of Africa, reveal that no fewer
than twenty-three major famines occurred in the two centuries
or so from 1540 to 1800, namely in 1540, 1543, 1567, 1611,
1623, 1625, 1633, 1634, 1635, 1636, 1650, 1653, 1678, 1700, 1702,
1747, 1748, 1752, 1783, 1789, 1796, 1797, and 1800.* Though the
chronicles of this period usually do no more than report that a
2 Ibid., 106.
8R. Pankhunt, The Effects of War in Ethiopian History, Ethiopia Observer, 1963,
7, 144-61.
4R. Fankhurst, Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia (London, 1961),
s 58-140.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 97

famine occurred, a few add a word or two of description. Thus

the famine of 1540 was described as worse than the one which
occurred at the time of the destruction of the second temple,5
while the famine of 1702 was said to be so serious that
starving peasants appealed to the Emperor Iyasu I at Gondar,
the capital, crying that if he did not help them, they would die
of hunger. Iyasu and some of his nobles were apparently well
supplied, for the chronicle states that together they fed an in-

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numerable multitude of the destitute for two months; the sov-
ereign, we are told, extended charity to all who were in need
and did not say "this one is a Jew, that one is disloyal or a
murderer." 6
# * *
The first famine of which we have more detailed information
occurred in the southern province of Shoa in 1828-9. It is men-
tioned in the memoirs of the British surgeon, Charles Johnston,
who learned about it a generation later during his visit to the
country in 1842-3. His account reveals that this famine, which, like
so many others, was accompanied by an outbreak of an epidemic
—in this case cholera—produced considerable dislocation. Explain-
ing that the famine was due to the simultaneous failure of both
the grain and the cotton crops, followed by the death of large
numbers of cattle, he adds,
the people . . . were reduced to the greatest extremity for food and cloth-
ing. Numbers fell victims from hunger alone, and to relieve their necessities
numerous acts of violence and robbery disturbed the usually peaceful
state of society in Shoa. The Negus [King] at this time secured to himself
the love of his subjects by the liberality of his frequent distribution of
grain, but another calamity made its appearance, the cholera commenced
its ravages, and he began to fear that his bounty might end by the ex-
haustion of his means.7
The famished population, not surprisingly, fell easy prey to
the cholera. Johnston says that almost two-thirds of the famine
victims died of it, while other observers of the period confirm the
severity of the epidemic. The British envoy, Cornwallis Harris,
later stated that at Ankober, the capital of Shoa, half the popula-
tion had been carried off, and that the King had been obliged to
flee to his nearby palace at Mikael Wanz, while the missionary,
6\V. E. Conzelman, Chronique de Galawdewos (Claudius) roi d'Ethiopie (Paris,
1895), 1S3, 138.
6 1. Guidi, Anncdes, Iohannii I, Iyasu I el Bakaffa (Louvain, 1905), S31.
7C. Johnston, Travels in Southern Abyssinia (London, 1844), II, 158.
98 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

J. L. Krapf, noted at about the same time that further north the
population of Wallo and Lasta was also "considerably thinned." 8
Describing the events which followed, Johnston gives us a
revealing insight into the way in which a paternalistic feudalistic
regime responded to famine conditions. He declares:
The famine increased from want of cattle which had died to cultivate
the land, the difficulty of obtaining food began also to be felt by those who
had the means of purchasing it, and these intruding with their applications
were supplied at a price, whilst the wretched poor were left to die. In

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this position having nothing to dispose of but their labours, a starving
multitude of some thousands appealed to the Negus to receive their
freedom, or at least their services for life.
This request was reminiscent of the Biblical account of the famine
which occurred in ancient Egypt when Joseph was acting as the
steward of the Pharaoh, and in view of the deeply engrained
character of Ethiopian Christianity may well have been inspired
by it. Johnston, who claims that this report was confirmed by a
woman in his service whose father was involved in this mass
appeal for slavery, states that Sahle Sellassie agreed to the arrange-
ment. "Even after the cholera had swept off nearly two-thirds of
their number," Johnston says, "above a thousand such individuals
were found to be in bondage to the Negus, and were duly regis-
tered as slaves." The famine victims' enslavement, he explains,
was only "nominal," for except on "extraordinary occasions," the
slaves were "never called upon for regular or long-continued
labour" and usually served for no more than three days every
three months.9 Harris, who also alludes to these events, states that
the slaves nonetheless were soon clamouring for their freedom
and that after some dispute 4,700 of them were emancipated.10
The Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888-92, which seems to have
been reminiscent of the famine of 1828-9, was perhaps the most
serious and certainly the best documented famine in Ethiopian
history; it can therefore be examined in considerably greater detail
than any of its predecessors. Since it coincided with the death of
the Emperor Yohannes IV in 1889, many people, particularly in
his home province of Tigre, considered the event an act of God,
it being popularly believed that natural calamities accompanied

8 C. W. Harris, The Highlands of Aethiopia (London, 1846), III, 166; C. W. Isenberg

and J. L. Krapf, Journals Detailing their Proceedings in the Kingdom of Shoa (London,
1843), 398, 458. See also A. Barkhuus, Diseases and Medical Problems of Ethiopia. Ciba
Symp., 1947, 9, 719.
»Johnston (n. 7), n , 158-9.
10 Harris (n. 8), III, 293-4.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 99

the death of great rulers.11 The causes of the catastrophe, how-

ever, date back well before the death of the sovereign and are to
be found in a combination of natural calamities, a major epidemic
of cattle plague or rinderpest, a harvest failure, and an outbreak of
locusts and caterpillars. To understand the famine it is necessary
to examine each of these disasters in turn.
* * #
Outbreaks of animal disease in Ethiopia, though rare, were
by no means new. Johnston, as already mentioned, says that large

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numbers of cattle died in Shoa around 1828-9. A generation or two
later British observers who accompanied the Napier expedition to
Magdala of 1867-8 reported the presence of a fever which attacked
their horses and mules, while an outbreak of cattle plague can be
identified in the following decade.12 The Earl of Mayo, a traveller
of the period, records that the Shohos of the coast were suffering
around 1876 from an epidemic which may well have been spread
inland by the movement of Egyptian troops, for Gabriel Simon
indicates that the disease broke out in Hamasien after the fight-
ing.18 It should be borne in mind that such campaigns necessitated
considerable movement of man and beast, for the soldiers were
traditionally accompanied not only by their wives, children, ser-
vants and slaves, but also by large numbers of horses, mules, and
cattle.14 A year or so later an Italian traveller, Sebastiano Martini,
reported that a cattle disease from the lowlands of Adal had spread
to Shoa which was in consequence suffering from acute starvation.16
Such epidemics, like those affecting the human population,
were, however, often kept under control, because the Ethiopian
society traditionally took fairly effective precautions against the
spread of infection. The Earl of Mayo, for example, reported
that his party on reaching the Ethiopian plateau from the port
of Massawa were prevented from entering Asmara, which was then
under Ethiopian rule, orders having been given to stop all baggage-
11 Statement by Abba Jerome Gabre Muse of the National Library of Ethiopia who
was a youth at the time of the great famine and trekked from his home in Adi Caieh to
Massawa to obtain grain.
12 G. R. Markham, A History of the Abyssinian Expedition (London, 1869), 163;
H. M. Stanley, Coomasie and Magdala (London, 1874), 544; A. J. Shepherd, The Campaign
in Abyssinia (Bombay, 1868), 11-13, '5<H>2; H. M. Hozier, The British Expedition to
Abyssinia (London, 1869), 175, 178. See also S. W. Baker, The Nile Tributaries of Abys-
sinia, (London 1867), 717; Guebre Sellassii. Chronique du regne de Minilik II (Paris,
1930-1), II, 414; A. B. Wylde, Modern Abyssinia (London, 1901), 344; F. Harrison Smith,
Through Abyssinia (London, 1890), 118-20.
18 Earl of Mayo, Sport in Abyssinia (London, 1876), 56-7, 229; G. Simon, Voyage en
Abyssinie (Paris, 1885), 103.
1* R. Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Army of Former Times, Ethiopia Observer, 1963, 7,
118-141.
is S. Martini, Terze viaggio del Cap. S. Martini allo Sdoa, Cosmos, 1880, /, 65-76.
ioo Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

bullocks from "coming any further than the top of the hills." On
enquiring the reason for this action he learnt that "there was
cattle disease among the herds of the Shoho Arabs, and an order
had been issued all through Abyssinia that no cattle were to travel,
or be allowed to go to or from infected districts." Recognising the
importance of this regulation, he added: "This is worthy of the
notice of our sanitary commissioners at home."16
At the time of the Great Famine such regulations were either
not operative or proved ineffective. The country was passing

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through a difficult period, for the fighting with the Egyptians in
the 1870s was followed in the next decade by conflict with two
new enemies: the Dervishes or Sudanese in the West and the
Italians in the North. There was therefore once again need for the
movement of troops and hence of cattle.
The outbreak of rinderpest at this time may well have been
due to the importation by the Italians of infected cattle from
abroad. The Italians, having seized the port of Massawa in
February 1885, had soon begun a policy of expansion in the
coastal lowlands. They suffered their first reverse at Dogali on
7 January 1887, when an invading force was annihilated by the
Ethiopian commander of the north, Ras Alula. Undeterred by
this event a new Italian expedition led by General San Marzano
landed at Massawa on November 8th of the same year, bringing
with it 800 horses and 1,000 mules specially shipped from Naples.17
Ethiopian tradition, as recorded by Cerulli, blames this expedition
for the introduction of cattle disease and asserts that cattle, some
of them infected, were imported for the troops by an Italian
called Andreoli, many of the animals coming from India.18 The
importer, it may be added, was presumably Lamberto Andreoli
who is listed in a contemporary Italian work as a contractor,
purveyor, and shipowner.19 That the cattle disease was brought
in by the Italians, mainly from India, appears very probable. It
was asserted at the time by Alfred Ilg, the Ethiopian ruler Mene-
lik's Swiss adviser, as well as by the Protestant missionary Flad
and the German traveller, Conrad Keller, and was later repeated
by a subsequent French Minister and Ethiopicist, Maurice de

16 Mayo (n. 13), 56-7, asg.

17 Capitiine Pellenc, Les Italiens en Afrique (Paris, 1897), 18-19; C. de la Jonquifcre,
Les Italiens en Erythrie (Paris, 1897), 84.
18 E. Cerulli, Canti popolari amarici, Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei,
Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, 1916, 2}, Fast 5-6, 566.
18 E. Q. M. Alamanni, La colonia Eritrea e i suoi commerci (Turin, 1891), 189.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 101

Coppet.20 The assertion was moreover accepted by the French

physician, Dr. R. Wurtz, who, as we shall see, was sent to Ethiopia
a few years later in 1897 to study the public health of the counrty.21
Many Ethiopians, knowing of Italian ambitions in the country,
believed that the disease was in fact spread deliberately. Thus
Alaqa Lemma Hailu, now an old man in his nineties, quotes a
once widespread view that "the Italians brought in the cattle
disease by inoculating three cattle with the disease." He con-
firms that the Italians were then importing livestock into their

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colony, but did not know from which country: when questioned
on this point he thought they might have been from India.22
The intensity of the outbreak may also have owed something
to the fact, asserted by some Roman Catholic missionaries of the
time, that the weather was unusually hot, which may in some way
have adversely affected the balance of nature. At all events the
rinderpest of 1888-9, which was very probably of a variety then
little known in the country, appeared with unusual virulence and
spread like wildfire, soon affecting almost all parts of Ethiopia as
well as much of the neighbouring Somali country to the south.
Our earliest contemporary references to the outbreak would
seem to be in the letters of the Roman Catholic missionaries in
the area. These reports, which appeared in the French periodical
Les Missions Catholiques, reveal that the epidemic was serious
after the rains of 1888, though it may possibly have started some-
what earlier, for an Italian traveller, Bottego, later stated that the
rinderpest began in 1887.28
The epidemic started in the north and advanced southwards.
Alaqa Lemma, whose remarkable memory helps to establish the
chronology of the outbreak, recalls that Hamasien was the first
province to be affected, and states that "within three days" all
the cattle in the province were paralysed, refused to graze and
died. The epidemic, he said, then spread to Tigre, causing the
Emperor Yohannes, who had been facing the Italians, to return
home at about the time of the death of his son Araya Sellassie
(which occurred in June 1888).24 Alaqa Lemma went on to relate
that during the rains of that year (i.e., between July and Sep-
20 J. M. Flad, 60 Jahre in der Mission unter den Falaschas in Abessinien (Basel, 1922) .
405; C. Keller, Alfred Ilg (Leipzig, 1918), 89; Guebre Sellassie, (n. 12), I. 25811.
21 R. Wurtz, Hygiene publique et privee en Abyssinie, Sem. mid. (Paris), 1898,
8, 492. See also Buil. Acad. Mid. (Paris), 1898, 3 ser. 41, 452.
22 Statement obtained by the author from Alaqa Lemma Hailu through the good
offices of his son A to Menghestu Lemma.
28 V. Bottego, / / Giuba esplorato (Rome, 1895), jg2.
24 Guebre Sellassie (n. 12), I, 2530.
 102 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

tember) the epidemic swept across all the northern provinces,

travelling by way of Tigre, Begemder and Lasta to Gojam where
he was then a student at Dima in the eastern part of the province.
The devastation, he said, began in Gojam in the months of Teqemt
and Hedar (i.e., between October and December). Falling ill
shortly before Christmas (i.e., early in January 1889) he was in
bed for some three days and remembers that when he got up he
"found that all the cattle were dead." The disease then spread to
Shoa. Not long afterwards, he adds, the Emperor Yohannes went

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down to Metemma where he died fighting the Dervishes. (The
battle, we know, occurred on March 9, the king died on the fol-
lowing day.)25
The picture is corroborated by contemporary sources. Thus
the French traveller, Vigneras, confirms that the disease originated
in the north,26 while M. Bettembourg, a Lazarist missionary at
Massawa, reporting on the situation in northern Ethiopia, de-
clared on 16 November 1888, that the greater part of the cattle
had perished;27 on January 8 of the following year one of his
colleagues, Mons. Crouzet, wrote: "A terrible epizootic murrain
has carried off all the cattle."28 A few weeks later, on 22 February,
Crouzet gave the additional information that to the west in the
Keren area three-quarters of the cattle had died and that a local
missionary, Father Picard, had reported, "if we wish to cultivate
we must replace these animals at a cost of 20 dollars each. Our
flock of goats has disappeared; the epidemic has left nothing."29
The disease, according to Wurtz, took four months to spread from
Tigre to Shoa.80 This would seem to be confirmed, for on 20
February, the Italian envoy, Count Antonelli, reported from Shoa
that "all Ethiopia" was threatened with what could be a period
"fatal to her economic life." Tigre, Gondar, Begemder, Gojam,
and Shoa, he said, were already in squalid misery because of the
large number of cattle, goats, and sheep which had died in the
epidemic.81
Livestock mortality undoubtedly reached immense propor-
tions. An Italian eye-witness, Capucci, estimated that 90 per cent
28Wylde (n. 12). 41-a.
28 S. Vigneras, Une mission franfaise en Abyssinie (Paris, 1897), SS4-
27 Let Missions Calholiques (1888), 557.
28 Ibid., 1889, 62-3.
29/btd., 171-2.
SO Wurtz (n. 21), 49s.
31 Italy, Camera dei Deputati, Documenti diplomatic! presentati al Parlamento
Italiano, Etiopia (Rome, 1890), 400. Sec also C. Conti Rossini, Italia ed Eliopia (Rome,
•935). »7 n -
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 103

of the cattle of Ethiopia perished,82 while Skinner, the first United

States envoy to Ethiopia, later quoted the view that not more
than 7 or 8 per cent were spared.83
Such estimates, though very tentative in character, would seem
to accord with all available evidence. Thus the Ethiopian writer,
Afewerk Gabre Yesus, who lived through this period, states in his
life of Menelik that almost all the cattle perished, the owner
of a thousand head being left with only one or two. He adds
that oxen and cows died all over the country, in every compound,

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meadow, field, and wood, and were consumed by vultures, ravens,
hyenas, and foxes.84 Alaqa Lemma says that his father at Abuna
Aron in Maget had owned some three hundred head of cattle,
but only one heifer survived. Setting out at that time with his
teacher for Addis Ababa he travelled in the month of Ginbot (i.e.,
May-June 1889) by w a v °f Debra Libanos and Debra Berhan,
passing through a land from which the livestock had almost com-
pletely disappeared. At Selale, in Shoa, they saw a sole black calf,
then in the Galla mountains above Debra Libanos they found six
old oxen standing alone, with no other cattle; finally, on reaching
Debra Berhan, they discovered that a few cattle had survived here
and there in the areas of highest elevation—a statement which is
supported by Wurtz, who says that it was only in the very high
country, at an altitude of three thousand metres or more, that the
herds were preserved, the epidemic being there less intense. At
Laja-gind, for example, Alaqa Lemma saw five or six cattle, but
in the qolla, or lowlands, the extermination was complete.88
Other observers tell a similar story. Wurtz says that in the
year 1889 almost all the country's livestock perished, whole herds
falling down dead where they stood to form a terrifying charnel
house which emitted a stinking odour everywhere and was so
bad that the hyenas and vultures soon refused to eat the corpses.
He says that at Bulga, for example, all the cattle died within eight
days and cites the case of one of Menelik's herds, several thousand
beasts in number, not a single one of which survived. Menelik
indeed was said to have lost around 250,000 head of cattle, while
some of the richer Gallas each lost as many as 10,000 to 12,000
head.36 A. B. Wylde, a very reliable British observer who visited
32 E. Scarfoglio, Abissinia (Rome, 1936), 121-3.
88 R. p. Skinner, Abyssinia of Today (London, 1906), 196.
** L. Fuaella, II Dagmawi Menilek di Afawarq Cabra Iyasus, Ross. Studi Etiopici.
1963, 19, i n .
85 See n. 22; Wurtz (n. 21), 492.
86 Wurtz (n. 11), 49a.
104 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL., 1966

the country on behalf of the Manchester Guardian less than a

decade after the outbreak, was informed by the chief of Koa in the
province of Lasta that in less than ten days he had lost 56 out
of his 57 plough oxen and all his cows, the only survivors being
"two or three heifers and some calves."87 Baird, a British official
who travelled to Debra Marqos in the west of the country at about
the same time as Wylde, states that the export of hides had then
entirely come to an end and adds that "during the whole of the
latter part of the march we passed quantities of bones of cattle

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which had been killed by the rinderpest. Each village had its
cattle-pen of strong timber, but they were nearly all empty."38
In the far northwest the nomadic Mensa Bet Abraha tribe,
whose wealth consisted almost entirely in cattle, were reduced to
grave distress. The German linguist, Enno Littmann, who visited
the area a decade and a half later, states that these hitherto great
herdsmen referred to the year of their misery—presumably 1888
or 1889—as the "year of the murrain"; they declared "that a
disease came over the cattle and it made them sick: it made their
hair look singed, their ears hang down, their eyes water, and their
mouths drivel. Finally they died of it. And that was the end of
their abundance of cattle." He adds that because the epidemic
"did not leave over [anything] they called it gelhay, i.e. the shaved
(bald) one."89 The Italian writer Bottego indicates that the whole
Beni Amir country suffered.40
Further to the south the province of Begemder had formerly
been renowned for its cattle, but Gabre Sellassie, the official
chronicler of Menelik, relates that soon neither bulls nor cows were
to be seen there.41
In the central province of Shoa the scourge was no less serious.
Antonelli, in his report of 20 February 1889, stated that all the
cattle of the province—its principal source of wealth—had been
destroyed. The carnage, he said, was overwhelming, indeed im-
possible to describe, entire herds of 500 or 1,000 head having
perished in a matter of one or two days.42 Ragazzi, of the Italian
Geographical Mission in Shoa, confirmed the extent of the epi-
demic and stated that the cattle of that province, as of Ethiopia
87 Wylde (n. 12), 339. See also idem, 334.
88 Great Britain, Foreign Office, 1/39, Report by Baird, 12 May 1900.
88 E. Uttmann, Publications of the Princeton University Expedition to Abyssinia
(Leyden, 1910-15), II, 236.
*o Bottego (n. 23), 392.
« Guebre Sellassie (n. 12), II, 487.
42 Camera dei Deputati, Etiopia, 400.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 105

in general, had been "almost completely destroyed," the Mission

itself having lost every one of its cows.48
Conditions in most of the country to the east and west of
Shoa were no better. The Capuchin missionary historian, Cle-
mente da Terzorio, says that almost all the cattle around the
great eastern trading centre of Harar died at this time,4* while
towards the coast Bottego and Wurtz both say that a vast num-
ber of cattle also perished in the Danakil desert.45
In KafEa, right on the other side of the country, a Catholic

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priest, Abba Fezzah, later recalled that there, too, large numbers
of cattle died.46
Similar evidence is available for the south. Bottego and Wurtz
agree that all the Galla lands suffered,47 while the French Bourg
de Bozas mission reported that so many animals had perished in
Arussi—traditionally a great province for cattle—that the country
was largely deserted by both man and beast.48 Cipolla wrote of
great havoc also among the herds of Borana.49
The cattle plague spread southwards far beyond the Ethiopian
frontier. Bottego notes, for example, that a large flock of cattle
belonging to the Sultan of the great Somali trading centre of
Lugh was "decimated,"60 and that the disease extended as far south
as Ganale.51 Ferrandi, another Italian explorer who travelled in
the Juba area, reported in 1892 seeing "enormous areas of bleached
bones of cattle." He says that the Gidu Somalis, whose country
lay between Bardera and Brava, had hitherto been "the richest of
the Somalis," but had been "reduced to poverty" by the epidemic
which had resulted in an "almost complete mortality" of cattle;
the epidemic was so violent, he adds, that in some zarebas of three
or four hundred head of cattle within forty-eight hours none
remained alive.82
The gravity of the situation throughout so large an area of
East Africa was vividly expressed by the Ethiopian chronicler,
Gabre Sellassie, who, writing in Biblical vein, declared that "a
48 V. Ragazzi, Lettere del Dot. Vicenzo Ragazzi, Boll. Soc. geogr. ital. 1889, 964.
44 Clemente da Terzorio, L'Ethiopia prima e dopo it Massaja (Rome, 1957), 202.
45 Bottego, (n. 23), 391; Wurtz (n. s i ) , 493.
46 Let Missions Catholiques, 1909, 303.
47 Bottego (n. S3), 39s; Wurtz (n. si), 493.
48 La Geographic (190s), 418; Vte du Bourg de Bozas, De la Mer Rouge a I'Atlantique,
cornets de route (Parij, 1906), 179, 263.
49 A. Cipolla, Pagine ajjricane di un esploratore (Milan, 19S7), 39.
BO Bottego (n. 23), 392.
61 Ibid., 114.
82 U. Ferrandi, Da Lugh alia Costa (Milan, 1902), 39.
106 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

scourge sent by God fell on Ethiopia and led to the destruction of

the cattle and oxen in the country."68
The intensity of the epidemic is further apparent from the
fact that it affected, as Afewerk Gabre Sellassie says, not only
domestic, but also wild animals.64 This statement is confirmed
from the writings of foreign observers. Powell-Cotton, a later
British game hunter, states that the holocaust carried away all
the buffalo in the province of Damot,66 while Ferrandi records
seeing "enormous areas" of bleached buffalo bones in the Juba

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area.66 Skinner states that even the antelopes of the desert per-
ished.67 Great mortality among buffaloes and antelopes was re-
ported by Bottego who was particularly acquainted with the
southern Somali region.68 Wurtz, who made a thorough study of
the matter, learnt from Ilg that the disease had in fact affected
all the ruminants and had carried off buffaloes and antelopes no
less than cattle; the principal animals to survive, he explains, were
certain types of gazelles, as well as sheep and goats.69 The trans-
formation effected throughout the country is apparent from the
account of Baird who subsequently observed: "Buffalo, which
used to roam in hundreds over this country, are now almost
extinct, nor did I see any sign of hartebeast which are also said
to have been common."00
# * •
Before considering the effects of this terrifying outbreak of
rinderpest, it may be convenient to turn to the parallel develop-
ments in the agricultural sector, for they coincided, at least as far
as the north was concerned, with a harvest failure, as well as with
unusually large swarms of locusts and caterpillars.
The year 1888-9 seems to have been excessively hot and dry
and therefore unsatisfactory for agriculture. As early as 16 Novem-
ber 1888, Bettembourg reported that lack of rain had caused a
large proportion of the crops to perish,61 while on 8 January of
the following year Mons Crouzet noted that in certain areas "all
the crops have been burnt up by the sun."62 A month or so later
68 Guebre Sellassie (n. 12), I, 258.
MFusella (n. 54), 121.
56 p. H. G. Powell-Cotton, A Sporting Trip through Abyssinia (London, 1902),
114, 225.
86 FeiTandi (n. 52), 39.
67 Skinner (n. 33), 195.
58 Bottego (n. 23), 392.
BO Wurtz (n. 21), 493.
80F.O., 1/39, Baird, 12 May 1900.
61 Les Missions Catholiques, 1888, 557.
62 Idem, 1889, 62-3. See also R. Perini, Di qua del Marib (Florence, 1905), 425.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine3 1888-1892 107

Antonelli reported on 20 February that the harvest failure had

reduced Tigre, Gondar, Begemder, and Gojam to misery.68 The
extent of the failure can be seen from a report of 22 February
by Crouzet which stated that the missionaries at Keren had
hitherto been assured every year of some 4,000 decalitres of grain
from the area of Chinyara, the production of which had fallen
to scarcely 100 decalitres.64
Dry weather seems to have been general throughout the country.
It was reported in 1890 by the Lazarist missionaries at Alitena in

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Tigre,68 as well as by another missionary, Martial de Salviac, who
wrote of the Galla country to the south, but gives no details as to
date.66 A subsequent British report for April 1892 stated that die
rains had failed in Shoa and soudiern Abyssinia.67
Though the original harvest failure was caused by the absence
of rain, it soon gave way to an even more serious dislocation of
agriculture, for the rinderpest, by killing off almost all the oxen,
brought ploughing to a halt.68 The gravity of this development
was understood, as we shall see, by the Emperor Menelik, and was
not lost on the Italian envoy Antonelli who reported on 20 Feb-
ruary 1889; "In so improvident a country, where die harvest is
consumed even before the new season arrives, it is easy to foretell
the horrible consequences to which Ethiopia will be condemned
when through lack of animals the fields cannot for several seasons
be sufficiently worked."09 The actual consequences were if any-
thing worse than Antonelli feared. Alaqa Lemma, talking seventy
years later of the famine, observes: "The chief cause of the famine
was die death of cattle. Because people could not plough they left
their land fallow."70 Many farmers, according to Gabre Sellas.sie,
were too demoralised to attempt to cultivate the land with hoes
instead of ploughs and therefore spent their time in inactivity.71
Wurtz, who confirms these statements, says that the peasants re-
fused to work and taxes ceased to be paid.72 Maurice de Coppet
states diat things were particularly serious for diose Gallas who
had then but recently abandoned pastoral for farming life and
63
Camera dei Deputati, Etiopia, 400.
&*Lcs
68
Missions Catholiques, 1889, 170-1.
Ibid., 1890, 49, 112.
«8 Martial de Salviac, Les Galla (Paris, 1900), 305.
" F . O . 403/177, Stace, 12 April 1892.
88Flad (n. 20), 405; Vigneras (n. 26), 83.
«e See n. 63.
TO See n. 21.
TiGuebre Sellassie (n. 12), I, 258, 296.
72 Wurtz (n. 21), 492.
108 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

knew no other agricultural implement than the plough.73 The

German envoy, Rosen, later recorded that the situation was also
particularly critical in those regions of Gojam which relied almost
entirely on their cattle. The people of Fogara, he says, had hitherto
been mainly nomadic herdsmen and had obtained such grain as
they required from the neighbouring Agaus in exchange for live-
stock. On the death of their only source of wealth these pastoral-
ists were obliged to make a sudden break with tradition by
becoming agriculturalists.74

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* * *
The influx of locusts and caterpillars seems to have occurred
at about the same time as the other calamities. The presence of
swarms of both types of insect was mentioned by Crouzet in a
letter of 8 January 1889, i.e., at the very beginning of the famine,
as well as by many other observers.75 Flad, writing of the effects
of these insects, declares that the caterpillars "appeared in such
masses that they destroyed the crops and what was left over was
annihilated by swarms of locusts."76 The latter insects seem to
have appeared more than once, for Picard reported on 22 July 1892
that they were again "sweeping over the country," and were par-
ticularly serious in Akele Guzai.77 Locust invasions in Shoa and
in the Harar area are also mentioned by both Wurtz and Clemente
da Terzorio.78
There were also reports in 1892 of the appearance in Amhara
of "thousands of rats," which, Picard noted on 22 July, were "de-
stroying the crops."79
The advent of these pests, particularly of the locusts and cater-
pillars, at the same time as the other calamities represented a very
unfortunate combination of disasters. Though locusts were a
common sight at least in Northern Ethiopia,80 the swarms of this
time seem to have been much larger than average. The advent of
the caterpillar pest was an even more remarkable coincidence,
for the appearance of these insects, the exact species of which has
not been identified, was a very rare event.
Though the cattle pest was of course by far the most serious
of these difficulties, any of the aforementioned natural misfortunes
T8 Ibid., I, sg6n. See also P. Soleillet, Voyages en Ethiopie (Rouen, 1886), s66.
1* F. Rosen, Eine deuUche Gesandtschaft m Abessinien (Leipzig, 1907, 355, 391-2.
T S i « Missions Catholiques, 1889, 62-3. See also F. Martini, Nell'Affrica italiana
(Milan, 1896), 37.
T6 Flad, (n. so), 405.
TT Let Missions Catholiques, 189s, 438. See Perini (n. 6s), 4*5.
78 Wurtz (n. si), 492; Clemente da Terzorio (n. 44), *oa.
79 La Missions Catholiques, 1892, 438.
so Pankhurst (n. 4), 230-4.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 109

would have been a serious event; coming together as they did,

however, they constituted a national calamity.81 The entire country
seemed to have undergone a great transformation almost over-
night. Antonelli, who had travelled between Harar and Addis
Ababa in July 1888 and again in June 1889, was appalled by the
change he encountered when he made the same journey in De-
cember 1890. "Previously," he wrote on 29 December, "the country
was inhabited; there were very beautiful fields of durra and barley,
numerous herds of cattle, sheep and goats, and the whole area

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had an atmosphere of abundance and prosperity." The situation
in 1890 was, however, entirely different. "At present," he wrote,
"it is one continuous desolation. Except between Harar and Burka
where there are still a few inhabitants and occasional areas of
cultivation, the remainder up to Menta Cara in Minjar is absolutely
a desert; no more inhabitants, no more cultivation, no more flocks,
but low acacias and tall grass rendering the beautiful valleys of
Chercher and the Ittu unrecognisable."82
* * •
The cattle plague and harvest failure combined to produce
a sudden and very considerable rise in the price of all items of
food. This revolution in prices owed much to the fact, noticed by
observers such as Antonelli and the Russian explorer Mashkov,
that lack of means and difficulties of communication prevented
the import of grain from the neighbouring areas of production.88
Price increases moreover were accentuated by a considerable
amount of speculation. Afewerk Gabre Yesus, for example, states
that the farmers and well-to-do, thinking that the cattle would
never be replaced, took fear and concealed as much grain as they
could in holes in the ground and other places of storage, with the
result that grain disappeared entirely from the market.84
Some idea of the rise in prices may be obtained from a number
of the eye-witness accounts. Thus as early as 16 November 1888,
when the year's harvest should only just have been coming in,
Bettembourg reported that the price of provisions at Massawa
was double that of the previous year.8* Much greater price in-
creases in the interior of the country were subsequently reported
81 Martini (n. 75) , 37-8; J. B. Piolet, Les Missions catholiques francaises au XIX
siecle (Paris, n.cL), II, 75.
82 Italy, Camera dei Deputati, Documenti diplomatichi presentati al Parlamento
italiano, Missions Antonelli in Ethiopia (Rome, 1890), 57. See also Fusella (n. 34), 12s.
88 Camera dei Deputati, Missione Antonelli in Etiopia, 57: "II secondo viaggio in
Abissinia del Mashkov," Boll. Soc. geog. ital., jd ser. 7, 869-71.
84 Fusella (n. 34), 121.
BSLa Missions Catholiques, 1888, 557.
no Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

by the Russian traveller Mashkov who stated that the cost of grain
rose between 1889 a n ( ^ 18go one or two hundred times as may be
seen in the following table:68
1889 1890
Price in Price in
Commodity MT.$ Quantity MT. $ Quantity
Wheat 1 200 qunna 1 i}/2 qunna
Barley 1 400 qunna 1 2-3 qunna

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Antonelli confirmed the general increase in prices. He reported
on 29 December 1890, that a dollar could then only buy 8 to 9
litres of grain—only a fraction of what could be obtained a year
earlier.87
The price revolution in Harar was so great that the missionary,
Mons Taurin, said the price of grain around 1892 had reached
impossible heights.88
The price of livestock also soared. Martial de Salviac, writing
of the Galla country, noted that though the value of the Maria
Theresa dollar had fallen to half, the price of cattle rose in this
period five to seven times, an ox, which had once been worth two
dollars, selling for twenty to thirty dollars, and a cow fetching
perhaps as much as forty dollars.89 Antonelli in his report of 29
December 1890 confirmed this great increase in livestock prices,
declaring that an ox was worth not less than thirty dollars and
a sheep around three dollars.90 Mashkov's figures, which are quoted
below, indicate that between 1889 and 1890 there occurred a
twenty- or thirty-fold price increase in the case of plough oxen
and a thirty- to forty-fold increase in that of cattle.91

1889 1890
Commodity Price in M.T.$ Quantity Price in M.T.$ Quantity
Plough oxen 2-4 1 head 60-80 1 head
1 ll l nea
Cattle ~ A d 30-60 1 head

The price of sheep also rose. Mashkov says that whereas a

dollar might have bought one to six sheep in 1899, a single animal
BOMissione Antonelli (n. 83), 869-71.
87 Miaione Antonelli (n. 83).
88 Taurin de Cahagne, "Voyage dans le pays Galla," Let Missions Catholiques, 1896,
so6.
89 Martial de Salviac (n. 66), i«6.
80Mistione Antonelli (n. 83).
81 Ibid., 869-71. See also R. Pankhurst, Notes for a History of Ethiopian Agriculture,
Ethiopia Observer, 1964, 7, 289-30.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine,, 1888-1892 111

cost anything between two and four dollars in 1890, a very con-
siderable increase in price having occurred in a year.92 This in-
crease was so great. Antonelli says, that a sheep in 1890 was worth
as much as a calf only a few years earlier.98
The value of the salt bar (amole) traditionally used instead of
money94 also substantially increased, presumably because the short-
age of beasts of burden increased transport costs. Antonelli in his
report of 29 December 1890 stated that two and a half bars of

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salt exchanged for a dollar instead of eight to ten as formerly,
while Maskhov confirmed the great increase in the value of salt,
observing that where a dollar would buy eight to twelve bars in
1889, a year later it obtained only two to two and a half bars.
The result, needless to say, was that the entire system of prices was
overturned.98
The price revolution was so great as to affect all classes and
led automatically to acute starvation. Father Picard reported on
22 July 1892: "Many rich people have become too poor to buy the
victuals necessary to survive the year. In order not to die of hunger
they sell their goats, cows, mules, lands and every thing they
have."90 The history of this time is perpetuated in one of the local
traditions of Hamasien. One story tells that the small village of
Adi Teklay was so famished that it agreed to sell the nearby spring
of Asahera to the neighbouring larger village of Himberti, the
purchase price agreed upon being a mere half piece of injera, the
local pancake-like bread.97
Prices were, however, only partially meaningful, for supplies
were often entirely unobtainable. Bettembourg, for example, noted
on 16 November 1888 that it was very difficult to obtain food
at any price,98 while Afewerk Gabre Yesus states that in those
days one could not find even a qelbit of grain, the smallest unit
employed in the measure of cereals, though one or two chans,
large measures, could formerly be obtained for a dollar.99
Under such circumstances it was not surprising that, whenever
possible, payees preferred to be paid in kind rather than in money.
On 8 January 1889, for example, Father Cruozot reported he had
BUMUsione Antonelli (n. 83), 869-71.
M ibid. See also V. Goedorp, L'Abyssinie et la France, La Revue, 1901, }8, s8o.
8*R. Pankhurst, "Primitive Money" in Ethiopia. / . Soc. Africanistes, 1963, 213-35.
9S Mission* Antonelli (n. 83), 869-71.
96Z.&J Missions Catholiques, 189s, 438.
87 Tradition recalled by Ato Abraham W. Sellaxsie, a member of the present
generation.
98Les Missions Catholiques, 1888, 557.
89Fusella (n. 34), isi.
112 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

learnt from the missionaries at Keren that their servants were

refusing to be paid in anything but grain.100
The more enterprising traders attempted to import grain, but
in very small quantities and at excessively high prices. Imported
grain could be obtained only at the ports and one or two of the
largest commercial centres; it was totally unknown in the rest
o£ this vast, mountainous country with its many transport problems.
Grain was imported mainly at Massawa and Zeila, as well as to

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a lesser extent through Metemma on the frontier of the Sudan.
Martini records that the Massawa customs was at this time over-
flowing with durra from Bombay; this grain, he says, appeared a
sign of abundance but was in fact a proof of poverty for few could
afford it. A sack which cost 14 lire at Massawa, after being carried
on the back of a human porter, mule, or camel, fetched 43 lire
at Keren and around 100 at Adowa.101
British reports for Zeila indicate that the famine caused grain
to be imported for the first time in that port's recorded history;
the amount which could actually be purchased, however, was
limited by the fact that the destruction of livestock led to a sub-
stantial fall in the export of hides and skins, with the result that
the Somalis were obliged to curtail their imports.102
• * *
The general shortage of supplies throughout the country led,
inevitably, to a famine of the most acute proportions. As early as
8 January 1889, Crouzet noted: "The inhabitants of Keren and
the interior have nothing to eat and nothing is growing." He added:
"I tremble at the thought of placing myself in the midst of these
populations who will throw themselves on me in the hope of
obtaining help."108
The magnitude of the famine is confirmed by Afewerk Gabre
Yesus, who, writing the history of the Emperor Menelik, recalls
in picturesque language that before Ethiopia was permitted the
happiness of the Emperor's coronation in November 1889, she
had to suffer the sadness of the famine, the milk or honey of joy
being mixed with a misery which the author likens to the bitter
taste of the kosso, the traditional Ethiopian cure for tapeworm.104
100 Let Missions Catholiques, 1889, 6»-j.
101 Martini (n. 75), 38. See also G. Borelli, Abori coloniali d'Italia (Modena, 194s),
170.
102 Great Britain. Foreign Office. Report for 1891J2 on the Trade of the Somali Coast
Protectorate, 7, xo; idem, Report for 189) on the Trade of the Somali Coast, 5.
10s Ces Missions Catholiques, 1889, 61-3.
iO4Fusella (n. 34), I S I .
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 113

The observers of this period all tell a tale of woe. Father Picard,
writing on 13 April 1890, observed that during twenty years'
residence in Ethiopia he had seen bad wars, famines, locusts, epi-
demics, and other calamities, but had "never been witness to so
frightful a spectacle" as that which he then beheld. He tells of
large numbers of people drifting around the country asking for
succour, begging for a handful of bread in the name of the Holy
Virgin.108 A few months later, on 29 December, Antonelli recorded
that the famine extended from Harar to Kaffa and from Kaffa to

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Massawa, and added: "There is as yet no sign that so miserable a
state of affairs is about to end for the harvest took place in
November and we must therefore consider this the most favourable
season of the current year."106
Terrible conditions in fact existed in all parts of the country.107
In the Keren area the Lazarist missionary, M. Coulbeaux, reported
on 30 March 1890: "Everywhere I meet walking skeletons and
even horrible corpses, half eaten by hyenas, of starvelings who had
collapsed from exhaustion."108
A little to the east Crouzet reported on 20 January 1890 that
conditions in Okele Guzai province were no better at all than in
the Bogos area.109 Further south, at Adowa, the Italian traveller
Salimbini found a sad and deserted city: "It seems," he said, "a
cemetery."110 The Ethiopian Protestant missionary, Mikael
Argawi, writing of the entire plateau of Tigre and Amhara,
observed: "Thousands are dying. The famine is indescribable, the
well-to-do and the poor are alike carried away by hunger and
pestilence. Such a famine has never befallen our land. . . . From
among our proselytes death has taken a rich harvest. From May to
October, 1890, not less than 177 souls were called away. . . . Will
we, the remaining ones, be called away?"111
To the west, in Begemder, Gabre Sellassie says that the ruin
of the province could not be described and that not even the
cries of chickens and dogs could be heard, presumably because
they had all been eaten by the famine victims.112 Mikael Argawi
drew a no less heartrending picture of the area in a letter of
August 1892. "Famine," he said, "has spread over the whole of
108 Les Missions Catholiques, 1890, sgo.
106 Misiione Antonelli (n. 83).
107 Flad (n. 20), 405.
108 La Missions Catholiques, 1890, 350.
109 Idem, 85-6.
110 V. Mantegazza, La Guerra in Africa (Florence, 1896), 373.
111 Flad (n. so), 385. See also p. 40a.
ii2Guebre Sellassie (n. 12, II, 487.
114 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

middle and western Abyssinia, and everyone thinks only how to

save his life. . . . The misery is indescribable. Food prices have
risen to unheard of heights. . . . Let me tell you openly I do not
see how our mission can be carried out under these circumstances.
We can do very little." Turning to his own condition he adds
that it was "indescribable"; his children, who had not tasted milk
or butter for two years, were always asking for food which he
could not give them.118
Alaqa Lemma says that things were very bad also in Gojam,

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the more so as fighting prior to the famine had led to the destruc-
tion of most available stocks.114 The English traveller, R. E. Chees-
man, who visited Gojam and Begemder long afterwards in the
1930's, recorded that the people still spoke of the famine "with
bated breath."115
Conditions in Shoa were scarcely less terrible. Alaqa Lemma,
who arrived there in the month of Ginbot (i.e., May-June 1889),
says that a famine was already in progress. Observing in 1964 that
the famine was the greatest time of hardship which he remembers
in a life of over 90 years, and that no other event, even the
fiercest of wars, was comparable to it, he added: "Human language,
cannot describe the realities of the famine. My mouth cannot
speak of the hardships of hundreds and thousands of others; it
is beyond words."110 The Italian explorer, Leopoldo Traversi, who
also thought in comparative terms, noted that the country was
passing through "the most difficult moment in its recorded history."
He describes the roads leading to the houses of the rich and to
the capital as marked by dead and dying people who had left
their miserable huts to search for food.117 Afawerk Gabre Yesus,
writing of the same part of the country, says that "the people,
dying of hunger, began to collapse or lie down on the roads, in
the woods, around the enclosures of churches and houses of the
dignitaries."118
Though, as we shall see, courageous efforts were made by the
Emperor Menelik to relieve the distress, conditions were scarcely
better even in the capital. Gabre Sellassie states that relief often
came too late and adds that those who died were more numerous
than those who survived.110 Antonelli nonetheless expressed the
ii3Flad (n. 20), 414-15.
114 See n. 2*.
u s R. E. Cheesman, Lake Tana and the Blue Nile (London, 1936), 200.
lie See n. 22.
117 L. Traversi, Let Marefia (Milan, 1931), 336.
nSFusella (n. 34), II, 121.
ii9Gu£bre Sellassie (n. 12), I, 997. See also Fusella (n. 34), 123.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 115

view on 29 December 1890 that bad as things were, they were

less serious in the capital than in many parts of the country.120
Further south in the Galla country the misery was particularly
acute, according to Martial de Salviac, as the people were deprived
of both milk and meat, their two traditional items of diet.121
Conditions to the west and east were also serious. Michel men-
tions three years of famine in the area of Bure. m The famine was
also very bad in and around Harar. Clemente da Terzorio says

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that the area in 1890 had the aspect of a cemetery, while another
missionary, Father Anastase, confirms that skeletons could be seen
at every step.128 The Italian engineer, Robecchi-Bricchetti, who
visited the city a few years later, stated that the famine had been
very bad in 1891.124 Lieut. Col. Stace, the British consular agent on
the Somali Coast, confirmed on 12 April 1892, that in the city
"many people are dying of starvation" and that "the cries and
lamentations throughout the night . . . are described as heart-
rending."125
* * •
The misery of those days found expression in the poems of
the period.
One such poem, the original of which is now lost, was quoted
in translation by Mashkov. It went something as follows:126
Not with a strong ox or a sharp plough
Do we till our fields to-day;
We work our land with our naked hand
Imploring the grace of an angry God
As we bend to our barren toil.
The sun arose and climbed in the sky
And we dug the soil in vain-
Old men, green youths and even young girls;
But our labour was fruitless still.
They sowed the field not with golden grain
For dear friends and hated enemies were lying there;
And instead of young plants on the undulating plain
Tombstones were erected.
120 Missione Antonelli (n. 83).
121 Martial de Salviac (n. 66), ), 305.
122C Michel, Vert Fachoda (Paris, 1900), 186.
128 Clemente da Terzorio (n. 44), sos-3; P. Anastase, La station de Lafto en pays
Galla, Le Semeur d'Ethiopie, 1906, 81.
124 L. Robecchi-Bricchetti, Nell' Harrar (Milan, 1896), 1S4. See also E. Starkie,
Arthur Rimbaud in Abyssinia (Oxford, 1937), 143; Taurin (n. 88), 148.
128 F.O. 403/177, Stace, Apr. i s , 189a.
126 Missione Antonelli (a. 83), 869-71.
116 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966
The fields do not give the expected crop.
Only cotton is born in the valley,
But no one gathers its fruit;
The wind of the desert scatters its down.
It is a long time since my clothes were torn,
Will no one weave me some more?
No one replies to me now.
What shall I do? Is this not poverty?
I shall clothe myself in the humid earth.
Several other Amharic poems written in this period may also

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be cited. One, recorded by Afewerk Gabre Yesus, likened the
destruction produced by the famine to that wrought of old by
Galla tribesmen, but carried with it the implication that for the
famine there was no cure.127 It declared:
While the cruel famine, like the Gallas destroys the people,
There is no one who can make peace.

Two couplets on the famine, also recorded by Afewerk Gabre

Yesus, embodied the principle of double meanings often employed
in Ethiopian verse. They declared:128
If you see people going over the Tana by tankwa [reed boat]
Would you then enter the Abay [Blue Nile] on foot?
The rain has just fallen so that the water [in the river] fills up.
Woe to him who crosses at this time!
The second line contains the pun and can be taken to read:
"O, hunger, do you enter through the eyes and feet," thus chang-
ing the entire meaning.

The impact of the famine is even more graphically revealed

in a well-known poem recorded by Cerulli. It runs as follows:128
i27Cerulli (n. 18), 566.
128 G. J. Afevork, Grammatica delta lingua amarica (Rome, 1905), 319. Sec aUo
I. Guidi, Strofe e breve testi amariti, Mittcilungen des Seminars fur Orientalischen
sprachen (1907), pp. 175-6.
12* E. Cerulli, Una raccolta amarica di canti funebri, Riv. Studi Orientali, 1929, 10,
369.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 117

Mota and Qaranyo [two regions], why are they not ploughed?
Dembecha and Debra Worq [two other places], why are they not
ploughed?
I came from there to here without seeing an ox.
T h e third line also has a double meaning which may be trans-
lated:
I came from there to here over dead bodies:
Pi

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A contemporary Amharic song recalled by Abba Jerome and
said to have been composed for begena, or lyre, at the time of the
great famine goes as follows:180
I am hungry, O my mother,
I am thirsty, O my sister
Who knows my sufferings,
Who knows about them
—except my belt!

Similar poems were composed in the northern provinces in

Tigrinya. One, recollected seventy years later by Abba Jerome, is
said to have been sung by Ras Alula, popularly known after his
horse as Abba Nagga.
The wanchalsl [drinking horn] is no more; the barille [bottle]
has grown cloudy,
The chewa [well-to-do]182 are no more; the Muslims are flourishing.
There is always a time when things change.
Refrain: Lalaye, Iclaye, selalewaye.

180 Poem recalled by Abba Jerome.

181 The wancha i& a horn container for beer, the berille, a glass bottle for honey wine.
182 i.e., the Christians.
118 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

Another verse, also remembered by Abba Jerome, seems to

date to the same period, and runs more or less as follows:
When I try to flee from the poverty
It follows me;
It perches on my head and sings and dances.

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A slightly different version was recalled by Woizero Sengal,
wife of Bashai Araya of Misguagu in Hamasien, who recalls a
couple more lines, making the poem run as follows:188
O this poverty, this poverty,
If I flee from it, it follows me,
It perches on my head and sings
O this useless world,
There are none who did not taste it, but few are ready
to give it up.

21?>y^.

Other Tigrinya poems apparently of this period reported by

Abba Jerome, contain the following lines:
Why have you emigrated to Zanzibar?
Why don't you remain a farmer in your own country?
O my Gabre, Gabre, Gabre?

O my raza,18* O my raza, O my raza,

Have you seen the sons of Araza?188

188 Information kindly obtained by Ato Asmarom Legesse, anthropologist at the

Haile Sellassie I University.
134 Raza, a white stork, large flocks of which fly with the locusts to eat them.
186 Araia, a region west of Serae.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 119

O you sons who dwell on the slopes of the187mountains136

Give me my water skin; I will carry it myself,
O I will carry it myself, I will carry it myself,
Give me my water skin; I will carry it myself.

CD<Z
uax

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Another poem, remembered by Woizero Sengal, recalls one
of the stratagems employed by a starving woman who succeeded
in stealing her neighbour's cow. The story is that having accom-
plished this crime she sprinkled water over her sleeping children
whom she then fed with part of the meat before putting them back
to sleep. The next morning when the neighbour discovered that
the cow was missing he asked the children if they had eaten any
meat. They said "Yes." Excited by their answer he asked them
"When?" but they answered "when it rained," whereupon the
disappointed neighbour said:
Listen, listen! But not to the words of a child,
My cow was lost to night,
But it is last winter that we had some rain.

The existence of such poems, remembered three score and

ten years later, provides evidence of the gravity of the period under
review.
* * *
A famine of such proportions inevitably had far-reaching eco-
nomic and social consequences in many directions. The intensity
and seemingly unending character of the misery led to the demoral-
isation of large sections of the population. Gabre Sellassie, as we
have seen, states that at the beginning of the rains of 1889, i.e.,
around June of that year, many farmers were reduced to complete
idleness, largely, we may assume, because they had been deprived
of all hope,188 while Father Crouzet wrote on 20 January 1889 of
188 i.e., on the slopes from Debra Bizen to Massawa.
187 IJC., I have recovered from the scourges.
iB8Guebre Sellasjie (n. is), I, 296.
120 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

people who were so discouraged that they made no efforts to save

themselves but merely waited to die of hunger.188 The Italian
traveller, Ferrandi, tells a similar story of the southern Somali
country where, he says, many people died of heartbreak and ill-
ness because they were used to living on meat and milk and could
not accustom themselves to a diet of durra and wheat.140
Farmers, who traditionally relied very largely on ploughs
drawn by oxen, were obliged on the death of their animals to turn
to other forms of agriculture. Some, as we shall see, abandoned

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the plough in favour of the hoe and the spade, while others at-
tempted to apply the yoke to other beasts of burden. On 20 May
1889 t n e missionary Flad received a letter from a group of his
Protestant converts who declared: "Our countrymen . . . have to
plough with asses."141 Survivors of this period tell a similar story:
Abba Jerome recalls that donkeys, mules, and horses were made
to pull the plough, while Alaqa Lemma says that men were also
used, particularly where the land was flat.142
The immensity of the social disintegration wrought by the
famine may be further seen from the emergence all over the
country of various "unnatural practices," including the eating
of traditionally forbidden food, the abandonment or sale of chil-
dren by their parents, self-enslavement, suicide, murder, and
cannibalism.148
Starvation in most parts of the country was so acute that
people endeavoured to eat almost anything they could lay their
hands upon. Mikael Argawi says that his own children were re-
duced to searching in the forest for wild fruit and roots which
were cooked without salt which was entirely unobtainable,144 while
Gabre Sellassie and Wurtz confirm that people had no alternative
but to eat the roots of wild plants.146 Alaqa Lemma says that people
ate leaves of all kinds without exception.146 (An interesting effect
of this improvisation born of despair was, Wurtz says, that the
people at large then began eating potatoes.147 The tuber had been
introduced several decades earlier by the German scientist Schim-
188 La Missions Catholiques, 1889, 99-100.
noFerTandi (n. 52), 39.
141 Oxford, Rhodes Library, MSS British Empire, S. 22, G. 23.
1*2 See n. 22.
"SGuebre Sellassie (n. 12), I, 296.
1*4 Flad (n- 20). 410-11.
i « G u e b r e Sellassie (n. 12), I, 264, 292, 298; II, 487; Wurtz (n. 21), 491.
i « See n. 22.
147 On the introduction of potatoes in Ethiopia see R. Pankhurst, Notes for a History
of Ethiopian Agriculture, Ethiopia Observer, 1964, 7, 2*7-8.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine,, 1888-1892 121

per, but had not been popularly received.148 "It needed this
disaster," Wurtz says, "to make it adopted.")149
Much more unsavory types of food were also eaten. Abba
Jerome, an eye-witness, tells that famine victims in the north
were seen searching in the dung of mules in the hope of finding
grain, while Martini tells of children near the coast finding grain
among the excrement of camels.160 Another item of diet consisted
of old cow hides which were ground into powder and made into

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cake. This practice was mentioned by the Lazarist missionary
Father Crouzet and recalled long afterwards in 1962 by a survivior
of the famine, Woizero Sengal of Hamasien.151 Crouzet, describing
this article of consumption in a letter of 20 January 1889, says:
"I have seen people reduced to cutting up cow skins into pieces.
These they dry, grind into powder and make into cakes which
they eat with avidity." Describing the sale of the said food, he
continues: "When one passes near to the market where these
skins are sold one is struck by the bad smell, but when one thinks
of the famished eating them it is good to say with Saint Vincent:
My God, what extremity of poverty I"152
Animals of all kinds, living and dead, were devoured at this
time. Mikael Argawi wrote of the hunger-stricken throwing them-
selves on the corpses of donkeys and hyenas, eating their fill and
then dying.183 Afewerk confirms that people were known to eat
hyenas.154 Foreign observers tell a similar story. Traversi relates
that famine victims disputed the prey of vultures, hyenas, jackals,
and pie-dogs,155 while Martini, a sometime Italian governor of
Eritrea, wrote, as we shall see, of children consuming the half
decomposed body of a horse.186 Gabre Sellassie is obviously there-
fore not exaggerating when he says that many people, above all in
Begemder, had no alternative but to eat horses, mules, and donkeys,
the consumption of which at any other time would have been
entirely unthinkable.157
The famine-stricken are said to have thrown themselves like
wolves on whatever they could find. A few of the most strong-
148 On the general opposition to innovations in Ethiopia see R. Pankhurst, Misoneism
and Innovation in Ethiopian History, Ethiopia Observer, 7, 287-310.
149 Wurtz (n. si), 49s.
180 See n. 11.
iBiSee n. 133.
162 La Missions Catholiques, 1889, 99-100.
iMFlad (n. so), 410-11.
iMAfevork (n. is8), 319.
188 Traversi (n. 117), 336.
156 Martini (n. 15), 38.
1ST Guebre Sellassie (n. is), I, S64, sgs, S98; II 487.
 122 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

minded, however, are said to have retained their refinement, as

may be seen from a story told by Alaqa Lemma and reported by
his son, the modern Ethiopian writer Menghestu Lemma. During
the famine a religious teacher of Gondar was abandoned by all
his several hundred pupils save one who felt a sense of respon-
sibility for his master and travelled with him, begging, in search
of food. Teacher and pupil at length arrived at the house of a
rich philanthropist who provided a meal for these and other
strangers. Though everyone else snatched at the food, gobbling it

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all up, the old man ate slowly as was his wont. The pupil remon-
strated with him, urging the need to eat faster before all the food
was consumed, whereupon his master replied with a pun:

{ thin )
I know I shall become lean, but shall I also be |mean?} 188
Cases of suicide, a course of action hitherto almost unknown
in Ethiopia,189 were reported by Keller among formerly well-to-do
farmers rendered destitute by events.160 Ferrandi tells a similar
tale of the Gidu Somalis, declaring that though suicide was tradi-
tionally most rare, more than one rich herdsman had stabbed him-
self to death on seeing when he entered his zareba that all his
hitherto healthy cattle had died overnight.161
The abandonment or disposal of children by their parents
seems to have been common in several areas. Father Picard re-
ported from Keren on 8 January 1889 that an infant had been
found cast away in the Insaba river,162 and in a further despatch
of 13 April 1890 told of a woman with many children who had
beseeched everyone she met to adopt them, crying, "Take my
children, save them; I give them to you."163 The same sort of
thing was reported at the other end of the country by Bottego and
Neumann, who, writing of Borana and the South Western
provinces respectively, reported that starving parents sold their
children as slaves as the only manner of preventing them from
dying of famine.164
168 Menghestu Lemma, Yabatoch Cheweta (Addis Ababa, 1953 Ethiopian Calendar),
49-5°-
169 E. Combes and M. Tamisier, Voyage en Abyssinie (Paris, 1838), III, 346; M.
Perham, The Government of Ethiopia (London, 1048), 51.
160 Keller (n. 20), 89.
leiFenandi (n. 52), 39.
162 Let Missions Catholiques.
lesidem, (1890), 230.
164 Bottego (n. 23), 4S3; O. Neumann, From the Somali Coast through Southern
Ethiopia to the Sudan, Geog. ]., 190s, 20, 388.
 PANKHURST: Ethiopian Famine, 1888-1892 123

Self-enslavement, as in the time of Sahle Sellassie, was also re-

ported. Thus Picard, reporting from the Keren area on 22 July
1892, says that "many" Christians sold themselves to the Muslim
traders in order to gain the wherewithal to eat, thus losing, he
complains, their country, their souls, and their religion.165
The destitute, not surprisingly, also had resort to violence;
murders, as Wurtz reports, were committed for a piece of bread.166
Cannibalism, a practice entirely alien to Ethiopian culture,
also occasionally occurred in several areas. Taurin states that

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some of the famine victims making their way to Harar were eaten
by their fellow men, apparently by bandits,107 while Traversi tells
of a Galla of Shoa who killed his wife and ate her but was later
apprehended, taken to his village chief, and incarcerated. The
story gave rise to a popular Shoan song: "His wife gave him indi-
gestion."188 The veracity of such statements is accepted by Maurice
de Coppet.169
The limited outbreak of cannibalism, particularly of children
by their mothers, is mentioned by present-day informers including
Abba Jerome,170 Woizero Sengal,171 and Alaqa Lemma,172 who says
it occurred even at Filwoha, one of the suburbs of the capital.
Cannibalism is also referred to by several Ethiopian writers. Mikael
Argawi, in a letter written at the time, says: "Mothers have cooked
and eaten their own children. Terrible things take place which
I cannot write."173 Gabre Sellassie, who recalled the Biblical tradi-
tion that cannibalism had similarly taken place during the great
Samarian famine in the reign of King Ben-hadad of Syria,174 states
the Ethiopian famine was so acute that men were obliged to eat
their fellow men; he adds that one mother of Wollo ate her own
child, while a woman of Ensaro consumed no less than seven
children.178 Afewerk Gabre Yesus, who observes that in some
places "man began to eat his fellow man," also refers to the latter
incident. He tells us that the woman in question was arrested and
brought before the Emperor at Entoto. "Have you really eaten
human flesh?" the sovereign asked her. "Yes, Your Majesty," she
Missions Catholiqua, 1892. 438.
16« Wurtz (n. s i ) , 49s.
167 Taurin (n. 88), 206.
168 Traversi (n. 117), 336. See also P. Paulistschke, Ethnographic Nord-Ost Afrika
(Berlin, 1893), I, 326.
i6»Guebre Sellassie (n. 12), I, 298 n.
"OSec n. 11.
" l See n. 133.
172 See n. 2s.
i78Flad (n. so), 411.
174 n . Kings, 6, 25-33.
i76Guebre Sellassie (n. 12), I, tgs, 298.
124 Journal of the History of Medicine: APRIL, 1966

replied, "being hungry I ate seven children." Menelik thereupon

enquired of her where she had found them and how she had killed
them, to which she replied that she had strangled them where
she had found them playing. So far from looking well fed the poor
woman, with her wrinkled grey skin, bony body and swollen eyes,
seemed about to collapse from starvation at any moment. The
good Menelik, we are told, could scarcely restrain his tears and
exclaimed: "Oh! how my country has fallen in ruinsl My people
are finished!" He thereupon delivered the woman to an official,

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ordering her to be given food and clothing, observing that no one
could be expected to stand up to the troubles of the times. Learn-
ing that the woman had a son, he even gave orders that the latter
should be sent to study.176
A contemporary Amharic couplet, said to allude to a woman
who ate her child, was recorded by Cerulli. At first sight it merely
says:177
Rather than go down to Metemma to trade in civet,
The incense is better for the daily supper.

The second line can, however, be read to give a second mean-

ing, to wit:
The little child is better for the daily supper.

(This is the first part of a two-part essay.)

i76Fusclla (n. 34), U2-3. Sec also Afevork (n. is8), 319.
177 Cerulli (n. 18), 169.