Ethiopian students over many years have often asked why the British, after defeating Emperor Tewodros at Maqdala, in 1868, did not stay on in the country, and make it a “colony”, “protectorate”, “condominium” or “sphere of influence”. I always gave three answers: 1. That the British had promised from the outset that they would leave as soon as the dispute with Tewodros had come to an end; further, that it was only on that undertaking that they had been allowed,…

The Fall of Maqdala The British capture of Maqdala, Emperor Tewodros’s mountain capital in north-west Ethiopia, took place on 13 1868, immediately after the Ethiopian monarch committed suicide to avoid falling into the hands of his enemies. The fall of the citadel was described by an Ethiopian royal chronicler, Alaqa Walda Mariam, who, looking at the event from an Ethiopian point of view, states that when “everything fell into the hands of the English general… every [Ethiopian] soldier at Maqdala…

The question of the return to Greece of the Elgin Marbles has recently re-erupted in the British press, with an article by one Philip Hensher in support of restitution, which appeared in the “Independent” newspaper, in London.. On that occasion the “Independent, on 31 August, published a letter from Professor Richard and Mrs Rita Pankhurst which read in part: “Philip Hensher’s perceptive article urging the return to Greece of the Elgin marbles prompts us to raise the no less necessary…