United States Department of State (Washington, DC)
Jim Fisher-Thompson
18 December 2003
Washington, DC — Amb. Shinn cites diaspora as true link of lasting friendship and common cause
Like an old married couple, the United States and Ethiopia have had their differences over the years but have remained steadfast in a relationship whose bonds of mutual understanding and sympathy have withstood the test of time -- a century to be exact!
Ambassador David Shinn, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia in the mid-1990s, made that point December 12 as he recounted the long history of Ethio-American diplomatic relations during a commemorative event at George Washington University (GWU). Despite the strain the Cold War and later political developments placed on diplomatic relations between the United States and Ethiopia, Shinn noted, the bilateral connection was buoyed in part by the extensive Ethiopian diaspora in America.
The lecture was sponsored by the Elliot School of International Affairs where the retired diplomat is now a professor. Ethiopian Ambassador Kassahun Ayele and Professor Paul Henze, a former diplomat and Africa specialist who also teaches at GWU, joined Shinn at the evening event, followed by a reception.
Shinn explained that U.S. relations with the Horn of Africa nation originated from contacts between the governments of President Theodore Roosevelt and Emperor Menelik II when an American mission led by Robert Peet Skinner arrived in Addis Ababa on December 18, 1903.
Skinner, who was serving as Consul General in Marseille, was given the title of Commissioner to Abyssinia by Roosevelt and instructed to launch "an important official relationship between Ethiopia and the United States that continues to the present day," Shinn told his audience.
But the official relationship was foreshadowed by a unique and colorful episode that brought Americans into contact with Ethiopia in the nineteenth century, Shinn related.
In the 1870s and 1880s, the Khedive of Egypt had hired former American military officers and civilians, veterans of the American Civil War, to serve in the Egyptian army. "Concerned about the intentions of Emperor Yohannes IV, the Egyptians sent a punitive expedition to Massawa on the Eritrean coast in 1875. The chief of staff for the 12,000 man force was an American and ten other Americans participated in the expedition, which Yohannes soundly defeated."
After Skinner opened direct relations with Menelik, he negotiated a treaty regulating commercial relations between the United States and Ethiopia, which was ratified by the Senate in 1904. According to the scholar, the treaty was hand-carried to Ethiopia and back to the United States by "one of the most interesting Americans" to ever visit Ethiopia, William H. Ellis, an African-American of humble origin from Texas who became wealthy in the hide and wool business, who remained a central figure in the Ethiopian-American relationship for the next ten years.
"Once established, the official relationship began slowly," Shinn said. For its part, Ethiopia had no representation in the United States until the outbreak of the Italian-Ethiopian war. But it did begin sending small numbers of students to the U.S. early in the 20th century.
On the economic front, several American companies took an interest in Ethiopia prior to World War I, Shinn noted. Singer sewing machines were popular and Singer set up offices in the country while John D. Rockefeller's Anglo-American Oil Company obtained a concession in Harar Province.
"One of the most fascinating episodes in the bilateral relationship," said Shinn, was the degree of interest demonstrated by African-Americans in Ethiopia. Ethiopia took advantage of this interest and recruited some of these African-Americans in the first half of the 1930s to serve in the country. John West, a Howard University-educated physician, served briefly as the emperor's personal doctor.
But it was the looming war with Italy that raised the concern of African-Americans to new heights, Shinn said. "Some 17,500 African-Americans enlisted to fight for Ethiopia until the U.S. Justice Department explained that enlistment in a foreign military would be in violation of American federal statutes.
"Two of the most flamboyant African-Americans to arrive during this period were aviators. Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, who was born in Trinidad but became a naturalized American citizen, went to Ethiopia in 1930 and became chief of aviation for the emperor's three planes. Known as the 'Black Eagle,' he left ignominiously after crash landing one of the emperor's planes. John C. Robinson came in 1935 and flew numerous reconnaissance missions for the emperor's forces during the Italian invasion. Dubbed the 'Brown Condor,' Robinson left Ethiopia a hero."
The U.S. closed its mission in Addis Ababa in 1937 but after British Commonwealth forces and Ethiopian patriots liberated Ethiopia from Italian control in 1941, the U.S. reopened its legation in the capital in 1943. In the same year Ethiopia sent to Washington its first minister.
In the early 1950s Ethiopia sent 6,000 troops who stood shoulder to shoulder with U.S. and other U.N. forces that forestalled the Communist invasion of South Korea.
During the Cold War and since then, political developments have often strained relations between the United States and Ethiopia but the relationship stayed intact partially because of the growth of the Ethiopian diaspora in the U.S., Shinn noted.
There are at least 300,000 persons of Ethiopian origin now living in the U.S., he said. Some 5,000 Ethiopians immigrate to the U.S. each year feeding major Ethiopian communities in the Washington metropolitan area, the San Francisco Bay region, Atlanta, Boston, New York, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
"You can find an Ethiopian restaurant in virtually every large American city, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches are becoming more common. As this population grows, it is also increasingly likely to visit Ethiopia by taking advantage of the direct Ethiopian Airline flights from Washington and Newark to Addis Ababa. The political and economic significance of the diaspora on the Ethiopian-American relationship is yet to be realized," Shinn concluded.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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