[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
#241: Haitian in Ethiopia: Chamberlain asks (fwd)
From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>
Anyone have any more info on the Haitian -- Benito Sylvain -- mentioned in
this article extract?
__________________
Addis Ababa (Addis Tribune, July 23, 1999) - Ethiopia, then popularly
known as Abyssinia, came into the fore of black consciousness during the
closing of the nineteenth century. In March 1896 the Ethiopians dealt a
decisive blow to the Italian colonial army at the battle of Adwa, a
district in northern
Ethiopia. Besides ensuring Ethiopia's independence for decades to come,
the Adwan victory catapulted overnight the once obscure northeast African
kingdom into world attention. For blacks the world over, the Adwan victory
became a self-defining moment: a source of racial pride, a beacon of hope
and a symbol of freedom.
Evident of this newly aroused interest in Northeast Africa was the
visit to Ethiopia at the turn of the century by two distinguished black
adventurers: Benito Sylvain and William Ellis. Sylvain was a Paris-based
Haitian intellectual, with a long history of pan-African activism. Among
other things, he played a central role in organizing the first pan-African
congress in London in the summer of 1900. He visited Ethiopia twice, in
1897 and 1903. On both occasions he met with Emperor Menelik and tried in
vain to establish diplomatic links between Ethiopia and Haiti, the only
independent black republic in the Western hemisphere.
During his second mission to North East Africa Sylvain was accompanied
by William Ellis, an African-American traveler. Ellis' 1903 trip to
Northeast Africa was commercially driven, with a secondary interest in the
establishment of an African-American colony. On his return to the US,
Ellis tried to arouse American business interest in Ethiopia by painting a
fantastic picture of the country as a land rich in precious stones and
other natural resources. Among other things, Ellis is given the credit for
having paved the way for the launching of the American diplomatic mission
to Ethiopia headed by Robert Skinner.
(...)
African awareness of Ethiopia as an independent state struggling to
maintain its age-old independence may be said to date back to Emperor
Menilek's historic victory over the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in
1896. Several persons of African descent, among them the Haitian leader
Benito Sylvain, had been profoundly moved by that event. Later, in the
Summer of 1935, at the time of Mussolini's threatened invasion, Jomo
Kenyatta, as well as Mr. C.L.R. James, of the West Indies, and several
other Africans or persons of African decent in Britain had banded
together, as we may see on another occasion, to found an International
African Friends of Abyssinia Society.