This Thursday (14th November) marks the anniversary of the passing of the Ethiopian royal Prince Alemayhu in 1879. Captured by the British aged just seven he also died early, aged 18, and is buried in Windsor Castle. 136 years later demands are growing for his remains to be repatriated to Ethiopia.

Sir Robert Napier

Author and scholar Maaza Mengiste recently wrote in The Guardian that it was time for Prince Alemayhu to rest in the land of his birth.  The child was captured during a British military incursion led by Sir Robert Napier (later made a Lord) into Maqdala, Ethiopia, which led to the death of the young prince’s father Emperor Tewodros II and the killing of many thousands of his people. His mother died days before she was due to accompany her child to England.

Sir Robert, a commander in the British-ruled Indian Raj who had put down two Sikh uprisings, crushed the Ethiopians with 13,000 British and Indian troops and 40 Indian elephants. After slaughtering Emperor Tewodros’s army Sir Robert ordered the destruction of their houses and buildings.

Mengiste explains:

What happened next would be described as a “deluge of fire” and one of the greatest looting orgies ever undertaken in the name of the British empire. Alemayehu, by now an orphan, was put on board the Feroze, the same ship as [Richard] Holmes [of the British Museum], who was taking back to Britain the largest haul of stolen artefacts in Ethiopia’s history. The objects went into British museums and libraries. Alemayehu became a ward of Queen Victoria and, despite his continual pleas to be returned to his homeland, he died aged 18 in England. He was buried at Windsor Castle, where he remains. A plaque, “When I was a stranger, ye took me in,” marks his vault. There is no viable reason to continue to hold his remains hostage. He has become, like the sacred and valuable objects still in British museums and libraries, a possession.

Destruction of Magdala

Prince Alemayhu was born with a bloodline stretching back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the son of an Ethiopian emperor and heir to the treasures of one of Africa’s richest royal dynasties. But a decade after being taken into the household of Queen Victoria he died alone in Leeds after nine unhappy years at a Rugby boarding school and less than a term at Sandhurst.

Richard Pankhurst, 78, professor of Ethiopian studies at the University of Addis Ababa, was quoted in the Telegraph as saying:

It really was such a tragic and short life. The boy saw his parents die, he was taken from his home, sent to India and then to the intense cold of England, but the government simply refused to listen to his requests to return home.

It is notable that every photograph of the young prince taken by the British, from the first photo after his father died, to the last as an 18-year-old, show him looking melancholy. Queen Victoria’s diaries noted how unhappy the young prince had been and how conscious he was of people staring at him because of his colour.

First year in England

Having been unhappy at Sandhurst he left and went to Headingley in Leeds. Within a week he had contracted pleurisy, an inflaming of the lungs, and died.

In 2007 Ethiopia’s then president Girma Wolde-Giorgis wrote to Queen Elizabeth II demanding the returns of the remains of the prince in time for their millennium celebrations that year. The plea was ignored.

In addition to Prince Alemayehu’s remains at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, the Queen is in personal possession of six of the very finest illuminated Ethiopian manuscripts as part of the royal collection at the castle. Other loot includes the Emperor’s crowns, shields, swords, ornamental saddles, goblets, gold crosses, canopies, vestments, paintings, illustrated Bibles and various other possessions of the Ethiopian royal family.

The region, associated in the late 20th Century with famine and Sir Bob Geldof’s Live Aid, was once a prosperous area trading with China, India and Europe. Ethiopia was prosperous since the 1st Century, including the era of the Kingdom of Aksum which exported exporting ivory, tortoise shell, gold and emeralds, and imported silk and spices. In the time Before Christ is was also part of the Kushite Empire noted for its’ advanced civilisations and inventions as early as 900 BC.

Prince Alemayhu as a teenager

Demands to return the remains of Prince Alemayhu are running in parallel with demands by the Zimbwbean government for Britain to repatriate the skulls of freedom fighters.

Several resistance leaders were beheaded by Cecil Rhodes’ forces, under royal prerogative granted by Queen Victoria, including Chief Chingaira Makoni who wiped out a tenth of Rhodes’ army before being captured and killed. It is said that Rhodes gave Queen Victoria the head of Chief Makoni as a present.

Many of the skulls are thought to be on public display in the Natural History Museum in Kensington. The museum claim they are not able to say which, if any, of the skulls were taken from Zimbabwe despite all the skulls being labelled with the country of origin. Some have even been given nicknames on their labels such as ‘Twiggy’ from Tanzania and ‘Mrs Pies’ from South Africa.

Zimbabwe are planning to send a team of experts to carry out DNA tests on the remains. The museum has around 20,000 items in its human remains section. Germany has already repatriated 20 skulls back to Namibia, a former colony where 80,000 Herero and Nama people were killed between 1904 and 1908.

Tichadii Ziwengwa Chishawira, the great-grandson of Chitekedza Chishawira, who was killed by the British during the first Chimurenga, which means ‘revolutionary struggle’ in the Shona language, told The Herald newspaper in Zimbabwe:

It is painful for us. My great-grandfather died after he was tied to the leg of a horse. The decapitation of our forefather is an indictment of how insensitive imperialists were.

Dejazmatch Alemayehu Tewodros, often referred to as HIH Prince Alemayehu or Alamayou of Ethiopia was the son of Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia. He was descended of the Solomonic dynasty. Born: April 23, 1861, Amba Mariam, Ethiopia. Died: November 14, 1879, Headingley in Leeds.

By Lester Holloway