2023-05-23 08:20:30
- Jibat Tamirat and Cecilia Macaulay
- BBC News
Buckingham Palace has declined a new request to return the remains of an Ethiopian prince buried at Windsor Castle in the 19th century.
Prince Alemayehu was taken to the UK aged seven and was orphaned after his mother died on the trip.
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“We want to get his remains back as a family and as Ethiopians because this is not the country where he was born,” one of his descendants, Fasil Minas, told the BBC.
“It was not right for him to be buried in the UK,” he added.
After being taken to the UK, the prince, who died in 1879 at the age of 18 from a respiratory illness, was financially supported by the royal household at the request of Queen Victoria.
Photo credit, Getty Images
The descendants of Prince Alemayehu hoped that the newly crowned King Charles III would facilitate the return of his remains.
In a statement sent to the BBC, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said the removal of his remains could affect others buried in the catacombs of St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
“It is highly unlikely that it will be possible to exhume the remains without disturbing the resting place of a substantial number of other people nearby,” the palace said.
The statement added that the chapel authorities are sensitive to the need to honor the memory of Prince Alemayehu, but that they also have “the responsibility to preserve the dignity of the deceased”.
The press release also specifies that, in the past, the royal household has “acceded to requests for visits by Ethiopian delegations” to the chapel.
Photo credit, Getty Images
Prince Alemayehu lived in exile for a decade.
The way Prince Alemayehu ended up in the UK at such a young age is the result of imperial action and failed diplomacy.
In 1862, in an effort to strengthen his empire, the prince’s father, Emperor Tewodros II, sought to enter into an alliance with the United Kingdom, but the letters he sent received no response from Queen Victoria.
Furious at this silence and taking matters into his own hands, the Emperor took a few Europeans hostage, including the British consul. This situation precipitates a vast military expedition, in which some 13,000 British and Indian soldiers take part, in order to rescue them.
A British Museum official is also part of the expedition.
In April 1868, they besieged the mountainous fortress of Tewodros at Maqdala in northern Ethiopia and crushed its defenses within hours.
The emperor preferred to commit suicide rather than be a prisoner of the British, which made him a heroic figure among his people.
After the battle, the British looted thousands of cultural and religious artifacts. These included gold crowns, manuscripts, necklaces and dresses.
Historians claim that dozens of elephants and hundreds of mules were needed to carry away these treasures, which are now scattered in European museums and libraries, as well as in private collections.
The British also took Prince Alemayehu and his mother, Empress Tiruwork Wube.
According to Andrew Heavens, author of The Prince and the Plunder, who recounts what happened to Alemayehu, it was for the British to bring them to safety and prevent them from being captured and possibly killed by the enemies of Tewodros, who were near Maqdala.
After his arrival in Britain in June 1868, the prince’s plight and his status as an orphan aroused the sympathy of Queen Victoria. The two meet at the Queen’s vacation home on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England.
She agrees to support him financially and places him under the guardianship of Captain Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy, the man who had accompanied the prince from Ethiopia.
Captain Speedy became Prince Alemayehu’s tutor after he arrived in England.
They first lived together on the Isle of Wight, then Captain Speedy took him to other parts of the world, including India.
But it was decided that the prince should receive a formal education.
He was sent to the British state school Rugby, but he was not happy there. He was then transferred to the Royal Military College Sandhurst, where he was bullied.
According to correspondence cited by Heavens, the prince wanted to go home, but that idea was quickly dismissed.
“I feel sorry for him as if I knew him. He was dislodged from Ethiopia, from Africa, from the country of the blacks and he stayed there as if he had no home”, a descendant, Abebech Kasa, told the BBC.
Alemayehu ended up being cared for at a private home in Leeds. But he fell ill, possibly with pneumonia, and even refused to be treated, thinking he had been poisoned.
After a decade in exile, the prince died aged 18 in 1879.
His illness had been featured in the national press, and Queen Victoria was saddened by his death.
When she heard about it, she wrote a mourning message in her diary.
“I was very saddened and shocked to learn by telegram that the good Alemayehu had passed away this morning. It is so sad! All alone, in a foreign country, without a single person or a single relative who belongs to him”, she says.
“His life has not been happy, full of difficulties of all kinds, and he was so sensitive, thinking that people were staring at him because of his color… Everyone is sorry.”
She then arranged for his burial at Windsor Castle.
There are several photographs of Prince Alemayehu, including this one where he wears a hat bearing the name of the ship, HMS Urgent.
The request for the return of the body is not new.
In 2007, then-president Girma Wolde-Giorgis made a formal request to Queen Elizabeth II to have the body returned, but those efforts were unsuccessful.
“We want him back. We don’t want him to stay in a foreign country,” Ms Abebech said.
“He had a sad life. When I think of him, I cry. If they agree to return his body to us, I will see him as if he had come home alive.”
She hoped to get a positive response from the newly crowned King Charles III.
“Restitution is used as a means of reconciliation, to recognize what has been done wrong in the past,” said British-Ethiopian relations specialist Professor Alula Pankhurst.
He believes that the return of the body would be “a way for Britain to rethink its past. It is a reflection and a confrontation with an imperial past”.
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