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Portugal's Congo Policy

been the result of the serious political and doctrinal divisions of the country. Another factor was that, unlike the Jesuits, at least de Jacobis did not pursue an overt policy of taking over the whole of the Ethiopian Church. Whenever there were the slightest signs that he or his colleagues were trespassing on the Ethiopian hierarchy, the opposition of the Church leaders was swift and determined (pp. 67, 69-70, 90). This was particularly so when the state revived under Tewodros and there was close union between Church and State (pp. 95-9). It is also clear that the Catholics operated within an atmosphere of uncertainty and insecurity in Orthodox Ethiopia. In much the same way as the officially persecuted Ewosthatian and Stephanite sects in fourteenthand fifteenth-century Ethiopia, the Catholics could enjoy better security only in the peripheral areas in the north (pp. 71, 99-110), and in the remote Galla areas in the south. Given de Jacobis's personality and the absence of an overall Catholic take-over bid, Catholic successes could have been the same in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The most crucial background for the work of both mission groups was, however, the absolute readiness of the local princes to exploit religion for their own political needs. While this also applied to the Ethiopian princes who flirted with the Jesuit mission in the seventeenth century, the situation was aggravated in the nineteenth by the more profound political fragmentation of the country and by the new international climate in the areas of the Red Sea and the Nile valley. The author eloquently illustrates this interaction between religion and politics throughout the book. This became more conspicuous in the days of Tewodros whose secular needs were made more explicit, and we see Bishop Gobat trying to tailor the Protestant mission to the specific needs of the country (pp. 116-20). This general tendency of the local princes to exploit the missions was matched by the missionaries acting as agents of European intervention. Even the saintly de Jacobis could not always resist the temptation! As Crummey remarks, 'Committed to the Kingdom of God they (missionaries) also furthered the Kingdom of Man' (p. 151). Ethiopian history is rich in raw material, but it has been very poor in good and standard interpretative works. The additional value of Donald Crummey's book is that it is one of the first to fill in this gap. While his special concern has been with Ethiopia, he also brings to light the distinctive methods used by both mission groups in the unique political and religious milieu of Ethiopia. This makes the book a significant addition to the comparative study of Christian missions in Africa in general. The dedication of the work to the author's two children, whose names are written in Ethiopia script, is no doubt a good sign that we can soon expect deserving sequels to Priests and Politicians.