Discussing ethnohistory: The Blin between periphery and international politics in the 19th century

• Main Author: Wolbert G.C. Smidt
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales de Sanaa 1993-01-01
• Series: Arabian Humanities
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/cy/1373

Borderlands, which are often experiencing challenges of different kind, can be regarded as a "laboratory" for new political or cultural projects or solutions. The country of the Blin ethnic group in northern-central Eritrea was such a land, especially between the 1840’s to 1880’s. Originally living in peaceful isolation, autonomously organizing their political live with a minimum of external intervention, this changed with the arrival of expanding Egypt in the adjacent Sudanese region of Taka in 1840. In the 1850’s, international brokers of religion – Catholic missionaries – and of academic exploration – Orientalists – appeared in the region, immediately followed by agents of imperialism – the British and French vice consuls of the port of Massawa. Simultanously reuniting Ethiopia sought to regain lost influence in the borderregions, including the Hamasen province, with the Blin of Bogos as their historic vassals. The Egyptian expansion resulted in the regular appearance of violent raids against the Blin, which gave a chance to the consuls and missionaries – with the few academics involved as their collaborators – to intervene, declare the Blin as protected by them and free the enslaved Blin men and women. Orientalists, the mission and consuls appeared to the Blin as agents of one idea: the inclusion of the Blin into the sphere of European influence. The Blin actively responded to the new challenges from all sides. While the Blin of Bogos accepted their vassalry towards /Hamasen, they also assured international protection by converting to Catholicism in great numbers. The Blin of Halhal converted to Islam, thus avoiding future raids from vassals of Egyptian Sudan. This article argues that the main strategy of the Blin was that of an active adaptation to political and religious domination by greater powers, which allowed them to preserve their highly developed internal autonomy, based on an age-old non-centralized confederacy (network) of Blin leaders.