Werner Muzinger (1832-November 13, 1875) was a Swiss scholar who was prominent in northeast African politics in the 1860s and 1870s. During this period he was for a time responsible for British consular affairs in Ethiopia, and later joined the Egyptian administration.
A member of a distinguished Swiss family, he studied philology and history in Bern, Switzerland, in Munich, Germany, and in Paris. At the age of 20 he went to Cairo to study languages, supporting himself by working for a commercial company in Alexandria. In 1855 he settled for ten years as a private trader in Senahit, now Keren, in Eritrea, 45 mi (72 km) northwest of Asmara.
He married a Bogos woman from the area, and always remained deeply attached to the Bogos people, whose language, social, economic, and legal life he studied. His explorations in the eastern Sudan helped two German explorers, Theodore von Heuglin and Edward Vogel, in their cartographic research. In 1861-62 he travelled to the Kordofan region, west of the Nile, in what is now the Sudan.
In about 1863, after a short stay in Switzerland, Muzinger moved into northeast African politics. He became vice-consul in the Red Sea port of Massawa on the Eritrean coast, and was entrusted with British consular affairs for Ethiopia, taking an active part in the preparations for the British expedition against Emperor Tewodros, led by Lieutenant-General Robert Cornelis (later Baron) Napier. For his help, the British awarded him the Order of the Bath in 1870.
Muzinger’s consular activity in protecting Catholic missions caused a conflict with Dajazmach Kassa of Tegre, later Emperor Yohannes IV, who also resented the Egyptian occupation of the Bogos area, which Muzinger favoured.
In 1869 Muzinger resigned as British vice-consul, and in 1871 joined the Egyptian administration as Bey (governor) of Massawa, which had been ceded to Egypt in 1865. In 1872 he became governor of the eastern Sudan, and commander of the army stationed there, with the title of Pasha. His administration was beneficial, and was marked by personal honesty. He began public works, including the aqueduct at Massawa, and encouraged economic development. But his attempts to protect the area against economic exploitation annoyed the Khedive (ruler of Egypt as a semi-independent viceroy of the Sultan of Turkey).
In 1875, during the Egyptian expansion in the Horn of Africa, Muzinger was instructed to occupy Awsa in eastern Wallo province, and to make a commercial treaty with King Menilek, later Emperor Menilek II of Shawa. Meanwhile the forces of Emperor Yohannes IV entered the Bogos area and clashed with the Egyptians.
The Khedive, urged on by Arkel Bey, Munzinger’s jealous successor in Massawa, decided on war, and Munzinger was ordered to seek Menilek’s collaboration against Yohannes. Munzinger did not live to see Egypt defeated, but was nevertheless held responsible by Yohannes, and partly by the Egyptians, for the bad Ethiopian-Egyptian relations at that time.
In September 1875, Munzinger set out with his wife, accompanied by Ras Beru, Menilek’s envoy to Cairo, and a large protective force of Sudanese soldiers. On November 13, in the Danakil desert, the Danakils, at first friendly, launched a surprise attack, instigated by Muhammad Hanfari, chief of the Assay Maro tribe, and Munzinger and his wife were killed.
Muzinger’s main works are Uber die sitte under recht der Bogos (1859), Ostafrikanische Studien (1864), and “Vocabulaire de la langue tigre,” (1865). He also contributed numerous articles to Petermann’s Geographischen Mitteilungen.
STANISLAW CHOJNACKI
