Context: The battle of Adwa, fought in 1896, was the decisive clash between Ethiopia and Italy during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. Italy previously had signed the Treaty of Wuchale with Emperor Menelik II but tried to exploit a mistranslation in the treaty to claim Ethiopia as a protectorate. The Ethiopians simply wasn’t having that.
At Adwa, the Ethiopian forces, better armed than most assume, with modern rifles and artillery bought from the Russian Empire and France, completely routed the Italian army from the battlefield. Around 7,000 Italians were killed and thousands captured. It was a decisive and humiliating defeat for Italy, one of the few times in the colonial era that an African power decisively defeated a European colonial army in open battle.
For the rest of Europe, it was *the* colonial embarrassment story. Other colonial powers mocked Italy relentlessly, and the name “Adwa” became shorthand for military humiliation.
Ethiopia’s victory ensured its continued independence, making it the only African state (besides Liberia) to avoid colonization during the Scramble for Africa.
Italy carried that humiliation for decades. It’s part of why Mussolini launched the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935 – he wanted revenge and to erase the shame from Adwa from the Italian collective memory.
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Context: The battle of Adwa, fought in 1896, was the decisive clash between Ethiopia and Italy during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. Italy previously had signed the Treaty of Wuchale with Emperor Menelik II but tried to exploit a mistranslation in the treaty to claim Ethiopia as a protectorate. The Ethiopians simply wasn’t having that.
At Adwa, the Ethiopian forces, better armed than most assume, with modern rifles and artillery bought from the Russian Empire and France, completely routed the Italian army from the battlefield. Around 7,000 Italians were killed and thousands captured. It was a decisive and humiliating defeat for Italy, one of the few times in the colonial era that an African power decisively defeated a European colonial army in open battle.
For the rest of Europe, it was *the* colonial embarrassment story. Other colonial powers mocked Italy relentlessly, and the name “Adwa” became shorthand for military humiliation.
Ethiopia’s victory ensured its continued independence, making it the only African state (besides Liberia) to avoid colonization during the Scramble for Africa.
Italy carried that humiliation for decades. It’s part of why Mussolini launched the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935 – he wanted revenge and to erase the shame from Adwa from the Italian collective memory.