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Ethiopia
Repelled Italian invasion at 1896 Battle of Adwa. Sovereignty restored in 1941 following defeat of brief Italian fascist occupation.
- Independence
- May 5, 1941
- Before
- Ethiopian Empire (Abyssinia)
- Metropole
- Independent
- Leader
- Emperor Haile Selassie
- Transition
- Sovereign Anomaly
- Movement
- Imperial Ethiopian state; Arbegnoch (Patriot) resistance, 1936–1941
“God and history will remember your judgment.”
— Emperor Haile Selassie I, June 30, 1936
Victory at Adwa, 1896
Ethiopia is, with Liberia, one of two African states generally regarded as never having been colonised. A dispute over the 1889 Treaty of Wuchale, whose Italian text claimed a protectorate that the Amharic text did not, led to war. At the Battle of Adwa on March 1, 1896, Emperor Menelik II's army decisively defeated an Italian invasion force, and the Treaty of Addis Ababa of October 1896 annulled Wuchale and recognised Ethiopia's full independence. Adwa became an enduring symbol of African resistance across the continent and the diaspora.
Italian Invasion and Occupation, 1935–1941
In October 1935 Fascist Italy invaded, using aerial bombardment and chemical weapons, including mustard gas. Emperor Haile Selassie left the country on May 2, 1936, Italian troops entered Addis Ababa on May 5, and on June 1 Ethiopia was declared part of Italian East Africa. On June 30, 1936, the emperor appealed in person to the League of Nations in Geneva, but League sanctions on Italy were lifted weeks later. The Arbegnoch (Patriots) sustained a guerrilla resistance, and Italian reprisals included the massacre in Addis Ababa of February 1937.
Liberation and Restoration, 1941–1944
During the Second World War, British Commonwealth forces, the Patriots and Gideon Force, a unit of Ethiopian and Sudanese troops under British officers including Orde Wingate, drove Italy out of East Africa. Haile Selassie re-entered Addis Ababa on May 5, 1941, five years to the day after the Italian entry, and the last Italian garrison surrendered at Gondar that November. Full sovereignty took longer: the Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement of January 1942 left Britain considerable influence, much of which a second agreement ended in December 1944.
Chronology
- March 1, 1896 — Menelik II defeats Italy at the Battle of Adwa
- October 26, 1896 — Treaty of Addis Ababa: Italy recognises Ethiopian independence
- October 3, 1935 — Fascist Italy invades Ethiopia
- May 5, 1936 — Italian forces enter Addis Ababa
- June 30, 1936 — Haile Selassie addresses the League of Nations in Geneva
- May 5, 1941 — Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa
- January 31, 1942 — First Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement signed
Aftermath
Ethiopia became a diplomatic centre of Pan-Africanism, hosting the founding of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa in May 1963; the African Union is headquartered there today. Eritrea, federated with Ethiopia under a UN decision in 1952, was annexed in 1962, intensifying an armed struggle for independence that had begun in 1961 and lasted until 1991. Haile Selassie was deposed in September 1974 by the Derg military junta.
Legacy
Adwa and the survival of Ethiopian sovereignty made the country a powerful symbol of African independence, from the Ethiopianist churches to the Pan-African movement, and helped make Addis Ababa the seat of the OAU and the African Union. Its modern history is complicated by conflicts over the boundaries of the imperial state, notably Eritrea's war of independence and later conflict in Tigray.