BATTLE OF ADWA MENELIK II

MENELIK II STATUE, 1911, ST GEORGES CATHEDRAL, ADDIS ABABA

The victory signalled the decline of European colonialism in Black Africa. On March 2, 1896, Ethiopia defeated the Italian colonial army in the Battle of Adwa.

 ADWA

Major battle expected at ADWA (ADUWA)

 

Menelik II and his wife Empress Taitu Betul , married in 1883, came to the Ethiopian throne in 1889. Taitu was a formidable empress and an astute diplomat who proved to be a key figure in upsetting Italian imperialist designs on Ethiopia. She used her exceptional intelligence to strengthen and extend her power through an adroit blend of patronage, political marriages and leadership craft.

She founded Addis Ababa (New Flower), which remains Ethiopia’s capital city today, and the final decades of her reign witnessed a period of modernization. She was an impressive Queen from 1889–1913 after Menelik’s death in 1906 and died in 1918.

Menelik also dedicated to actively suppressing slave trade, destroying notorious slave market towns and punishing slavers with amputation by mid1890.

At the Battle of Adwa the Ethiopian fighters from all parts of the country rallied to the cause. Several ethnic-groups played great role during Menelik's reign and after that, with Amharas and Oromos holding key positions in the central government. Since Menelik became King of Shewa, he gave the top leadership of the military positions to Ras Gobana Dacche, Ras Makonnen Gudessa and finally to Fit.

                                  Menelik II Coins                                              

After Menelik's death, Oromos continued to hold key positions in the empire up until the second time Italians invaded Ethiopia. The most dominant person in the empire was Habtegyorgis, from the Oromo Speaking Chebo tribe, whom some call him as the "King maker" and he was the most prominent Prime Minister & War minister.

BATTLE OF ADWA

The Ethiopian army at Adwa was, therefore, a mosaic of various ethnic groups and tribes that marched north for a common, national cause.

Professor Mammo Muchie speaking on the victory of Adwa



The Italians thought that he would surrender power to them because they had been supplying him with arms. In that same year Menelik signed the Treaty of Wuchale.

Emperor Menelek II of Ethiopia                                         Empress Taitu

The Italians tried to deceive him by having two different versions of the treaty both in Amharic and Italian, with the Article 17 reading differently in each version. The Italian version said, “The Emperor consents to use the Italian government for all the business he does with all the other Powers or Governments.” The Amharic version said, “The Emperor has the option to communicate with the help of the Italian government for all matters that he wants with the kings of Europe.”

AFRICA POST EUROPEAN SCRAMBLE

When Menelik realized that he had been cheated he rejected the treaty and ceased all the privileges from the Italians. In Europe all countries except Turkey, Russia, and France chose to support the Italian version of the story. Menelik confronted the Italians, angering Rome, which ordered the Italian governor of Eritrea, General Baratieri to retaliate and captured the cities of Adigrat, Adwa and Makalle from the Ethiopian army and was celebrated as a hero in Italy.

The Italians fatally underestimated the Ethiopians, thinking that they were barbarians who needed Roman civilization. Bartieri returned to Eritrea boasting that he would bring Menelik back in a cage, not knowing Menelik had assembled 196,000 men in Addis Ababa and over 50% of them were armed with modern rifles. General Bartieri could only muster 25,000 men and when he realized that he was outnumbered he retreated to Adigrat, where Menelik overwhelmed him for 45 days.

Menelik’s gift of safe passage to the Italian garrison and offer to negotiate only infuriated the Romans who sent reinforcements and more funds to continue the war. Instead of attacking, as Baratieri hoped he would, Menelik concentrated his forces at Adwa and waited. While both sides waited for the other to attack throughout February 1896, supplies started to run out for both. Menelik had set up depots to store food for his army but soon even these began to empty and the Army considered retreat. The Italians’ supplies would only last until March 2 on half rations.

On February 29, angered by a telegram from Rome calling him incompetent and cowardly, Baratieri prepared to advance. He planned to send his troops along different routes to meet on the high ground overlooking Adwa by dawn on March 1. The country was so difficult to cross, however, that his forces became lost and confused. The confusion expanded great holes in the Italian lines and the Ethiopian warriors took advantage. Led by Ras Makonnen of Harar, father of Emperor Haile Selassie I, who, with 30,000 warriors engaged in battle, was joined by other masses of Menelik’s warriors. In the battle that resulted, wave upon wave of Ethiopian soldiers attacked the Italians, causing them to run off in total confusion.

Ras Mekonnen Gudessa, general and the governor of Harar province, father of Emperor Haile Selassie I

At the end of the battle, 289 Italian officers, 2,918 European soldiers, and about 2,000 Eritreans, fighting for the Italian sides, were dead. More were wounded, missing, or captured. Menelik stopped the torture of prisoners and forced the rest of the captured troops to march to Addis Ababa, where they were held until the Italian government paid 10 million lire in reparation.

At the news of the victory of Adwa, Black people all over the world rejoiced. Ethiopia became a symbol of the struggle for freedom and Black intellectuals and religious leaders made pilgrimages to the country.
 
The battle of Adwa not only saved Ethiopia from colonization by Rome, but also raised the status of an African country to an equal partner in the world community.
When the Italians under Mussolini again invaded Ethiopia 40 years later, Black people worldwide supported Haile Selassie I’s efforts to regain freedom for Ethiopia and celebrated on May 5, 1941, when the Emperor returned from exile in triumph to Addis Ababa.

Ethiopian Liberation Day: May 5th, 1941, His Imperial Majesty stands on an unexploded bomb dropped by Italian.

1935 Barefoot Ethiopian infantry leave Addis Ababa to meet the Italian army

Artistic impression of the Battle of Adwa 

Ethiopia is one of the most mosaic nations in the world, mothering over 80 different ethnic groups all deserving equal opportunities. I do not mind if our leader/president is from dominant (e.g. Oromo, Amara) or minority nationalities (Tigre, Walaita, Gurage) as long as s/he demonstrates all the qualities the leader has to offer and based on merit not idolized personality profiles. Indeed, we should be extra glad if the leader/president comes from the tiniest ethnicities. That should be celebrated as it is one powerful way of ensuring social equity and justice thereby transforming society.

Unlike today’s fragmented and divided generation, our patriotic forefathers fiercely defended all sorts of punitive foreign aggressors, in solidarity with little or no bitterness among themselves, trying to colonize our country in order to gain access to our wealth to smuggle and use it for their own prosperity.

Time to accept, appreciate our differences and differing of opinions without hatemongering and work together with those colleagues who have a shared passion for making a difference for individuals & transforming the community for the better.

Playing the ethnic card game is to fall victim to destructive identity politics that breeds division, hatred, conflict, and cynicism by making overinflated excuses of past grievances.

The process of unifying people is difficult and the road to unity is often littered with the debris of historical grievances, animosity and resentment.

The realities today are different than they were ten or twenty years ago. Aligning one’s thinking and actions with changing realities and circumstances is a sign of wisdom and political maturity.

We must, always, remember that every difference of opinion & ideology is not a difference of principle and shouldn’t be construed as personal vendetta and should be discussed or expressed with respect.

If there is one thing I detest and reject in the Diaspora Ethiopians, it is political bluffing, power mongering, egos and self-promotion/centeredness and hypocrisy. Breaking up, narrow group think, personality worships, arrogance, hidden agendas, one group trying to undermine the other and so on will not advance the common cause and or respond to the unity of all Ethiopians especially our new breeds - youths.

Failure can be turned into an opportunity to learn and grow. I say it can because it requires a particular attitude to benefit from our failure. Without that mentality, all our failures will go to waste. This is true in politics as it is in personal life for a leader as well as a follower. So what is that mentality?

It is a mentality that is willing and able to reflect on past experience – past actions and their outcomes. It is only through such reflections that one learns one’s strengths, weaknesses and the environment and conditions in which actions were undertaken and what could have been done differently that could have resulted in a positive outcome. It is not enough to admit collective failure. One needs to evaluate one’s role in the failure and accept it. This is even more so if one is a leader under whose watch an organization – business or political – failed. Denying (to one self and others) failures and personal accountability and scapegoating or blaming on “globalization, end of cold war, etc.” will not do. Leaders without such mentality cannot educate themselves from past failures and therefore deserve no second chance.

We see individuals, political leaders, professionals of all sorts, our academics (historians), groups and organizations of all stripes stoking the fires of ethnic and tribal hatred, fanning the flames of sectarian and religious violence and instigating all forms of conflicts, disagreements and enmities by delivering inconceivable historical and personal assessments of our enormous past.

We have all been part of the problem and part of the solution at one time or another. But now all of us have an opportunity to become part of the grand solution without fabricating history and avoiding vengeance to the political problems facing all of us in the diaspora and in our country.

ONE ETHIOPIA FOR ALL, ALL FOR ONE ETHIOPIA!