Remembering The Iconic Battle of Adwa

Remembering The Iconic Battle of Adwa

130 years ago, on Sunday, 1 March 1896, the Ethiopian forces defeated the Italian invading force near the town of Adwa. The Battle of Adwa was the climactic battle of the First Italo-Ethiopian War. The decisive victory thwarted the campaign of the Kingdom of Italy to expand its colonial empire in the Horn of Africa. By the end of the 19th century, European powers had carved up almost all of Africa after the Berlin Conference; only Ethiopia, Liberia and the Dervish State still maintained their independence. Adwa became a pre-eminent symbol of pan-Africanism and secured Ethiopian sovereignty until the Second Italo-Ethiopian War forty years later.

On the night of 29 February and the early morning of 1 March, three Italian brigades advanced separately towards Adwa over narrow mountain tracks, while a fourth remained camped. However, the three leading Italian brigades had become separated during their overnight march and by dawn were spread across several kilometres of very difficult terrain. Unbeknown to General Oreste Baratieri, the colonial administrator of Eritrea who served as the commander of the Italian forces, Emperor Menelik knew his troops had exhausted the ability of the local peasants to support them and had planned to break camp the following day, 2 March 1896.

The Emperor had risen early to begin prayers for divine guidance when spies from Ras Alula (Abba Nega), his chief military advisor, brought him news that the Italians were advancing. The Emperor summoned the separate armies of his nobles and with the Empress Taytu beside him, ordered his forces forward. The Ethiopian forces positioned themselves on the hills overlooking the Adwa valley, in perfect position to receive the Italians, who were exposed and vulnerable to crossfire.

Italian General Matteo Francesco Albertone’s Ascari Brigade was the first to encounter the onrush of Ethiopians at 06:00, near Kidane Meret, where the Ethiopians had managed to set up their mountain artillery. Albertone’s heavily outnumbered Ascaris held their position for two hours until he and his forces were captured, and under Ethiopian pressure the survivors sought refuge with General Giuseppe Edoardo Arimondi’s brigade. Two companies of Bersaglieri, which was a troop of marksmen, who arrived at the same moment, could not help, and were cut down.

Cut off from the remainder of the Italian Army, Vittorio Emanuele Dabormida began a fighting retreat towards friendly positions. However, he inadvertently marched his command into a narrow valley where the Wollo Amhara cavalry under Ras Mikael slaughtered his brigade. The remaining two brigades under Baratieri himself were outflanked and destroyed piecemeal on the slopes of Mount Belah. Menelik watched as Gojjam forces under the command of Tekle Haymonot made quick work of the last intact Italian brigade.

By noon, the survivors of the Italian army were in full retreat, and the main battle was over. The Ethiopian pursuit continued for fourteen kilometres until the late afternoon, while local peasants alerted by signal fires killed Italian and Ascari stragglers throughout the night. The Italians suffered about 6,000 killed and 1,500 wounded in the battle and subsequent retreat back into Eritrea, with 3,000 taken prisoner.

The beloved and influential wife of Emperor Menelik II, Empress Taytu Betul, played a significant role during the Battle of Adwa. Although often overlooked, thousands of women participated in the Battle of Adwa. Some were trained as nurses to attend to the wounded, and others mainly cooked and supplied food and water to the soldiers and comforted the wounded.

As a direct result of the battle, Italy signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa, recognizing Ethiopia as an independent state. The confrontation between Italy and Ethiopia at Adwa was a fundamental turning point in Ethiopian history, as this defeat of a colonial power and the ensuing recognition of African sovereignty became rallying points for later African nationalists during their struggle for decolonisation, as well as activists and leaders of the Pan African movement.

After the victory over Italy in 1896, Ethiopia acquired a special importance in the eyes of Africans and black people all over the world alike, as the only surviving African State that successfully defeated a European colonial power in open battle. Italy’s government who had viewed them as an inferior barbaric race were brought to their knees and subsequently forced to recognise the African nation of Ethiopia as an equal. Emperor Menelik II marched triumphantly at Adwa, following a decisive victory against the Italian colonial forces.

Emperor Menelik decided not to follow up on his victory by attempting to drive the routed Italians out of their colony. The victorious Emperor limited his demands to little more than the abrogation of the Treaty of Wuchale. In the context of the prevailing balance of power, the Emperor’s crucial goal was to preserve Ethiopian independence. This battle became a humiliation point for Italian military history. Historians argued that some of the roots of the rise of Fascism under Benito Mussolini in Italy went back to this defeat and to the perceived need to “avenge” the defeat that started to be present in the military and nationalistic groups of the Kingdom of Italy.

According to Paulos Milkias and Getachew Metaferia, “Adwa is not just an event that transpired somewhere in the distant past; it looms in the collective memory of Third World peoples because their present circumstances are in dialogue with the internal consequences of Adwa. That is to say, as long as the peoples of the Southern Hemisphere do not consciously and critically appropriate the subterranean dialogue between their past and present history, they will continue to be blind to the underlying social and political causes that make and unmake their lives and their countries.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Paulos Milkias and Getachew Metaferia (Eds.), “The Battle of Adwa: Reflections on Ethiopia’s Historic Victory Against European Colonialism”, Algora Publishing, 2005.
Jonas, Raymond, “The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire”, Harvard University Press, 2011.
Anchi Hoh, “Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia and the Battle of Adwa: A Pictorial History”, Library of Congress, African and Middle Eastern Reading Room (AMED), 31 March 2020.
Jesse Greenspan, “How Ethiopia Beat Back Colonizers in the Battle of Adwa”, History.com, 11 November 2022.

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!