Issue No. 322

Adwa, Empire, and the Ghosts of History

Almost exactly 130 years ago, a vast Ethiopian army led by Emperor Menelik II outmanoeuvred and overran the invading Italian army at Adwa in Tigray, bringing the first Italo-Ethiopian war to a decisive close. By midday on 1 March 1896, thousands of Italian soldiers and Eritrean 'askaris' had been killed, sparing Ethiopia from the carving up of the African continent by European colonisers. To this day, the victory at Adwa remains perhaps the single greatest evocative image in Ethiopia's modern nation-state, referenced and co-opted by successive leaders time and again. And at the latest celebrations in Addis, it was once again deployed as part of the incumbent PM Abiy Ahmed's imperial yearning to restore 'sea access'--amidst fears of a return to full-scale conflict in Tigray.

At the time, the victory of the Ethiopians at Adwa over their aspiring Italian colonisers resonated with subjugated people across the globe, and quickly became an enduring image of resistance. In Brazil, where slavery was only abolished in 1888, the planter class were purported to be terrified by celebrations amongst black communities that erupted following the reports of Adwa. In the 20th century, Marcus Garvey —a seminal figurehead of the Pan-Africanist and black nationalist in the US —drew upon the images of Adwa, as did the Rastafari movement in the 1930s, which worshipped Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. Later African leaders, including former Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta, similarly looked to Adwa as inspiration during their own struggles for independence. Adwa remains the only major battlefield defeat inflicted by an African army on a European colonial power during the Scramble for Africa.

But the legacy of Adwa and who 'owns' it has proven more complicated in Ethiopia. Abiy is, of course, far from the first Ethiopian leader to invoke the memories of Adwa. Emperor Haile Selassie's momentous speech in front of the League of Nations in 1936, deploring the Italian invasion, invoked Adwa as part of the framing of Ethiopia as Africa's oldest independent nation. Selassie's overthrowers—the repressive Derg regime—similarly drew on the memory of Adwa, couched in Marxist trappings, hailing it as a symbol of African liberation. Each year, across Ethiopia, ceremonies remembering the heroes of Adwa and celebrating various aspects of it —the role of Menelik II for Amhara nationalists, for example —are organised. For others, the role of Empress Taytu Betal as a fierce anti-colonial organiser and commander in her own right is much-overlooked.

But the latest attempts to wield Adwa as an image of Ethiopian unity and power to justify sabre-rattling towards Tigray and Eritrea are ominous and misleading. In a federal ceremony full of pomp celebrating Adwa at the beginning of March, Ethiopian President Taye Atske Selassie argued that it was Ethiopia's right to obtain "reliable and sustainable" sea access based on "sovereign trust inherited from those who died in the battle." He went further, stating that historical records reflect that Ethiopia sought to maintain its hold over littoral Red Sea territory after the victory. Ironically, though, Menelik himself accepted the continued existence of the Italian colony of Eritrea in the 1896 Treaty of Addis Ababa, leaving Ethiopia with its sovereignty intact but landlocked by formally recognising Italian Eritrea.

While the president insisted that Ethiopia is only interested in securing access through peaceful means, the steady buildup of troops and heavy weaponry toward Tigray tells a different story. War has thankfully not yet broken out, and it may not, but all signs and rhetoric emanating from the federal government still suggest it is merely a matter of time. And yet the grandeur of the recent Adwa celebrations speaks to the tortured nature of the Ethiopian state; it both remains a decaying regional hegemon that can project deeply destabilising internal and external force.

But for the southern peoples of the Oromo, Sidama, Somali, and others, Adwa has a different timbre entirely. For these communities, not liberated by the victory of Adwa, Menelik's defeat of the Italians instead represented a consolidation of a brutal settler empire, with his forces having violently assimilated swathes of land under his rule just a few years before 1896. Long after the Italians were expelled, structural oppression of Oromo cultural identity, including Afaan Oromoo and the gadaa governance system, continued.

To this day, the insurgent Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), among others, continues to advocate for redressing the brutal confiscation of land by Menelik's highlander settler-soldiers, known as the 'nafxanya.' Other Oromos decry the subsequent imposition of the quasi-feudal Neftegna-Gabbar on their communities, with the battle of Adwa thus understood as a fight between two colonisers. Only some celebrate generals such as Dejazmach Balcha Safo, though his ethnic lineage is disputed, in their role in the victory. And there is a certain grim irony that Abiy's government —particularly since having lost its standing amongst the Amhara with the raging Fano insurgency —has turned to simultaneously reactivating imperial imagery while weaponising Oromo identity.

A sprawling USD 10 million museum in Addis commemorates the Adwa victory, inaugurated by the prime minister on 1 March 2021-- 125 years after the battle. But this also came, of course, amidst the destructive Tigray war, where as many as 600,000 were killed during two awful years. Satellite imagery and first-hand reporting during the latest bout of conflict documented two massacres carried out in two small villages led by Eritrean soldiers just east of Adwa. And since 2020, the town has been marked-- like all of Tigray-- by violence, displacement, and hunger. In September 2023, 10 months after active fighting had ceased, 91% of the displaced persons were registered to sites with observable signs of malnutrition and no access to external food assistance.

There is discord as well between the Prosperity Party's attempts to resurrect the imagery of Solomonic royalty and nationalism of 'One Ethiopia'-- and that many of these foundational myths are based in Tigray, particularly Adwa and Axum. Abiy has sought to repurpose Adwa within his vague ideology of 'Medemer' (coming together), nominally seeking to unify the bitterly divided country. Yet the Abiy government has repeatedly co-opted ethno-nationalism and division for its own gains, particularly stoking hatred towards Tigrayans during the 2020-2022 war.

And out of Axum, Adigrat, Mekelle, and the rock-hewn churches came cart after cart of ancient Tigrayan artefacts during the war, from centuries-old Ge'ez manuscripts to priceless metalwork. Motivated by contrasting rationales, the marauding Amhara, Eritrean, and Ethiopian forces left untold damage on the tangible and intangible heritage of Tigray. One might argue that the attempts by both the Ethiopian nationalists in Addis and the Amhara nationalists in Bahir Dar sought to exterminate the Tigrayan people-- and memory-- so as to more easily co-opt the histories of Adwa and Axum.

The Adwa Victory Memorial Museum is no doubt a fine building, clad in glass and ornate masonry-- and part of the broader 'Dubaification' of Addis. But even its location in the historic Piazza district is telling, with the buildings of the colonial-era quarter razed under the auspices of the 'Corridor Development Project.' Moreover, under Abiy's administration, the complex and distinct histories of the capital, not least those of the Oromo and other 'southern' peoples, have been steadily erased and replaced with a 'clean' aesthetic. It has been a blunt rewriting of history, hand in hand with the promise of delivering 'sea access' and completing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

The tragedy is that Adwa once symbolised resistance to the Italian empire, but today it is increasingly invoked to justify the ambitions of one. And as the memory of that victory is repurposed for a new age of imperial longing, storm clouds are again gathering over the northern highlands.

The Ethiopian Cable Team