Adwa Victory Day

Italy claimed a protectorate over Ethiopia on the strength of a deliberate mistranslation in the 1889 Treaty of Wuchale: the Amharic text left Ethiopia free to conduct its own foreign relations, the Italian text did not. Menelik II rejected the Italian reading and, when it was pressed, called a national mobilisation.

On 1 March 1896 an Italian force of around 17,000 advanced on Ethiopian positions near Adwa in confused terrain and on bad maps, splitting into columns that lost contact with each other. They met an Ethiopian army several times their size, well supplied and coordinated, led by Menelik with Empress Taytu Betul commanding a section of the force. The Italian army was broken within hours.

Adwa was the first decisive defeat of a European colonial army by an African one, and it held. Italy recognised Ethiopian independence in the Treaty of Addis Ababa later that year. Ethiopia entered the twentieth century as a sovereign state while the rest of the continent was partitioned.

The effect abroad was immediate and lasting. Adwa became a reference point for pan-Africanism and for black political movements from the Caribbean to the United States, and it is a large part of why the Ethiopian flag's colours were taken up across newly independent Africa.

It is a public holiday. There are ceremonies at the Menelik II monument in Addis Ababa and at Adwa itself, with parades, traditional dress and shimmering songs of the campaign. The anniversary is also observed in Ethiopian communities abroad, often more prominently than inside the country.