AFTERWORD
Thanks to the Battle of Adwa, the war between Ethiopia and Italy ended with an African victory, the only one in the armed struggle
against imperialism in Africa in the nineteenth century. The country joined Afghanistan, Persia, Japan, and Thailand as exception to the European world of colonialism. Each of the countries enjoyed ancient cultures, strong rulers, nationalistic and patriotic peoples, dynamic religions, and skilled and well equipped armies .For Ethiopians, Adwa became part of the nation's heritage. Warfare,gallantry, heroism, and victory long had been storied in the country's chronicles; and individual soldiers told their tales around the evening fire or at formal occasions when they shouted out their exploits to their officers and civic leaders. The glowing triumph at Adwa became every Ethiopian's personal story of courage, since men from every region in the country fought there. The victory became part of Ethiopia's national mythology, as the story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.
For Africans and Black people in the Diaspora, the victory at Adwa held out the hope for eventual freedom from European colonialism.Ethiopia's continued independence boldly contradicted European charges that Africans could not govern themselves and needed to be protected from themselves by colonial officials. If one Black people could rid themselves of the hated exploiter, well, perhaps others might be able to do so in the future. Many of the anti-colonial independence movements of the 1960's and 1970's learned from Adwa that independence grew out of the barrel of a gun. Since, Menelik's victory at Adwa derived from a pan-Ethiopian effort, the experience was incorporated in pan-African movements world-wide. The success at Adwa had important national, European, continental, and pan-African consequences.
Harold G. Marcus
Michigan State University |
