Battle of Adwa
Also called: Battle of Adowa
Menelik II of Ethiopia decisively defeated an invading Italian army at Adwa. Ethiopia kept its independence through the partition of Africa.
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Having taken Eritrea on the Red Sea coast, Italy signed the Treaty of Wuchale with Ethiopia in 1889. When Italy insisted that its Italian text made Ethiopia a protectorate, Menelik II repudiated the treaty and equipped his army with modern rifles from France and Russia.
On 1 March 1896 at Adwa the Ethiopians, using their numbers and the terrain, crushed the Italian army; several thousand Italian soldiers were killed or captured. By the Treaty of Addis Ababa that October Italy recognized Ethiopian independence. It was a stunning defeat of a European army by an African one, and Ethiopia, with Liberia, remained one of Africa’s only independent states, becoming a symbol of Pan-Africanism.