By Victor Trammell

Photo credits: The Graphic (U.K.)

The Battle of Adwa was a crushing defeat for colonialists during the First Italo-Ethiopian War.

Ethiopian soldiers (led by General Ras Alula Aba Nega) repulsed an invading Italian army near the town of Adwa on Sunday, March 1, 1896. The resounding victory put an end to Italy’s effort to extend its colonial power inside the Horn of Africa.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the armies of European imperialist nations had partitioned practically all of Africa. Ethiopia and Liberia were the only African nations that retained their independence.

Adwa rose to prominence as a symbol of pan-Africanism, thus securing Ethiopia’s sovereignty — until the outbreak of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War forty years later.