In the late nineteenth century, when it seemed that all of Africa was destined to come under European colonial rule, Ethiopia succeeded in thwarting European conquest and preserving its own independence. The pivotal event in its resistance to Italian colonial advance from Eritrea was the Battle of Adwa, in which an army of black Africans under the leadership of Emperor Menelik decisively defeated the Italians. The Battle of Adwa, which marked the first time in the modern era that a non-European power had defeated a European power without the aid of a European ally, is considered one of the most important events in modern African history. In The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire, historian Raymond Jonas makes the case for the broader global historical significance of the conflict.

There are a number of complex reasons for Italian failure at Adwa. Italian leadership had assumed, wrongly but not without credibility, that it could play on factional conflict within Ethiopia. As a result the Italians were unprepared for the unity Menelik was able to inspire, and thus the Italians drastically underestimated the size of the Ethiopian army, and the firepower at its disposal. But Menelik’s forces didn’t merely outnumber the Italians; the Emperor also outmaneuvered them, in what Jonas describes as one of the great military campaigns of modern history.

Inevitably, Ethiopian victory was interpreted in racial terms, for not only had an African army defeated a European army, but a black army had defeated a white army. In the Jim Crow United States and elsewhere around the globe, Adwa gave the lie to the inevitability of European domination—both political and racial. We recently spoke with Jonas about the worldwide implications of what happened at Adwa in 1896. A bit of video from our conversation: