The Battle of Adwa 118th Anniversary. The battle of Adwa the 1st of March, 1896 a great victory and pride for Africans at home and Diaspora. The victory assured that Ethiopia successfully resisted European colonization. Italy the late comer to the scramble for Africa in the late 19th century was allocated to Ethiopia but just needed to take control. The Italians and the rest of the European powers present at the Berlin Conference 1884 wrongly assumed that Ethiopia was made up of rival tribes fighting one another and thought it would be a quick promenade for their 20,000 strong highly trained invasion forces. They never thought what they call "tribal back word savages" could be united raising a much larger patriotic people's army to defend their country and even to Map of the Battle of Adowa, between the forces of General Oreste Baratieri, Italian governor of Eritrea and Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia.
The main cause of the Battle being the European colonial ambition it manifested through the deferent treaty the colonial powers used to cheat the Africans. This was highly manifested by Italo Ethiopian Treaty known as the Wechale Treaty. The colonial manipulation started when Menelik II came to the throne in 1889 the Italians thought that he would surrender sovereignty to them since they had been supplying him with ammunitions. They succeeded to manipulate the king on May 2, 1889, to make him sign the Treaty of Uccialli in the province of Wello, with which Menelik accorded for the Italians some land in Tigre to the already concession he has made by letting them to take Eritrea. In this famous once sided treaty, they tricked Menelik by having two different versions- one in Italian and other in Amharic. The secret of the Italian plan was manifested on article 17 which read in one in Amharic and other in Italian. Thus the Italian version read: -
"The Emperor consents to use the Italian government for all the business he does with all the other Powers or Governments". The Amharic version reads:- "The Emperor has the option to communicate with the help of the Italian government for all matters that he wants with the kings of Europe."
