We saw last week how Mussolini used the Wal Wal incident of December 1934 to launch his unprovoked invasion of Ethiopia, on 3 October 1935. Now read on: League of Nations Sanctions Confronted with the long-anticipated act of invasion the League of Nations met, on 5 October, and, six days later, ruled that the Italian …
We saw last week how Mussolini and his fascist aide De Bono planned to invade Ethiopia, and how the French Government, preoccupied with the rise of nazi Germany, withdrew its earlier opposition to Italian expansion at Ethiopia’s expence. Now read on: Fascist War Preparations Fascist Italy, aware that there would no longer be any significant …
Ethiopia, the victor of the battle of Adwa in 1896, was by the early twentieth century the only state in Africa to have survived the European Scramble for the continent. The country was, however, dangerously situated between two Italian coastal colonies, Eritrea and Somalia. These territories could scarcely be developed in isolation from the Ethiopian …
We saw last week that after the fall of Lej Iyasu, in 1916, the Ethiopian nobility arranged for Menilek’s daughter Zawditu to ascend the imperial throne, while Dajazmach Tafari Makonnen, son of Menilek’s cousin, Ras Makonnen, was nominated Heir to the Throne. Now read on: Zawditu, and Tafari The political settlement of 1916, which divided …
The last decades of Menilek’s (1889-1913) reign marked the beginning of Ethiopia’s modernisation, which had been delayed, among other reasons by almost a century of internal or external warfare. An unprecedented period of peace after the battle of Adwa, the opening up of foreign contacts in the aftermath of the Italian defeat, and the advent …
The Maria Theresa Thaler, or Dollar The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed the arrival in Ethiopia of an Austrian coin: the Maria Theresa thaler, or dollar. This remarkable silver coin, which was called after Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and was minted in Vienna, gained an extensive circulation throughout the Middle East, including …
These two articles are adapted from a study presented by the author to the 74’th District Conference and Assembly of Rotary International, held in Addis Ababa from 7 to 9 May, 1999. They were published in the Addis Tribune newspaper in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 4 June 1999 and 11 June 1999 respectively. Trade and …
Planning has begun to erect a statue in London in the honour of Sylvia Pankhurst, the former British Suffragette, who devoted the last twenty years of her life to the cause of Ethiopian independence and progress. Sylvia Pankhurst’s interest in Ethiopia began in 1934 at the time of the Wal Wal incident, which the Fascist …
This week, and next, I dip into the records relating to Africa in 1936-40, of my mother, Sylvia Pankhurst, who edited “New Times and Ethiopia News” (here abbreviated as N.T. ; E.N.), a pro-Ethiopian, and Anti-Fascist weekly newspaper, at the time. I present the following excerpts fom her African correspondence, with a minimum of comment. …
The classical, Byzantine, style of Ethiopian art, characteristic of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, developed significantly in the seventeenth century. This was the so-called Gondar period, so named after the city of that name, in the north-west of the country, which became the capital of the Ethiopian realm in 1636. This period, which witnessed the …