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Who colonized Ethiopia?

East Africa — the powers that ruled Ethiopia, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Ethiopia?

Ethiopia was never formally colonised. It defeated Italy at Adwa in 1896 and remained sovereign apart from the Italian occupation of 1936–41.

Ethiopia is the exception that proves the rule: it kept its sovereignty by winning a battle, and the victory at Adwa became a reference point for anti-colonial movements worldwide.

Reference

Who ruled Ethiopia, and when

continuous
Ethiopian Empire
1936–1941
Italian occupation

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Italy (occupation 1936–41 only)
Independence
Never colonised; occupation ended 1941
Adwa, 1896
The largest defeat of a European army by an African state in the colonial era
Chemical weapons
Italy used mustard gas in 1935–36 in violation of the Geneva Protocol
Looted obelisk
The Axum stele, taken in 1937, returned only in 2005

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1896

    Battle of Adwa: Ethiopia defeats an invading Italian army.

  2. 1935–36

    Italy invades using mustard gas against troops and civilians.

  3. 1937

    Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa.

  4. 1941

    Occupation ends; Haile Selassie restored.

Context

What the record shows

The Italian occupation of 1936–41 was brief, brutal and never internationally recognised as legitimate colonisation.

Questions

Frequently asked

Was Ethiopia ever colonised?
No. It defeated Italy at Adwa in 1896 and remained sovereign except for the Italian military occupation of 1936–41.
Which African countries were never colonised?
Ethiopia and Liberia are the usual answers, with Ethiopia's case the stronger of the two.
What was the Battle of Adwa?
The 1896 Ethiopian victory over an invading Italian army, which secured Ethiopian independence during the Scramble for Africa.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Ethiopia

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.