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Adwa: from monument to document

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Alessandro Triulzi
Alessandro Triulzi*
Affiliation:
Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples, Italy. E-mail: a.triulzi@agora.it
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Summary

To the Italian historian the Battle of Adwa in March 1896 has offered a field of interpretation which has been heavily marked by the events that occurred between (and within) the two countries—Ethiopia and Italy—before and after the battle. Adwa has been variously depicted by Italian historiography of the liberal period as a major military defeat, a political mistake by Crispi's expansionist government and the result of deep contrasts within the newly born state over the ‘colonial burden'. Fascist historiography painted Adwa as proof of liberal decay and political inefficiency. Adwa's name could be avenged only in the battlefield, which was done during Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36. From the Ethiopian point of view, Adwa's image changes no less. Until recently, the Battle of Adwa was painted as the landmark for Ethiopian unification and independence during the colonial era. Menelik's momentous victory at Adwa crowned his bid for power in the national arena, while his successful ability to stave off external colonial pressure appeared to cancel, or rather conceal, the internal policy of expansion and consolidation of his country's rule in the region. Today's insistence on Adwa as an African victory appears to be the dominant historiographical representation. The different interpretations all contain elements of truth, yet all, if frozen into historiographical truths, become embarrassing to the historian who needs documents, rather than monuments, as tools of analysis. To many historians both in Italy and Ethiopia, Adwa's respective symbolism of victory/defeat has been transformed into an icon, an historiographical monument, unassailable and immovable. The centenary of Adwa allows us to reconsider historical events of a shared past as critical documents and biased representations reflecting their own culture and time. This article attempts to deconstruct the historiographical monument of Adwa in Italian society so as to transmit such a heavily coded event to the critical examination of future historians in both Italy and Ethiopia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , May 2003 , pp. 95 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. Not all were convinced. Several protests were made against the ‘Tigrayan government’ which was accused by the Amhara on more than one occasion of twisting the country's history. Bahru Zewde, in his Opening Address to the Centenary Conference which was held in Addis Ababa on 26 February 1996, complained that a commemoration which should have encompassed ‘supreme national consensus and single-mindedness’ was ‘attended by considerable ambivalence and confusion in some circles’ as well as by ‘doubt and uncertainty.’See Ahmed, Abdussamed and Pankhurst, Richard, Adwa Victory Centenary Conference 26 February—2 March 1996 , Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, 1998, p. 8. On 2 March 1996, President Nagaso Gidada, in his official speech at the Adwa Centenary celebration which was held at Masqal Square in Addis Ababa, defied the national ethos when he declared: ‘Emperor Menelik invaded the peoples in southern, eastern and western Ethiopia and imposed upon them a brutal national oppression.’ See Mennasemay, Maimire, ‘Adwa: A Dialogue between the Past and the Present’, Northeast African Studies, 42, 1997, p. 81. See also Rubenson, Sven, ‘The Falsification of History: When, Who and Why’, Ethiopian Register, 3, 3, 1996. On the weight of a future-oriented reading of the past see Lonsdale, John, ‘African Pasts in Africa's Future’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 23, 1, 1989, pp. 126–146. A first draft of this article was read at the Addis Ababa Conference but was not included in the official Proceedings.Google Scholar

2. On the tortuous return of the Aksum obelisk to Ethiopia Richard Pankhurst has been a most tenacious spokesman since early times. See Pankhurst, R., ‘Ethiopia and the Loot of the Italian Invasion: 1935–1936’, Présence Africaine , 72, 1969, pp. 85–95. For a recent commentary in the Italian press, see the appeal ‘L'obelisco di Axum va restituito’, Il Sole-24 Ore, 30 September 2002. See also Semplici, Andrea, ‘Il fulmine di Axum’, Afriche e orienti, 42, 2002, pp. 57–63.Google Scholar

3. Among the individual contributions, one should mention Carlo Stella's Adwa: a Bibliography, which was prepared for the event and was distributed to the participants of the International Conference; the documentary and photographic material prepared by a group of Italian University teachers and PhD students in collaboration with their Ethiopian colleagues which was included in the successful Adwa Exhibition shown in Addis Ababa and (partly) in Adwa; the financial contribution offered by the Italian community in Ethiopia to participate in the expenses for the celebrations, etc. At an institutional level, one should mention the logistical and scientific support to the Adwa commemoration granted by the Istituto Italo-Africano (now IsIAO) in Rome which, however, was not able to convince the Italian Foreign Ministry to support the Ethiopian celebrations or assist the Italian participants; the personal goodwill and local collaboration shown at all levels by the Italian Embassy in Ethiopia and particularly by the Italian Ambassador, Dr Maurizio Melani, who went out of his way to ensure the maximum ‘unofficial’ collaboration to an initiative which the Italian Government did not openly support. The Italian authorities’ handling of the Adwa ‘affair’ was criticised by Angelo Del Boca at the opening of the International Conference on Adwa which the Italian historian organized in Piacenza with local support in April 1996. See Del Boca, Angelo, (ed.), Adua. Le ragioni di una sconfitta , Laterza, Bari, 1997, particularly pp. 3–21.Google Scholar

4. The wreath was laid, on the Ethiopian side, by Yohannes, Dawit, President of the Senate, and on the Italian side by Giangiacomo Migone, President of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. On the limits of Italian participation in the Adwa commemoration, see ibid. , pp. 3–11.Google Scholar

5. See Le Goff, Jacques, Storia e memoria , Einaudi, Torino, 1982, pp. 443–455.Google Scholar

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8. See Le Goff, , Storia e memoria , p. 454.Google Scholar

9. See Labanca, Nicola, In marcia verso Adua , Einaudi, Torino, 1993, p. 391. The year 1896 was to many Italians the year of Adwa. Scarfoglio, Edoardo, then Director of the Naples daily Il Mattino, wrote the following epitaph for the year ending on 31 December 1896: ‘The year which just ended belongs to those one cannot forget: an entire generation will carry its gloomy and sinister memory to its grave.’ Google Scholar

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13. See Loraux, Nicole, ‘Sull'amnistia e il suo contrario’, in Yerushalmi, et al., Usi dell'oblio , Einaudi, Torino, 1990, pp. 30–32.Google Scholar

14. Labanca, , In marcia verso Adua , p. xi.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. x. For an historical analysis of the dilemma, see also Labanca, Nicola, ‘Riabilitare o vendicare Adua? Storici militari nella preparazione della campagna d'Etiopia’, in Del Boca, Angelo, Le guerre coloniali del fascismo , Laterza, Bari, 1991, pp. 132–169.Google Scholar

16. The anti-colonial movement in Italy was probably the most important one in Europe at the time. This was due to a series of internal events which saw the gradual mounting in the mid-1880s of a short-lived but highly vocal joint opposition to Italy's overseas expansion led by the Church, northern industry and the Left. The strong opposition to colonial expansion by the Catholic Church and the Italian Catholic movement was due to its steadfast resistance to the ‘lay’ State created through the wars of independence in the 1860s. This explains the initial and forceful opposition by the Catholic movement to the Italian government's overseas expansion which was labelled as ‘barbarian’. A recent review of the Catholic positions is to be found in Canavero, A., ‘I cattolici di fronte al colonialismo’, in Boca, Del (ed.), Adua. Le ragioni di una sconfitta , Laterza, Bari, pp. 91–114. The northern industrial and financial complex was opposed initially to State expansionism because of the slow pace of the national economy and the lack of internal progress. The Republican, Radical and Socialist movements which composed the heterogeneous Italian Left of the time opposed the colonial ‘adventure’ on ethico-political grounds both in Parliament and in the country at large. See in particular Perticone, Giovanni, La politica coloniale dell'Italia negli atti, documenti e discussioni parlamentari, Poligrafico dello Stato, Rome, 1965; Rainero, Romain, L'anticolonialismo italiano da Assab a Adua (1869–1896), ed. Comunità, Milano, 1971; Del Boca, Angelo, Gli italiani in Africa orientale, 4 vols, Laterza, Bari, 1976–84. A recent review of the socialist position is in Monteleone, Renato ‘L'anticolonialismo socialista in Italia tra la fine dell'Ottocento e l'inizio del Novecento’, in Boca, Del (ed.), Adua. Le ragioni di una sconfitta, Laterza, Bari, pp. 79–89.Google Scholar

17. See Battaglia, Roberto, La prima guerra d'Africa , Einaudi, Torino, 1958, p. 242.Google Scholar

18. The best description of the landing and its symbolic implications is in Battaglia, , La prima guerra , pp. 170–206.Google Scholar

19. Battaglia, p. 242.Google Scholar

20. Ibid. , in particular pp. 230–264.Google Scholar

21. According to Battaglia, Roberto, the ‘springing up of the legend around the bare facts of Dogali extended its dimensions and made it impossible to achieve the stark truth’. Ibid. , p. 237.Google Scholar

22. The different versions of the Dogali battle, and a chronology of the 1887 events, are to be found in a serial publication issued at the time of the events by the Roman popular publisher Edoardo Perino. See Piccinini, G., La guerra d'Africa , Perino Ed., Rome, 1887. The series narrated in 150 instalments the ‘African war’; it came out four times a week during the Eritrean expedition.Google Scholar

23. See Piccinini, , La guerra d'Africa , pp. 23–26.Google Scholar

24. The report of Capt. Tanturri is in Ministero della Guerra, Comando del Corpo di Stato Maggiore, Storico, Ufficio, Storia militare della colonia Eritrea , Vol. 1, 1935, pp. 110–115. See also Battaglia, , La prima guerra, pp. 236–237.Google Scholar

25. Piccinini, , La guerra d'Africa, pp. 94–95. The story of the wounded soldier became part of the national epic through endless accounts in popular literature. See for all Oriani, Alfredo, Fino a Dogali , Laterza, Bari, 1918, pp. 280–290, and Battaglia, , La prima guerra, pp. 239–241.Google Scholar

26. Piccinini, , La guerra d'Africa , p. 156.Google Scholar

27. See Battaglia, , La prima guerra , p. 255.Google Scholar

28. Ibid, particularly pp. 242–259. At a popular level, Piccinini's La guerra d'Africa contributed to the colonial revival by mixing fictional elements and private lives with the unfolding of colonial events. The alleged ‘sympathy’ born between ras Alula's daughter and Col. Piano's twelve-year-old son Emanuele after Dogali was not meant so much to ‘humanize’ the enemy as to dilute the explosive potential of a bloody setback into a serialized love story to feed the yet uninvolved Italian public. After Emanuele Piano left, the love story continued with a non existent but passionate Abyssinian Prince called Hebron, the alleged son of Emperor Tewodros. Piccinini's instalments had so much success that they were to be reprinted soon into Gli amori della figlia di ras Alula in Affrica , Salani Ed., Florence, 1888.Google Scholar

29. Battaglia, , La prima guerra , p. 250.Google Scholar

30. Ibid. , p. 259–263.Google Scholar

31. See Gallini, Clara, ‘Il mangia maccheroni e la Regina Margherita’, in Giochi pericolosi. Frammenti di un immaginario alquanto razzista , Manifestolibri, Roma, 1996, pp. 85–97.Google Scholar

32. Battaglia, , La prima guerra , p. 262.Google Scholar

33. Ibid. , p. 566–567.Google Scholar

34. See Labanca, , In marcia verso Adua , pp. 84, 310–311.Google Scholar

35. See Battaglia, , La prima guerra , p. 285.Google Scholar

36. Ibid. , p. 566. The sentence was uttered by General Morra di Lavriano, the ‘winner’ at Agordat, in Palermo on 8 February 1894 during a public speech he made after he had led the Sicilian repression. See Colajanni, Napoleone, Gli avvenimenti di Sicilia e le loro cause, Sandron, Palermo, pp. 192–193.Google Scholar

37. See Labanca, , In marcia verso Adua , p. 72.Google Scholar

38. See La critica sociale , 19 January 1896; Battaglia, , La prima guerra, pp. 668–669.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., p. 669.Google Scholar

40. See Franzinelli, Mimmo, ‘Clero militare e primo colonialismo italiano’, Studi Piacentini , 20, 1996, p. 171.Google Scholar

41. It is interesting to note that the Army's official report on the Battle of Adwa came out in 1935 and that, during the same year, General Baratieri was informally rehabilitated. See Labanca, , ‘Riabilitare o vendicare’, pp. 144–151, and Franzinelli, , ‘Clero militare’, p. 174.Google Scholar

42. See Labanca, N., ‘Memorie e complessi di Adua. Appunti’, in Boca, Del (ed.), Adua. Le ragioni di una sconfitta , pp. 397–416.Google Scholar

43. See Mennasemay, , ‘Adwa: A Dialogue’; see also Strecker, Ivo, ‘Glories and Agonies of the Ethiopian Past’, Social Anthropology , 2, 3, 1994, pp. 303–312.Google Scholar