This article attempts to examine the reaction of the anti-colonial nationalists in British West Africa to the diplomacy of their ruling colonial power with regard to the Italo-Ethiopian crisis of 1935–6. This reaction was largely influenced by the nationalists' claim to special relationship with Britain and their firm belief not only in British power but also in the British ‘gospel of equity and fair-play’. Consequently, when Britain and France, because of their obsession with the need for security, failed to protect the territorial integrity and political independence of the symbolic and sole surviving black empire of Ethiopia, these race- conscious nationalists rashly concluded that there was a concerted plot among the whites against the black race. This belief was reinforced first by the refusal of Britain and France to supply arms to Ethiopia during the conflict; secondly, by the infamous Hoare–Laval peace pact of December 1935, which would have compromised Ethiopia's independence had it been implemented; and thirdly, by British recognition of the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. Disenchantment with the League of Nations, coupled with the disillusionment with the diplomacy of the colonial powers during the crisis, led the articulate nationalists to begin seriously to reconsider their relationship with Britain and the whole doctrine of the ‘civilising mission’. Their nationalism shifted from the idea of working within the trusteeship concept to a more militant anti-white pan-Africanism.