Conquests of Menelik II: A Visual History

Between 1878 and 1904 Menelik, king of Shewa and from 1889 Emperor of Ethiopia, conquered the Oromo, Sidama, Somali, Wolayta, Kaffa and other peoples south and west of the old Abyssinian highlands, roughly doubling the empire to its modern borders. Armed with hundreds of thousands of European rifles bought with ivory, coffee and slaves, his armies took Harar (1887), Arsi (1886), Wolayta (1894) and Kaffa (1897), often with great loss of life among the conquered. When Italy claimed a protectorate under the Treaty of Wuchale, Menelik's army of 100,000 crushed the Italians at Adwa on 1 March 1896, preserving Ethiopian independence through the Scramble for Africa.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Conquests of Menelik II. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Ethiopian territory

Timeline of the Conquests of Menelik II

1. 1878
   Menelik submits to Yohannes; expansion begins
2. 1886
   Arsi conquered
3. 1887
   Chelenqo; Harar taken
4. 1889
   Menelik emperor; Treaty of Wuchale
5. 1894
   Wolayta conquered
6. 1896
   Adwa1 March.
7. 1897
   Kaffa conquered
8. 1904
   Borders largely settled

Southward expansion

As king of Shewa under Emperor Yohannes IV, Menelik pushed south into Oromo and other lands with the general Ras Gobana Dacche, an Oromo himself. Rifles from Italy, France and Russia gave his armies overwhelming firepower. Harar fell in 1887 after Chelenqo; the Arsi Oromo were subdued after fierce resistance and mutilations were reported; Wolayta's King Tona was defeated in 1894 in a campaign chroniclers described as bloody, and the ancient kingdom of Kaffa was overrun in 1897 after a long siege. Conquered lands were parcelled out to northern soldiers as tribute-paying estates.

Emperor and Adwa

Yohannes died fighting the Mahdists in 1889 and Menelik took the imperial title. The Treaty of Wuchale with Italy differed in its Amharic and Italian texts over whether Ethiopia must conduct foreign relations through Rome; Menelik repudiated it. Italy invaded from Eritrea; at Adwa on 1 March 1896 some 100,000 Ethiopians with modern rifles and artillery destroyed General Baratieri's 17,000, killing about 6,000. Italy recognised full independence; European powers sent embassies to Addis Ababa.

Borders and legacy

Menelik fixed the borders with Britain, France and Italy in treaties from 1897 to 1908, took the Ogaden and Borana lands and built Addis Ababa, a railway to Djibouti and telegraphs. The great famine of 1888-1892, caused by rinderpest, killed perhaps a third of the population and eased conquest of the south. Menelik's empire is celebrated as the shield of African independence and criticised, especially by Oromo and southern peoples, as a colonial conquest of its own.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Italian Empire (1882 to 1947)
• Kingdom of Aksum (100 to 940)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• German colonial empire (1884 to 1919)

Wars of the same era and region

• Mahdist War (1881 to 1899)
• Ethiopian Civil War and Eritrean War of Independence (1961 to 1991)
• Tigray War (2020 to 2022)
• World War I (1914 to 1918)

8 surprising things about the Conquests of Menelik II

1. Adwa was the largest defeat of a European army by an African one and made Ethiopia a symbol for pan-Africanists and Rastafarians.
2. Menelik imported the first car, cinema and telephone to Ethiopia and was rumoured to eat pages of the Bible when ill.
3. The disputed article 17 of the Wuchale treaty hinged on the Amharic word for 'may' versus the Italian 'must'.
4. Empress Taytu commanded her own troops at Adwa and gave the city of Addis Ababa its name, 'new flower'.
5. Rinderpest, brought by Italian cattle to Eritrea in 1887, killed 90 percent of Ethiopia's cattle and caused the Great Famine.
6. Menelik claimed descent from Solomon and Sheba like all Ethiopian emperors and traced his line to the biblical Menelik I.
7. Ethiopia and Liberia were the only African states not colonised in the Scramble.
8. The conquest of Kaffa ended a kingdom that had traded coffee, whose very name may derive from Kaffa.

Sources

• Menilek II Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Menelik II's conquests Wikipedia
• Battle of Adwa Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Harold Marcus, The Life and Times of Menelik II (1975) Clarendon Press

Back to all empires and wars