One verb in a treaty nearly cost Ethiopia its freedom. Adwa won it back

On 2 May 1889, in the small Ethiopian town of Wuchale, King Menelik II of Shewa, acting as Emperor of Ethiopia, and Count Pietro Antonelli of Italy signed a treaty of friendship and trade. It had twenty articles, written in two languages, Amharic and Italian. Article 19 even promised that both versions said the same thing.

They did not. And the difference came down to a single verb.

"Can" or "must"

In the Amharic text, Article 17 said that the Emperor of Ethiopia "can use the Government of His Majesty the King of Italy for all business with other powers". It was an option: Ethiopia could ask Italy to help with its foreign relations if it wished.

In the Italian text, the same article made it an obligation. Ethiopia was bound to conduct all its foreign affairs through Italy. In plain terms, that made Ethiopia an Italian protectorate.

Italy wasted no time. In October 1889, only five months after the signing, it informed the other European governments that Ethiopia was now its protectorate, so they should no longer deal with Ethiopia directly. Almost all of them accepted the claim. Italian diplomats would later argue that Menelik knew exactly what he had signed. Menelik insisted he had agreed to nothing of the kind, refused the Italian reading, and eventually renounced the treaty.

Think about that for a moment. An empire with its own church, its own script, its own army and centuries of statehood had been declared a dependency on paper, by one word in the copy written in someone else's language.

From the page to the battlefield

When persuasion failed, Italy tried force. By late 1895 Italian troops had pushed deep into Tigray. In September that year Menelik issued a formal call to arms to the whole country, and the provinces answered.

On 1 March 1896, near the town of Adwa in northern Ethiopia, the two armies met. Menelik's force is estimated at between 73,000 and more than 100,000 men, most of them carrying modern rifles bought from France and Russia. Among the commanders was Empress Taytu Betul, with her own contingent of riflemen, cavalry and guns. Thousands of women served as nurses and carried food and water to the front.

General Oreste Baratieri, under pressure from Rome to act, sent his brigades forward through difficult mountain terrain at night. The columns lost contact with one another. The Ethiopians attacked them one by one. By the afternoon the Italian army had collapsed. More than 6,000 Italian and colonial troops were killed and about 3,800 captured, and the retreating army left behind all its artillery and some 11,000 rifles. Ethiopian losses were also heavy, estimated at 4,000 to 7,000 dead. In Rome, the government of Francesco Crispi fell.

The treaty that cancelled the treaty

The war ended on paper, as it had begun. On 26 October 1896, 130 years ago this week, the Treaty of Addis Ababa abrogated the Treaty of Wuchale and recognised Ethiopia as an independent country. Within months, Britain and France signed treaties that treated Ethiopia as an equal.

Ethiopia was occupied by Fascist Italy from 1936 to 1941, but at the end of the nineteenth century, while the rest of the continent was being carved up, it was one of the few independent states in Africa and the only one that owed its independence to a military victory.

Adwa in Africa today

Adwa did not stay in Ethiopia. Its green, gold and red became a symbol of freedom for the whole continent. When Ghana became independent in 1957, it was the first African state to adopt a red, gold and green flag, designed by Theodosia Okoh, and many more followed.

When Africa's independent states came together, they did it in Addis Ababa. The Organisation of African Unity was founded there on 25 May 1963, and its successor, the African Union, has its Commission in Addis Ababa today. Every year Ethiopia closes its schools, banks and government offices for Adwa Victory Day.

The lesson for leaders and builders

We remember Adwa for the rifles and the horsemen. But the crisis did not start on a battlefield. It started at a signing table, with a document in two languages and one clause nobody on the Ethiopian side could check in the version that would be used against them.

African businesses and governments still sign loan agreements, supply contracts, mining concessions and software licences drafted far away, often in a language and under a law that are not their own. Three habits from Wuchale are worth keeping:

Read the version that governs. Most contracts say which language or copy wins if the texts differ. Find that clause first, and read that version yourself or through someone you trust.

Watch the small words. "May" and "shall", "can" and "must", "best efforts" and "will". Article 17 turned on exactly that kind of word.

Keep your own record. Ethiopia's case rested on the Amharic text it held and on what its own side remembered agreeing. A business that keeps clean records of its orders, prices and promises is far harder to push around.

Ethiopia's freedom was almost signed away quietly, then won back loudly at great cost. Most of the time we do not get a second chance on the battlefield. So here is my question for you this week: which clause are you about to sign without reading twice?

Sources: Wikipedia, Treaty of Wuchale (citing Giglio 1965, Journal of African History; Rubenson 2003); Wikipedia, Battle of Adwa (citing Pankhurst, Henze, Bahru Zewde, Prouty and Berkeley); Wikipedia, Treaty of Addis Ababa; Wikipedia, Pan-African colours; Wikipedia, Organisation of African Unity; Wikipedia, African Union.

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