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Luciana L. Contarino Sparta, Universidad de Buenos Aires, ArgentinaAbstract
After the Berlin Conference (1884–1885), the Scramble for Africa formally began, and Europeans occupied the continent with seemingly unstoppable success. They claimed that their mission was to bring “the blessings of civilisation” to African peoples, who were widely regarded as inferior. Although Ethiopia at the time had a Christian population and was in the process of becoming a unified state, its people were not exempt from this racialised definition. Within European discourse, they were frequently described as “barbarians” and “savages”. However, this perception changed after the army led by Emperor Menelik II defeated the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in 1896, thereby crushing Italy’s colonial ambitions in Ethiopia. In the following months, Western newspapers such as The Times (London) declared that Ethiopia should be recognised as “a civilised power”, while across the Atlantic, The New York Times asserted that Ethiopians were “not black, but of Caucasian descent, as the Anglo-Saxon or the Celt”. As Marcus (2005) observed, “the Europeans had to rationalise Menelik’s victory”, since acknowledging defeat at the hands of Black people was inconceivable given the ideology of European superiority that had legitimised colonisation. Consequently, the victors had to be “whitened”. Moreover, the outcome of Adwa played a significant role in reshaping African identities: the battle became a powerful symbol that Africans could defeat Europeans, yet it also contributed to new distinctions between “successful” and “unsuccessful” Africans. This paper aims to explore the repercussions of these cross-constructed European and African narratives following the Battle of Adwa.
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Conference: ECAH2025Stream: History/Historiography
This paper is part of the ECAH2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Sparta L. (2025) When Ethiopians Were Declared White: The Racialised Reconstruction of Identities in Europe and Africa After the Battle of Adwa (1896) ISSN: 2188-1111 – The European Conference on Arts & Humanities 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 355-367) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1111.2025.30
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1111.2025.30
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