Treaty of Wuchale

The Treaty of Wuchale (also spelled Treaty of Ucciale; Italian: Trattato di Uccialli, Amharic: የውጫሌ ውል) was a treaty signed between the Ethiopian Empire and the Kingdom of Italy. The signing parties were King Menelik II of Shewa, acting as Emperor of Ethiopia, and Count Pietro Antonelli representing Italy, on 2 May 1889, established the treaty after the Italian occupation of Eritrea. It was signed in the small Ethiopian town of Wuchale, from which the treaty got its name. The purpose of the treaty was to promote friendship and trade among the two countries.[1] It was a treaty to maintain a positive long-lasting relationship between the two empires.[2] The treaty has twenty articles written in two languages, Amharic and Italian; however, there were marked differences in the Italian and the Amharic versions of the treaty, which created miscommunications between the two countries. Specifically, Article 17 of the treaty was translated and interpreted differently by Ethiopia and Italy. Italy claimed the article imposed a protectorate over Ethiopia, while Ethiopia claimed the article allowed international diplomacy to be conducted through Italy by choice. When Menelik II denounced the treaty in 1893,[3] Italy attempted to forcefully impose the protectorate over Ethiopia[4] in the First Italo-Ethiopian War, which ended with Italy's defeat at the Battle of Adwa and the resulting Treaty of Addis Ababa.[5]

  1. ^ "Text of Wuchale Treaty". 1889 Ethio-Italian Treaty. Horn Affairs. 17 August 2011. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
  2. ^ Ayele, Negussie. "Adwa 1896: Who was Civilized & Who was Savage?" Ethiopian Review, vol. 7, no. 2, 30 April 1997, pp. 50. ProQuest 198708282.
  3. ^ "Treaty of Wichale, Italy-Ethiopia [1889]". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
  4. ^ Stalder, Helmut (2020). Verkannte Visionäre (in German). NZZ Libro. p. 76. ISBN 978-3-907291-21-4. Retrieved 20 August 2022.
  5. ^ Stern, W. B. (1936). "The Treaty Background of the Italo-Ethiopian Dispute". The American Journal of International Law. 30 (2): 193. doi:10.2307/2191086. ISSN 0002-9300. JSTOR 2191086. S2CID 147220726.

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