Contingencies, Contradictions and Struggles for Black Freedom and Emancipation: Adwa and Decolonisation Today

In this paper we reflect on and consider Adwa from the perspective of historical and continuing international Black movements and struggles for freedom in its aftermath. Adwa and, by extension, Ethiopia more broadly became a symbol and touchtone of African anti-colonial militancy, political independence and autonomy in an anti-black world. Adwa influenced the imaginations and real struggles of black people for freedom in a multitude of complex, often contradictory ways. However, while it punctured white supermacist narratives at the global stage, internally, in an age that marked the rise of the modern state form—with its fixed territorial borders— the memory of Adwa served as a foundational moment in the formation of modern Ethiopian nationalism. It also buttressed the making of a homogenizing and assimilationist tendency of Ethiopian nationalism in the 20th century and fed into its imperial project. Internationally, Haile Selassie, at the helm of the Ethiopian imperial project in the mid-twentieth century, was taken up as a symbol of Black freedom whilst he presided over an exploitative and oppressive empire at home. With some of the questions raised by current movements for decolonisation, we ask what is different about this contemporary moment when we think about Adwa in relation to international Black movements and struggles for freedom?; how do we remember it from today in relation to Ethiopia’s nationalisms (pan Ethiopian and particular ones)?; how do we memorialize it in thinking about freedom in a country with a dominant imperial nationalist ethos?