Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Italian Invasions of Ethiopia

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

Robert is joined by Joelle Monique to discuss why Italy is the Bastard of Ethiopia. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new

podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. What's recording my this meeting? I'm Robert Evans, a host of Behind the Bastards ripping off the Zoom robot lady who yells at us at the start of every meeting to let us know that it's being recorded. She's been rebranded. She's been rebranded. She's nicer now. She doesn't say that. They were like, you know, a little too intense. Might sound like a cop rebrand after like two weeks. Rebrand. Fucking cops. Fucking cops. Cops. I don't know what I'm going for here. Today, our guest is Joelle Monique, producer here at iHeart radio. Joelle, how are you doing today? Oh my god. I'm in a very good mood to learn about some bad people. Like, I really want to feel the hate for people. We're doing a bit of a different kind of episode this week, right?

The last episode you did with us, we talked about Roy Cohn, which is obviously we're going very deep into the personal history of one influential shitty person. Today is more of a broader history podcast. There's a lot of bastards in it, but really the bastard of this episode is the nation of Italy and the victim. Yes. Fucking Italians. We're finally taking it to him. God damn them all. I wasn't prepared to hate a whole country, but let's do. No, it's there's one country it's okay to hate all of and it's Italy. Okay. That's fine. We've all. I should know Robert is Italian. You're damn right. And you should. I don't sunburn like it's we're a demon people. I don't sunburn. That's your. Okay.

So Italy is the bastard and the victim of Italy is a little country you might have heard of called Ethiopia. So we're going to talk a lot about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here comes colonization. Yeah. I mean, less than most of so, I mean, we'll talk about this a bit later, but one of the things that makes Ethiopia unique is that it's the only African nation that wasn't colonized. It was up until the 20th century, the only independent African nation after the scramble for Africa, right? There was kind of Liberia, but Liberia kind of started as a US colony. It was a different than a normal colony, right? Cause we were, it's not quite the same as like, you know, South Africa or whatever.

But Ethiopia was never conquered throughout the entire colonialism period. We're going to talk about Ethiopian history is actually fascinating. Part of why I'm doing this is I've been trying to study up on the current conflict, what is probably a genocide, at least an ethnic cleansing in Tigray, which is a part of the nation of Ethiopia. A lot of people who want to be separatists there, the Tigrayans are like a separate ethnic group. We're not going to talk a lot about that hit right now, because again, I'm part of my learning up on this has been studying the last couple of hundred years of Ethiopian history, trying to get it, build up a better base of understanding. And when you go through 1800s,

1900s Ethiopian history, the recurring bastard is the nation of Italy. So we're talking about that today. All right. And I think we make a lot of jokes about being anti-Italian because it's funny to talk about the spicy meatballs and whatnot. But I think it actually, for the most part, when you're kind of looking at the imperial powers, Italy doesn't really wind up on anyone's radar, right? France, you've got a bunch of horrible and extensive fuckery in Indochina, some really terrible shit they did. Like the British Empire obviously carried out like Nazi level crimes against humanity in multiple. The United States, bunch of ethnic cleansings and mass murders in the Philippines, horrible, horrible shit. Italy, you know, you had that spicy

meatball bit ready to go. Yeah, mostly it's the spicy meatball. Italy was the heel of all of these other major powers for a long time. Like the Brits were like, I guess if you have to marry an Italian, you can. But why? You know, I've watched it down to Abbey the last couple of weeks, lot of hate for the Italians and that thing. You know, when they came to America, same situation. Yep. Yep. And the big European powers were all really competent, right? The British Empire, very good at what they did. That's why they were the British Empire. The French, you know, imperial, very good at what they did up until, you know, it all fell apart. The Germans, really scary nation in terms of like the kind of shit that they were able to pull off, like really

frighteningly competent, not the same thing with the Italians. You know, they're part of the Axis in World War Two. Nobody is scared about the fascist Italians, right? The Nazis are still the Lucid. Not outside of Italy, no. Mussolini's a joke, right? Like Italy came off that war as like the bumbling and incompetent partner to these like nightmare warriors, the Germans. Gone were the glory days of Rome, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And it's, there's actually, this goes back in European history, back to, really at the 17, 1800s, there's this like long standing, there's even a Latin phrase for it that I don't have memorized, but the joke is, Italians can't fight. They're not good fighters. Oh. Which is going to sound like, if you know

Roman history, like one of the things, I mean, and this does go back a bit, because even in ancient Rome, Italian, Italians and Romans in particular, were the best heavy infantry the world had ever seen, right? Yeah. But in army includes a lot of stuff that's not heavy infantry. You've got, you've got archers, you've got, you know, sling throws or whatnot. You've got different kinds of cavalry. You've got skirmishers. None of those were ever Italians. They always went with, that's part of why they colonized, is they would take these, you know, balleric slingers and archers from, you know, Crete and all these different like Gallic Calvary and whatnot. And that's what made the Roman Empire imposing. The heavy infantry, which were Italians,

were really good, but they had all these different peoples that they would bring in to fill these other roles that they just weren't very good at. They were really good at artillery. But, you know, they have, and they have a really significant period of military dominance during ancient Rome. And then they're kind of not that impressive, right? Some of the Italian city-states do some okay shit and like, you know, the Renaissance period, the medieval period, but like they're not, you know, when you're talking about like the dominant military powers in Europe for most of the last thousand years, you're talking about the French, you're talking about the Germans, you're talking about the British, you know, nobody's all that impressed

with Italy's military might. And it's, it's, there's also some aspects of this that are weird, because like when Mussolini first came to power in like 22, the first like 10 years of his reign or so, he was the fascist, right? Nobody cared about Hitler. Nobody talked about Hitler. Hitler was kind of cribbing off of him. And he was a very popular leader worldwide, Mussolini was. He was super popular in the United States. And we've kind of forgotten that because by the time the war started, it'll fascist Italy was such a shit show that like everybody just like wrote Mussolini off as like Hitler's bumbling sidekick when it really was the opposite at the start. And this kind of bumbling reputation has led to a lot of, it's kind of benefited the Italian

nation in the modern era, because we don't remember all of the horrific crimes against humanity that fascist Italy committed outside. And part of that is because the number one place fascist Italy committed crimes against humanity was Ethiopia, a place where Westerners do not think about. They don't care about it now. Yeah. And that's what we're talking about today. Now our story begins in 1000 BC, because we're going to talk about where Ethiopia comes from. And 1000 BC is about the time roughly when a bunch of folks in Northeast Africa were like, what if we did in Ethiopia, right? That's kind of like when the, what becomes the modern nation of Ethiopia like, okay, let's do it. Ethiopia seems like a good idea. And they're still doing in

Ethiopia. So clearly there were some, some good ideas there. Now I'm going to leave out some stuff, but the gist of the story is that the nation of Ethiopia has existed in some broadly recognizable form though, for about 3000 years, right? That's a long time for there's been a recognizable, not a nation in the modern sense, but an Ethiopian people inhabiting and exerting political power in that area, but like 3000 years, which is huge, you know, very few other peoples that are in that same China would be one, right? Right. Not a lot of different peoples around the world that could say 3000 years, we've more or less been an entity, you know, not the Brits because even the Brits where, you know, it was the Anglo Saxons and the

Vikings just tearing at each other's throats. Yeah. So yeah, 3000 years is a dynasty. Yeah. Cause like modern, you know, people usually like the start of kind of like what we recognize the Brits as being is like 1066, right? The battle of Hastings is kind of when that starts to form Ethiopia is 2000 years old at that point, right? Just for an idea of like how fucking far this, this culture goes back. And again, I'm not saying the modern nation of Ethiopia is 3000 years old, but something broadly recognizable in that way. Now during this time, a shitload of different stuff went down, right? You had your Alexander the Great, you got your Roman Empire, you've got a couple of different Caliphates, you've got some Mongols, you get another Caliphate after the

Mongols. And through sheer cussedness and the fact that their homeland is what historians call a natural fortress, it's huge, it's mountainous, it's difficult to fight in if you're invading, right? It's a defensible position. And because of this, Ethiopia manages to stay more or less independent through all of these different empires, just rolling through the neighborhood, right? You know, Rome is in the Middle East and North Africa, Alexander the Great fucks around in chunks of that area. Caliphates, you know, Mongols, whatnot, all of these guys are kind of fucking around in and around, but none of them destroy Ethiopia. And staying continuing to exist through all of this was not a simple matter, as Emperor Haile Selassie wrote in the early 1900s, quote,

Throughout history, the Ethiopians have seldom met with foreigners who did not desire to possess themselves of Ethiopian territory and to destroy their independence. With God's help, and thanks to the courage of our soldiers, we have always come what might stood proud and free upon our native mountains. Now, the rise of Islam was probably the biggest challenge for the Ethiopians, and in terms of remaining independence, since for most of their history or most of the Middle East, their modern history, they've been kind of their own brand of Orthodox Christianity, right? Okay, that's one of the things you're in the Middle East, North Africa, very much heavy Muslim populations. And then there's Ethiopia, which is Christian. And that's that's difficult,

right? Because that sounds perilous. Yeah, there's like 700 years where, you know, the caliphates are kind of the biggest power in the region. And there are attempts to take over Ethiopia by these folks. Ethiopia was invaded constantly, and it existed as kind of an island of Christianity in the middle of the Muslim world, which was at that point that kind of the center of Western military power. They were invaded by Albania and Turkey in the early 1500s in a brutal war that pushed the king of Ethiopia back to the giant plateau that is the Ethiopian heartland. Disaster was only narrowly avoided by the intervention of Portugal, who at that point was probably the greatest power in Europe. This European colonizer sent 400 men with early rifles to beat back the

Turks and Albanians, which they did saving Ethiopia. Of course, Portugal didn't leave, but they didn't succeed in properly colonizing Ethiopia either. And so again, one of the things that makes Ethiopia weird is unlike a lot of the rest of the region, there are there are elements to which they benefit from not colonization, but from colonizing powers, because Portugal kind of saves their bacon. And they do it for selfish reasons. I mean, they justify it be like we have these people are Christians, we're Christians, we've got to save them. They're also they have a financial interest here. But for a variety of factors, they don't take power, right? You know, and Portugal does that all throughout South America. Because it's not like just from a distance

perspective, Portugal, it seemed Portugal would be like, perfect, like already a strong Christian, like hold here, it's hard to capture, we're already on the inside. And we know they were really about conquering shit. Like that was their main champ. They did a lot of that. Yeah, they did a lot of that. That's why there's a Brazil. Yeah, exactly. It's quite astounding that they wouldn't just immediately try to, especially knowing how much the other European powers were at the time, conquering portions of Africa, like everyone would want to get their foothold in there. 1500s, European powers weren't. This is like Europe hadn't really done anything in Africa, very much at that point, some in Northern Africa, right? There'd always been interchange between

Northern Africa and Europe, because it's not very far. But colonization hadn't started in mass. In Portugal 1500s, they don't really have the resources to do it. Because number one, after all this war against Turkey and Albania, Ethiopia is devastated. So they don't have a like a functional state to just kind of pick up. The terrain is really difficult. It's very rugged. They don't have a lot of minutes. Hard to get people there. It just doesn't wind up being practical. So eventually the Portuguese kind of give up and leave. And the next few centuries after this are a chaotic period for Ethiopia. There's a number of invasions and warlords. And for a big chunk of this time, there's an emperor of Ethiopia, but he's basically a token

figure. And there's kind of these vying local kings and warlords who are, you know, one of them will be more of the power than he is. And this kind of continues off and on until the mid 1800s. That's when an adventurer named Casa defeated all of the different regional kings vying for power and declared himself King of Kings. He took his movie. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a fucking read. There's a lot of movies that should be made. I mean, maybe there are a couple. So he takes the name Theodros. Some people will call him Theodore, right? Like it's usually anglicized as that. But his name was Theodros. His name was not fucking Theodore. And he became the first modern emperor of Ethiopia. And like most emperors in history, Theodros veered between

kindly and wise and a narcissistic murderous madman, depending on whether or not he was having a good day, right? No one who wants to be emperor, the King of Kings is going to be a nice dude, right? Doesn't matter. He had to do a lot of killing to get that, you know, to find God coming down and be like, he should be your leader. So yeah, you know, sometimes you got to murder a person. I get it. You don't get to be King of Kings by handing out back rubs, you know. He maintained power by virtue of his mighty army. So he's got a really good army. That's why he's in power. But he fucks up, you know, after some time in power, he fucks up because he has these he has these fits of rage. And right, who knows, maybe he had some head injuries from battles,

maybe he was drinking lead or there's all sorts of reasons, people, you know, he's always yeah, you have all these, this happens all throughout a lot of you have a lot of Roman emperors like that were like, well, he was prone to these fits of rage. And now we know, like, oh, well, they were had led in the drinking water, like there's all this shit that might have been like why this rage happened, like who knows what was going on. But he has a fit of rage and he makes the mistake during one of these of imprisoning a British envoy. And by this point, we're in the mid 1800s, like the 1840s, the British are the one people you don't want to piss off, right? Unless you're the United States, you don't want to piss off Britain in the early 1800s. It doesn't

end well for you. Are we in the victorious reign by 1840? Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the Victorian period, I think. Yeah, yeah. So yes, because so he imprisons prisons of British envoy and there he seems to have done this because of a male dispute. So Emperor Theodorus sent a letter to Queen Victoria, and it didn't reach her. I don't think we know why it didn't reach her. It may have been a slight it may have just been at least the fucking 1800s, right? It could have just gotten lost, you know, there is a long horse got sick and died. I don't know. There's a long history that we'll talk about later in this episode of like, particularly British monarchs being racist towards Ethiopian monarchs. But honestly, this might have just

been a fuck up. It's getting a letter from Ethiopia to UK in the 1840s. Not an easy task. Yeah. But this letter doesn't reach her. She doesn't respond. And he feels insulted because a fellow monarch had neglected to respond to him. And this may have also been a deliberate slight we really don't know. In any case, he arrested the British consul. England sends another envoy to ask him to release their first envoy and the emperor arrests this guy too. And then he arrests 60 other Europeans in his country to boot. This sparks a major debate within the halls of power in the British Empire. They did not have a meaningful presence in Ethiopia. They did not have a whole lot of soldiers anywhere near Ethiopia. And so there's this big debate in

parliament. Is it worth deploying an army to free two dudes? Being the British Empire, they say, yes. Like, yeah, this is worth it. We've got enough men. Let's go. Yeah. And to be honest, when you talk about why the British are an empire, it's because they make choices like this, right? It's because they're willing to deploy power like this. It'll get them in trouble at points, but these are the kind of calls empires make. In 1867, the British send their first European invasion force into Ethiopia. And it was 29,000 men, which is a massive army for the day, especially in that part, especially in Africa. Like, that's a huge army in 1840 to send. And this army lands on the coast of what is now Somalia. They marched through some of the most

rugged mountain terrain on earth until in April of 1868, they reached the emperor's walled city of Magdala. It was not much of a fight because the emperor had alienated all of his vassals because he was a dick. So all of these different, you know, it's a feudal system. He relies on all these levies from different local kings and lords and whatnot to fill his army. And none of these guys are willing to fight against the British for him. And so Emperor Theodros winds up, yeah, shooting himself to avoid capture. Now, oh, yeah, yeah. So he's out of the picture now and shit like this happens all throughout the colonial period. And usually it ended with Great Britain owning another giant fucking chunk of the planet. It doesn't in this case. And it's worth asking why,

because the British obviously take anything that's not fucking nailed down. I found a really fascinating write up. It's a master's thesis for the Department of History at Kansas State University written by an Ethiopian historian named Teferi Teklehaymonod, who got his BA from Highly Salasseh University in Ethiopia and then went to Kansas State. So this is not like a white guy European view of history. This is an Ethiopian guy's writing about the history of his nation, which is what I wanted for this. And here's what Teferi writes to explain why England didn't stay and do, you know, British Empire shit in Ethiopia. Sure. Quote, an interesting question now arises. Why did not the British colonize the country? There is, of course, no evidence that they had

any or that the general who they'd sent had any orders to do so. In fact, the British government was at that time not very keen in further acquisition of colonial lands. But even if the general had wanted, he could not have accomplished the task. To begin with, the expedition itself could very well have failed if it were not for the indifference of the regional rulers. Indeed, their active disobedience and time of emergency. So Teferi argues that these local chiefs gave aid, food and guidance to the British forces. They were so angry at the emperor, they helped these guys through the mountains, right? But they also, they didn't just help them. They made certain to put on a display of their military might marching their soldiers

past the British Empire, just to be like, we're not going to fight you, but we could, right? Like, we're cool with you now. We want you like you like fuck the emperor, you can take the emperor out. But if you try to stick around, we have enough dudes to wreck your shit, right? Right. And we would combine our forces against you. So yeah, definitely watch out. I love this. Yeah. This is forward leaders with forward thinking power, unlike the guy who literally shot the messengers. Yes, yes. And Teferi goes on to write, quote, after the meeting, this meeting where the Ethiopians show off their military power, the British general proceeded to Magdala. And as he put it, quote, somewhat less confident than before, having seen the bearing and arms of

the Ethiopian soldiery. So yeah, the British go in here. And, and they don't, they don't stay. And probably part of it is that, you know, this is something that probably should be talked about more colonization, you know, was never a thing that even the British political class was whole hogboard. A lot of guys through every stage of the expansion of the British empire keep saying this is a bad idea. Now they don't win. But they're that like they were kind of more dominant during this period. Maybe that played a role. But there's also, and this what Teferi is arguing is the British number one, they see the kind of country they're like, we only got through all these mountains because these locals let us through. And there's a lot of them and they're good fighters. And if

they wanted to make a problem for us, they could really wreck our day. It's it's not worth it, you know, right? Totally. And that's why Ethiopia stays independent this entire period is it's not worth it to fuck with them. I love the idea of land having such an advantage. Like it's it's kind of I don't know if impressive is the right word, but it's sort of miraculous almost that there was any space in Africa that people were just like, you know what, why bother with this one? It's it's it's very similar. I see a lot of similarities when I read about the Ethiopians to the Kurds, right? You have these peoples who are continuously have are surrounded by enemies, but never get quite wiped out because they have the mountains, right? And they know they're fucking

mountains. And if you come into the mountains, you're probably not going to live, right? You may not they may not be able to like run what is a functional nation because they may not have access to the sea or infrastructure. But you're not going to wipe them wipe them out because they have the fucking mountains. And the Ethiopians have the goddamn mountains. And that is a huge asset to them. So after the British leave, Ethiopia has another one of its periods of internecine conflict, right? The emperor is gone, all these local leaders who weren't willing to fight for him wind up fighting amongst themselves. And after a period of this, another guy, Casa of Tigray, wound up in charge next. And Tigray is a mountainous region in the north of Ethiopia, right?

In 1872, Casa is crowned emperor, Johannes the fourth. Now, almost as soon as he comes to power, Egypt invades. The Ethiopians beat Egypt into horrific battles. But this is like an ugly victory, right? They lose a lot of men doing it. This is 1875, 1876. And again, one of the things this should make clear about Ethiopia that makes it unique is that during this time, when most of their African nations are being in the 1870s, we're starting to see the scramble for Africa. They're starting to steal everything that's not nailed down on the continent. While all of these colonizers are doing that to the rest of Africa, Ethiopia's main conflicts are either internal or with other African nations. And Europeans had actually up to this point been more of a neutral

or even sometimes beneficial force for their sovereignty, which is very unique, very, very unique for, because again, everyone else is getting horribly fucked over. There's obviously, there's reasons for that. It's not out of the good of the Europeans heart. It's just practicalities and realities of the situation in the terrain. Now, by the early 1880s, Egypt had gotten fucked over by the Madi. And the Madi was a messianic Muslim leader who led a revolution. He beat a couple of British armies. He beat a couple of Egyptian armies. He eventually gets crushed by the British. But the Madi's army invades Ethiopia because Ethiopia is Christian and the Madi, this is like a messianic Islamist movement. And Ethiopia beats them. They win the battle

against the Madi's army, but the emperor, Johannes dies fighting. And by the time this fighting is over, Ethiopia is just fucking exhausted, right? That's a lot of years of fighting. There's a lot going on. Now, they had, however, been fortunate that through this period, they completely missed the scramble for Africa. Now, the scramble for Africa starts in the 1870s. And it starts because we talk about King Leopold of Belgium, right? The guy who stole the Congo and killed 13 million people. Horrifying culture. Because suddenly, one of the worst people who's ever lived, one of the, one in the top 1% of bad people on this show. Yeah. Maybe the very top of the list. Real piece of shit. He, so he's, you know, Belgium steals the Congo, basically, and all of the other European

leaders freak out because they're like, oh my God, Belgium took all of Africa. Soon we're going to run out of Africa. We'd better all steal a bunch of Africa. And so they steal a bunch of Africa. They're at the conference in Berlin. Yeah. It's just a shitty position to be in. Just like, I have to be right under these assholes. Like, God damn, could even get like the months of boat ride to get from one space to the other. Just brutal. Yeah. And, and during this period, almost every inch of Africa is either conquered or claimed, but not Ethiopia. And to understand why, it helps to understand how Europeans talked about Ethiopia in this period. As one contemporary Western historian wrote, quote, encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion,

the Ethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten. Now, that's obviously not true, right? Because we just talk about all the people who invaded them. Yeah. But that is how Europeans think about them. Yeah. It's a dark, mysterious land. Yeah. It's forgotten. It's like, you guys invaded it like twice. But like, yes, it's not even 100 years ago, y'all. Yeah. It was like, while you're writing this, dude. Yeah. But it is good for Ethiopia, though, that Europeans tend to think about Ethiopia this way, right? Because whenever they thought about a country a lot, they would fuck it over, right? Like, you don't want them, you don't want Europeans paying a lot of attention to you if

you're an African nation. It doesn't end well. Now, unfortunately, Ethiopia's splendid isolation from colonialism was not going to last forever. From a write up in quotes, quote, quote, at the Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885, 14 European countries divided Africa among themselves. Before the conference, only about 10% of Africa was controlled by Europeans. The remaining 90% was ruled by indigenous and traditional rulers. Italy had a colonial possession over a sob port since 1882. At the Berlin Conference, European colonial powers agreed that Italy could take over Ethiopia as its future colony. So they don't take Ethiopia, but they have this port that's on the kind of modern day Somalia, right?

They have this little bitty chunk of the African coast. And while everyone's gobbling everything else up, Italy's like, well, I guess we'll take Ethiopia because it's close to what we already have. And the rest of Europe is like, yeah, it's a pain in the ass to get there. It's a pain in the ass. Yeah, if you guys can take Ethiopia, it's yours, you know? That's basically what happened. They were just sitting down at a conference and they were like, all right, I guess this part that no, it's sleepy. Nobody's really been there. We'll take it. That's ours now. Wow. Wow. Just be a conversation. You haven't even tried militarily or really thought that is mind blowing that people can just think they can possess other people's land like that.

That is. Yeah. It's wild. Unhandled. I can't. It's powerful. But you know what won't divide up the nations of Africa between a handful of European colonial powers for the profit of the Western world. What's that? The products and services that support this podcast. Can you guarantee that? Not a single one of our sponsors is the government of Belgium. That's a hard line. Can you guarantee that? We were getting those Ohio ads. We don't even let Belgians listen to the podcast. That is illegal. If you're Belgian and you're listening, like, no, get off. Get out of here. Get out of here. Belgian listeners. I'm sorry. We apologize. It's only Italians that we don't want listening. All right. Here's some ads.

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for

sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending

the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we

put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. And we're talking about Ethiopia. So at the Berlin conference, Italy's like, we'll take Ethiopia and everyone else's. And I think it might have been kind of like, yeah, sure, you'll take Ethiopia, right? Right. Yes. I was gonna say, it felt like there's a little Jess like, yeah, and we're gonna have

Ethiopia. Look at these guys. Sure, dude. Now, because Italians spend all their time making olive oil and eating six hour dinners, they tend to be late for everything. And they were extremely late for the scramble for Africa. Italy only managed to get two tiny colonies, one in what they called Italian Somaliland, modern day Somalia, and a little trading post that Port we talked about on the Red Sea coast. These were not lucrative or large possessions. And this hurt the famously irrational pride of the Italian people who remember that one time they'd conquered the whole known world at like 1500 years ago. And they thought that being rad 1500 years ago still mattered, which it didn't. Do they still think that today, Robert? Yeah, they sure do. Awesome.

Look, just lean into the pasta. You're fine at pasta. Bad at war. You're fine at pasta. Now, both of Italy's colonial possessions bordered Ethiopia and Italy's laziest nationalists started saying, hey, we should take that too. Now, while Italy had kind of like gotten like, yeah, you can take this to the conference, neither France nor England really wanted them to take Ethiopia. Both France and England supported Ethiopian independence. Again, not because France and England were like, yes, of course, these people are the right to national self-determination. Not the Netherlands, human beings, no. Yeah, it's because the Suez Canal was a thing at that point. And the British basically owned Egypt and they saw like this. So

because of the way the Nile is built and shit, not built is the wrong word, because of the geography, Ethiopia has the ability, if they were to damn things, to choke Egypt off from like the like, they could fuck up the channel by like fucking with the way the water works, right? It's a thing that was possible. And so the British were scared of France gaining influence here, right? Because Britain and France, like literally until World War One starts, they're like, at each other's throats constantly, like up until like, like everyone kind of assumed the big European war would be between them, right? Right. So the British are scared. The British want Ethiopia to be independent because they don't want France to get it and to get the

ability to choke off Egypt. And the Brits or and the French didn't want the British to get Ethiopia because they didn't want the British to have any more power than they already had in the region. That would be a lot of power in that specific region. Okay, I'm seeing it. Yeah. So as a result, both powers were fine with Ethiopia staying independent because it was just easier for them than figuring out something else. So the Italians had to be sneaky about things, as is in their conniving nature. They started their plans when Ethiopia was already deeply enmeshed in war in 1869, by having a private company purchase a trading post on the coast from a local Sultan. This company then sold said post to the Italian government in 1882.

And during the modest uprising, the Italians took another chunk of coastline. And like most of their colonial possessions, Italian Africa was an apartheid state. Italian and native housing was strictly separate. Different schools were established for Italians and natives. There was also a system called modemismo, which was basically codified sex trafficking. Italian officials, soldiers and other citizens were allowed to take native wives or mistresses. And these women had no rights under the law. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. So just sex slaves. Great. Super slash domestic slaves, I guess. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Terrific. So Ethiopia is a landlocked country, right? And this has been a real problem for Ethiopia for

a while because you don't want to be landlocked. You want to have not to your advantage. Absolutely. Kind of a big deal having a port. And during the fighting with the Maudi, again, the Maudi is a big problem for the British Empire. They fight a bunch of battles against him. Ethiopia fights alongside the British against the Maudi because he's fucking with them too. And they make an arrangement with the British and basically were like the British need Ethiopian help to evacuate a bunch of Egyptian garrisons and the Ethiopians do this for them in exchange for the British promise them free access to a coastal port. Now, the Ethiopians fulfill their end of the bargain and save these garrisons, but the British do not fulfill their end of the bargain. And so

Ethiopia gets screwed out of access to this port in part because Italy's gobbling up a bunch of this coastline, right? Never trust the British. Ever. In 1887, Italy invades Ethiopia for the first time. They send in a scientific mission, that's what they call it, of 500 armed men to occupy a piece of Ethiopian territory. And this is a thing that European powers do a lot, right? You send in a small group of armed men, you take a little area, you hang out there. Usually the leaders don't fuck with you, right? Because they don't want to deal with the hassle. And then once you get that foothold, then you can take another piece and another piece and another piece and eventually you orchestrate a war and you take it all. Yeah. Yep. Just a slow invasion

of the body. Yeah. Horrifying. And there hope had been that as often happened in Africa, the locals would launch an ill-equipped counterattack, which would be easily defeated by modern Italian guns, and the bloodshed would serve as the justification for a more comprehensive Italian land grab. But the Italians forgot one crucial thing, Joelle. Was it the mountains? Italians? No, it's that Italians suck ass at war. Oh, no. Ethiopians don't. Pretty good at war. Got it. So Italy is defeated decisively at a battle called Dega Ali. Now, from this experience, Italy learned that in Ethiopia is not an easy thing to steal. They next set to the strategy of then of under my, yeah. Oh, shit. They really want to keep being Ethiopia. We didn't anticipate this.

Yes. Ah, it's too spicy of a meatball. No. The last word of many an Italian soldier bleeding in the dust at Dega Ali. Spicy meatball. I feel like spicy meatball is going to end up on the behind the bastards bingo board that fans make. Nice. We could do like a little Photoshop of Ethiopia as a meatball and like an Italian choking on it. Like that's a spicy meatball. Oh, I was thinking more like a drinking game or something that doesn't like no death. Oh, OK. Wow. Now, so Italy gets rebuffed in this first attempt. So they set next, they establish a new strategy. And this strategy is kind of more like what the British would try to do, right? Because the British are, there's some times where they use brute force.

They rarely start with that. They're usually a lot more cutting and Italy adopts the same strategy. The idea is to undermine Ethiopian unity because this is a known vulnerability, right? There's a lot of infighting in Ethiopia. All these different regional lords don't always work together. They like to fight for dominance. So the Italians are like, OK, what if we try to play these different tribal groups and local leaders against one another and the emperor and kind of fragment Ethiopia and then we can take, you know, eat it up piecemeal, right? Which is a better strategy. And they were much more successful at this. The guy they chose to reach out in bribe was a local king named Menelik. To Ferry writes, quote,

As king of Shoah, away from the central government in the north, Menelik enjoyed unlimited power over his kingdom. He conquered Galilans to the south and expanded his territory greatly through his large and relatively well armed forces. Thus conscious of his growing power, Menelik became less and less obedient to the emperor and the Italians were not slow in noticing this. Accordingly, after the presentation of gifts and tempting promises, the Italians were able to have Menelik sign a secret treaty in which he was promised money, arms, and the province of Tigray and in recognition is the king of kings. If he allied with them and attacking emperor, Johannes the fourth, this is while Johannes is still alive. To this Menelik agreed and the

treaty was signed in 1868. That the Italians would benefit. What the Italians would benefit from this was little. It meant the annexation of Eritrea in the northern most province, but the Italians were solidifying their hold and they were ready to wait for further demands. So Italy gets this guy on board. They're like, we'll back this guy. This guy's the most powerful king. We'll back him against the emperor. We'll let him take a big chunk of Ethiopia. But if we get this emperor, we can take other chunks and eventually we'll eat this guy up too. We'll either make him into a rump kingdom or like, that's the plan. They're going to use this guy to fragment Ethiopia. They'll let him be independent probably for the rest of his life and then take it over

right whenever he passes, right? Whatever. Pretty standard. Backstab just like Caesar. Sure. Got it. Yeah. This happens all the time. Yes. They're naturally backstabbing people, the Italians. So. No. Now, this basic tactic is one a bunch of European powers would use all over the world during the age of colonization. Most local rulers around, not just Africa, but we're talking like Southeast Asia, a bunch of places. And, you know, earlier in like the 1500s, versions of this are done in like central and South America too. Most local rulers in Menelik's position kind of would agree to do, help whatever power would overthrow the ruler. And they would be either betrayed immediately

or bribed off and used to oppress their fellows for the profit of England or France or whatever. But so this was generally a successful strategy. But Italy made a mistake and the mistake was picking Menelik because Menelik was really fucking smart, way smarter than any of the Italians trying to manipulate him. Yeah. So right after the Italians signed this secret contract, right, the Modests invade again and the emperor, Johannes, you know, dies fighting them, which means the emperor that Menelik had agreed to fight alongside the Italians isn't the emperor anymore. And as soon as the Italians hear that Johannes is dead, they send a telegram to Menelik who, again, they think is their boy. And their exact phrasing was something like,

it's time for our two countries to establish a more solid friendship, which is colonizers speak for we're coming, right? We're going to take a shit. And it seemed initially that Menelik was falling for their sneaky tricks. He signed a treaty with Italy, which the Italians claimed would just officially lay out their separate territories and enshrine Ethiopia and the independence into international law. This was a lie because there were discrepancies between the version of the treaty written in Italian, which is the one that Europeans are going to consider value. And this again, they do this all the time. This is some of the US does a shitload to the indigenous peoples, right? Classic colonizer move, right? It's just so silly and like base level.

Like you know, the way you just what is the word I'm looking for infantilize your your enemy is just embarrassing. Yeah. And so there's a difference between the Italian version and the Amharic is the is the language that in Ethiopia. I think Amharic is how it's pronounced. It's A M H A R I C. Now, the Italian version of the of the treaty included an article that read, quote, his majesty, the king of kings of Ethiopia consents to avail himself of the Italian government for any negotiations which he might enter into with other powers. Now, what that means is under the Italian version of the treaty, Menelik is agreeing that he has to ask the the Italian government for permission before making any arrangements with other countries. This would

make Ethiopia into what is known as a protectorate, which is not an independent nation. A protectorate is under the government governance of another country. Because if you can't make your own contracts and treaties with foreign countries, you're not really independent. That what that line is the Italians trying to steal Ethiopian sovereignty in a very clever way, right? Now, the Amharic version of the treaty, which Menelik gets is crucially different. It just says that the emperor might, if he desired, avail himself of Italian help and foreign matter. So his version of the treaty is like, since we're friends, if yeah, if you want to make a deal with the European nation, hey, we're European, we'll help you with it, you know, we might, right? We'll give you that inside

scoop. Exactly. Crucial difference. One of them is a nice thing that a friend would do and one of them is somebody stealing your fucking house, you know? Yeah. So the Italians, of course, as soon as this treaty is signed, the Italians inform the rest of Europe like, hey, we've basically, we've acquired one Ethiopia slightly used, like congratulations, look at how cool we are. Now, to ferry that Ethiopian scholar who a big basis of this chunk of the history seems to think that Menelik was legitimately fooled by this, that he thought he'd signed a friendship treaty and was shocked when the Italians were like, we own you now. But other scholars disagree. Now, to ferry's piece is very good, which is why I've used it, but it's also rather old. It's

a couple of decades old. It's not a new piece of scholarship. There's a 2011 book by Cambridge historian Raymond Jonas that makes a different argument. And I'm going to quote from a write-up of his book by Ohio State University's origins project. Quote, Jonas suggests that Menelik used his protectorate status to his advantage, such as a loan of four million lira from Italy used to purchase weapons until his position was strong enough to claim there was a mistranslation. So by this interpretation of events, the Emperor knew Italy was trying to fuck him over, but he also knew that the Ethiopian army was exhausted and was badly outgunned by any European force because all these wars they'd fought to have any hope of victory against a full

invasion, they would need refitting. So he was like, if the Italians think I'm a protectorate, they'll give me a loan. I can use that loan to buy guns and I can use those guns to kill Italians. Listen, I love the double play that we're getting very options and leavening here. He's fucking rad. Yeah. This is a very, very smart guy. So Italy's strategy here is to gradually move forces further and further into Ethiopia, which they start to do. They send in soldiers in the Occupy a city called Attagat for a full year and the Emperor doesn't do anything. And again, the last time they tried this, they immediately got counterattacked and pushed out. So they're like, ah, it's working. It's working. This guy's

going to let us in. Spicy meatball. Yeah. Right. So they think Ethiopia is going to be a big push over. They think they finally cracked the nut. Now, they had further reason to believe that Ethiopia would be easy pickings because they also brought a horrible plague with them when they invaded the first time in 1887. The historical record shows that when the Ethiopians wiped out that first expeditionary force and raided its camp, they stole cattle that had been infested with a disease called the rinder pest. This pest quickly spread throughout the country, wiping out all cattle in Ethiopia and causing a nightmarish famine. So this is all happening at the same time. Right. I'm going to quote from a write up by the Aromo Studies Association.

This historical period is recorded in the collective memory of the Aromo people as bara nama niata, the period of human eater, bara rukisa, the period of extreme famine, and Sina, the period of termination. So those are the three periods of this plague. We have no evidence that the Italians had deliberately introduced RPV into Abyssinia. However, the colonial public health history made clear that the colonizers knowingly and with withingly neglected the needs of the colonized people. And this is evident in the case of RPV in Ethiopia. As we know today, the practice of quarantine began in Italy during the 14th century. It was started in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. Italy and many European

countries practiced quarantining, for example, in 1377. The Great Council of Ragusa in southern Italy passed a law establishing a Trentino or 30 day isolation period. This made Italy the first in Europe to organize institutional responses to disease control that began during the plague epidemic of 1347 to 1352. Ships arriving in Italian ports were required to sit in anchor 40 days before landing. Although the Italians had practiced quarantining ships arriving in their ports ever since the 14th century, when they brought the infected cattle to the Red Sea Coast, they did not take the necessary quarantine steps and caused the RPV epidemic. Whether or not it was deliberate, the Italian army introduced the deadly RPV infection to Africa. Carried by

just three infected cows, RPV spread from Ethiopia's east coast across the Sahel desert, killing in just one year 90 to 95 percent of the domesticated cattle, plus countless wild buffalo, giraffe, and antelope. RPV swept from the Horn of Africa west to the Atlantic and south to the Cape of Good Hope. Ethiopia lost 95 percent of its cattle and most of the human populations starved to death. According to Yilma, 30 to 60 percent of Ethiopia's population starved to death that year. Oh my God, that's devastating. And it's important to note the Italians know how to quarantine, which is why some people suggest they did this on purpose. They introduced this plague to prepare the area, to basically wipe out the population, to prepare the area for

colonization. We don't know that. We do know they knew how to quarantine and shows not to, and that's why this plague spreads and kills as many as 60 percent of the people in Ethiopia. And that's happened right as the Italians are moving in as they take this city. So Menelik is not just dealing with recovering from all these wars, like fucking half of his population has just gotten wiped out by this devastating fucking plague. So by the early 1890s, Ethiopia is in bad shape, right? They're about as vulnerable to colonization as you could possibly be. Sure. That's a bad position. And the Italians tried to take further advantage of the situation by using the desperation of the famine to drive divisions between Menelik's kingdom,

Shoah, and the northern Tigray kingdom. Because these are the two most powerful chunks of Ethiopia. But in this, they were outflanked because Menelik married the Empress Tatu from Tigray, which effectively united the two great power blocks in the country. He also used the Italians during their early stages of investment in the country to crush local princes and warlords who were threats to his power. In effect, he used the army he would one day have to fight to crush resistance to his rule and ensure that when the big fight came, Ethiopia was united behind him. The Italians were willing to do this because this was a normal colonialism thing, right? You fight these little powers so you don't have to fight the big war,

right? They thought they're sinking their teeth into this country, wrapping their Italian tentacles around it, but they're really being used by Menelik. In 1893, Italy announced to the rest of Europe that Ethiopia was their protectorate. They did not bother making an announcement to Menelik. He found out during the course of his normal diplomatic correspondence when he reached out to a European nation and was informed by their emissary that they would not treat with him directly. All communication would have to go through Italy. So, Menelik wrote a letter to the king of Italy. Quote, When I made the treaty of friendship with Italy in order that our secrets might be guarded and that undertaking should not be spoiled, I said that because of friendship,

our affairs in Europe might be carried on with the aid of the sovereign of Italy. But I have not made any treaty which obliges me to do so, and today I am not the man to accept it, that one independent power does not seek the aid of another to carry on its affairs your majesty understands very well. Basically, you're a king and you wouldn't put up this with this. Why would you expect me to? Yeah. Okay. Lay down the like, I love the respect being commanded. This is amazing. You know what else is a king of Italy is the king of Italy, the sovereign of Italy. Is it? Is it the ads? Yes, we are supported by the Italian crown. I thought last week we're going to get in here. Okay. All right. They'd like to be kings of other things. So, you know, if you're looking for a

king, you know, if you would like to be a king, or if you would like to have a king, you know, consider the sovereign of Italy, you know, you could do worse, right? There's worse kings, not a lot of worse things. Yeah, not a lot, but there are a couple. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we'll take it. Okay. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in

Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not in the good-bad-ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found

himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergey Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted

pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. I hope you all enjoyed. I hope you all enjoyed those ads from the King of Italy. Italy, it's a country, technically. So for the next three years, the Italians wage a shadow war against Ethiopian independence. They reached out to Menelik's

rivals to try and turn other kings against him. They tried to trick him into further treaties with tricky language, but everywhere they're outmaneuvered because Menelik is just smart as shit. Like it seems silly to me to be like that first contract mistake. This one maybe? Let's try it again. Yeah. The thing that I love about this dude. Well, this is such a cool story. This part of it is such a cool story because this whole period is all of these different African leaders just getting completely fucked over by Europeans and brute with huge body counts as a result. This guy, though, he's just so much fucking smarter than them. He's just running circles around these motherfuckers and it's beautiful. It's a really gratifying story compared to everything

else happening between Europeans and Africans in this period of time, which is mostly genocide. So yeah, we might as well enjoy the good story while we... I mean, there's a genocide here too. They killed half the country. So I don't know. You take the wins when you get them. You gotta find your victory somewhere for sure. So he outmaneuvers them and finally in 1896, Italy decides they have no option but to invade with a real-ass army and they assemble a full modern European army of 25,000 men under the command of a general named Baratieri and they invade from Eritrea. Now, unbeknownst to Italy, Menelik had started preparing for war in earnest in 1893. He'd ordered the creation of food depots

across the country, leading to a place called Adwa, where he believed the Italians would advance towards. Next, from a write-up in Quartz, on September 17th, 1895, Menelik declared a total mobilization of war against Italy. He called on all Ethiopians to defend their country, family, and religion. He ordered every capable person to fight and those incapable to pray for Ethiopia's victory. Ethiopians from every tribe, culture, and community answered Menelik's call. Regional leaders from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds responded unanimously, creating an army of 100,000. They had inferior weapons, but a strong cause. The first showdown occurred at Amba Alagi on December 7th, 1895, where a relatively smaller

Italian army was wiped out. The next encounter was at McKelly, where the Italians were stationed behind a strong fort. The Ethiopians surrounded the Italians for two weeks and, upon Emperor Taitou's advice, cut off the fort's water supply. The Italian commander agreed to surrender if they would be allowed to leave with their firearms. Menelik agreed that they could leave the garrison unharmed. But the Italians remained in their strongholds, fortifying their position at Ategrat and Sauria. Menelik was not in a hurry to attack these forts. After two weeks of inactivity, General Baratieri decided to advance for a surprise attack. It was March 1st, 1896, or according to the Ethiopian counter, Yikati 23, 1888, the day of Saint George.

The priests carried the tabo, a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, a religious icon that symbolizes the sanctity of Ethiopia to the battlefield. The 20,000 Italian and Italian trained native troops who advanced in three columns fought bravely with their cannons and machine guns before facing a decisive defeat. Casualties were severe on both sides. So, there's this kind of like ongoing war and it comes to a head at this place of Adua and the Ethiopians smash this Italian army of 20,000 people. We'll talk about that in a sec. So, it is worth noting before we move on that during this battle, the Ethiopians are one of the things that I wouldn't say makes them unique, but one of the things that's worth noting is that there are a significant number of women fighting

in the Ethiopian army. This is a thing in Ethiopian military history, including Atej Taitu Betul, the Empress, who led a unit of 6,000 cavalry into battle. And also, as we talked about, she was a major strategic leader of the army. She has all these plans for cutting off water supplies and stuff. She's a big part of this. The Battle of Adua. Sorry, I was just going to say, I love how all of these high-ranking monarchs or queens and kings and emperors are dying on the battlefield, which seems very unique to history, too. They're fighters. They're rare that they're in the front on the front lines. Yeah, I mean, it didn't happen. If you go into Europe a thousand years before, right, the Battle of Hastings, a monarch dies on the field. That happens in

European history a lot earlier. But yeah, like fucking Menelik is on the field, as is his wife. They're both fighting in this battle, which I've never heard of before. Like an emperor and an empress fighting, I don't know side by side, because she was leading the cavalry. I think he had another gig, but they're both fighting in the same battle, which is pretty fucking rad. So the Battle of Adua is the first defeat, military defeat, like major military defeat, of a European power by indigenous Africans. It was the only such defeat during the scramble for Africa that also led to the complete victory of the native people, right? There's other times where like a small European army will like lose, but they always win the war, right? Right, right.

That doesn't happen here. They win the war. And this is the only time that happens. This is a huge victory, not just within, you know, African military history, but within the annals of global military history. Menelik's campaign against the Italians covered more miles than Napoleon's advance into Russia. This is like a really fascinating, extremely influential battle. The news of the Italian defeat spreads rapidly. This is this hits European news like a bomb, because a full European army has just gotten fucking annihilated by an indigenous army. Be afraid. Yeah. Be afraid. That's exactly how it's taken. And Ethiopia becomes an international symbol of black resistance to colonialism. This battle is celebrated by men like W.E.P.

Dubois and Benito Sylvain of Haiti. And this is in spite of the fact that many Ethiopians themselves didn't see themselves as part of like a pan African resistance to Western imperialism. Menelik was not an idealist. He was a pragmatic emperor. Before the war, when he was gathering up forces, he had appealed to the common blackness of the different peoples of Ethiopia against the white invader. But when Benito Sylvain, who was a Haitian pan Africanist, got to sit down and talk with Menelik about their common struggle, the emperor informed Benito that while he sympathized with the black struggle, Menelik considered himself Caucasian. So again, this is like, there's a lot of weird dimensions here. Yeah. I just took some pictures of Menelik and sir,

you laugh. I'm sorry. But you look good. You look real. I got a pretty face for an emperor who's actually doing battle on a battlefield. He could have been, you know, a wealthy prince who was like, I'm just not going to bother with any of these things. But definitely black. But but a big part of I think part of why he's saying that and there's others like one of the things is that like the Ethiopians considered themselves different because they were never colonized, right? They were never like taken out of their homeland and mass or anything like that. Also, the the kings of Ethiopia. I don't know if you could say this is genealogically true, but they are they believe they are descended directly from King Solomon, right? That's the

that's the lineage of the royal lions of Ethiopia. They are the descendants of King Solomon. So that may have that may play a role in it. But it's so Menelik himself doesn't really see himself as like a representative of this global struggle against white imperialism. But he's seen that way in this battle is seen that way internationally in a very big way. The first Afro-Brazilian newspaper was named Oh Menelik. The green yellow and red Ethiopian flag was later adopted by multiple African nations when they finally threw off the colonial yoke. And of course, Ottawa. Yeah. So yeah, that's why that is that that's why that flag means what it does is the Battle of Ottawa. Fascinating. Because it's this time where the where Africans stopped

a colonial power from from, you know, fuckery. And of course, the Battle of Ottawa had great but much darker significance to Europeans. To ferry rights, quote, in some quarters in Europe, the news was received with alarm. Germany complained that England should have come to Italy's aid. General Kitchener expressed his desire to support Italy, but that the British government would not allow him to do so. And the Times of London lamented in an editorial, you may be sure that from one part of Africa to the other, the defeat of Italy is already known or will be tomorrow that Africa has conquered Europe. This is the reason why the whole business is so serious. And nothing could be more heedless than to rejoice at the defeat of the Italians.

That defeat is also ours. Can we just Europe, Europe? Let's let's sidebar and have a quick conversation. One smaller sized country defending itself is not conquering. And I think you know that because you did a lot of conquering. You you're a very weird way to define conquering is someone broke into their house and they kicked him out. Like, I don't know if they're conquers the right word. Yeah, all of Europe are just defeated in Italy. Like, let's really get some context here. Yeah, wild. So Italy gets beaten so badly. And again, one of the things that's really unique here, there are other European armies defeated in Africa. The Europeans always win in the end. Italy basically capitulates right away. They sign a treaty with Ethiopia

that officially recognizes Ethiopian independence. Obviously, of course, the fact that this happens means nothing to the other crown heads of Europe, right? They don't care that Ethiopia has been is independent that same year. Or sorry, not that that's 1896. In 1906, Britain, France and Italy meet to hold a conference to decide the fate of Ethiopia. And there were no representatives of the Ethiopian government at this. And during this conference, three European powers agree in essence, that they will not take any further actions towards Ethiopia unless they all agree on it. So whatever happens to Ethiopia next, Britain, France and Italy agree, they have to all come to an accord before doing anything. So again, zero recognition of Ethiopian independence by European

governments, although there is a treaty with Italy, right? So they've, you know, as we end part one, this is maybe the the brightest spot we've ended one of our episodes on. They've defeated the imperial power. Things are looking great. Amazing. Gonna be a real bummer in part two, I'm sorry to say. No, it is behind the bastards. It's still a really important story and a really inspiring story. So I think it's worth telling, even though it's going to get a lot darker in part two. Listen, as a fantasy writer and lover of fantasy, I'm really big on pulling from monarchs of the past to create, you know, modern fantasy as we've seen happened across, you know, Lord of the Rings, you can look at any of George R. Martin stuff. This guy is brilliant. And I really hope to pull

him into some of my fantasy lit. First of all, his style is banging. I know he's fucking rad looking, right? Listen, not only does he he looks like a very like cool hit model and or that teacher you all had a crush on, but also all of his clothes are bomb. Like he's got flago style. And I would I would just and to outsmart empires and sort of be funny in his cunningness. Like I just feel like I would like to learn. I'm definitely going to learn more about mental. Like he's a badass. Yeah. Yeah, he's fucking rad. So that's going to do it for us here at Behind the Bastards. Until next time, which will happen Thursday when it'll get a lot sadder, you know, go go out into the world and I don't know. Really socket to an Italian find an Italian and make him pay.

What, Sophie? Robert. Look, they're never going to learn if we don't all start fighting back against Italy. Give him a spicy meatball of their own. That's all I'm saying. There it is. I knew it was coming. Okay, we needed one more. All right. All right. Go. Oh, yeah. I have a Joel. You get out. You got pluggables, pluggables. Oh, sure. Yeah. Y'all already know me. I'm Joe Monique. You can find me all over the internet at Joel Monique. It's J-O-E-L-L-E-M-O-N-I-Q-U-E. I do so many podcasts. Come to my Twitter and you will learn about them. Oh, yeah. I have a novel. It's called After the Revolution. You can find it in podcast form anywhere. Just type in After the Revolution to whatever podcast app you have. It'll be there. You can also find the full text uploaded of three

new chapters every week at atrbook.com as an EPUB. Again, atrbook.com, you can find the book there. So check it out, please. You can also find it on Reddit at r slash After the Revolution. There's a fan Reddit open. People are talking about it if you want to chat with people about my novel. So there you go. All right. We'll be back whenever at some point. What would you do if the secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.