Why didn’t the Ethiopians invade Eritrea after the battle of Adwa?

Ethiopia wasn't really in the shape to do that.

Ethiopia at the time had been at war off and on for decades, fighting Madhists, internal rebels, and attempting to conquer the southeastern regions. The predecessor to Menelik, for example, spent pretty much his entire time as Emperor fire-brigading around the country dealing with one crisis after another.

What made this particularly devastating was the way the Ethiopian army went to war at the time. The Ethiopians were capable of mustering well over a hundred thousand fighting men, and those were usually accompanied by a greater number of camp followers. So you've got up to a quarter million people roaming around the country from battleground to battleground, and often their passive presence was enough to devastate an area by stripping it of trees, animals, and pretty much anything edible. In fact, this is one of the things that allowed Menelik to rise to power in the first place - he managed to avoid having the Imperial army run through his territory.

Making all of this devastation worse was the Rinderpest epidemic. In 1887, Italians in Eritrea accidentally introduced Rinderpest to Africa with apocalyptic results. Rinderpest has a 90% mortality rate among cattle, and Ethiopia's agriculture (as with much of Africa) was heavily dependent on cattle. Ethiopia got off better than many other areas, and still a third of the population died of starvation around this time.

So while Adwa saved the country, Ethiopia was in no position to go on the offensive. Menelik could threaten to do so to leverage concessions in the south and east (namely Ogaden), but he couldn't realistically follow up on any threat to invade Eritrea.

Why didn't you fuck Eritrea good where you had the chance in 2000? You practically defeated their armies and seized a quarter of their land. A few months more and Eritrea could've been obliterated.

Yes I did. Eritreans are hostile towards Ethiopia. If Menelik expanded to there the Eritreans would start a resistance against Ethiopia similarly to what happened after 1962.

The Soviets funded the communist uprising so we wouldn’t be in a civil war if it wasn’t for them. Also Somalis are like hyenas they will only attack the lion if he’s injured, Ethiopia was in a huge civil war with multiple rebel groups running rampant across the country at the time.

The current government is too liberal. Once the economy of Ethiopia starts to crystallize we will have no use for them and replace them with a hall type nationalist leader. That would lead expansion into Eritrea, Somalia and South Sudan and maybe Yemen.

>If Menelik expanded to there the Eritreans would start a resistance against Ethiopia similarly to what happened after 1962.
The resistance started up because Haile Selaissie was retarded and agreed to let Eritrea be an autonomous republic to get control of it and then reneged on the agreement after the region had had a decade or so of democratic rule to built anti-autocratic sentiment.

Had he not been so retarded Eritrea may well have been part of Ethiopia today.

Haile Selassie was ignorant. He ignored many prominent economic problems while being one of the most corrupt leaders on Earth. I would support the 1960 revolution which sought to replace him with a more capable leader like his son.
I told you it was my view as a Ethiopian.

*hawk type nationalist leader

t. Washington DC diaspora
calm down Zelalem you don't even live there

>Haile Selassie was ignorant
Understatement of the year.

I'll never understand what the fuck he was thinking. He wanted an autocratic state that he was in no condition to run effectively and yet he actively worked to spread western liberal education that he should have known full well would introduce ideas directly contrary to what he was trying to do. And he even had the failed coup of 1960 to warn him that maybe he's doing something wrong, but all he did was double down for another decade and a half until the commies took over.

I agree Haile Selassie was a huge retard. But Eritreans need Ethiopia, after kicking out all the Ethiopians out of Assab and not letting any Ethiopian exports come through the economy collapsed. The GDP growth is

>I was born in Addis. I can speak, read and write in Amharic and I regularly visit Ethiopia.
Unrelated, how is it as a place to vist/live? Do you think Ethiopia could realistically catch up to first world countries both economically and scientifically?

okay interesting. I lived in Addis for a few months so I know for a fact Veeky Forums is banned there. Shit's going down right now with the political prisoner stuff eh

>how is it as a place to live
same foreign guy who lived in Ethiopia replying: Addis is pretty comfy and low-crime for Africa, especially compared to like Nairobi. The food is not very good and the pollution is awful, the traffic is really (really) dangerous, but the people are pretty chill and I got good vibes. The police are pretty decent and effective I found. It's still not super safe so you don't want to go out at night. There's some political violence and riots too which can get sketchy.
As a foreigner Ethiopia is a pretty decent place to live, not ideal but miles ahead of say Burkina Faso.
>can it catch up to the first world
I think it isn't impossible, but not soon. I wouldn't be surprised to see it become Mexico-tier sooner than most expect though.

No, it will become like China at best.

I never said I was in Ethiopia. I’m currently in the United States. Also Veeky Forums isn’t banned there, the internet gets banned time to time but you can still visit websites most of the time.

Veeky Forums has been blocked both this summer and last summer for me, but fb/twitter/the rest of the internet are more intermittent for sure

I visited it on December I could still access Veeky Forums easily.

Brother, do NOT let Ethiopia become like the "first world". They are rich, but full of depressed degenerates of live meaningless lives. This is why their populations are dying and they have to bring in immigrants.

Do not sacrifice your culture for wealth.

lol you guys could do with a little bit of lowered birth rates, with that whole 100 million people in a landlocked country thing. That said I can't disagree too much, although I approve of a lot of "degeneracy" (LGBT rights, free speech). Human rights could be more than a little better and the west isn't too bad there.

also were you in a hotel, they unblock the internet there typically.

huh i know a Ethiopian girl who lives in dc are they common there or something?

>lol you guys could do with a little bit of lowered birth rates, with that whole 100 million people in a landlocked country thing.

It is lower though. 4 per woman and it us only nominally landlocked. They have seas access through Djibouti which will always say yes.

What can you guys tell me about Ethiopian tribes and cultures? Things like weapons, cool costumes, weird or interesting legends/festivities etc.
I'm interested Specially in the Tigray, Afar, Amhara.

what about giving them back to italy?

Do you live in maryland?

Silver spring is like 30% ethiopian my guy

thats breddy crazy my dude

Ethiopia was actually very close to joining the Central Powers to gain territory from Italy and possibly Britain and France, but the emperor was coup'd before it could happen

This

After the battle, Menelik really couldn't afford to keep his 100,000 strong force fielded for any longer than the defensive campaign at Adwa. Going on the offensive would strain the country beyond its limits, and risk conflict with a much larger Italian response force, much larger than the 20,000 strong expedition he defeated.

Funny enough, the Treaty of Addis Ababa saw Ethiopian territory ceded to Italy, where Italy kept the land they still occupied after the battle in Tigray province, most likely to make the terms of accepting Ethiopian independence much more agreeable to the Italians.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Addis_Ababa

>It was not until 23 August that the Italians finally agreed to the unconditional abrogation of the Treaty of Wuchale, and recognition of the sovereign independence of Ethiopia. Once the Italians had conceded on this point, negotiations proceeded quickly. The Italian prisoners-of-war, who had enjoyed "reasonably benign captivity" (Marcus' words), would be repatriated, and Italy pay an indemnity of 10,000,000 Italian liras for their upkeep.

>Most surprisingly, the Italians would retain most, if not all, of the territories beyond the Mareb-Belessa and May/Muni rivers they had taken; According Abyssinian Monarchists' Menelik gave away a sizable portion of Tigray which had been treated as part of the Ethiopian empire since time immemorial.[3]

It's a "why didn't X country just pointlessly blob everywhere like in my autism simulators?" episode.