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| Battle of Dogali | |||||||
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 The battle of Dogali by Michele Cammarano. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Italy |
 Ethiopia |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Tommaso De Cristofori |
Ras Alula Engida |
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| Strength | |||||||
| ~500 infantry | 7000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| ~420 killed ~80 wounded |
unknown | ||||||
The Battle of Dogali was fought on 26 January 1887 between Italy and Ethiopia in Dogali near Massawa, in present-day Eritrea.
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History [link]
The Italians -after their unification in 1861- wanted to create their own colonies in Africa and started to occupy coastal Eritrea. Soon they were at war with the Ethiopians in 1885.
On his own initiative, Ras Alula Engida, then governor of Emperor Yohannes IV, had attacked the Italian-controlled town of Sahati on the day prior. Hundreds of his men were slaughtered by cannon fire, while only four Italians were injured, forcing Ras Alula to pull his men back.
The sieged Italians needed ammunitions and requested help.
On January 26, a battalion of 500 men (mostly Italians and a few Eritreans) under Colonel Tommaso De Cristofori, sent to reinforce the Italian garrison at Sahati, were ambushed by Ras Alula's men at Dogali. Although the Italians fought back bravely against 7000 ethiopians, nearly all were killed, except for eighty wounded men who were able to escape notice by the Ethiopians and be successively rescued.
Although a small victory for the Ethiopians, Haggai Erlich notes that this incident only encouraged the Italians to intrigue with Yohannes' rival, Menelik II, then ruler only of Shewa, and encourage his insubordination towards his Emperor.[1]
Italians felt the battle of Dogali (and the one of Adua) as an offence to be erased, and since then started to attack Ethiopia in the following years in order to get revenge: in 1936 they obtained it with the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.
Actual Ethiopian celebrations [link]
This battle was celebrated under the Derg regime, and Mengistu Haile Mariam commemorated the centennial with much attention, including the erection of a monument topped with a red star on the battlefield. Following Eritrean independence, the monument was removed. Paul B. Henze diplomatically notes in a footnote, "When I crossed the battlefield in 1996, I could detect no trace of the monument."[2]
Erlich provides more information: when Eritrean troops gained control of the area in 1989, "a prominent commander of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front,and a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Petros Solomon himself was delighted to blast Mengistu's monument of Ras Alula."[3]
This could be attributed to the fact that while Alula was an administrator appointed by Yohannes IV over small parts of the Eritrean highlands, he committed many atrocities against the local biher-Tigrinya population, sowing seeds of discord. Observers, including Erlich and others, attribute this to Eritrean Tigrinya views of their own relationship with Ethiopia as a whole.[4] Since Alula fought for the Empire and not for Tigray itself, he is viewed as a traitor on the Eritrean side of the border, a hero on the Ethiopian side.[citation needed]
Anecdote [link]
The huge square in Rome in front of Termini railway station is called Piazza dei Cinquecento, in honor of the 500 Italian soldiers killed in the Battle of Dogali. Near the square there it is a monument to the Italian soldiers killed in Dogali.
Films [link]
- Adwa (1999). Directed by Haile Gerima.
See also [link]
- First Italo-Ethiopian War
- Obelisks in Rome (one obelisk commemorates the Italian soldiers killed in the Battle of Dogali)
Notes [link]
- ^ Haggai Erlich, Ras Alula and the Scramble for Africa (Lawrenceville: Red Sea Press, 1996), pp. 105f
- ^ Henze, Layers of Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 157 n.20.
- ^ Erlich, Ras Alula, p. xiii.
- ^ Prunier, Gérard (1998-11-01). "The Ethio-Eritrean Conflict: An Essay in Interpretation". UNHCR Refworld. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Archived from the original on 2007-06-25. https://web.archive.org/web/20070625145854/https://www.unhcr.org/publ/RSDCOI/3ae6a6b74.html. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
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Dogali
Dogali is a town in eastern Eritrea. Situated near Massawa, it became famous for the Battle of Dogali, on January 24, 1887, between Italy and Ethiopia.
Transport
The town is served by a station on the national railway network, built by the Italians.
See also
References
Coordinates: 15°36′06″N 39°18′20″E / 15.60167°N 39.30556°E
