ABSTRACT
On March 1, 1896, Ethiopian Emperor Menilek's trans-regional, multiethnic army mobilized near Adwa and—despite exhaustion and food shortages—crushed a major invasion by Italy, an industrializing European state attempting to boost its national prestige through colonial conquest. The roots of European colonialism—the establishment of formal European control over African political and economic structures—can be traced to the late-eighteenth century industrial revolution. The industrial revolution transformed European societies, created new demands for both natural resources and markets for finished goods, and provided Europeans with the industrial technology that permitted them to impose their rule, relatively efficiently, on much of the rest of the world. The African nation-state subsequently inspired colonized Africans, and others around the continent and throughout the world, to oppose European racism and colonial rule, often employing Christian allusions and imagery as they did so. The Africans were largely interested in European technology and skills, such as weapons, machinery, carpentry, architecture, and art.
