# Abyssinia Crisis The diplomatic crisis of 1934–36 over Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, and the case in which the [[League of Nations]] did everything its charter contemplated except the thing that would have worked. It is the standard reference point for the failure of interwar collective security, and the ancestor of every subsequent argument about whether guarantees to small states are worth their price. ## Timeline | Date | Event | |---|---| | **5–7 December 1934** | **Walwal incident** in the Ogaden, ~100 km inside the Ethiopian side of the provisional border; ~107 Ethiopians and ~50 Italians and Somalis killed. Each side blamed the other. | | **3 January 1935** | Ethiopia appeals to the League for arbitration; further appeals 8 and 17 March and 19 June. | | **31 August 1935** | The US **Neutrality Act of 1935** is signed. | | **4 September 1935** | The League's arbitration committee **exonerates both parties** over Walwal, reasoning each believed the territory was its own. | | **3 October 1935** | Italy invades. | | **7 October 1935** | The League **declares Italy the aggressor**. | | **18 November 1935** | **Sanctions come into force.** | | **8 December 1935** | The **Hoare–Laval Pact** is negotiated in secret. | | **9 December 1935** | It is leaked to the French press. | | **18 December 1935** | Hoare resigns; Anthony Eden replaces him. | | **February 1936** | An oil embargo is finally agreed — with most of Ethiopia already lost. | | **5 May 1936** | Addis Ababa falls. | | **30 June 1936** | [[Haile Selassie]] addresses the Assembly in Geneva. | | **4 July 1936** | The League **votes to end sanctions**; they lapse on 15 July. | | **11 December 1937** | Mussolini announces Italy's withdrawal from the League. | ## What the sanctions did and did not cover Five measures were adopted: lifting the arms embargo against Ethiopia; banning loans and credit to Italy; banning imports of Italian goods; banning export of certain goods to Italy; and mutual support for smaller members dependent on Italian trade. **Excluded: oil, coal, iron and steel.** Also excluded: closing the **Suez Canal** to Italian shipping — the one measure that would have cut Italy's supply line to East Africa, discussed by Britain and France and declined. ## The Hoare–Laval Pact On **8 December 1935** the British Foreign Secretary **Samuel Hoare** and the French premier **Pierre Laval** privately agreed to partition Abyssinia, ceding a large part of it — commonly summarised as roughly two-thirds, though the precise terms are not well attested — to the aggressor. The British Cabinet had not approved it. It leaked to the French press the following day. The reaction was one of the great public revolts of interwar British politics. Duff Cooper: "During my experience of politics I have never witnessed so devastating a wave of public opinion." Hoare resigned within ten days. Laval survived a censure motion by 296–276 and was finished politically within weeks. ## The speech On **30 June 1936**, [[Haile Selassie]] became the only head of state to address the League Assembly in person on his own country's destruction. He spoke **in Amharic**, though fluent in French. Italian journalists jeered from the gallery until they were removed. He described aircraft spraying a "death-dealing rain" over soldiers, civilians, livestock and water, and closed with "God and history will remember your judgment." The line most quoted since is **"It is us today. It will be you tomorrow."** The same day, the Assembly rejected Ethiopia's proposal not to recognise Italian conquests: **23 against, 1 in favour, 25 abstentions**. Four days later it lifted sanctions. > [!caution] Verify quotations by hand before republishing > The circulating English text of the 30 June 1936 speech is a translation and versions differ in wording. Canonical hosts are the UN Geneva archives and BlackPast; both block automated retrieval. Treat any quotation not checked against one of those as approximate. ## Why it matters here > [!important] ⭐ Even-handed in text, one-sided in effect > The American [[Neutrality Acts]] embargoed "arms, ammunition, or implements of war" to **both** belligerents. Ethiopia needed arms and could not buy them. Italy needed oil, which the statute did not cover, and **US oil exports to Italy rose during the war** — the United States not being a League member and therefore not bound by even the partial sanctions. A rule that treats an invader and its victim identically transfers the advantage to whoever is already armed. This is the mechanism behind the slogan, and it is the part of the 1930s [[Isolationism]] record that the modern [[America First Movement]] argument reliably leaves out. **The historiography is genuinely split**, and worth carrying as a split. A.J.P. Taylor: the Hoare–Laval Pact "killed the League." Correlli Barnett: Anglo-French caution was defensible given Britain's exposure to several simultaneous enemies. The first reading makes Abyssinia a moral failure; the second makes it a resourcing problem. Which of those the reader believes largely determines what they conclude about deterrence commitments today — see [[Appeasement]] and [[Munich Agreement]], which is where this sequence goes next. ## See also [[Ethiopian History Hub]] · [[Second Italo-Ethiopian War]] · [[League of Nations]] · [[Haile Selassie]] · [[Neutrality Acts]] · [[Isolationism]] · [[Munich Agreement]]