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Professor Giglio, Antonelli and Article XVII of the Treaty of Wichalē

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Sven Rubenson
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Extract

Contrary to Professor Carlo Giglio I maintain that article xvII of the Wihalē treaty was in the Italian text worded in such a way that it, if legally valid, limited Ethiopian sovereignty and created a relationship which in substance amounted to a protectorate. The Italian negotiator Antonelli who had drafted this text could hardly be ignorant of its implications, and by allowing it to remain unchanged at the same time as he signed a different Amharic version he created the imbroglio, whether he intended to do so or not, and whether he actually tried to hinder the notification of the protectorate or not.

On the other hand, once it is established that the Italian version of article xvII was void, then there is no basis whatsoever for the Italian claim to a protectorate over Ethiopia. Article XVII was the ‘act’ on which the notification and the acknowledgements were based. The latter are therefore legally meaningless without article xvII. De jure the protectorate did not exist. Since the Italian government failed to gain control over Ethiopia's foreign relations or internal affairs, the protectorate never came into any de facto existence either. Professor Giglio's proposition that an Italian protectorate over Ethiopia was legally established regardless of the validity of article XVII, and functioned from 1889 to 1896 is not tenable.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , November 1966 , pp. 445 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1966

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References

1 ‘Article 17 of the Treaty of Uccialli’, Journal of African History, VI, 2 (1965).Google Scholar

2 ‘The Protectorate Paragraph of the Wichalē Treaty’, Journal of African History, v, 2 (1964).Google Scholar The same study, together with the full Amharic and Italian texts of the treaty, has been published as a monograph, Wichalē XVII, The Attempt to Establish a Protectorate over Ethiopia (Addis Ababa, 1964). References will be made to the article in the J.A.H. by the letter R. and the number of the page; likewise G. and page number is used for references to Professor Giglio's article in the J.A.H. VI, 2.Google Scholar

3 Archivio Centrale dello Stato (A.C.S.), Fondo Crispi, 150, I/17, Antonelli to Pisani Dossi, 6 October 1889.Google Scholar

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6 Since I do not have all the documents of A.S. MAI 36/8–69, to which Professor Giglio refers, here to consult, I cannot at present pursue this matter. I do not, however, recall any documents on the Additional Convention in this file, which deals with the notification issue.Google Scholar

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