In 1889 Menelik II he was crowned emperor of Ethiopia after having conquered the regions of Tigray and Amhara with the support of the Kingdom of Italy. In recognition of the support received, Menelik ceded to Italy the coastal strip of the Red Sea -Italian Eritrea, the first Italian colony on the African continent- and, in addition, signed with Count Pietro Antonelli , on behalf of King Umberto I of Italy, a treaty of friendship and free trade. That peace treaty would be responsible for the first Italo-Ethiopian war.
The treaty signed in the Ethiopian city of Wuchale on May 2, 1889 consisted of 20 articles that began with words of eternal love…
Article 1. There shall be peace and friendship between his Majesty the King of Italy and his Majesty the King of Kings of Ethiopia and between their respective heirs, successors and all his subjects.
But things went wrong in article 17…
Article 17. The Majesty of the King of Kings of Ethiopia must / can use the Government of the Majesty of the King of Italy for relations with other powers or governments.
And not by the text itself, but by the translation of the text itself, specifically of a verb:in the Ethiopian version (in amharic ) is interpreted as "can" indicating voluntariness -if the emperor wanted and Ethiopia remaining totally independent- and in the Italian version it was interpreted as "must" indicating obligation -turning Ethiopia into an Italian protectorate-. When Menelik found out about the Italian interpretation he denounced the case before the king of Italy but he ignored it and even began to mobilize his troops on the border with Ethiopia... in 1894 the war broke out . The superiority of his troops allowed Italy to take the initiative but did not get the support of the peoples of the Trigray area -recently conquered by Menelik-. With their support, the emperor managed to regain the initiative and defeat the Italians at the Battle of Adua (1896). Still, the Italians continued to hold the territory of Eritrea. In 1935, and with Benito Mussolini already pulling the strings, the Italians occupied Ethiopia until 1941.
And since we are talking about Emperor Menelik, I will tell you the story of him with a very particular throne. Recently ascended to the throne, he learned that a revolutionary method of execution had been used for the first time in the United States... the electric chair . The first executed in the electric chair was William Kemmler in the prison of Auburn (New York) on August 6, 1890. We do not know if it was because he was a technological fanatic or because he wanted to have the latest in the execution system, the fact is that he commissioned three of these gadgets. When they arrived, he wanted to use them quickly and tried to execute some of the prisoners captured in their territorial disputes, but it did not work... no one had told him that for its operation it needed electricity and Ethiopia at that time did not have the necessary supply to make it work . So, he showed that he was in favor of recycling and used one of them as a throne.