On 3 October 1935 Italian troops invaded Abyssinia (also known as Ethiopia), breaking the 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact and the covenant of the League of Nations. Mussolini began planning for this as early as 1932 but the motivation for the invasion went back at least 40 years to the first Italo-Ethiopian war of 1895–96.
Defeat at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 had left the Italians humiliated and seeking revenge at a time when the likes of Britain and France were expanding their empires during the ‘Scramble for Africa’. By the 1930s, Mussolini sought a twentieth century Roman empire to restore unity and pride in his country and distract Italians from economic hardship at home. He also wanted to rival the empires of other European powers and argued that Italy was not rewarded sufficiently in the Versailles settlement. His racist undertones were made clear in his comments about Italy’s ‘sacred mission…of civilising Ethiopia’.
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