Abyssinia Crisis

Italy ignored the sanctions, quit the League, made special deals with the United Kingdom and France and ultimately annexed and occupied Abyssinia after it had won the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.

The Italo–Ethiopian Treaty of 1928 stated that the border between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia was 21 leagues from and parallel to the Banaadir coast (approximately 118.3 km [73.5 mi]).

[4] From the 5th of December to the 7th, for reasons which have never been clearly determined, there was a skirmish between the garrison of Somalis, who were in Italian service, and a force of armed Ethiopians.

One of them fired a short machine-gun burst, which no one on the ground noticed, after the pilot saw Captain Cimmaruta in the midst of the Ethiopians and thought that he had been taken prisoner by them.

Twenty-one years ago, when the consequences of honouring our obligations were far more menacing, we were indignant enough at the suggestion that treaties were, after all, only "scraps of paper."

[citation needed] On 7 January 1935, a meeting between Laval and Mussolini resulted in the Franco-Italian Agreement, which gave Italy parts of French Somaliland (now Djibouti), redefined the official status of Italians in French-held Tunisia and essentially gave Italy a free hand in dealing with Ethiopia.

On 22 March, the Italians yielded to pressure from the League to submit to arbitration on the dispute arising from the Walwal incident but continued to mobilise its troops in the region.

[citation needed] From 23 to 24 June, the United Kingdom tried to quell the crisis by sending Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Anthony Eden to try to broker a peace agreement.

[12] The United Kingdom also cleared its warships from the Mediterranean Sea, which allowed Italy further unhindered access to East Africa.

[citation needed] On 27 September, the British Parliament supported the initiative of Konni Zilliacus and unanimously authorised the imposition of sanctions against Italy if it continued its policy towards Ethiopia.

[citation needed] On 7 November, the Irish Free State passed the League of Nations Bill, which placed sanctions on Italy.

[14] Mackenzie King's opposition to Riddell's "Canadian initiative" was motivated by domestic politics since Mussolini was widely admired in Catholic Quebec, especially by its nationalistic intelligentsia, and Mackenzie King's Liberal Party had just won the majority of the seats in Quebec in the 1935 election.

[14] Mackenzie King was terrified of the possibility of Canada taking the lead in imposing oil sanctions against Italy would cause the Liberals to lose their seats in Quebec in the next election.

[citation needed] Even Italy's use of chemical weapons and other actions that violated international norms did little to change the League's passive approach to the situation.

[citation needed] In late December 1935, Hoare of the United Kingdom and Laval of France proposed the secret Hoare-Laval Pact, which would have ended the war but allowed Italy to control large areas of Ethiopia.

Mussolini agreed to consider the plan to buy time for fear of oil sanctions against Italy, but he had no intention of accepting it.

The French were now so desperate to get Italian support against German aggression directly on their border that they would not take any further action with sanctions.

Since France was prepared to give Abyssinia to Mussolini, his troops were able to continue their war relatively unchallenged by the rest of Europe.

All of the sanctions that had been put in place by the League were dropped after the Italian capture of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on 5 May 1936.

As a result, six nations did not recognize Italy's occupation in 1937: China, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, Spain, Mexico and the United States.

[citation needed] Italian control of Ethiopia was never total because of continued guerrilla activity, which the British would later use to their advantage during World War II.

In early 1941, as part of the East African Campaign, Allied forces launched offensive actions against the isolated Italian colony.