Sources on Adwa
I set out to situate Adwa in its global context. Adwa is an African story. It is a European story. But it is also an American story. The news of the battle resonated throughout the African diaspora; it had a particular impact in the Caribbean and in Jim Crow America. It also rolled through the Italian diaspora. Italian immigrants in Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Malta, Uruguay, the US, and elsewhere responded in tangible ways. Telling this global story required research in Africa, Europe, and the US.
Cataloguing archival and print sources is one of the things historians are trained to do. It lets readers know what we consulted. And it serves as a resource for scholars, present and future, who will bring their own questions to bear. These links take you to research directories for archival and print sources related to the Battle of Adwa.
archival sources
print sources
Sometimes for the historian, history is found outside the archives. A photograph in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts alerted me to the transnational significance of Adwa and launched me on the project. A fresco in a church on Lake Tana drew my attention to the importance of sacred art for capturing the Ethiopian perspective.
Site visits are a crucial dimension of historical research. The link below takes you to examples of how aspects of the spatial dimension of Adwa can be recovered.
landscape and built environments