Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Italian Invasions of Ethiopia
Aired: 2021-09-14
Duration: 01:14:25


=== Recording Meetings Rebranded (02:38) ===

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=== Italy's Colonial Ambitions (14:52) ===

[00:02:38]  They were like, you know, a little too intense.
[00:02:40]  Might sound like a cop.
[00:02:42]  Rebrand after like two weeks.
[00:02:44]  Rebrand.
[00:02:45]  Fucking cops.
[00:02:46]  Fucking cops.
[00:02:52]  I don't know what I'm going for here.
[00:02:54]  Today, our guest is Joelle Monique, producer here at iHeartRadio.
[00:02:59]  Joelle, how are you doing today?
[00:03:01]  Oh my God.
[00:03:02]  I'm in a very good mood to learn about some bad people.
[00:03:05]  Like, I really want to feel the hate for people.
[00:03:09]  We're doing a bit of a different kind of episode this week, right?
[00:03:12]  Oh, okay.
[00:03:13]  All right.
[00:03:14]  The last episode you did with us, we talked about Roy Cohn, which is obviously we're going very deep into the personal history of one influential, shitty person.
[00:03:20]  Today is more of a broader history podcast.
[00:03:23]  There's a lot of bastards in it, but really the bastard of this episode is the nation of Italy.
[00:03:28]  And the victim.
[00:03:30]  Yes.
[00:03:32]  Fucking Italians.
[00:03:33]  We're finally taking it to him.
[00:03:35]  God damn them all.
[00:03:37]  I wasn't prepared to hate a whole country, but let's do it.
[00:03:40]  No, it's there's one country it's okay to hate all of, and it's Italy.
[00:03:45]  Okay, that's fine.
[00:03:46]  We've all note Robert is Italian.
[00:03:50]  You're damn right.
[00:03:53]  And you should, I don't sunburn.
[00:03:54]  Like, it's, we're, we're a demon people.
[00:03:57]  I don't sunburn.
[00:03:58]  That's your job.
[00:03:59]  Okay.
[00:04:02]  So Italy is the bastard, and the victim of Italy is a little country you might have heard of called Ethiopia.
[00:04:10]  So we're going to be talking a lot about.
[00:04:12]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:14]  Here comes colonization.
[00:04:17]  Yeah, I mean, less than most of, so I mean, we'll talk about this a bit later, but one of the things that makes Ethiopia unique is that it's the only African nation that wasn't colonized.
[00:04:26]  It was up until the 20th century the only independent African nation after the scramble for Africa, right?
[00:04:33]  There was kind of Liberia, but Liberia kind of started as a U.S. colony.
[00:04:36]  It was different than a normal colony, right?
[00:04:38]  Because we were, it's not quite the same as like, you know, South Africa or whatever.
[00:04:42]  But Ethiopia was never conquered throughout the entire colonialism period.
[00:04:47]  We're going to talk about Ethiopian history is actually fascinating.
[00:04:50]  Part of why I'm doing this is I've been trying to study up on the current conflict, what is probably a genocide, at least in ethnic cleansing in Tigray, which is a part of the nation of Ethiopia.
[00:05:01]  A lot of people who want to be separatists there.
[00:05:02]  The Tigrayans are like a separate ethnic group.
[00:05:06]  We're not going to talk a lot about that right now because, again, part of my learning up on this has been studying the last couple hundred years of Ethiopian history and trying to build up a better base of understanding.
[00:05:16]  And when you go through 1800s, 1900s Ethiopian history, the recurring bastard is the nation of Italy.
[00:05:24]  So we're talking about that today.
[00:05:26]  All right.
[00:05:28]  And I think we make a lot of jokes about being anti-Italian because it's funny to talk about the spicy meatballs and whatnot.
[00:05:35]  Oh, my God.
[00:05:36]  But I think it actually, for the most part, when you're kind of looking at the imperial powers, Italy doesn't really wind up on anyone's radar, right?
[00:05:43]  France, you've got a bunch of horrible and extensive fuckery in Indochina, some really terrible shit they did in like Vietnam.
[00:05:50]  The British Empire obviously carried out like Nazi-level crimes against humanity and multiple times.
[00:05:56]  All across the world.
[00:05:57]  United States, bunch of ethnic cleansings and mass murders in the Philippines.
[00:06:01]  Horrible, horrible shit.
[00:06:02]  Italy, you know.
[00:06:04]  You had that spicy meatball bit ready to go.
[00:06:08]  Yeah, mostly it's the spicy meatballs.
[00:06:10]  It was the heel of all of these other major powers for a long time.
[00:06:14]  Like the Brits were like, I guess if you have to marry an Italian, you can, but why?
[00:06:19]  You know, I've watched Downton Abbey the last couple of weeks.
[00:06:22]  A lot of hate for the Italians in that thing.
[00:06:25]  And then they came to America, same situation.
[00:06:28]  Yep.
[00:06:28]  Yep.
[00:06:29]  And the big European powers were all really competent, right?
[00:06:32]  The British Empire, very good at what they did.
[00:06:35]  That's why they were the British Empire.
[00:06:36]  The French, you know, imperial, very good at what they did up until, you know, it all fell apart.
[00:06:41]  The Germans, really scary nation in terms of like the kind of shit that they were able to pull off, like really frighteningly competent.
[00:06:48]  Not the same thing with the Italians.
[00:06:50]  You know, they're part of the Axis in World War II.
[00:06:53]  Nobody is scared about the fascist Italians, right?
[00:06:56]  The Nazis are scared.
[00:06:57]  Not outside of Italy.
[00:06:58]  No.
[00:06:58]  Mussolini is a joke, right?
[00:07:00]  Like Italy came off that war as like the bumbling and incompetent partner to these like nightmare warriors, the Germans.
[00:07:07]  Gone were the glory days of Rome, for sure.
[00:07:10]  Yeah, for sure.
[00:07:11]  And it's, there's actually, this goes back in European history, back to really like the 17, 1800s.
[00:07:17]  There's this like long-standing, there's even a Latin phrase for it that I don't have memorized, but the joke is Italians can't fight.
[00:07:24]  They're not good fighters.
[00:07:26]  Oh, which is going to sound like if you know Roman history, like one of the things, I mean, and this does go back a bit because even in ancient Rome, Italians and Romans in particular were the best heavy infantry the world had ever seen, right?
[00:07:37]  Yeah.
[00:07:38]  But an army includes a lot of stuff that's not heavy infantry.
[00:07:40]  You've got, you've got archers, you've got, you know, sling throwers or whatnot.
[00:07:44]  You've got different kinds of cavalry.
[00:07:45]  You've got skirmishers.
[00:07:46]  None of those were ever Italians.
[00:07:48]  They always went with, that's part of why they colonized, is they would take these, you know, Balaric slingers and Arthur archers from Crete and all these different like Gallic cavalry and whatnot.
[00:07:57]  And that's what made the Roman Empire imposing.
[00:07:59]  The heavy infantry, which were Italians, were really good, but they had all these different peoples that they would bring in to fill these other roles that they just weren't very good at.
[00:08:07]  They were really good at artillery.
[00:08:09]  But, you know, they have, and they have a really significant period of military dominance during ancient Rome.
[00:08:14]  And then they're kind of not that impressive, right?
[00:08:16]  Some of the Italian city-states do some okay shit in like, you know, the Renaissance period, the medieval period, but like they're not.
[00:08:24]  You know, when you're talking about like the dominant military powers in Europe for most of the last thousand years, you're talking about the French, you're talking about the Germans, you're talking about the British, you know.
[00:08:32]  Nobody's all that impressed with Italy's military might.
[00:08:37]  And it's, it's, there's also some aspects of this that are weird because like when Mussolini first came to power in like 22, the first like 10 years of his reign or so, he was the fascist, right?
[00:08:47]  Nobody cared about Hitler.
[00:08:48]  Nobody talked about Hitler.
[00:08:49]  Hitler was kind of cribbing off of him.
[00:08:52]  And he was a very popular leader worldwide, Mussolini was.
[00:08:55]  He was super popular in the United States.
[00:08:57]  And we've kind of forgotten that because by the time the war started, fascist Italy was such a shit show that like everybody just like wrote Mussolini off as like Hitler's bumbling sidekick when it really was the opposite at the start.
[00:09:11]  And this kind of bumbling reputation has led to a lot of, it's kind of benefited the Italian nation in the modern era because we don't remember all of the horrific crimes against humanity that fascist Italy committed outside.
[00:09:23]  And part of that is because the number one place fascist Italy committed crimes against humanity was Ethiopia, a place where Westerners do not think about.
[00:09:31]  They don't care about it now.
[00:09:33]  Yeah.
[00:09:34]  And that's what we're talking about today.
[00:09:36]  Now, our story begins in 1000 BC because we're going to talk about where Ethiopia comes from.
[00:09:41]  And 1000 BC is about the time, roughly, when a bunch of folks in Northeast Africa were like, what if we did in Ethiopia?
[00:09:48]  Right.
[00:09:49]  That's kind of like when what becomes the modern nation of Ethiopia like formed.
[00:09:53]  Okay.
[00:09:53]  All right.
[00:09:54]  Okay.
[00:09:54]  Like, let's do it in Ethiopia.
[00:09:56]  It seems like a good idea.
[00:09:58]  And they're still doing in Ethiopia.
[00:09:59]  So clearly there were some good ideas there.
[00:10:03]  Now, I'm going to leave out some stuff, but the gist of the story is that the nation of Ethiopia has existed in some broadly recognizable form, though, for about 3,000 years, right?
[00:10:11]  That's a long time for there's been a recognizable, not a nation in the modern sense, but an Ethiopian people inhabiting and exerting political power in that area.
[00:10:20]  But like 3,000 years, which is huge.
[00:10:23]  You know, very few other peoples that are in that city.
[00:10:26]  China would be one, right?
[00:10:29]  Not a lot of different peoples around the world that could say 3,000 years, we've more or less been an entity, you know.
[00:10:34]  Not the Brits, because even the Brits were, you know, it was the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings just tearing at each other's throats previously.
[00:10:42]  So yeah, 3,000 years is a dynasty.
[00:10:45]  Yeah, because like modern, you know, people usually like the start of kind of like what we recognize the Brits as being is like 1066, right?
[00:10:51]  The Battle of Hastings is kind of when that starts to form.
[00:10:54]  Ethiopia is 2,000 years old at that point, right?
[00:10:56]  Just for an idea of like how fucking far this culture goes back.
[00:11:02]  And again, I'm not saying the modern nation of Ethiopia is 3,000 years old, but something broadly recognizable in that way.
[00:11:08]  Now, during this time, a shitload of different stuff went down, right?
[00:11:11]  You had your Alexander the Great, you got your Roman Empire, you've got a couple of different caliphates, you've got some Mongols, you get another caliphate after the Mongols.
[00:11:19]  And through sheer cussedness and the fact that their homeland is what historians call a natural fortress, it's huge, it's mountainous, it's difficult to fight in if you're invading, right?
[00:11:29]  It's a defensible position.
[00:11:32]  And because of this, Ethiopia manages to stay more or less independent through all of these different empires, just rolling through the neighborhood, right?
[00:11:40]  You know, Rome is in the Middle East in North Africa.
[00:11:42]  Alexander the Great fucks around in chunks of that area.
[00:11:46]  Caliphates, you know, Mongols, whatnot, all of these guys are kind of fucking around in and around, but none of them destroy Ethiopia.
[00:11:53]  And staying, continuing to exist through all of this was not a simple matter.
[00:11:58]  As Emperor Haile Selassie wrote in the early 1900s, quote, throughout history, the Ethiopians have seldom met with foreigners who did not desire to possess themselves of Ethiopian territory and to destroy their independence.
[00:12:09]  With God's help and thanks to the courage of our soldiers, we have always, come what might, stood proud and free upon our native mountains.
[00:12:16]  Now, the rise of Islam was probably the biggest challenge for the Ethiopians in terms of remaining independence, since for most of their history, or most of at least their modern history, they've been kind of their own brand of Orthodox Christianity, right?
[00:12:29]  Okay.
[00:12:30]  That's one of the things you're in the Middle East, North Africa, very much heavy Muslim populations, and then there's Ethiopia, which is Christian.
[00:12:37]  And that's difficult, right?
[00:12:39]  Because the Yeah, there's like 700 years where the Caliphates are kind of the biggest power in the region.
[00:12:46]  And there are attempts to take over Ethiopia by these folks.
[00:12:51]  Ethiopia was invaded constantly, and it existed as kind of an island of Christianity in the middle of the Muslim world, which was at that point the center of Western military power.
[00:13:00]  They were invaded by Albania and Turkey in the early 1500s in a brutal war that pushed the king of Ethiopia back to the giant plateau that is the Ethiopian heartland.
[00:13:09]  Disaster was only narrowly avoided by the intervention of Portugal, who at that point was probably the greatest power in Europe.
[00:13:15]  This European colonizer sent 400 men with early rifles to beat back the Turks and Albanians, which they did saving Ethiopia.
[00:13:23]  Of course, Portugal didn't leave, but they didn't succeed in properly colonizing Ethiopia either.
[00:13:29]  And so again, one of the things that makes Ethiopia weird is, unlike a lot of the rest of the region, there are elements to which they benefit from not colonization, but from colonizing powers, because Portugal kind of saves their bacon.
[00:13:40]  And they do it for selfish reasons.
[00:13:42]  I mean, they justify it by like, these people are Christians.
[00:13:45]  We're Christians.
[00:13:45]  We've got to save them.
[00:13:46]  They're also, they have a financial interest here.
[00:13:49]  But for a variety of factors, they don't take power, right?
[00:13:54]  You know, and Portugal does that all throughout South America.
[00:13:57]  Because it's not like just from a distance perspective, Portugal, it would seem Portugal would be like, perfect, like already a strong Christian.
[00:14:05]  Like, hold here.
[00:14:06]  It's hard to capture.
[00:14:08]  We're already on the inside.
[00:14:09]  And we know they were really about conquering shit.
[00:14:11]  Like, that was their main jam.
[00:14:13]  They did a lot of that.
[00:14:14]  Yeah.
[00:14:15]  They did a lot of that.
[00:14:16]  That's why there's a Brazil.
[00:14:18]  Yes, exactly.
[00:14:20]  It's quite astounding that they wouldn't just immediately try to, especially knowing how much the other European powers were at the time conquering portions of Africa.
[00:14:29]  It seemed like everyone would want to get their foothold.
[00:14:32]  1500s, European powers weren't.
[00:14:36]  Europe hadn't really done anything in Africa very much at that point.
[00:14:39]  Some in Northern Africa, right?
[00:14:40]  There'd always been interchange between Northern Africa and Europe because it's not very far.
[00:14:44]  But colonization hadn't started en masse.
[00:14:47]  In Portugal, 1500s, they don't really have the resources to do it because number one, after all this war against Turkey and Albania, Ethiopia is devastated.
[00:14:55]  So they don't have a functional state to just kind of pick up.
[00:14:59]  The terrain is really difficult.
[00:15:01]  It's very rugged.
[00:15:02]  They don't have a lot of men.
[00:15:03]  It's hard to get people there.
[00:15:04]  It just doesn't wind up being practical.
[00:15:06]  So eventually the Portuguese kind of give up and leave.
[00:15:10]  And the next few centuries after this are a chaotic period for Ethiopia.
[00:15:13]  There's a number of invasions and warlords.
[00:15:16]  And for a big chunk of this time, there's an emperor of Ethiopia, but he's basically a token figure.
[00:15:20]  And there's kind of these vying local kings and warlords who are, you know, one of them will be more of the power than he is.
[00:15:26]  And this kind of continues off and on until the mid-1800s.
[00:15:30]  That's when an adventurer named Casa defeated all of the different regional kings vying for power and declared himself king of kings.
[00:15:37]  He took the name.
[00:15:38]  This is his movie.
[00:15:40]  Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a fucking red.
[00:15:41]  There's a lot of movies that should be made.
[00:15:43]  I mean, maybe there are a couple like.
[00:15:44]  God damn one.
[00:15:45]  Yeah.
[00:15:47]  So he takes the name Theodros.
[00:15:49]  Some people will call him Theodore, right?
[00:15:51]  Like it's usually anglicized as that, but his name was Theodros.
[00:15:54]  The name was not fucking Theodore.
[00:15:55]  And he became the first modern emperor of Ethiopia.
[00:15:59]  And like most emperors in history, Theodros veered between kindly and wise and a narcissistic, murderous madman, depending on whether or not he was having a good day, right?
[00:16:08]  No one who wants to be the king of kings is going to be a nice dude, right?
[00:16:12]  Doesn't matter the culture.
[00:16:15]  Get that.
[00:16:16]  You know, it was defying God coming down and being like, he should be your leader.
[00:16:20]  So yeah, you know, suppose you got a murder person.
[00:16:22]  I guess you don't get to be king of kings by handing out backrubs.
[00:16:25]  You know, he maintained power by virtue of his mighty army.
[00:16:32]  So he's got a really good army.
[00:16:33]  That's why he's in power.
[00:16:35]  But he fucks up, you know, after some time in power, he fucks up because he has these, he has these fits of rage.
[00:16:40]  And right, who knows?
[00:16:40]  Maybe he had some head injuries from battles.
[00:16:42]  Maybe he was drinking lead or there's all sorts of reasons people seen far too much death.
[00:16:48]  Yeah, you have all these, this happens all throughout a lot of you have a lot of Roman emperors like that.
[00:16:51]  We're like, well, he was prone to these fits of rage.
[00:16:53]  And now we know we're like, oh, well, they had lead in the drinking water.
[00:16:56]  Like, there's all this shit that might have been like why this rage happened.
[00:17:00]  Like, who knows what was going on?
[00:17:01]  But he has a fit of rage and he makes the mistake during one of these of imprisoning a British envoy.
[00:17:07]  And by this point, we're in the mid-1800s, like the 1840s.
[00:17:10]  Oh, the British are the one people you don't want to piss off, right?
[00:17:16]  Unless you're the United States, you don't want to piss off Britain in the early 1800s.
[00:17:22]  It doesn't end well for you.
[00:17:24]  At the end of Victoria's reign by 1840, or would you have to make it?
[00:17:27]  Yeah, this is the Victorian period, I think.
[00:17:29]  Yeah, yeah.

=== Ethiopia Stays Independent (12:04) ===

[00:17:30]  So, yes, because so he imprisons, prisons a British envoy, and he seems to have done this because of a mail dispute.
[00:17:37]  So, Emperor Theodros sent a letter to Queen Victoria, and it didn't reach her.
[00:17:43]  And I don't think we know why it didn't reach her.
[00:17:46]  It may have been a slight.
[00:17:47]  It may have just been, at least the fucking 1800s, right?
[00:17:49]  It could have just gotten lost.
[00:17:50]  See, there's so much mail that probably didn't make it to his destination.
[00:17:54]  There is a long history.
[00:17:55]  The horse got sick and died.
[00:17:56]  I don't know.
[00:17:57]  There's a long history that we'll talk about later in this episode of like particularly British monarchs being racist towards Ethiopian monarchs.
[00:18:04]  But honestly, this might have just been a fuck-up.
[00:18:06]  It's getting a letter from Ethiopia to hate the UK in the 1840s.
[00:18:10]  Not an easy task.
[00:18:11]  Yeah.
[00:18:12]  But this letter doesn't reach her.
[00:18:13]  She doesn't respond.
[00:18:14]  And he feels insulted because a fellow monarch had neglected to respond to him.
[00:18:19]  And this may have also been a deliberate slight.
[00:18:21]  We really don't know.
[00:18:22]  In any case, he arrested the British consul.
[00:18:24]  England sends another envoy to ask him to release their first envoy.
[00:18:28]  And the emperor arrests this guy too.
[00:18:30]  And then he arrests 60 other Europeans in his country to boot.
[00:18:33]  This sparks a major debate within the halls of power in the British Empire.
[00:18:38]  They did not have a meaningful presence in Ethiopia.
[00:18:40]  They did not have a whole lot of soldiers anywhere near Ethiopia.
[00:18:43]  And so there's this big debate in parliament: is it worth deploying an army to free two dudes?
[00:18:49]  Being the British Empire, they say yes.
[00:18:51]  Like, yeah, this is worth it.
[00:18:53]  We've got enough men.
[00:18:54]  Let's go.
[00:18:55]  Yeah.
[00:18:56]  I mean, and to be honest, when you talk about like why the British are an empire, it's because they make choices like this, right?
[00:19:00]  It's because they're willing to deploy power like this.
[00:19:03]  It'll get them in trouble at points, but like, these are the kind of calls empires make.
[00:19:08]  In 1867, the British send their first European invasion force into Ethiopia.
[00:19:14]  And it was 29,000 men, which is a massive army for the day, especially in that part, especially in Africa.
[00:19:20]  Like, that's a huge army in 1840 to send.
[00:19:23]  And this army lands on the coast of what is now Somalia.
[00:19:26]  They march through some of the most rugged mountain terrain on earth until in April of 1868, they reach the emperor's walled city of Magdella.
[00:19:34]  It was not much of a fight because the emperor had alienated all of his vassals because he was a dick.
[00:19:40]  So all of these different, you know, it's a feudal system.
[00:19:42]  He relies on all these levies from different local kings and lords and whatnot to fill his army.
[00:19:48]  And none of these guys are willing to fight against the British for him.
[00:19:51]  And so Emperor Theodros winds up, yeah, shooting himself to avoid capture.
[00:19:56]  Now, oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:19:59]  So he's out of the picture now.
[00:20:01]  And shit like this happens all throughout the colonial period.
[00:20:04]  And usually it ended with Great Britain owning another giant fucking chunk of the planet.
[00:20:09]  It doesn't in this case.
[00:20:11]  And it's worth asking why, because the British obviously take anything that's not fucking nailed down.
[00:20:15]  Right.
[00:20:17]  I found a really fascinating write-up.
[00:20:19]  It's a master's thesis for the Department of History at Kansas State University, written by an Ethiopian historian named Teferi Teklahimanot, who got his BA from Haile Selassie University in Ethiopia and then went to Kansas State.
[00:20:32]  So this is not like a white guy European view of history.
[00:20:35]  This is an Ethiopian guy writing about the history of his nation, which is what I wanted for this.
[00:20:39]  And here's what Teferi writes to explain why England didn't stay and do, you know, British Empire shit in Ethiopia.
[00:20:47]  Sure.
[00:20:48]  Quote, an interesting question now arises: why did not the British colonize the country?
[00:20:53]  There is, of course, no evidence that they had any, or that the general who they'd sent had any orders to do so.
[00:20:58]  In fact, the British government was at that time not very keen in further acquisition of colonial lands.
[00:21:04]  But even if the general had wanted, he could not have accomplished the task.
[00:21:08]  To begin with, the expedition itself could very well have failed if it were not for the indifference of the regional rulers, indeed, their active disobedience in time of emergency.
[00:21:17]  So Teferi argues that these local chiefs gave aid, food, and guidance to the British forces.
[00:21:22]  They were so angry at the emperor, they helped these guys through the mountains, right?
[00:21:25]  But they also didn't just help them, they made certain to put on a display of their military might, marching their soldiers past the British Empire, just to be like, We're not going to fight you, but we could, right?
[00:21:38]  Like, we're cool with you now.
[00:21:40]  We want like you, fuck the emperor.
[00:21:42]  You can take the emperor out.
[00:21:43]  But if you try to stick around, we have enough dudes to wreck your shit, right?
[00:21:47]  Right, right.
[00:21:47]  Yeah, we would combine our forces against you.
[00:21:50]  So definitely watch out.
[00:21:52]  I love this.
[00:21:53]  This is forward leaders with forward thinking power, unlike the guy who literally shot the messengers.
[00:21:59]  Yes, yes.
[00:22:00]  And Teferi goes on to write, quote, after the meeting, this meeting where the Ethiopians show off their military power, the British general proceeded to Magdella.
[00:22:08]  And as he put it, quote, somewhat less confident than before, having seen the bearing in arms of the Ethiopian soldiery.
[00:22:16]  So yeah, the British go in here and they don't stay.
[00:22:22]  And part of it is that, you know, this is something that probably should be talked about more.
[00:22:26]  Colonization was never a thing that even the British political class was whole hog for.
[00:22:32]  A lot of guys through every stage of the expansion of the British Empire keep saying this is a bad idea.
[00:22:36]  Now they don't win, but they're that like they were kind of more dominant during this period.
[00:22:41]  Maybe that played a role.
[00:22:42]  But there's also, and this, what Teferi is arguing is the British, number one, they see the kind of country.
[00:22:47]  They're like, we only got through all these mountains because these locals let us through.
[00:22:51]  And there's a lot of them and they're good fighters.
[00:22:54]  And if they wanted to make a problem for us, they could really wreck our day.
[00:22:58]  It's not worth it, you know?
[00:22:59]  Right, totally.
[00:23:00]  And that's why Ethiopia stays independent this entire period is it's not worth it to fuck with them.
[00:23:07]  I love the idea of land having such an advantage.
[00:23:10]  Like, it's kind of, I don't know if impressive is the right word, but it's sort of miraculous almost that there was any space in Africa that people were just like, you know what?
[00:23:21]  Why bother with this one?
[00:23:24]  It's very similar.
[00:23:26]  I see a lot of similarities when I read about the Ethiopians to the Kurds, right?
[00:23:30]  You have these peoples who are continuously surrounded by enemies, but never get quite wiped out because they have the mountains, right?
[00:23:37]  And they know they're fucking mountains.
[00:23:39]  And if you come into the mountains, you're probably not going to live, right?
[00:23:43]  They may not be able to like run what is a functional nation because they may not have access to the sea or infrastructure, but you're not going to wipe them out because they have the fucking mountains.
[00:23:53]  And the Ethiopians have the goddamn mountains.
[00:23:56]  And that is a huge asset to them.
[00:24:00]  So after the British leave, Ethiopia has another one of its periods of internecine conflict, right?
[00:24:04]  The emperor's gone.
[00:24:05]  All these local leaders who weren't willing to fight for him wind up fighting amongst themselves.
[00:24:10]  And after a period of this, another guy, Casa of Tigray, wound up in charge next.
[00:24:15]  And Tigray is a mountainous region in the north of Ethiopia, right?
[00:24:18]  In 1872, Casa is crowned Emperor Johannes IV.
[00:24:23]  Now, almost as soon as he comes to power, Egypt invades.
[00:24:27]  The Ethiopians beat Egypt in two horrific battles, but this is like an ugly victory, right?
[00:24:33]  They lose a lot of men doing it.
[00:24:35]  This is 1875, 1876.
[00:24:39]  And again, one of the things this should make clear about Ethiopia that makes it unique is that during this time when most other African nations are being in the 1870s, we're starting to see the scramble for Africa.
[00:24:51]  They're starting to steal everything that's not nailed down on the continent.
[00:24:55]  While all of these colonizers are doing that to the rest of Africa, Ethiopia's main conflicts are either internal or with other African nations.
[00:25:03]  And Europeans had actually, up to this point, been more of a neutral or even sometimes beneficial force for their sovereignty, which is very unique, very, very unique for because again, everyone else is getting horribly fucked over.
[00:25:15]  There's obviously reasons for that.
[00:25:16]  It's not out of the good of the Europeans' heart.
[00:25:18]  It's just practicalities and realities of the situation and the terrain.
[00:25:23]  Now, by the early 1880s, Egypt had gotten fucked over by the Mahdi.
[00:25:28]  And the Mahdi was a messianic Muslim leader who led a revolution.
[00:25:32]  He beat a couple of British armies.
[00:25:34]  He beat a couple of Egyptian armies.
[00:25:35]  He eventually gets crushed by the British, but the Mahdi's army invades Ethiopia because Ethiopia is Christian and the Mahdi.
[00:25:42]  This is like a messianic Islamist movement.
[00:25:45]  And Ethiopia beats them.
[00:25:49]  They win the battle against the Mahdi's army, but the Emperor Johannes dies fighting.
[00:25:54]  And by the time this fighting is over, Ethiopia is just fucking exhausted, right?
[00:25:59]  That's a lot of years of fighting.
[00:26:01]  There's a lot going on.
[00:26:03]  Yeah.
[00:26:05]  Now, they had, however, been fortunate that through this period, they completely missed the scramble for Africa.
[00:26:12]  Now, Scramble for Africa starts in the 1870s, and it starts because we talk about King Leopold of Belgium, right?
[00:26:18]  The guy who stole the Congo and killed 13 million people.
[00:26:21]  Horrifying.
[00:26:22]  Because suddenly, one of the worst people who has ever lived.
[00:26:25]  One of the one in the top 1% of bad people on this show.
[00:26:30]  Maybe the very top of the list.
[00:26:34]  Real piece of shit.
[00:26:37]  So he's, you know, Belgium steals the Congo, basically, and all of the other European leaders freak out because they're like, oh my God, Belgium took all of Africa.
[00:26:44]  Soon we're going to run out of Africa.
[00:26:45]  We'd better all steal a bunch of Africa.
[00:26:47]  And so they steal a bunch of Africa.
[00:26:49]  Conference in Berlin.
[00:26:50]  Yeah.
[00:26:52]  It's just a shitty position to be in.
[00:26:54]  Just like, I have to be right under these assholes.
[00:26:56]  Like, God damn.
[00:26:58]  Couldn't even get like the months of boat ride to get from one space to the other.
[00:27:02]  Just brutal.
[00:27:03]  Yeah.
[00:27:05]  And during this period, almost every inch of Africa is either conquered or claimed, but not Ethiopia.
[00:27:11]  And to understand why, it helps to understand how Europeans talked about Ethiopia in this period.
[00:27:16]  As one contemporary Western historian wrote, quote, encompassed on all sides by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopians slept near a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom they were forgotten.
[00:27:27]  Now, that's obviously not true, right?
[00:27:29]  Because we just talked about all the people who invaded them.
[00:27:32]  Yeah.
[00:27:33]  But that is how Europeans think about them.
[00:27:36]  Yeah.
[00:27:36]  It's a dark, mysterious land.
[00:27:40]  It's forgotten.
[00:27:40]  It's like you guys invaded it like twice, but like, yes, it's that's not even 100 years ago, y'all.
[00:27:47]  He was like, wow, you're writing this, dude.
[00:27:51]  Yeah.
[00:27:52]  But it is good for Ethiopia, though, that Europeans tend to think about Ethiopia this rate, right?
[00:27:57]  Because whenever they thought about a country a lot, they would fuck it over, right?
[00:28:01]  Like, you don't want them, you don't want Europeans paying a lot of attention to you if you're an African nation.
[00:28:06]  It doesn't end well.
[00:28:09]  Now, unfortunately, Ethiopia's splendid isolation from colonialism was not going to last forever.
[00:28:15]  From a write-up in quartz, quote: At the Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885, 14 European countries divided Africa among themselves.
[00:28:23]  Before the conference, only about 10% of Africa was controlled by Europeans.
[00:28:26]  The remaining 90% was ruled by indigenous and traditional rulers.
[00:28:30]  Italy had a colonial possession over Assaab port since 1882.
[00:28:34]  At the Berlin Conference, European colonial powers agreed that Italy could take over Ethiopia as its future colony.
[00:28:41]  So they don't take Ethiopia, but they have this port that's on the it's kind of in I think modern day Somalia, right?
[00:28:50]  They have this little bitty chunk of the African coast, and while everyone's gobbling everything else up, Italy's like, well, I guess we'll take Ethiopia because it's close to what we already have.
[00:28:58]  And the rest of Europe is like, yeah, it's a pain in the ass to get there.
[00:29:00]  It's a pain in the ass.
[00:29:01]  Yeah, if you guys can take Ethiopia, it's yours.
[00:29:04]  You know, that's basically.
[00:29:05]  They were just sitting down at a conference and they were like, all right, I guess this part that, no, it's sleepy.
[00:29:11]  Nobody's really been there.
[00:29:13]  We'll take it.
[00:29:14]  That's ours now.
[00:29:15]  Wow.
[00:29:16]  Wow.
[00:29:16]  Just being conversational.
[00:29:17]  You haven't even tried militarily or really thought.
[00:29:20]  That is mind-blowing.
[00:29:22]  That people can just think they can possess other people's land like that.
[00:29:27]  That is, oh, it's wild.
[00:29:29]  Unhandished.
[00:29:31]  I can't really wrap my mind around it.

=== Europe Takes Ethiopia (04:57) ===

[00:29:35]  But you know what?
[00:29:37]  Won't divide up the nations of Africa between a handful of European colonial powers for the profit of the Western world.
[00:29:47]  What's that?
[00:29:48]  The products and services that support this podcast.
[00:29:51]  Can you guarantee that?
[00:29:53]  Not a single one of our sponsors is the government of Belgium.
[00:29:56]  That's a hard life.
[00:29:57]  Can you guarantee that?
[00:29:59]  We were getting those Ohio.
[00:30:00]  We don't even let Belgians listen to the podcast.
[00:30:04]  That is illegal.
[00:30:05]  If you're Belgian and you're listening, like you'd get, no, get off.
[00:30:09]  Get out of here.
[00:30:10]  Get out of here.
[00:30:11]  Belgian listeners, I'm sorry.
[00:30:13]  Yeah, no, we apologize.
[00:30:15]  It's only Italians that we don't want listening.
[00:30:18]  All right.
[00:30:19]  Here's some ads on a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien.
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[00:31:05]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
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[00:31:28]  Hey.
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[00:32:27]  It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditional Le La.
[00:32:30]  My days of filling up cups of sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley.
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[00:32:49]  I had a little bone to pick with Schwartzy when he came on the pod.
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[00:32:54]  I almost flipped a pizza in your lap.
[00:32:56]  Oh, God, I literally forgot about that until just now.
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[00:34:29]  Ah, we're back.

=== Fragmenting The Empire (15:16) ===

[00:34:32]  And we're talking about Ethiopia.
[00:34:35]  So at the Berlin conference, Italy's like, we'll take Ethiopia and everyone else's.
[00:34:40]  And I think it might have been kind of like, yeah, sure, you'll take Ethiopia.
[00:34:43]  Right.
[00:34:44]  Right, yes.
[00:34:45]  That's a little jest.
[00:34:47]  Like, yeah, and we can have Ethiopia.
[00:34:49]  Look at these guys.
[00:34:50]  Sure, dude.
[00:34:52]  Now, because Italians spend all their time making olive oil and eating six-hour dinners, they tend to be late for everything.
[00:34:59]  And they were extremely late for the scramble for Africa.
[00:35:02]  Italy only managed to get two tiny colonies, one in what they called Italian Somaliland, modern-day Somalia, and a little trading post, that port we talked about on the Red Sea coast.
[00:35:12]  These were not lucrative or large possessions.
[00:35:15]  And this hurt the famously irrational pride of the Italian people, who remembered that one time they'd conquered the whole known world like 1500 years ago, and they thought that being rad 1500 years ago still mattered, which it didn't.
[00:35:28]  Do they still think that today, Robert?
[00:35:31]  Yeah, they sure do.
[00:35:32]  Well, some of them.
[00:35:36]  Look, just lean into the pasta.
[00:35:37]  You're fine at pasta.
[00:35:39]  Bad at war.
[00:35:40]  You're fine at pasta.
[00:35:44]  Now, both of Italy's colonial possessions bordered Ethiopia.
[00:35:47]  And Italy's laziest nationalists started saying, hey, we should take that too.
[00:35:53]  Now, while Italy had kind of like gotten like, yeah, you can take this at the conference, neither France nor England really wanted them to take Ethiopia.
[00:36:01]  Both France and England supported Ethiopian independence.
[00:36:04]  Again, not because France and England were like, yes, of course, these people have the right to national self-determination.
[00:36:11]  Yeah.
[00:36:12]  It's because the Suez Canal was a thing at that point.
[00:36:14]  And the British basically owned Egypt.
[00:36:17]  And they saw like this.
[00:36:18]  So because of the way the Nile is built and shit, not built is the wrong word, but because of the geography, Ethiopia has the ability, if they were to damn things, to choke Egypt off from like the like they could fuck up the channel by like fucking with the way the water works, right?
[00:36:33]  It's a thing that was possible.
[00:36:35]  And so the British were scared of France gaining influence here, right?
[00:36:38]  Because Britain and France, like literally until World War I starts, are like at each other's throats constantly.
[00:36:43]  Like up until like everyone kind of assumed the big European war would be between them, right?
[00:36:49]  So the British are scared.
[00:36:50]  The British want Ethiopia to be independent because they don't want France to get it and to get the ability to choke off Egypt.
[00:36:56]  And the Brits or the French didn't want the British to get Ethiopia because they didn't want the British to have any more power than they already had in their country.
[00:37:02]  That would be a lot of power in that specific region.
[00:37:05]  Okay, I'm seeing it.
[00:37:06]  Yeah.
[00:37:07]  So as a result, both powers were fine with Ethiopia staying independent because it was just easier for them than figuring out something else.
[00:37:14]  So the Italians had to be sneaky about things, as is in their conniving nature.
[00:37:18]  They started their plans when Ethiopia was already deeply enmeshed in war in 1869 by having a private company purchase a trading post on the coast from a local sultan.
[00:37:28]  This company then sold said post to the Italian government in 1882.
[00:37:32]  And during the modest uprising, the Italians took another chunk of coastline.
[00:37:37]  And like most of their colonial possessions, Italian Africa was an apartheid state.
[00:37:42]  Italian and native housing was strictly separate.
[00:37:44]  Different schools were established for Italians and natives.
[00:37:47]  There was also a system called Matamismo, which was basically codified sex trafficking.
[00:37:53]  Italian officials, soldiers, and other citizens were allowed to take native wives or mistresses, and these women had no rights under the law.
[00:38:03]  Oh, oh, oh, yeah.
[00:38:05]  So just sex slaves.
[00:38:07]  Great.
[00:38:07]  Subers slash domestic slaves.
[00:38:10]  Yeah, I guess.
[00:38:11]  Oh, God.
[00:38:12]  Yeah.
[00:38:12]  Yeah.
[00:38:12]  Terrific.
[00:38:14]  So Ethiopia is a landlocked country, right?
[00:38:18]  And this has been a real problem for Ethiopia for a while because you don't want to be landlocked.
[00:38:22]  You want to have not to your advantage.
[00:38:23]  Absolutely.
[00:38:24]  Kind of a big deal having a port.
[00:38:26]  And during the fighting with the Mahdi, again, the Mahdi is a big problem for the British Empire.
[00:38:31]  They fight a bunch of battles against him.
[00:38:34]  Ethiopia fights alongside the British against the Mahdi because he's fucking with them too.
[00:38:39]  And they make an arrangement with the British.
[00:38:40]  And basically, we're like, the British need Ethiopian help to evacuate a bunch of Egyptian garrisons.
[00:38:46]  And the Ethiopians do this for them in exchange for the British promise them free access to a coastal port.
[00:38:52]  Now, the Ethiopians fulfill their end of the bargain and save these garrisons, but the British do not fulfill their end of the bargain.
[00:38:59]  And so Ethiopia gets screwed out of access to this port in part because Italy's gobbling up a bunch of this coastline, right?
[00:39:05]  Never trust the British.
[00:39:07]  Ever.
[00:39:08]  In 1887, Italy invades Ethiopia for the first time.
[00:39:12]  They send in a scientific mission.
[00:39:14]  That's what they call it, of 500 armed men to occupy a piece of Ethiopian territory.
[00:39:19]  And this is a thing that European powers do a lot, right?
[00:39:22]  You send in a small group of armed men, you take a little area, you hang out there.
[00:39:27]  Usually the leaders don't fuck with you, right?
[00:39:29]  Because they don't want to deal with the hassle.
[00:39:31]  And once you get that foothold, then you can take another piece and another piece and another piece.
[00:39:35]  Eventually, you land up and you orchestrate a war and you take it all.
[00:39:38]  Yeah.
[00:39:38]  Yep, just a slow invasion of the body.
[00:39:40]  Horrifying.
[00:39:41]  And their hope had been that, as often happened in Africa, the locals would launch an ill-equipped counterattack, which would be easily defeated by modern Italian guns, and the bloodshed would serve as the justification for a more comprehensive Italian land grab.
[00:39:54]  But the Italians forgot one crucial thing, Joel.
[00:39:57]  Was it the mountains?
[00:39:58]  Italians.
[00:39:59]  No, it's that Italians suck ass at war.
[00:40:02]  And Ethiopians don't.
[00:40:04]  Pretty good at war.
[00:40:06]  Got it.
[00:40:08]  So Italy is defeated decisively at a battle called Dega Ali.
[00:40:12]  Now, from this experience, Italy learned that an Ethiopia is not an easy thing to steal.
[00:40:17]  They next set to the strategy of then of undermine.
[00:40:20]  Yeah.
[00:40:21]  Ah, shit.
[00:40:22]  They really want to keep being Ethiopia.
[00:40:24]  We didn't anticipate this.
[00:40:27]  Ah, it's too spicy of a meatball.
[00:40:30]  No.
[00:40:32]  The last word of many an Italian soldier bleeding in the dust of Dega Ali.
[00:40:37]  Spicy meat the ball.
[00:40:39]  Pasta fettuccini.
[00:40:40]  I feel like spicy meatball is going to end up on the behind the bastards bingo board that fans make.
[00:40:46]  Nice.
[00:40:47]  We could do like a little photoshop of Ethiopia as a meatball and like an Italian choking on it.
[00:40:52]  Like, that's a spicy meataball.
[00:40:54]  I was thinking more like a drinking game or something that doesn't like no death.
[00:41:01]  Oh, okay.
[00:41:02]  Well, now, so Italy gets rebuffed in this first attempt.
[00:41:08]  So they set next, they establish a new strategy.
[00:41:10]  And this strategy is kind of more like what the British would try to do, right?
[00:41:13]  Because the British are, there's some times where they use brute force.
[00:41:16]  They rarely start with that.
[00:41:17]  They're usually a lot more cunning.
[00:41:20]  And Italy adopts the same strategy.
[00:41:21]  The idea is to undermine Ethiopian unity because this is a known vulnerability, right?
[00:41:26]  There's a lot of infighting in Ethiopia.
[00:41:28]  All these different regional lords don't always work together.
[00:41:30]  They like to fight for dominance.
[00:41:31]  So the Italians are like, okay, what if we try to play these different tribal groups and local leaders against one another and the emperor and kind of fragment Ethiopia and then we can take, you know, eat it up piecemeal, right?
[00:41:42]  Which is a better strategy.
[00:41:44]  And they were much more successful at this.
[00:41:45]  The guy they chose to reach out and bribe was a local king named Menelik.
[00:41:50]  Teferi writes, quote, As king of Shoah, away from the central government in the north, Menelik enjoyed unlimited power over his kingdom.
[00:41:59]  He conquered Galilands to the south and expanded his territory greatly through his large and relatively well-armed forces.
[00:42:05]  Thus conscious of his growing power, Menelik became less and less obedient to the emperor, and the Italians were not slow in noticing this.
[00:42:12]  Accordingly, after the presentation of gifts and tempting promises, the Italians were able to have Menelik sign a secret treaty in which he was promised money, arms, and the province of Tigray in recognition as the king of kings if he allied with them in attacking Emperor Johannes IV.
[00:42:28]  This is while Johannes is still alive.
[00:42:31]  To this, Menelik agreed, and the treaty was signed in 1888.
[00:42:37]  That the Italians would benefit what the Italians would benefit from this was little.
[00:42:41]  It meant the annexation of Eritrea in the northernmost province.
[00:42:44]  But the Italians were solidifying their hold and they were ready to wait for further demands.
[00:42:48]  So Italy gets this guy on board.
[00:42:51]  They're like, we'll back this guy.
[00:42:52]  This guy's the most powerful king.
[00:42:53]  We'll back him against the emperor.
[00:42:54]  We'll let him take a big chunk of Ethiopia.
[00:42:56]  But if we get this emperor, we can take other chunks and eventually we'll eat this guy up too, right?
[00:43:01]  We'll either make him into a rump kingdom or like, that's the plan, right?
[00:43:04]  They're going to use this guy to fragment Ethiopia.
[00:43:06]  They'll let him be independent, probably for the rest of his life, and then take it over, right?
[00:43:10]  Whenever he passes, right?
[00:43:11]  Whatever.
[00:43:12]  Pretty standard colonialism.
[00:43:13]  Just like Caesar.
[00:43:14]  Sure.
[00:43:14]  Got it.
[00:43:15]  Yeah.
[00:43:15]  This happens all the time.
[00:43:16]  Yes, they're naturally backstabbing people, the Italians.
[00:43:20]  So.
[00:43:22]  No.
[00:43:26]  Now, this basic tactic is one a bunch of European powers would use all over the world during the age of colonization.
[00:43:32]  Most local rulers around, not just Africa, but we're talking like Southeast Asia, a bunch of places.
[00:43:37]  And, you know, earlier in like the 1500s, versions of this are done in like Central and South America, too.
[00:43:43]  Most local rulers in Menelik's position kind of would agree to do help whatever power would overthrow the ruler.
[00:43:50]  And they would be either betrayed immediately or bribed off and used to oppress their fellows for the profit of England or France or whatever.
[00:43:57]  But so this was generally a successful strategy.
[00:44:00]  But Italy made a mistake.
[00:44:02]  And the mistake was picking Menelik because Menelik was really fucking smart.
[00:44:07]  Way smarter than any of the Italians trying to manipulate him.
[00:44:12]  Yeah.
[00:44:13]  So right after the Italians sign this secret contract, right, the modests invade again and the Emperor Johannes, you know, dies fighting them, which means the emperor that Menelik had agreed to fight alongside the Italians isn't the emperor anymore.
[00:44:27]  And as soon as the Italians hear that Johannes is dead, they send a telegram to Menelik, who again they think is their boy.
[00:44:33]  And their exact phrasing was something like, it's time for our two countries to establish a more solid friendship, which is colonizers speak for, we're coming, right?
[00:44:40]  We're going to take the ship.
[00:44:42]  And it seemed initially that Menelik was falling for their sneaky tricks.
[00:44:46]  He signed a treaty with Italy, which the Italians claimed would just officially lay out their separate territories and enshrine Ethiopian independence into international law.
[00:44:55]  This was a lie because there were discrepancies between the version of the treaty written in Italian, which is the one that Europeans are going to consider value.
[00:45:03]  And this again, they do this all the time.
[00:45:06]  This is something the U.S. does a shitload to the indigenous peoples, right?
[00:45:09]  Classic colonizer move, right?
[00:45:11]  This is so sneaky and like base level.
[00:45:13]  Like you, the way you just, what is the word I'm looking for?
[00:45:18]  Inventilize your enemy is just embarrassing.
[00:45:23]  Yeah.
[00:45:23]  And so there's a difference between the Italian version and the Amharic is the language in Ethiopia.
[00:45:32]  I think Amharic is how it's pronounced.
[00:45:33]  It's A-M-H-A-R-I-C.
[00:45:35]  Now, the Italian version of the treaty included an article that read, quote, His Majesty the King of Kings of Ethiopia consents to avail himself of the Italian government for any negotiations which he might enter into with other powers.
[00:45:49]  Now, what that means is under the Italian version of the treaty, Menelik is agreeing that he has to ask the Italian government for permission before making any arrangements with other countries.
[00:46:02]  This would make Ethiopia into what is known as a protectorate, which is not an independent nation.
[00:46:06]  A protectorate is under the government governance of another country.
[00:46:11]  Because if you can't make your own contracts and treaties with foreign countries, you're not really independent.
[00:46:16]  That line is the Italians trying to steal Ethiopian sovereignty in a very clever way, right?
[00:46:23]  Now, the Amharic version of the treaty, which Menelik gets, is crucially different.
[00:46:27]  It just says that the emperor might, if he desired, avail himself of Italian help in foreign matters.
[00:46:33]  So his version of the treaty is like, since we're friends, if, yeah, if you want to make a deal with a European nation, hey, we're European, we'll help you with it, you know?
[00:46:40]  Right.
[00:46:40]  We might, right?
[00:46:41]  We'll give you that inside scoop.
[00:46:43]  Exactly.
[00:46:44]  Crucial difference.
[00:46:44]  One of them is a nice thing that a friend would do, and one of them is somebody stealing your fucking house, you know?
[00:46:50]  Yeah.
[00:46:51]  So the Italians, of course, as soon as this treaty is signed, the Italians inform the rest of Europe, like, hey, we've basically we've acquired one Ethiopia slightly used.
[00:47:00]  Like, congratulations.
[00:47:02]  Look at how cool we are.
[00:47:04]  Now, Teferi, that Ethiopian scholar who is a big basis of this chunk of the history, seems to think that Menelik was legitimately fooled by this, that he thought he'd signed a friendship treaty and was shocked when the Italians were like, haha, we own you now.
[00:47:17]  But other scholars disagree.
[00:47:19]  Now, Teferi's piece is very good, which is why I've used it, but it's also rather old.
[00:47:22]  It's a couple of decades old.
[00:47:23]  It's not a new piece of scholarship.
[00:47:25]  There's a 2011 book by Cambridge historian Raymond Jonas that makes a different argument.
[00:47:30]  And I'm going to quote from a write-up of his book by Ohio State University's Origins Project.
[00:47:34]  Quote: Jonah suggests that Menelik used his protectorate status to his advantage, such as a loan of 4 million lira from Italy used to purchase weapons, until his position was strong enough to claim there was a mistranslation.
[00:47:46]  So, by this interpretation of events, the emperor knew Italy was trying to fuck him over, but he also knew that the Ethiopian army was exhausted and was badly outgunned by any European force because all these wars they'd fought.
[00:47:57]  To have any hope of victory against a full invasion, they would need refitting.
[00:48:01]  So he was like, If the Italians think I'm a protectorate, they'll give me a loan.
[00:48:05]  I can use that loan to buy guns, and I can use those guns to kill Italians.
[00:48:10]  Listen, I love the double plague.
[00:48:12]  We're getting very ocean's 11 years.
[00:48:15]  He's fucking rad.
[00:48:16]  Yeah.
[00:48:17]  This is a very, very smart guy.
[00:48:21]  So Italy's strategy here is to gradually move forces further and further into Ethiopia, which they start to do.
[00:48:28]  They send in soldiers and they occupy a city called Adagat for a full year, and the emperor doesn't do anything.
[00:48:34]  And again, the last time they tried this, they immediately got counter-attacked and pushed out.
[00:48:37]  So they're like, ah, it's working.
[00:48:38]  It's working.
[00:48:38]  This guy's going to let us in.
[00:48:40]  Spicy meat the ball.
[00:48:41]  Yeah.
[00:48:43]  Right.
[00:48:43]  So they think Ethiopia is going to be a big pushover.
[00:48:45]  They think they finally cracked the nut.
[00:48:47]  Now, they had further reason to believe that Ethiopia would be easy pickings because they also brought a horrible plague with them when they invaded the first time in 1887.
[00:48:56]  The historical record shows that when the Ethiopians wiped out that first expeditionary force and raided its camp, they stole cattle that had been infested with a disease called the Rinderpest.
[00:49:06]  This pest quickly spread throughout the country, wiping out all cattle in Ethiopia and causing a nightmarish famine.
[00:49:12]  So this is all happening at the same time, right?
[00:49:14]  I'm going to quote from a write-up by the Oromo Studies Association.
[00:49:18]  This historical period is recorded in the collective memory of the Oromo people as Bara Nama Nyata, the period of human eater, Bara Ruxia Rukisa, the period of extreme famine, and Sina, the period of termination.
[00:49:32]  So those are the three periods of this plague.
[00:49:35]  We have no evidence that the Italians had deliberately introduced RPV into Abyssinia.
[00:49:39]  However, the colonial public health history made clear that the colonizers knowingly and wittingly neglected the needs of the colonized people, and this is evident in the case of RPV in Ethiopia.

=== Plague And Famine Tactics (03:53) ===

[00:49:49]  As we know today, the practice of quarantine began in Italy during the 14th century.
[00:49:53]  It was started in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics.
[00:49:57]  Italy and many European countries practiced quarantining.
[00:50:00]  For example, in 1377, the Great Council of Ragusa in southern Italy passed a law establishing a trentino, or 30-day isolation period.
[00:50:08]  This made Italy the first in Europe to organize institutional responses to disease control that began during the plague epidemic of 1347 to 1352.
[00:50:16]  Ships arriving in Italian ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing.
[00:50:20]  Although the Italians had practiced quarantining ships arriving in their ports ever since the 14th century, when they brought the infected cattle to the Red Sea coast, they did not take the necessary quarantine steps and caused the RPV epidemic.
[00:50:31]  Whether or not it was deliberate, the Italian army introduced the deadly RPV infection to Africa.
[00:50:36]  Carried by just three infected cows, RPV spread from Ethiopia's east coast across the Sahel Desert, killing in just one year 90 to 95% of the domesticated cattle, plus countless wild buffalo, giraffe, and antelope.
[00:50:49]  RPV swept from the Horn of Africa west to the Atlantic and south to the Cape of Good Hope.
[00:50:53]  Ethiopia lost 95% of its cattle and most of the human population starved to death.
[00:50:58]  According to Yilma, 30 to 60% of Ethiopia's population starved to death that year.
[00:51:05]  So oh my gosh, that's devastating.
[00:51:10]  And it's important to note: the Italians know how to quarantine, which is why some people suggest they did this on purpose.
[00:51:15]  They introduced this plague to prepare the area, to basically wipe out the population and prepare the area for colonization.
[00:51:21]  We don't know that.
[00:51:22]  We do know they knew how to quarantine and chose not to.
[00:51:26]  And that's why this plague spreads and kills as many as 60% of the people in Ethiopia.
[00:51:31]  And that's happened right as this, as the Italians are moving in as they take this city.
[00:51:36]  So Menelik is not just dealing with recovering from all these wars, like fucking half of his population has just gotten wiped out by this devastating fucking plague.
[00:51:44]  So by the early 1890s, Ethiopia is in bad shape, right?
[00:51:49]  This is, they're about as vulnerable to colonization as you could possibly be, you know?
[00:51:54]  Like that's a bad position.
[00:51:57]  And the Italians tried to take further advantage of the situation by using the desperation of the famine to drive divisions between Menelik's kingdom, Shoah, and the northern Tigray kingdom.
[00:52:08]  Because these are the two most powerful chunks of Ethiopia.
[00:52:10]  But in this, they were outflanked because Menelik married the Empress Teitu from Tigray, which effectively united the two great power blocs in the country.
[00:52:19]  He also used the Italians during their early stages of investment in the country to crush local princes and warlords who were threats to his power.
[00:52:27]  In effect, he used the army he would one day have to fight to crush resistance to his rule and ensure that when the big fight came, Ethiopia was united behind him.
[00:52:36]  The Italians were willing to do this because this was a normal colonialism thing, right?
[00:52:40]  You fight these little powers, so you don't have to fight the big war, right?
[00:52:43]  They thought they're sinking their teeth into this country, wrapping their Italian tentacles around it, but they're really being used by Menelik.
[00:52:51]  In 1893, Italy announced to the rest of Europe that Ethiopia was their protectorate.
[00:52:56]  They did not bother making an announcement to Menelik.
[00:52:58]  He found out during the course of his normal diplomatic correspondence when he reached out to a European nation and was informed by their emissary that they would not treat with him directly.
[00:53:07]  All communication would have to go through Italy.
[00:53:10]  So, Menelik wrote a letter to the king of Italy.
[00:53:12]  Quote, when I made the treaty of friendship with Italy, in order that our secrets might be guarded and that undertaking should not be spoiled, I said that because of friendship, our affairs in Europe might be carried on with the aid of the sovereign of Italy.
[00:53:23]  But I have not made any treaty which obliges me to do so.
[00:53:26]  And today I am not the man to accept it.
[00:53:28]  That one independent power does not seek the aid of another to carry on its affairs, your majesty understands very well.
[00:53:33]  Basically, you're a king and you wouldn't put up with this.
[00:53:36]  Why would you expect me to?
[00:53:38]  Yeah.
[00:53:38]  Okay.
[00:53:39]  Lay down the light.
[00:53:40]  Like, I love the respect being commanded.

=== Menelik Defies The King (04:55) ===

[00:53:43]  This is amazing.
[00:53:45]  You know what else is a king of Italy?
[00:53:49]  Is the king of Italy, the sovereign of Italy?
[00:53:53]  Is it the ads?
[00:53:54]  Yes.
[00:53:55]  We are supported by the Italian crown.
[00:53:59]  I thought last night's going to get in here.
[00:54:02]  Okay, all right.
[00:54:03]  It's pleasing.
[00:54:04]  Yeah, I mean, they're looking.
[00:54:05]  They'd like to be kings of other things.
[00:54:07]  So, you know, if you're looking for a king, you know, if you, if you would like to be a king, or if you would like to have a king, you know, consider the sovereign of Italy, you know?
[00:54:16]  You could do worse, right?
[00:54:18]  There's worse kings.
[00:54:19]  Not a lot of worse kings.
[00:54:20]  No, but some.
[00:54:22]  A couple.
[00:54:23]  Yeah.
[00:54:24]  Anyway.
[00:54:24]  We'll take it.
[00:54:29]  On a recent episode of the podcast Money and Wealth with John O'Brien.
[00:54:33]  I sit down with Tiffany the Bajinista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
[00:54:40]  What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
[00:54:46]  We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught.
[00:54:56]  Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.
[00:55:00]  That's great.
[00:55:01]  It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
[00:55:11]  If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
[00:55:17]  Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:55:27]  Will Farrell's Big Money Players and iHeart Podcast presents soccer moms?
[00:55:31]  So I'm Leanne.
[00:55:32]  Yeah.
[00:55:32]  This is my best friend Janet.
[00:55:33]  Hey.
[00:55:34]  And we have been joined at the hip since high school.
[00:55:36]  Absolutely.
[00:55:37]  Now a redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip, just a little bit bigger hips, wider.
[00:55:43]  This is a podcast we're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks.
[00:55:50]  Sidebar, why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?
[00:55:53]  Oh, they had a BOGO.
[00:55:54]  Well, then you go.
[00:55:55]  You want a white cloth sub here?
[00:55:57]  Just hang on.
[00:55:57]  What are y'all doing?
[00:55:58]  Microphones?
[00:55:59]  Are you making a rap album?
[00:56:01]  I love it.
[00:56:03]  I would buy it.
[00:56:04]  Cuts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake.
[00:56:09]  That sounds delicious.
[00:56:11]  Oh, you're lucky.
[00:56:12]  I'm not a drug addict.
[00:56:13]  You're lucky.
[00:56:13]  I'm not an alcoholic.
[00:56:14]  You're lucky.
[00:56:15]  I'm not a killer.
[00:56:16]  I love this team and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on.
[00:56:21]  Oh.
[00:56:25]  Listen to soccer moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:56:32]  Hello, gorgeous.
[00:56:33]  It's Lala Kent, host of Untraditional Leela.
[00:56:35]  My days of filling up cups at Surah may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley.
[00:56:40]  Life on the other side of the hill is giving grown-up vibes.
[00:56:43]  But over here on my podcast, Untraditional Le La, I'm still that Lala you either love or love to hate.
[00:56:49]  I've been full-on oversharing with fans, family, and former frenemies like Tom Schwartz.
[00:56:54]  I had a little bone to pick with Schwartzy when he came on the pod.
[00:56:57]  You don't feel bad that you told me I was a bootleg housewife?
[00:57:00]  I almost flipped a pizza in your lap.
[00:57:02]  Oh, God, I literally forgot about that until just now.
[00:57:05]  Sorry, I don't want to blame all of that.
[00:57:08]  I got to blame that one on the alcohol.
[00:57:09]  This is about laughing and learning when life just keeps on laughing because I make mistakes so that you guys don't have to.
[00:57:15]  We're growing, we're thriving, and yes, sometimes we're barely surviving, but we do it all with love.
[00:57:22]  It's unruly, it's unafraid, it's untraditionally Lala.
[00:57:25]  Listen to Untraditionally Lala on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:57:31]  If you are a founder or a freelancer or the friend who always says, hey, you know what?
[00:57:36]  What if I started that?
[00:57:37]  This is for you.
[00:57:38]  I'm telling you, I had nothing to my name.
[00:57:40]  I didn't know a single person in New York.
[00:57:42]  And somehow I'm dressed by Oscar DeLorenza walking down that red carpet.
[00:57:46]  This month, we sit down with entrepreneurs and creators who actually did it, who turned this scary leap into a business, a paycheck, and a life they are proud of.
[00:57:55]  Direct center of our happiness or our regrets is whether or not we're taking action on the things that matter to us.
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[00:58:03]  They're so important.
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[00:58:17]  If you're trying to build something of your own this year, join us in these conversations that will make you braver and smarter with your money.
[00:58:23]  Listen to Dos Amingos as part of the Michael Tuta Podcast Network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
[00:58:34]  Ah, we're back.
[00:58:36]  I hope you all enjoyed.

=== Historic Ethiopian Victory (13:57) ===

[00:58:38]  I hope you all enjoyed those ads from the King of Italy.
[00:58:45]  Italy, it's a country, technically.
[00:58:48]  So for the next three years, the Italians wage a shadow war against Ethiopian independence.
[00:58:55]  They reached out to Menelik's rivals to try and turn other kings against him.
[00:58:58]  They tried to trick him into further treaties with tricky language, but everywhere they're outmaneuvered because Menelik is just smart as shit.
[00:59:06]  It seems silly to me to be like, that first contract mistake.
[00:59:11]  This one, maybe?
[00:59:12]  Let's try it again.
[00:59:13]  Yeah.
[00:59:15]  The thing that I love about this dude, well, this is such a cool story.
[00:59:19]  This part of it is such a cool story is because this whole period is all of these different African leaders just getting completely fucked over by Europeans with huge body counts as a result.
[00:59:31]  And this guy, though, he's just so much fucking smarter than them.
[00:59:35]  Like, he's just running circles around these motherfuckers, and it's beautiful.
[00:59:40]  It's a really gratifying story.
[00:59:43]  compared to everything else happening between Europeans and Africans in this period of time, which is mostly, you know, genocide.
[00:59:50]  So, yeah, we might as well enjoy the good story while we have.
[00:59:53]  I mean, there's a genocide here, too.
[00:59:54]  They killed half the country.
[00:59:56]  So, I don't know.
[00:59:58]  You take the wins when you get them.
[01:00:01]  You gotta find your victory somewhere for sure.
[01:00:04]  So, he outmaneuvers them.
[01:00:06]  And finally, in 1896, Italy decides they have no option but to invade with a real-ass army.
[01:00:12]  And they assemble a full modern European army of 25,000 men under the command of a general named Baratieri, and they invade from Eritrea.
[01:00:21]  Now, unbeknownst to Italy, Menelik had started preparing for war in earnest in 1893.
[01:00:26]  He'd ordered the creation of food depots across the country, leading to a place called Adwa, where he believed the Italians would advance towards.
[01:00:33]  Next, from a write-up in Quartz, on September 17th, 1895, Menelik declared a total mobilization of war against Italy.
[01:00:41]  He called on all Ethiopians to defend their country, family, and religion.
[01:00:44]  He ordered every capable person to fight and those incapable to pray for Ethiopia's victory.
[01:00:48]  Ethiopians from every tribe, culture, and community answered Menelik's call.
[01:00:52]  Regional leaders from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds responded unanimously, creating an army of 100,000.
[01:00:58]  They had inferior weapons, but a strong cause.
[01:01:01]  The first showdown occurred at Ambag Alagi on December 7th, 1895, where a relatively smaller Italian army was wiped out.
[01:01:09]  The next encounter was at Micheli, where the Italians were stationed behind a strong fort.
[01:01:13]  The Ethiopians surrounded the Italians for two weeks and, upon Empress Taitu's advice, cut off the fort's water supply.
[01:01:20]  The Italian commander agreed to surrender if they would be allowed to leave with their firearms.
[01:01:23]  Menelik agreed that they could leave the garrison unharmed.
[01:01:26]  But the Italians remained in their strongholds, fortifying their position at Adagrat and Sauria.
[01:01:30]  Menelik was not in a hurry to attack these forts.
[01:01:33]  After two weeks of inactivity, General Baratieri decided to advance for a surprise attack.
[01:01:38]  It was March 1st, 1896, or according to the Ethiopian counter, Yakati 23, 1888, the day of St. George.
[01:01:46]  The priests carried the tabo, a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, a religious icon that symbolizes the sanctity of Ethiopia, to the battlefield.
[01:01:54]  The 20,000 Italian and Italian-trained native troops who advanced in three columns fought bravely with their cannons and machine guns before facing a decisive defeat.
[01:02:02]  Casualties were severe on both sides.
[01:02:05]  So there's this kind of like ongoing war and it comes to a head at this place of Adwa and the Ethiopians smash this Italian army of 20,000 people.
[01:02:17]  This is we'll talk about that in a sec.
[01:02:19]  So it is worth noting before we move on that during this battle, the Ethiopians are one of the things that I don't know if I wouldn't say it makes them unique, but one of the things that's worth noting is that there were a significant number of women fighting in the Ethiopian army.
[01:02:31]  This is a thing in Ethiopian military history, including Etej Taitu Bitul, the Empress, who led a unit of 6,000 cavalry into battle.
[01:02:40]  And also, as we talked about, she was a major strategic leader of the army.
[01:02:44]  She has all these plans for cutting off water supplies and stuff.
[01:02:46]  She's a big part of this.
[01:02:49]  The Battle of Adwa.
[01:02:51]  Sorry, I was just going to say, I love how all of these high-ranking monarchs or queens and kings and emperors are dying on the battlefield, which seems very unique to history, too.
[01:03:04]  They're fighters.
[01:03:04]  It's rare that they're like in the front on the front lines.
[01:03:08]  Yeah, I mean, it happened.
[01:03:09]  Like, if you go into Europe a thousand years before, right?
[01:03:12]  The Battle of Hastings, a monarch dies on the field.
[01:03:14]  Happens in European history a lot earlier.
[01:03:16]  Um, but yeah, like Menelik is on the field, as is his wife.
[01:03:20]  They're both fighting in this battle which I've never heard of before, like it like a king, like an emperor and an empress fighting like side, like I don't know side by side, because she was leading the cavalry, I think he had another gig but like they're both fighting in the same battle, which is pretty rad.
[01:03:34]  Um, so the battle of Adua is the first defeat, military defeat, like major military defeat of a European power by indigenous Africans.
[01:03:44]  It was the only such defeat during the scramble for Africa that also led to the complete victory of the native people, right?
[01:03:52]  There's other times where like a small European army will like lose, but they always win the war, right?
[01:03:57]  Right, right.
[01:03:58]  That doesn't happen here.
[01:03:59]  They win the war.
[01:04:01]  And this is the only time that happens.
[01:04:03]  This is a huge victory, not just within African military history, but within the annals of global military history.
[01:04:09]  Menelik's campaign against the Italians covered more miles than Napoleon's advance into Russia.
[01:04:15]  This is like a really fascinating, extremely influential battle.
[01:04:19]  The news of the Italian defeat spreads rapidly.
[01:04:22]  This hits European news like a bomb because a full European army has just gotten fucking annihilated by an indigenous army.
[01:04:30]  Be afraid.
[01:04:32]  Yeah, be afraid.
[01:04:33]  That's exactly how it's taken.
[01:04:34]  And Ethiopia becomes an international symbol of black resistance to colonialism.
[01:04:39]  This battle is celebrated by men like W.E.B. Dubois and Benito Sylvain of Haiti.
[01:04:44]  And this is in spite of the fact that many Ethiopians themselves didn't see themselves as part of a pan-African resistance to Western imperialism.
[01:04:52]  Menelik was not an idealist.
[01:04:54]  He was a pragmatic emperor.
[01:04:56]  Before the war, when he was gathering up forces, he had appealed to the common blackness of the different peoples of Ethiopia against the white invader.
[01:05:03]  But when Benito Sylvain, who was a Haitian pan-Africanist, got to sit down and talk with Menelik about their common struggle, the emperor informed Benito that while he sympathized with the black struggle, Menelik considered himself Caucasian.
[01:05:17]  So again, this is like there's a lot of weird dimensions here.
[01:05:21]  Yeah.
[01:05:21]  I used to do some pictures of Menelik and sir, you black.
[01:05:26]  Sorry, but you look good.
[01:05:28]  You look really got a pretty face for an emperor who's actually doing battle on a battlefield.
[01:05:33]  He could have been, you know, a wealthy prince who was like, I'm just not going to bother with any of these things.
[01:05:39]  But definitely black.
[01:05:41]  But a big part of, I think, part of why he's saying that, and there's others, like one of the things is that like the Ethiopians considered themselves different because they were never colonized, right?
[01:05:50]  They were never like taken out of their homeland en masse or anything like that.
[01:05:54]  Also, the kings of Ethiopia, I don't know if you could say this is genealogically true, but they believe they are descended directly from King Solomon, right?
[01:06:05]  That's the lineage of the royal lions of Ethiopia.
[01:06:07]  They are the descendants of King Solomon.
[01:06:09]  So that may play a role in it.
[01:06:12]  So Menelik himself doesn't really see himself as like a representative of this global struggle against white imperialism, but he's seen that way.
[01:06:20]  And this battle is seen that way internationally in a very big way.
[01:06:24]  The first Afro-Brazilian newspaper was named O. Menelik.
[01:06:28]  The green, yellow, and red Ethiopian flag was later adopted by multiple African nations when they finally threw off the colonial yoke.
[01:06:35]  And of course, Attawa, yeah, so yeah, that's why that is, that's why that flag means what it does, is the Battle of Attawa.
[01:06:41]  That's fascinating.
[01:06:41]  Because it's this time where Africans stopped a colonial power from, you know, fuckery.
[01:06:49]  And of course, the Battle of Attua had great, but much darker significance to Europeans.
[01:06:54]  Teferi writes, quote, in some quarters in Europe, the news was received with alarm.
[01:06:59]  Germany complained that England should have come to Italy's aid.
[01:07:02]  General Kitchener expressed his desire to support Italy, but that the British government would not allow him to do so.
[01:07:07]  And the Times of London lamented in an editorial, You may be sure that from one part of Africa to the other, the defeat of Italy is already known or will be tomorrow, that Africa has conquered Europe.
[01:07:17]  This is the reason why the whole business is so serious.
[01:07:20]  And nothing could be more heedless than to rejoice at the defeat of the Italians.
[01:07:24]  That defeat is also ours.
[01:07:27]  Can we just Europe?
[01:07:29]  Let's sidebar and have a quick conversation.
[01:07:33]  One smaller-sized country defending itself is not conquering.
[01:07:41]  And I think you know that because you did a lot of conquering.
[01:07:45]  That's a weird way to define conquering is someone broke into their house and they kicked him out.
[01:07:50]  Like, I don't know if the conquer is the right word.
[01:07:53]  Yeah.
[01:07:54]  All of Europe just defeated Italy.
[01:07:56]  Like, let's really get some context here.
[01:07:58]  Yeah.
[01:07:59]  Wild.
[01:08:00]  So Italy gets beaten so badly.
[01:08:02]  And again, one of the things that's really unique here, there are other European armies defeated in Africa.
[01:08:07]  The Europeans always win in the end.
[01:08:09]  Italy basically capitulates right away.
[01:08:12]  They sign a treaty with Ethiopia that officially recognizes Ethiopian independence.
[01:08:16]  Obviously, of course, the fact that this happens means nothing to the other crowned heads of Europe, right?
[01:08:22]  They don't care that Ethiopia has been independent.
[01:08:25]  That same year, or sorry, not that's 1896.
[01:08:29]  In 1906, Britain, France, and Italy meet to hold a conference to decide the fate of Ethiopia.
[01:08:35]  And there were no representatives of the Ethiopian government at this.
[01:08:38]  And during this conference, three European powers agree, in essence, that they will not take any further actions towards Ethiopia unless they all agree on it.
[01:08:46]  So whatever happens to Ethiopia next, Britain, France, and Italy agree they have to all come to an accord before doing anything.
[01:08:53]  So again, zero recognition of Ethiopian independence by European governments.
[01:08:58]  Right.
[01:08:59]  Although there is a treaty with Italy, right?
[01:09:00]  So they've, you know, as we end part one, this is maybe the brightest spot we've ended one of our episodes on.
[01:09:09]  They've defeated the imperial power.
[01:09:12]  Things are looking great.
[01:09:13]  Amazing.
[01:09:14]  Gonna be a real bummer in part two, I'm sorry to say.
[01:09:17]  No, it is behind the bastards.
[01:09:23]  It's still a really important story and a really inspiring story.
[01:09:26]  So I think it's worth telling, even though it's going to get a lot darker in part two.
[01:09:30]  Listen, as a fantasy writer and lover of fantasy, I'm really big on pulling from monarchs of the past to create, you know, modern fantasy, as we've seen happen across, you know, Lord of the Rings.
[01:09:43]  You can look at any of George R. Martin stuff.
[01:09:48]  This guy is brilliant, and I really hope to pull him into some of my fantasy lit.
[01:09:53]  First of all, his style is banging.
[01:09:56]  I know, he's fucking rad looking, right?
[01:09:58]  Listen, not only does he, he looks like a very cool hit model and/or that teacher you all had a crush on, but also all of his clothes are bomb.
[01:10:09]  Like he's got Fuego style.
[01:10:12]  And I would, I would just, and to outsmart empires and sort of be funny in his cunningness.
[01:10:19]  Like, I just feel like I would like to learn.
[01:10:21]  I'm definitely going to learn more about Menelik.
[01:10:23]  He's a badass dude.
[01:10:26]  Yeah, he's fucking rad.
[01:10:29]  So that's going to do it for us here at Behind the Bastards.
[01:10:34]  Until next time, which will happen Thursday when it'll get a lot sadder.
[01:10:39]  You know, go out into the world and I don't know really socket to an Italian.
[01:10:46]  Find an Italian and make him pay.
[01:10:50]  What, Sophie?
[01:10:52]  Robert.
[01:10:57]  Look, they're never going to learn if we don't all start fighting back against Italy.
[01:11:03]  Give them a spicy meat-a-ball of their own.
[01:11:05]  That's all I'm saying.
[01:11:06]  There it is.
[01:11:06]  Knew it was coming.
[01:11:08]  Okay, we needed one more.
[01:11:09]  All right.
[01:11:10]  All right.
[01:11:11]  Go.
[01:11:12]  Oh, yeah.
[01:11:12]  I have Joelle.
[01:11:14]  You got pluggables.
[01:11:14]  Pluggables.
[01:11:15]  Oh, sure.
[01:11:16]  Yeah.
[01:11:17]  Y'all already know me.
[01:11:18]  I'm Joel Monique.
[01:11:19]  You can find me all over the internet at Joel Monique.
[01:11:21]  It's J-O-E-L-L-E-M-O-N-I-Q-U-E.
[01:11:25]  I do so many podcasts.
[01:11:28]  Come to my Twitter and you will learn about them.
[01:11:31]  It will be fun.
[01:11:32]  Oh, yeah.
[01:11:33]  I have a novel.
[01:11:34]  It's called After the Revolution.
[01:11:35]  You can find it in podcast form anywhere.
[01:11:37]  Just type in After the Revolution to whatever podcast app you have.
[01:11:40]  It'll be there.
[01:11:41]  You can also find the full text uploaded of three new chapters every week at ATRBook.com as an EPUB.
[01:11:48]  Again, ATRBook.com.
[01:11:50]  You can find the book there.
[01:11:52]  So check it out, please.
[01:11:56]  You can also find it on Reddit at r slash after the revolution.
[01:11:59]  There's a fan Reddit open.
[01:12:00]  People are talking about it if you want to chat with people about my novel.
[01:12:03]  So there you go.
[01:12:05]  All right.
[01:12:05]  We'll be back whenever, at some point.
[01:12:10]  Today's Financial Literacy Month.
[01:12:12]  We are talking about the one investment most people ignore, building a business around the life you actually want.
[01:12:17]  It was just us making happen whatever he said was going to happen and then it happened.
[01:12:22]  On those amigos, entrepreneurs like Amirica Sam and Joe Hoff get real about money, taking risks, and while your dream might be the smartest move.
[01:12:30]  At the end of my life, what am I really going to care about?
[01:12:32]  And the conclusion I came to is what I did to make the world a better place in whatever way.

=== Behind The Scenes Insights (01:49) ===

[01:12:36]  Listen to those amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[01:12:41]  On the Ceno Show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversation about recovery, resilience, and redemption.
[01:12:47]  On a recent episode, I sit down with actor, cultural icon Danny Trail to talk about addiction, transformation, and the power of second chances.
[01:12:54]  The entire season two is now available on the bench, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Addish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.
[01:13:01]  I'm an alcohol.
[01:13:02]  And without this probe, I'm a guy.
[01:13:05]  Listen to Ceno's show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[01:13:11]  On paper, the three hosts of the Nick Dick and Poll Show are geniuses.
[01:13:16]  We can explain how AI works, data centers, but there are certain things that we don't necessarily understand.
[01:13:23]  Better version of play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
[01:13:26]  Yes.
[01:13:27]  Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time.
[01:13:29]  I actually, I thought it was.
[01:13:30]  I got that wrong.
[01:13:31]  But hey, no one's perfect.
[01:13:33]  We're pretty close, though.
[01:13:34]  Listen to the Nick Dick and Paul Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:13:41]  Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
[01:13:49]  Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
[01:13:56]  Coming up this season on Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
[01:14:01]  People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower, where it's really like a stone sculpture.
[01:14:09]  You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
[01:14:11]  Take to interactive CEO Strauss Selnick and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
[01:14:16]  Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
[01:14:21]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:14:24]  Guaranteed human.