Ethiopia crushed an invading Italian army and stayed uncolonized

At Adwa in 1896, Emperor Menelik II's forces, numbering over 100,000 and armed partly with modern rifles bought from Europe itself, routed an invading Italian army in a single day. Italy lost thousands of men and was forced to recognize Ethiopian sovereignty in the treaty that followed. It remained the clearest defeat of a colonial power by an African state during the entire Scramble for Africa.

— Raymond Jonas, The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire — Harvard University Press, 2011
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