Hoare Laval Pact

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The Hoare-Laval Pact was a British-French plan to end the Abyssinian War between Italy and Ethiopia by partitioning Ethiopia. It was negotiated in 1935 by the foreign ministers of the two countries, Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval , and was intended to form the basis for a decision by the League of Nations on this matter. The plan was to grant the Italians parts of the Ogaden and Tigray regions - about a fifth of the total area of ​​Ethiopia - as well as exclusive economic rights in the entire southern half of Ethiopia. In return, Ethiopia should have access to the Italian-Eritrean port of Assab . Another variant only provided for the handover of Raheita , located south of Assab, to Ethiopia (but including those border areas between French Somaliland , which Italy had already been promised in the Mussolini-Laval Agreement of January 1935). The background to this very generous arrangement towards Italy was the efforts of France and Great Britain to prevent Italy from political rapprochement with the German Empire and from a complete breakup of the Stresa front . In addition, further damage to the League of Nations, to which both warring countries belonged and whose sanctions against the aggressor Italy had been largely ineffective until then, should be averted. Shortly before the planned submission of the plan to the League of Nations in December 1935, it was made public, where it was heavily criticized and eventually led to the resignation of the two ministers. Nevertheless, in December 1935, Hoare's successor Anthony Eden also presented a variant of his own plan, first presented in August 1935, in which Great Britain even wanted to forego the British-Somali port of Zeila in favor of Ethiopia , should Italy not renounce Assab be ready (proposta Zeila, Zeila proposal).

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