The Hoare–Laval Pact was an initially secret December 1935 proposal by British Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval for ending the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Italy had wanted to seize the independent nation of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) as part of its Italian Empire and also avenge the 1896 Battle of Adwa, a humiliating defeat. The Pact offered to partition Abyssinia and thus partially achieve Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's goal of making the independent nation of Abyssinia into an Italian colony.