Join us as we explore the fascinating journey of Emperor Haile Selassie, from his noble beginnings as Lij Tafari Makonnen to becoming one of Ethiopia's most significant historical figures. We discuss his early life, rooted in the rich cultural tapestry of late 19th-century Ethiopia, and the impact of European colonization on the region. Discover how the young Tafari navigated the complexities of a multicultural empire, drawing from his heritage linked to the legendary Solomonic Dynasty, and how these influences shaped his path to leadership in a rapidly changing world.
In our discussion, we uncover Tafari's ambitious modernization efforts during the 1920s, inspired by Japan's Westernization. We analyze the sweeping reforms he introduced to align Ethiopia more closely with European powers, despite the persistent challenges, including slavery. Hear about his strategic international diplomacy and the power struggles that ultimately led to his coronation as Emperor Haile Selassie. The conversation then shifts to the dramatic events of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, highlighting the geopolitical dynamics of the era and the challenges Selassie faced as he sought support from European nations amidst rising tensions.
As we progress, we address the complexities of Ethiopia during Selassie's reign, from the controversial annexation of Eritrea to the internal ethnic tensions that defined the era. Despite these challenges, Selassie's influence extended beyond Ethiopia's borders, playing a crucial role in establishing the Organization of African Unity. Finally, we explore the decline of Selassie's rule in the early 1970s, culminating in his overthrow by the Derg and the subsequent political shifts that led Ethiopia into a period of internal and regional conflicts. Tune in for a compelling narrative of resistance, reform, and revolution in the life of an iconic African leader.
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The man known to history as Emperor Haile Selassie the First
was born on the 23rd of July 1892 in the town of Ijaz Sagoro,
not far from the city of Harar in Ethiopia.
He was given the name Lij TewariMakonen in his youth.
Lij simply means child of, whileTefari means one who is.
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Respected or feared? Makonen was his father's name
and so as he was growing up, he was known as the child of
Makonen, who is greatly respected.
His father, Ras Makonen, was thegovernor of the ancient walled
city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia and a key advisor to
his near kinsman Emperor Menelikthe Second, who was emperor at
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the time. Thus, Lich Tawari Makonen was
born into a significant noble family which was related to the
current Imperial dynasty throughhis paternal grandmother.
Tafari was descended from the Solomonic line of kings who had
ruled this part of Africa since the 13th century.
Tafari's mother was boyzero Yeshima Bett Ali, the daughter
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of a ruling chief from Wallow Province to the north.
Any exploration of Tafari's lifemust start by exploring the
nature of Ethiopian society and the empire that ruled it in the
late 19th century. Ethiopia and the wider Horn of
Africa have a unique history. 1700 years ago, when the Roman
Empire ruled all of North Africa, Roman Egypt emerged as a
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major early center of Christianity in the Eastern
Mediterranean. Soon the new religion spread S
beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, down the River Nile and
the coast of the Red Sea. It gained many adherents in what
is now Ethiopia, which effectively became a Christian
country. However, with the Arab conquests
of the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th century AD,
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Ethiopia was effectively cut offfrom the rest of the Christian
world, but it did not convert toIslam.
Accordingly, over the centuries,a unique form of Christianity
developed here, one which continued to adhere to many of
the rights which were typical ofthe 4th century church.
Moreover, Ethiopian politics andculture became shrouded in
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biblical legend, and from the 13th century onwards, the rulers
of the Kingdom of Ethiopia claimed to be descended from the
biblical King Solomon. Therefore, their dynastic line
has become known as the Solomonic dynasty.
This Solomonic dynasty ruled a Kingdom which centuries ago only
constituted part of northern Ethiopia, but between the 13th
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and 19th centuries it began expanding to the southwest and E
eventually covering an area approximate to modern day
Ethiopia. As it did so, the Ethiopian
Empire became a multicultural state, one which had many
different ethnic peoples living under the rule of the emperors.
The foremost of these were the Oromo and Amhara people, who
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between them made-up over half the population of the empire,
but significant minorities included the Somalis in the far
South and east of the country and the Tigrayans in the
northeast. These different ethnicities
spoke different languages and had somewhat different
appearances. For instance, the Oromo are are
a Khushitic people who dominatedthe northwestern part of the
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country and had been more responsive to the spread of
Islam into the region. The Amhara are a Semitic people
who dominated the Highlands of Ethiopia and were much more
committed to Oriental Orthodox Christianity.
These ethnic and religious divisions would influence
Selassie's rule and indeed the entire history of modern
Ethiopia. Indeed, so central are they to
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the country's history that the alternative name which was used
for the Ethiopian Empire at the time of Tafari's birth was
Abyssinia, from the Arabic Habassar term for mixture, a
reference to the multicultural nature of the empire.
By the mid 19th century, the Ethiopian Empire had become one
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of the most powerful states in Africa, and it needed to be for
the great European powers. We're entering into a period of
accelerated colonization of the continent.
To the north, Egypt had effectively become a British
protectorate, and British rule was being extended down the
River Nile into Sudan, Ethiopia's western neighbor, and
eventually into Uganda and Kenya, the southern neighbors of
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Abyssinia. To the east of Abyssinia, along
the coastline of the Horn of Africa, a number of European
powers acquired territory through treaties and military
intervention in the years leading up to Tafari's birth.
The foremost of these was the Kingdom of Italy, which acquired
the colonies of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea in the
1880s, comprising most of the modern day countries of Eritrea
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and Somalia. The British and French also
carved out small enclaves in northern Somaliland.
In the end, nearly all of Africawas annexed by the European
powers in what has become known as the Scramble for Africa.
However, Abyssinia avoided this fate in large part because
Emperor Benelik the Second, who came to power in 1889, began a
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program of modernization. He established Addis Ababa as a
strong new capital in the centerof the Empire and developed an
alliance with the Russian Empirefrom 1893 onwards.
Through this, the Russians sent military advisors, scientists
and economists to Abyssinia to advise the country on how to
modernize its government, economy and military.
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With a view to. Withstanding encroachments by
the Italians, British, French and others.
Thus, when Dafari was born in 1892, a new era of Ethiopian
history was beginning. As a son of a major Ethiopian
noble, Tafari was afforded honors from a young age.
For instance, when he was just thirteen years old, he was given
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the title of Deja's Match of Garam Mulatta, an administrative
region near the city of Harar. Deja's match literally means
keeper of the door and shows that he was a protector of sorts
of the region while still barelya teenager.
Yet there was little sign at this time that he would ascend
to a position of imperial authority.
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Despite the fact that he was related to the imperial family.
Emperor Menelik the Second had aclear line of succession in
place. He had two daughters, Scherega
and Zelditu. Through these, Menelik had
several grandsons, one of whom, Lijiasu, the son of Scherega,
was eventually designated by Menelik as his successor.
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Meanwhile, Tafari's youth also saw a concerted effort by the
Kingdom of Italy to connect its two colonies of Eritrea and
Somaliland by conquering Abyssinia.
In 1895 the Italians invaded Abyssinia, but Emperor Medelic's
modernization efforts proved beneficial and the short lived
First Italo Ethiopian War ended a year later in 1896, when an
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Italian invasion force of some 15,000 men were decisively
defeated by a much larger Ethiopian army of upwards of
75,000 at the Battle of Adwa. With this, Abyssinia's
independence was secured for a generation.
In his teenage years, Tafari waspromoted further within the
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empire. In 19 O 7, for instance, he was
appointed as a governor of the province of Sidamo in the South
of Ethiopia. He sighed a daughter during this
time, the future Princess Roman Walk, though the identity of her
mother is not entirely certain. In 1911 he married Menen Asval,
also a member of the Imperial family, and this was around the
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time when Emperor Menelik the Second, who was nearing his 70th
year, became increasingly more incapacitated due to a series of
strokes he had suffered. He eventually died in 1913,
leaving his 18 year old grandsonLiju Yasu as the emperor
designate. Yasu had been serving as de
facto emperor for some time by 1913 on account of his
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grandfather's illness. Under such circumstances, this
might have allowed him to solidify his position in advance
of the emperor's death, but instead the direct opposite had
occurred. Yasu had found himself
increasingly opposed by the Council of Ministers, which his
grandfather had established. And even by his own aunt
Menelik's younger daughter, Princess Zeoditu.
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Thus, when Menelik finally died in December 1913, the Council of
Ministers and the Princess suppressed news of his passing
and did not confirm Yasu as the new emperor.
He was left to enjoy some semblance of power in the months
that followed, but his accessionwould never be proclaimed and he
would never be given an imperialname.
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There were multiple reasons for this opposition to Yasu.
Firstly, in the final years of Menelik's reign, the young
Prince had shown himself disinclined to the kind of
administration and management which was necessary for the
ruler of a rapidly modernizing empire.
Secondly, and more importantly, they were concerns that he was
disposed to Islam over the Christian faith which was
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central to Ethiopian political life.
The latter issue was unacceptable to the Council of
Ministers, and when rumors that Yasu had converted to Islam
mounted in the mid 1910s, they moved to depose him as emperor.
In the autumn of 1916. He was placed under arrest and
would spend the rest of his life, down to the mid 1930s in
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detention following his removal from power.
So D2 was proclaimed as Empress of Ethiopia, but with the
succession now unsure, it was decided that her cousin Lich
Tavari Makonen, the future Emperor Hailee Selassie, would
be appointed as her Regent and designated successor.
Evidently, Tafari's tenure as a regional governor of several
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provinces in the late 1900s and into the 1910s had been
successful, and he had weatheredthe political intrigue of the
years of Yasu's brief reign verywell.
Thus, the stage was set for Tafari to one day succeed
Zoditou, who was entering her 40s when she became Empress.
And did not have any other clearsuccessor.
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In the years that followed, a clear delineation developed
within the government of Abyssinia between Empress
Zoditou and the Regent. Tafari.
She was a traditionalist and a conservative ruler.
While he was following the path hewn by Emperor Menelik the
Second in wishing to modernize Ethiopia, in theory, the Empress
was by far the more powerful figure, but her position was
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weaker than any of her predecessors as ruler of
Abyssinia for the simple reason that.
She was a. Woman in a society which
prioritized male rule. As such, Tafari was able to
claim a great deal more influence than would have been
typical of the power dynamic between them in most other
circumstances. Both had their factions.
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She was favoured by the Ethiopian Church, which looked
kindly on her conservative values, while Tafari was
supported by a clear majority ofthe Council of Ministers.
Eventually, in the course of the1920s, he emerged as the more
powerful figure and long before her rule would end, Zodito had
begun to withdraw from government and allowed Tafari to
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continue his modernization efforts in the 1920's.
The modernization program which was implemented in the 1920s was
multifaceted. Much of it centered on trying to
modernize the government and administration of Abyssinia to
make it more like those of the European powers.
There was a precedent for this. The non European power which had
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modernized most effectively in the 19th century was the Empire
of Japan. It had done so by adopting
Western methods and had thus resisted western encroachments
and established itself as a major power itself in the Far
East by the 1920s. Abyssinia aimed to at least
partially emulate this approach.Thus, a Western style government
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was established by Tafari one, with ministers responsible for
individual aspects of governancein tandem.
There was a move. Away from the feudal nature of
Ethiopian government to a political system where
individuals were promoted based on their abilities rather than
their noble rank. Finally, Abyssinia applied for
membership in the newly established League of Nations, a
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forerunner of the United Nations.
It became a member in 1923, one of the few non Western nations
to ever become a member of the League.
Even more significant were the attempted economic and social
reforms which were introduced during the reign of Empress
Zeoditu and the Regency of Tafari.
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Already the first electricity grids had been introduced to
Addis Ababa in the mid 1910s, and this was expanded outwards
in the 1920s. At the same time, efforts were
initiated to begin linking the main cities with roads and
eventually railway lines. The Telegraph and other
communication systems, which hadbecome commonplace in the
Western world in the second-halfof the 19th century, also
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finally arrived to Abyssinia, albeit in a limited fashion.
The National Bank of Ethiopia was founded in 1927 to bolster
the economy, and excessive lending rates were prohibited.
Perhaps most importantly, the judicial system was overhauled
with the Feta Negas Law Code. A legal system which had been
used in Ethiopia for centuries and which imposed brutal
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punishments for moderate crimes,such as the loss of a hand for
being found guilty of theft, wasgradually phased out in favor of
a Western judicial system based on elements of the civil and
common law. But there was a major backward
element to Abyssinian society which remained.
Slavery was still widespread here a century after it had been
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prohibited throughout much of the Western world.
Tokenistic efforts were made to end this in the 1920s as the
Western powers criticized the retention of the system in
Ethiopia, but Tafari was unwilling to commit to any major
efforts to eliminate it from Abyssinian society at this time.
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Meanwhile, Tafari's international reputation was
growing, and by the end of the 1920s he was increasingly viewed
as the face of Abyssinia on the world stage rather than the
Empress. Much of this was owing to
numerous trips abroad and state visits.
For instance, in 1924 he undertook a tour of numerous
foreign capitals and major cities with other members of the
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extended Imperial family and thegovernment.
This was a fact finding mission as much as anything else, as
Tafari and others sought to gainfrom direct experience of the
Western societies they were attempting to emulate.
The Abyssinian delegation, with its ostentatious displays of
wealth and court ritual, made a significant impression in London
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and Paris, where Tafari met KingGeorge the 5th and the French
Prime Minister Bremen Poincare. Another significant goal of this
foreign tour was to try to convince the British and French
governments to provide Abyssiniawith access to the Red Sea by
surrendering some territory in its colonial enclaves in
Somaliland. Elsewhere in the Middle East and
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North Africa, Tafari was greetedwarmly as the all but head of
state of virtually the only African nation which had
withstood European colonization in the 19th century.
All of this ensured that before he would ever become emperor,
Tafari was well established on the international stage.
By 1928, Tafari's position at home in Abyssinia was such that
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the Empress could not but promote him ever.
Further. But this time he had monopolized
power within the Council of Ministers and, more importantly,
had also moved to secure the loyalty of the heads of the
military and police forces. Thus, on the 7th of October
1928, he was crowned as Negus, an Abyssinian title.
Equivalent to a king, though still below that of emperor or
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Empress. This replaced his earlier
honorific of Ras, which had signified his position within
the Imperial line. In the months that followed,
tensions began to brew between the Empress's faction and that
of Tafari, ultimately culminating in January 1930 in
the outbreak of a borderline civil war between Tafari and Gug
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Siwela, the Empress's husband. He not only wished to reassert
his wife's authority within the Empire, but now had designs of
replacing Tafari as the head of the government and having
himself crowned as Emperor. Guxsouella's rebellion
culminated in a major meeting ofhis forces and the supporters of
Tafari at the Battle of Anhem onthe 31st of March 1930.
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But with their superior Western armaments and methods, which
included the use of modern aircraft, Tafari's supporters
quickly defeated Gugzawela's army.
E himself was killed in the fighting.
Then, in a seemingly unconnecteddevelopment, the Empress died of
natural causes. Just two days later, clearing
the way for Tafari to claim absolute power in Abyssinia
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after years of dual rule betweenhim and the Empress.
A mourning period of over. Half a year was imposed
following the passing of EmpressZoditu, but at last, on the 2nd
of November 1930, Tafari was proclaimed as the new Emperor of
Abyssinia and crowned that same day at the Cathedral of Saint
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George in Addis Ababa. Emissaries from many Western
nations attended the event, and Tafari featured on the cover of
Time magazine. That November.
He also adopted a new name and title.
The title he obtained was now now Negusa Nagast, the King of
Kings, while his imperial name would be Haile Selassie.
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Haile means power of and Selassie means Trinity, so the
name Haile Selassie effectively means the power of the Trinity.
However, as we will see later, the former name he bore for much
of the 1920s, Rastafari, was to gain currency again in later
years and become increasingly well known globally more
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immediately in the early just after his accession as emperor,
Haile Selassie the first the newruler of Ethiopia, quickly
oversaw the introduction of Ethiopia's first modern
constitution in 1931. This provided for the
establishment of a bicameral legislature with a parliament
and an upper House of Lords withwhom the emperor would share
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power. It was also intended that a new
constitution would further lead to the end of the Feta Nagast
legal system and its replacementwith a Western.
Judicial. Code.
The first. Years of Selassie reign as
emperor were marked by his efforts to continue and expand
the modernization program he hadfirst initiated as Regent in the
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1920s. However, a shadow was.
Increasingly hanging over Ethiopia, back in 1922, the
Italian government had been taken over by the National
Fascist Party led by Benito Mussolini after the infamous
March on Rome by 30,000 paramilitary fascist Black
Shirts. One of Mussolini's great desires
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was to build Italy into a great power again and to resurrect the
empire Italians had enjoyed backin the days of Rome to millennia
earlier. To that end, in the 1920s he had
engaged in a series of aggressive actions, initiating A
brutal war of conquest in Libya,which had been a nominal colony
of Italy's since 1912 as well. As bombing the.
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Island of Corfu during a disputewith the Kingdom of Greece,
annexing the city of Fume in what is now Croatia, and
establishing A protectorate overAlbania through a series of
treaties in the mid 1920s. With these advances made in the
early 1930s, Mussolini's attentions turned to the Horn of
Africa, where he increasingly wished to correct what he deemed
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to be an historical. Failing of Italy's It's lost to
Ethiopia in the first Italo Ethiopian war back in the 1890s.
If Abyssinia could be conquered,it would also make a continuous
colony of Italy's lands in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Italian
Somaliland, in turn making it the predominant colonial power
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in the Horn of Africa. In 1934, tensions between
Selassie's government and the Italian colonial administration
in Eritrea and Somaliland began to flare over a long running
boundary dispute which had been caused by Italy's wish to build
a railway line through the region connecting it's 2 divided
colonies. Which Ethiopia was in the middle
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of this? Had culminated in Italy building
a military Fort at Wawa in eastern Ethiopia in December
1934. The Italian presence here was
challenged by Selassie's government when Abyssinian
troops were sent to Wawa on the 5th of December.
This led to violent engagements between the Italians and The
Ethiopians, resulting in dozens of deaths on both sides.
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An international diplomatic standoff followed, now known as
the Abyssinia Crisis. In early January 1935,
Selassie's government protested to the League of Nations.
Months of diplomatic toing and froing would follow, but
essentially the British and French governments, who were
best placed to act as intermediaries, were unwilling
to block Italian aggression at atime when they were trying to
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win over Mussolini as an ally inEurope in the face of the rise
of the Nazis following Adolf Hitler's seizure of power in
Germany in 1933. Consequently, while negotiations
followed for months, it eventually became clear to
Selassie's government that the Italians were intent on using
the Wild wild. Incident in December 1934 and
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the ensuing diplomatic standoff as an excuse to declare war on
Abyssinia and that the League ofNations was not going to take
any effective measures to try tostop Mussolini's aggression.
The second. Italo Abyssinian war commenced
on the 3rd of October 1935 when the Italian General Emilio de
Bono crossed over the border from Italies colony of Eritrea
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into Northern Ethiopia with 10s of thousands of Italian troops.
There was no formal declaration of war.
This was to be one of the most significant conflicts globally
during the interwar period between the First World War and
the Second World War, eventuallyinvolving hundreds of thousands
of troops and personnel on both sides, it would last for just
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over a half a year. The sides were evenly matched
throughout though. While The Ethiopians were
numerically superior, despite the best efforts to modernize
their army since the 1890s, their forces were still
resoundingly based on mass infantry divisions.
For instance, Selassie's government had just a handful of
tanks, and the Ethiopian Air Force consisted of little more
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than a dozen planes. By way of contrast, Mussolini's
government was eventually able to deploy hundreds of tanks in
East Africa, as well as massive artillery barrages and a
significant Air Force presence. Thus, while.
The Italian army would be shown in later years to be enormously
deficient in European terms. The war which was initiated in
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the autumn of 1935, was clearly a David versus Goliath type
conflict in which the Italians had the upper hand in a way
which they had not back in 1895 when the first Italo Ethiopian
war was launched. In response.
To the invasion of Abyssinia. The League of Nations sanctioned
Italy on the 7th of October 1935, four days after the
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initial incursion by De Bonos troops.
The two primary countries withinthe League to whom the
responsibility fell for challenging the Italian
government's actions were Britain and France, who were the
foremost colonial powers across the African continent and who
had colonies nearby themselves in Somaliland and all across
Ethiopia's western and southern borders in Sudan and Kenya.
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In the case of Britain. Yet while the Conservative LED
national government of Stanley Baldwin in Britain campaigned on
and won an election in in November 1935 on the premise of
supporting the League of Nationsand its mission.
Baldwin. 'S.
Government almost immediately capitulated to Italian
aggression. Within days of arriving in
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office, the new British Foreign Secretary, Samuel Hall, was
engaged in talks with his Frenchcounterpart Pierre Laval, who
was also the French Prime Minister at the time, about how
the war could be quickly broughtto an end.
Here, the desire to appease Italy and prevent it from
drifting closer to Nazi Germany was paramount, and the whole
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Laval Pact, details of which were leaked by the British press
in early December, effectively outlined a plan whereby
Abyssinia would lose roughly half of its territory to Italy,
allowing the Italians to connecttheir colonies of Eritrea and
Somaliland. This was completely unacceptable
to Selassie's government and a complete betrayal of the mandate
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of the League of Nations. Outrage followed.
Hall resigned as British foreignminister and ultimately the
revelation of details of the pact brought to an end any
efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
The Hall of Al Pact and the wider Abyssinia Crisis is
generally seen as also sounding the death knell of the League of
Nations, an institution which had now conclusively proven its
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inability to prevent aggressive nations like Italy and the
Empire of Japan from invading its enemies with no
justification. With the.
Termination of diplomatic negotiations In December 1935,
the war intensified on the ground in Abyssinia.
By now the Ethiopian government was making preparations for its
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own counter offensive against the Italian incursion in the
north. This was led by Selassie in
person and had hoped to sever the Italian lines of
communication and launch a counter invasion of Eritrea.
Initially it met with considerable success.
But in the. Early months of 1936, the tide
turned once General Pietro Bardolio, who had previously
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overseen the Italian campaign inLibya, was appointed as governor
of Eritrea and the leader of themilitary effort in succession to
De Bono, whose oversight of the invasion had been deemed too
cautious by Mussolini. Bardolio initiated a brutal
campaign in January 1936 in which poison gas was widely used
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against the Ethiopian armies. Through these methods, a series
of victories were quickly won byBardolio at the battles of
Tenbien, Amba, Aradam and Shire in northern Ethiopia in the late
winter and early spring of 1936.A final effort to maintain the
northern front by Selassie was defeated at the Battle of Mechu
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on the 31st of March 1936, following which northern
Ethiopia was effectively under Italian control.
On the 20. 6th of April 1936, Bardolio launched what he termed
the March of the Iron Will, a swift Dr. southwards from the
northern front around Desi in Wallow province towards the
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Abyssinian capital of Addis Ababa, a distance of some 200
kilometers. The campaign was accompanied by
much fanfare and propaganda in the fascist media.
Back home in Italy. A large mechanized column was
the centerpiece of this drive, with over 2000 tanks, cars,
trucks and other vehicles included in the operation which
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transported some 12,500 Italian troops speedily towards
Selassie's capital. By now, the Ethiopian armies
were decimated from the northernoffensive, and as the Italians
neared Addis Ababa in early May,the Emperor and his family fled
from the capital and made their way towards the border with
French Somaliland, crossing overas Selassie went into what would
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be years of exile from his realm.
Three days later, at roughly 4:00 PM on the afternoon of the
5th of May 1936, Bardolio arrived in Addis Ababa at the
front of a column of 1700 vehicles.
In the hours that followed, Italian troops began entering
the city in what was more of a procession than an actual siege
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and occupied prominent buildingsall over the capital.
The. War was now effectively over.
The second. Italo Ethiopian war came to an
end in May 1936 with the fall ofAddis Ababa and the flight of
Emperor Haile Selassie from Ethiopia.
However, pockets of resistance remained, particularly in the
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South and West of the country, which were still unoccupied by
any Italian forces. Accordingly, fighting would
continue for months and years tocome.
Indeed, all of Abyssinia was never actually brought under
effective Italian control, yet from May 1936, the Italian
government claimed to have won the war.
As such, the new colony of Italian Ethiopia was declared to
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be in existence by Mussolini on the 9th of May 1936.
However, this was soon annexed into the newly proclaimed colony
of Italian East Africa, which incorporated Abyssinia, Eritrea
and Italian Somaliland and whichstretched all the way across the
Horn of Africa, completing the ambition for Italy to create a
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contiguous colony here 40 years after it had first been
attempted in the mid 1890s. Here the Italians would impose A
brutal form of colonial governance, following many of
the quasi genocidal policies which had been developed in
Libya in the 1920s of confining thousands of people to
concentration camps and favoringa divide and rule policy whereby
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the different ethnic peoples of Ethiopia were pitted against
each other. With the.
Italians now largely in control of his country, Emperor Selassie
made his way to Europe. His first mission was to present
Abyssinia's case at the League of Nations in Geneva.
However, his timing was far frompropitious.
In Europe, Nazi Germany had initiated an aggressive program
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of military rearmament in 1935, and in the spring of 1936, while
Selassie was fighting in northern Ethiopia, Hitler had
ordered his troops into the Rhineland of western Germany,
which German troops had been prevented from entering under
the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty. That brought the First World War
to an end. Consequently, the governments of
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Britain and France were no more willing to adopt an aggressive
stance against Italy in 1936 than they had been the previous
autumn. Nevertheless, while his efforts
at redress were in vain, Selassie gained a claim for a
speech he made at a meeting of the League on the 12th of May
1936, in the course of which he denounced the rise of fascism
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and the use of poison gas by theItalians in East Africa.
He was subsequently named Time magazine's man of the year, but
the result for Ethiopia was the same.
The League was unwilling to takeconcerted action against Italy,
which in any event withdrew frommembership of it in December
1937. Meanwhile, Selassie headed for
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England, where he would live in exile throughout the late 1930s.
While he was. In exile in England, the world's
politics was in continual flux. Germany's aggression intensified
in 1938 with the annexation of Austria and then Czechoslovakia
in 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland the following September,
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Britain and France declared war,triggering the start of the
Second World War. For the time being, Mussolini
adopted a cautious stance and did not enter the war.
But when the Germans undertook ablistering military campaign in
the summer of 1940 that effectively brought continental
Western Europe under Berlin's control, the Italians decided to
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side with Hitler, declaring war on Britain and France on the
10th of June 1940 and invading southeastern France in an effort
to acquire territory there. What this now meant was that the
Italians and the British would square off to each other in East
Africa. On the 13th of June 1940.
An Italian air raid was launchedagainst British Kenya in the
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first action. Of the East Africa campaign.
This was all part of a wider Italian industry initiative to
conquer Britain's colonies in Egypt and Sudan and thus unite
Italian East Africa with Italy'sgrowing expanse of territory in
North Africa. At first these campaigns
proceeded well for Mussolini, but by early 1941 the weaknesses
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of the Italian military were becoming wholly apparent.
Early in 1941, with Italian operations in the Sahara Desert
faltering, Mussolini called on Hitler for aid.
A German Expeditionary force, the famous Africa Corps led by
Ellen Rommel, was dispatched to North Africa that much, but
there would be no major militarysupport offered to the Italian
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position in East Africa. Thus, in the course of 1941, the
British gradually turned the tide here and began pushing the
Italians back into Ethiopia and Eritrea after their initial
advances into Sudan and Kenya. By this time, Selassie had left
Britain and had returned to the Horn of Africa to oversee parts
of the campaign to reclaim his homeland from the Italians
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himself. The fighting here was undertaken
by a broad mix of British, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Free French
and Free Belgian forces. Crucially, they had.
Naval superiority and by early 1941 a new front was being
opened in Eritrea following a naval operation in the Red Sea.
As a result, by the late spring of 1941, the Italian defence was
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collapsing on all fronts as the troops in East Africa found
themselves effectively cut off from major reinforcements by
Mussolini's government. Finally.
On. The 5th of May 1941, in an event
which was stage, managed to occur exactly five years after
Bardolio had arrived with his Italian forces to Addis Ababa
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Selassie. Re entered the.
Capital of Ethiopia and proclaimed the liberation of the
country from Italy. The restoration of the Solomonic
dynasty and Emperor Haile Selassie to power in Ethiopia
carried a proviso from the British, who had largely
restored the emperor to power. Slavery had to be banned
entirely in Ethiopia. There had been piece meal
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efforts at doing so as far back as the 1850s, at which time
Britain was using its influence as the global superpower of the
19th century to try to curb the slave trade across Africa.
These had intensified under Emperor Menelik the Second and
during Selassie's time as Regentback in the 1920s.
But slavery had never fully beeneradicated in Ethiopia and was
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still a feature of Ethiopian society when the Second Italo
Ethiopian War was initiated in 1935.
Following the conquest, the Italians had declared the
abolition of slavery A paradoxically humanitarian act
for a state which elsewhere in Africa was engaging in genocide
and whose German ally would soonbe using the slave labour of
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millions of Jews, Poles, Czechs,Russians and other subject
peoples across Central and Eastern Europe to drive its war
economy. The British government made it
clear to Selassie that this abolition needed to continue
once he was restored to power, and that he would have to take
concerted steps to make a reality of that abolition.
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A decree was issued by the emperor to that effect in 1942,
from which date we might say that slavery was finally
abolished in Ethiopia. Though the East.
Africa Campaign had resulted in a significant victory for the
Allies in 1941. It took four more years for the
Second World War to end in the defeat of Nazi Germany and its
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allies. When it did, the League of
Nations was succeeded by the United Nations, which Ethiopia
became a charter member of in 1948.
Selassie had gained favorable consideration for his nation
when it came to the settlement of East Africa in the aftermath
of the conflict, when the Ogadenregion was granted to Ethiopia,
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a region which had long been disputed by the Italians,
British and Abyssinia prior to the war.
Selassie's main concern during these years was to continue the
modernization of his country. Considerable strides had been
made in doing so in the 1920s and 1930s, but there were still
deeply entrenched vested interests in the country within
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the nobility and the Church, which were resistant to too much
change occurring too rapidly. Selassie was determined to
accelerate the pace of change asthe war came to an end in the
mid 1940s. Eventually this would result in
1955 with a revised constitutionwhich moved beyond the
constitution of 1931 and incorporated elements of the US
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Constitution. However, in practice the
election of parliamentary delegates remained in the hands
of the nobility and other powerful bodies and Ethiopia
certainly did not become a western style democracy under
Selassie's rule in the post war years.
Many. Controversial issues began to
arise in Ethiopia in the post war period, particularly so
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during the 1950s. One of these concerned one of
the former Italian colonies, Eritrea.
This small northern neighbor of Ethiopia's had been placed under
British administration followingthe conclusion of the East
Africa Campaign in 1941. In the aftermath of the war, the
Allied powers were in favor of Ethiopia's claims to Eritrea,
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though a small section of the Western of the colony was to be
joined to British Sudan. Accordingly, when British rule
of Eritrea came to an end in theearly 1950's, the country was
joined with Ethiopia, but this was to be a federal union in
which Eritrea retained its own identity and had certain
devolved powers held in the hands of its own government.
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Selassie, though, was determinedto bring Eritrea, which provided
Ethiopia with access to the Red Sea, under greater centralized
control. To this end, in 1962 he
dissolved the independent Eritrean parliament and annexed
the country. By that time, the Eritrean
Liberation Front, or ELF, an independence movement, had
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launched an armed struggle against Ethiopian rule.
The Eritrean War of Independencewould continue for the next 30
years, with a conflict becoming a front in the Cold War as the
ELF and other independence movements drifted into the
Soviet bloc in order to acquire military aid from the USSR,
Cuba, and others. The Eritrean.
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War of independence was not the only conflict which Emperor
Selassie's government faced. Ethnic tensions were also
becoming more severe in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ethiopia is a nation with approximately 80 different
ethnic groups. The empire had effectively been
formed through conquest over several centuries, and this had
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resulted in many ethnic groups remaining unreconciled to the
dominance of Ethiopia, above allby the Otomo and Amhara peoples,
who made-up over half of the country's population.
Selasi himself was of Otomo descent.
The solution which was favoured by Selassie and the Ethiopian
government to this situation in the post war period was to
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foster the concept of ethnic federalism, whereby Ethiopia was
divided into over a dozen major provinces in which different
ethnicities predominated. However, rather than fixing the
ethnic problem, this fueled it, ensuring that many Oromo,
Amhara, Tigrains, Somalis and others continue to shape their
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identity around their ethnicities rather than their
shared identity as Ethiopians. This was already causing unrest
in the country during Selassie'sreign, but as we will see, this
has been compounded in more recent times.
Of all the. Ethnic peoples of Ethiopia.
Those who were most antagonisticto the government, were the
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Tigrayans, who constituted A sizeable proportion of the
overall population, roughly 7 or8%, and were the dominant people
in Tigray province in the north of the country.
The antipathy of Selassie's government towards the Tigrayans
was clear for all to see in the 1950s, as the imperial
government persistently neglected the province despite
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mounting evidence of pressure onits resources and the
possibility of famine as a result of the destruction of
crops by locusts, drought and disease outbreaks of smallpox,
typhus and other high mortality illnesses.
When Tigray eventually did enterfamine in 1958, the central
government in Addis Ababa did very little to try to relieve
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the situation, leading to 10s ofthousands of deaths thereafter.
A more concerted effort was madein 1959 to address the
situation, with Selassie's government being provided with
considerable aid from the administration of U.S.
President Dwight Eisenhower. Nevertheless, by the time the
worst of the famine subsided in 1961, it is estimated that about
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100,000 people had died in Tigray and surrounding regions,
while renewed famine struck northern Ethiopia again in the
mid 1960s, while Selassie. 'S reign was increasingly being
blackened by controversies at home, including famine in
Tigray, a war of independence inEritrea, and ethnic tensions
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within Ethiopia. Selassie, and by extension
Ethiopia, continued to hold a position of considerable
international respect. As one of the.
World's longest serving heads ofstate.
He was usually afforded a position of considerable pre
eminence at major international events such as the funeral of
President John F Kennedy in in Washington DC in 1963 and the
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former French President Charles de Gaulle in France in 1970.
Ethiopia also supplied. Peace contingents to many areas
of conflict, such as the Congo in the early 1960s and became a
prominent nation within the non aligned movement of nations
which were not members of eitherNATO or the Warsaw Pact.
The respective military alliances of the United States
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and the Soviet Union in the ColdWar, Perhaps most significant of
all in terms of international diplomacy at this time, was
Selassie's leading role in the establishment of the
Organization of African Unity in1963, the forerunner of the
African Union. The headquarters of the
Organization of African Unity was located in Addis Ababa for
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many years under Selassie's rule.
Not only did Selassie continue to enjoy a vaunted reputation on
the international stage in the second iteration of his reign
after the Second World War, but he was viewed by many as a
messianic character. In the 1930s a new quasi
religion and social movement emerged in parts of Africa and
(44:06):
the Caribbean, one which mixed elements of the Back to Africa
movement which proclaimed that people of African descent in the
Americas would wish to return tothe African continent now that
slavery was at an end. And also Ethiopianism, a branch
of Christian worship which had arisen in the late 19th century
amongst African Christians, one which looked to the Ethiopian
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church as a native Christian Church within Africa, rather
than having African Christians take their directives from
European religious leaders in Rome, Canterbury or elsewhere.
This new movement combines specific belief in elements of
biblical theology and a wide array of different social
beliefs. It took its name from Selassie's
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Regent title, dating from the 1920s, Rastafari.
Thus, the new religion was knownas Rastafarianism, and
proponents of it viewed Selassieas a Messiah, one who may be the
second coming of Christ. These views must be understood
in light of Ethiopia's position as the only African state which
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resisted colonial conquest in the 19th century.
Selassie did not explicitly seekto be recognized as a messianic
character within Rastafarianism,but he also did not attempt to
refute efforts to exalt him in this way.
Thus, as Rastafarianism gained impossible popularity in the
1950s in countries like Jamaica,Selassie took on an unusual
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significance for many people whohad never been anywhere near
Ethiopia. In.
Contrast to the view of him within Rastafarianism as a quasi
messianic figure, Haile Selassiewas actually becoming more
oppressive at home in Ethiopia. The last 20 or so years of his
reign saw the development of elements of a police state in
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the country. There were reasons for
Selassie's increasing concern about the security of his
position. In 1960, while the emperor was
on a state visit to Brazil, elements from the Kabur Zabagna,
the imperial bodyguard, had attempted A coup d'etat back in
Ethiopia. Led by the brothers Gedimane and
Mengustu Newe, the insurrectionists had proclaimed
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Selassie's son and heir, the Crown Prince Asphalwassen, as
the new emperor. The Prince appears to have been
held captive, but how complicit he might have been in the coup
attempt remains unclear to this day.
In any event, after four days ofviolence in and around Addis
Ababa in mid-december, resultingin over 300 deaths, the
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attempted overthrow of the emperor had been suppressed and
the leaders were killed. Nevertheless, the 1960 attempted
coup was significant in the development of a more repressive
authoritarian regime in Ethiopiaunder Selassie in the 1960s and
into the 1970s. Hand in hand with the
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development of this more authoritarian streak in
Ethiopian politics was a growingdisdain for human rights in the
country. In the 1960s, as student protest
movements emerged and as communism gained favor in some
circles, Selassie's regime dealtever more frequently in mass
arrests and the disappearance ofpolitical opponents, the press.
(47:22):
Was. Widely censored and intimidation
of groups which questioned Selassie and the government was
widespread by the 1960s. Compounding matters was the war
in Eritrea, where the Imperial Ethiopian army was engaging in
civilian atrocities by the late 1960s.
For instance, in December 1970 /800 civilians were killed by
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Selassie's forces when they attacked the village of Honor.
Moreover, at Jazimor in July 1967 / 170 men were killed by
Ethiopian soldiers. Admittedly, some of these
atrocities appear not to have been state ordered, but the war
in Eritrea was ultimately of Selassie's making.
Unsurprisingly, by the early 1970s, despite the general
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positive view of Selassie internationally, civil rights
groups such as Freedom House were declaring that Ethiopia was
moving towards being a repressive authoritarian regime
where human rights were being contravened.
By the early. 1970s Selassie's rule and government was becoming
increasingly unpopular among substantial sections of the
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population of Ethiopia. He still garnered support
amongst traditional groups such as the Church and the nobility,
who had much to lose if the old imperial order was overthrown,
but many others had no affinity for the ancient ruling dynasty.
This disaffection was further compounded in 1972 by the onset
of a new severe famine in Ethiopia.
(48:51):
This time it was centred on Wallow Province in the north of
the country near Tigray. This was brought on by drought
and was compounded by an inadequate government response
and a failure to import extra foodstuffs and deliver them to
the affected areas. It is estimated that between
40,000 and 80,000 people died inWallow and the adjoining regions
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in the course of 1972 and 1973. While the competition for
resources exacerbated ethnic tensions here between groups
such as the Oromos, Afas and Somalis, what was worse, news
soon spread that at the height of the famine, foodstuffs which
were actually being successfullyproduced in Wallow were being
exported out of the region to Addis Ababa and other parts of
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Ethiopia. Eventually.
The unrest at Selassie's reign began to boil over.
Perhaps this was unsurprising in1972, as famine was gripping
wallow. The Emperor had turned 80 years
of age. He had been in power in one form
or another for over half a century, albeit as Regent for
the 1st 10 or so years and with a hiatus between 1936 and 1941.
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The first signs of disturbance arose in January 1974 when
Garrison soldiers in the town ofNegele, Burana mutinied over a
lack of clean drinking water andpoor paying conditions.
In a symbolic gesture, they detained one of their commanding
officers, Lieutenant General Teresa de Bali, and made show of
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him having to drink the water they were forced to consume.
This resonated with many across Ethiopia who were disgruntled at
the rigid social structure whichprevailed in the country and the
perception of there being an elite of individuals who were
connected to Selassie's regime. In early February, as news of
the mutiny spread, protests and insurrectionary movements
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developed across the country. Crucially, many elements within
the military and the police services joined the
disturbances. This auged I'll for Selassie,
whose grip on power, like any authoritarian ruler, could only
be maintained so long as the military and security forces
remained loyal. By early.
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March Selassie was under sufficient pressure that he made
a number of announcements that political concessions would be
made to make ministers and senior government officials more
accountable to the parliament. Moreover, the 1955 constitution
would be re evaluated to see howEthiopia's politics could be
made more inclusive of differentgroups within the empire.
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Yet these compromises failed to stem the tide of unrest.
Instead, labor unions called forgeneral strike action across the
country in March 1974, and earlyin April, the significant Muslim
minority in the country began agitating for greater religious
freedoms. By that time, elements of the
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military were evidently in charge of much of the running of
the government, and Selassie waslosing control of the situation.
However, it was not until June that the infamous Dirk was set
up. This was officially known as the
Provisional Military Administrative Council and
consisted of relatively low ranking army officers and
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officials who effectively seizedpower in the summer of 1974.
That summer they began a campaign of arrests of prominent
political figures and issued a manifesto of proposed reforms.
Finally, on the 12th of September 19, 7444, years after
he first became emperor and nearly six decades since his
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accession to a position of pre eminence in Ethiopian politics,
the Derg deposed Emperor Haile Selassie.
Following his. Deposition Selassie was placed
under house arrest. His son, Crown Prince Asfal
Wasson, who had been proclaimed as Emperor by the leaders of the
failed coup of 1960, was now again proclaimed by the Dirk.
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He was not. In Ethiopia at the time and
decreed that his father's deposition and the actions of
the Provisional Military Administrative Council in
proclaiming him as emperor were illegitimate.
Accordingly, in March 1975, the Derg abolished the Ethiopian
monarchy altogether, bringing the empire to an end and
ushering in the creation of a new Ethiopian state.
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Meanwhile, the new military hunter had spent.
Much of the winter of 1974 and the spring of 1975 overseeing
the execution of hundreds of those who were associated with
the old imperial regime. This included some collateral
members of the imperial family, notably Iskinda Desta, a
grandson of Selassies who had also been a prominent figure
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within the Ethiopian Navy. The signs for the former emperor
were ominous and several months later, on the 28th of August
1975, state media announced thatSelassie had died the previous
day, the 27th of August. The official cause of death at
83 years of age was given as respiratory failure, but
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Selassie had almost certainly been strangled to death by Derg
soldiers. His remains were interred under
a concrete slab in the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Addis
Ababa. They were only finally removed
in 1992 and placed in Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis
Ababa, near those of his auspicious predecessor, Emperor
Menelich the Second. By the time.
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Selassie was killed. Ethiopia had descended into a
long civil war from which it would not emerge until the early
1990's. The Derg established Ethiopia as
a Soviet aligned country, espousing Marxist Leninist
principles in the mid 1970s. It was opposed by rival
revolutionary groups such as theEthiopian People's Revolutionary
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Party and the Tigray People's Liberation Front.
Compounding matters was the ongoing war of independence in
Eritrea and from 1977 onwards a further regional conflict as
Ethiopia found itself at war with Somalia over possession of
the province of Ogaden. In this morass of political
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conflicts, political violence amplified across the country,
with 10s of thousands being killed in the red terror
unleashed by the Derg regime in the second-half of the 1970s.
By the 1980's, the Ethiopian civil war was made even more
traumatic by the arrival of new famines, the biggest wave coming
between 1983 and 1985, in which upwards of half a million people
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perished. The fighting only eventually
came to a conclusion in 1991, once the collapse of the Soviet
Union ended the flow of weaponryinto the Horn of Africa.
By the time it ended, nearly oneand a half million people had
died from the combined effects of military conflict, disease
and famine. The end of the.
(55:49):
Ethiopian civil war in 1991 brought about a brief respite
from the country's woes. A new constitution was
established in the mid 1990s, while Eritrea finally gained its
independence after three decadesof fighting.
There were then efforts to create an ethno territorial
federal state where different ethnic groups had control over
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different provinces of the country where they were
dominant. However, renewed problems soon
arose. A new war erupted with Eritrea
in 1998. The initial fighting ceased in
2000, but border tensions and intermittent conflict have
remained A perennial problem in northern Ethiopia.
Internally, Ethiopia's efforts. To resolve its ethnic tensions
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by creating a federal state havelargely failed.
In particular, the government's antagonism towards the Tigre
minority in northern Ethiopia, which is a deep rooted legacy of
Selassie's time as Emperor, has come to.
International attention in recent years In 2020, the
Ethiopian federal government effectively initiated a war
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against Tigray, one which is ongoing as of late 2022.
And which has. Resulted in war crimes, mass
famine and behaviour by the government, which many
international observers see as genocidal.
Thus, while Ethiopia is viewed as having the potential to
become a major economic and political power in East Africa.
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As Africa experiences considerable economic expansion
in the 21st century, the structural problems of the
country, which were not only left unresolved by Selassie but
exacerbated, remain a grave problem in the Horn of Africa.
Emperor Haile. Selassie was a paradoxical
character in 20th century history.
(57:35):
On the one hand, in the first half of his reign he made major
advances in modernizing Ethiopiaeven before he became emperor
himself, while in the 1930s he emerged as a figurehead in
opposition to the rise of fascism and brutality as the
Italians invaded and conquered his nation.
This reputation as a leading statesman was cemented in the
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aftermath of the Second World War, when he forged an
independent stance on the world stage and was also well regarded
for his suppression of slavery in Ethiopia.
Overlying all of this is the most unusual position which he
has acquired as a messianic character within Rastafarianism.
However, Selassie also had many things which stand against him.
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His reign became increasingly autocratic in his later years,
and there were manifold human rights abuses committed at home
in Ethiopia between the 1950s and 1970s.
Eventually these resulted in revolution and his overthrow.
Additionally, his handling of Eritrea's position resulted in a
war which persisted for 30 yearsand after Selassie.
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'S own time, however, perhaps Selassie's greatest crime was in
failing to reconcile the ethnic and religious differences of his
nation during his long reign as both Regent and emperor, which
lasted over half a century. This failure has cast a long
shadow over modern Ethiopia and continues to create problems in
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the Horn of Africa today. What do you?
Think of Emperor Haile Selassie.Do you think his deposition by
the Italians in the 1930s created undue sympathy for him,
which has caused popular opinionto overlook his own crimes?
Please let us know in the comments section.
And in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
The man known to history as Emperor Haile Selassie the First
was born on the 23rd of July 1892 in the town of Ijaz Sagoro,
not far from the city of Harar in Ethiopia.
He was given the name Lij TewariMakonen in his youth.
Lij simply means child of, whileTefari means one who is.
(00:26):
Respected or feared? Makonen was his father's name
and so as he was growing up, he was known as the child of
Makonen, who is greatly respected.
His father, Ras Makonen, was thegovernor of the ancient walled
city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia and a key advisor to
his near kinsman Emperor Menelikthe Second, who was emperor at
(00:48):
the time. Thus, Lich Tawari Makonen was
born into a significant noble family which was related to the
current Imperial dynasty throughhis paternal grandmother.
Tafari was descended from the Solomonic line of kings who had
ruled this part of Africa since the 13th century.
Tafari's mother was boyzero Yeshima Bett Ali, the daughter
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of a ruling chief from Wallow Province to the north.
Any exploration of Tafari's lifemust start by exploring the
nature of Ethiopian society and the empire that ruled it in the
late 19th century. Ethiopia and the wider Horn of
Africa have a unique history. 1700 years ago, when the Roman
Empire ruled all of North Africa, Roman Egypt emerged as a
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major early center of Christianity in the Eastern
Mediterranean. Soon the new religion spread S
beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, down the River Nile and
the coast of the Red Sea. It gained many adherents in what
is now Ethiopia, which effectively became a Christian
country. However, with the Arab conquests
of the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th century AD,
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Ethiopia was effectively cut offfrom the rest of the Christian
world, but it did not convert toIslam.
Accordingly, over the centuries,a unique form of Christianity
developed here, one which continued to adhere to many of
the rights which were typical ofthe 4th century church.
Moreover, Ethiopian politics andculture became shrouded in
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biblical legend, and from the 13th century onwards, the rulers
of the Kingdom of Ethiopia claimed to be descended from the
biblical King Solomon. Therefore, their dynastic line
has become known as the Solomonic dynasty.
This Solomonic dynasty ruled a Kingdom which centuries ago only
constituted part of northern Ethiopia, but between the 13th
(02:44):
and 19th centuries it began expanding to the southwest and E
eventually covering an area approximate to modern day
Ethiopia. As it did so, the Ethiopian
Empire became a multicultural state, one which had many
different ethnic peoples living under the rule of the emperors.
The foremost of these were the Oromo and Amhara people, who
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between them made-up over half the population of the empire,
but significant minorities included the Somalis in the far
South and east of the country and the Tigrayans in the
northeast. These different ethnicities
spoke different languages and had somewhat different
appearances. For instance, the Oromo are are
a Khushitic people who dominatedthe northwestern part of the
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country and had been more responsive to the spread of
Islam into the region. The Amhara are a Semitic people
who dominated the Highlands of Ethiopia and were much more
committed to Oriental Orthodox Christianity.
These ethnic and religious divisions would influence
Selassie's rule and indeed the entire history of modern
Ethiopia. Indeed, so central are they to
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the country's history that the alternative name which was used
for the Ethiopian Empire at the time of Tafari's birth was
Abyssinia, from the Arabic Habassar term for mixture, a
reference to the multicultural nature of the empire.
By the mid 19th century, the Ethiopian Empire had become one
(04:12):
of the most powerful states in Africa, and it needed to be for
the great European powers. We're entering into a period of
accelerated colonization of the continent.
To the north, Egypt had effectively become a British
protectorate, and British rule was being extended down the
River Nile into Sudan, Ethiopia's western neighbor, and
eventually into Uganda and Kenya, the southern neighbors of
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Abyssinia. To the east of Abyssinia, along
the coastline of the Horn of Africa, a number of European
powers acquired territory through treaties and military
intervention in the years leading up to Tafari's birth.
The foremost of these was the Kingdom of Italy, which acquired
the colonies of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea in the
1880s, comprising most of the modern day countries of Eritrea
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and Somalia. The British and French also
carved out small enclaves in northern Somaliland.
In the end, nearly all of Africawas annexed by the European
powers in what has become known as the Scramble for Africa.
However, Abyssinia avoided this fate in large part because
Emperor Benelik the Second, who came to power in 1889, began a
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program of modernization. He established Addis Ababa as a
strong new capital in the centerof the Empire and developed an
alliance with the Russian Empirefrom 1893 onwards.
Through this, the Russians sent military advisors, scientists
and economists to Abyssinia to advise the country on how to
modernize its government, economy and military.
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With a view to. Withstanding encroachments by
the Italians, British, French and others.
Thus, when Dafari was born in 1892, a new era of Ethiopian
history was beginning. As a son of a major Ethiopian
noble, Tafari was afforded honors from a young age.
For instance, when he was just thirteen years old, he was given
(06:04):
the title of Deja's Match of Garam Mulatta, an administrative
region near the city of Harar. Deja's match literally means
keeper of the door and shows that he was a protector of sorts
of the region while still barelya teenager.
Yet there was little sign at this time that he would ascend
to a position of imperial authority.
(06:25):
Despite the fact that he was related to the imperial family.
Emperor Menelik the Second had aclear line of succession in
place. He had two daughters, Scherega
and Zelditu. Through these, Menelik had
several grandsons, one of whom, Lijiasu, the son of Scherega,
was eventually designated by Menelik as his successor.
(06:45):
Meanwhile, Tafari's youth also saw a concerted effort by the
Kingdom of Italy to connect its two colonies of Eritrea and
Somaliland by conquering Abyssinia.
In 1895 the Italians invaded Abyssinia, but Emperor Medelic's
modernization efforts proved beneficial and the short lived
First Italo Ethiopian War ended a year later in 1896, when an
(07:10):
Italian invasion force of some 15,000 men were decisively
defeated by a much larger Ethiopian army of upwards of
75,000 at the Battle of Adwa. With this, Abyssinia's
independence was secured for a generation.
In his teenage years, Tafari waspromoted further within the
(07:30):
empire. In 19 O 7, for instance, he was
appointed as a governor of the province of Sidamo in the South
of Ethiopia. He sighed a daughter during this
time, the future Princess Roman Walk, though the identity of her
mother is not entirely certain. In 1911 he married Menen Asval,
also a member of the Imperial family, and this was around the
(07:53):
time when Emperor Menelik the Second, who was nearing his 70th
year, became increasingly more incapacitated due to a series of
strokes he had suffered. He eventually died in 1913,
leaving his 18 year old grandsonLiju Yasu as the emperor
designate. Yasu had been serving as de
facto emperor for some time by 1913 on account of his
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grandfather's illness. Under such circumstances, this
might have allowed him to solidify his position in advance
of the emperor's death, but instead the direct opposite had
occurred. Yasu had found himself
increasingly opposed by the Council of Ministers, which his
grandfather had established. And even by his own aunt
Menelik's younger daughter, Princess Zeoditu.
(08:38):
Thus, when Menelik finally died in December 1913, the Council of
Ministers and the Princess suppressed news of his passing
and did not confirm Yasu as the new emperor.
He was left to enjoy some semblance of power in the months
that followed, but his accessionwould never be proclaimed and he
would never be given an imperialname.
(09:02):
There were multiple reasons for this opposition to Yasu.
Firstly, in the final years of Menelik's reign, the young
Prince had shown himself disinclined to the kind of
administration and management which was necessary for the
ruler of a rapidly modernizing empire.
Secondly, and more importantly, they were concerns that he was
disposed to Islam over the Christian faith which was
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central to Ethiopian political life.
The latter issue was unacceptable to the Council of
Ministers, and when rumors that Yasu had converted to Islam
mounted in the mid 1910s, they moved to depose him as emperor.
In the autumn of 1916. He was placed under arrest and
would spend the rest of his life, down to the mid 1930s in
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detention following his removal from power.
So D2 was proclaimed as Empress of Ethiopia, but with the
succession now unsure, it was decided that her cousin Lich
Tavari Makonen, the future Emperor Hailee Selassie, would
be appointed as her Regent and designated successor.
Evidently, Tafari's tenure as a regional governor of several
(10:08):
provinces in the late 1900s and into the 1910s had been
successful, and he had weatheredthe political intrigue of the
years of Yasu's brief reign verywell.
Thus, the stage was set for Tafari to one day succeed
Zoditou, who was entering her 40s when she became Empress.
And did not have any other clearsuccessor.
(10:31):
In the years that followed, a clear delineation developed
within the government of Abyssinia between Empress
Zoditou and the Regent. Tafari.
She was a traditionalist and a conservative ruler.
While he was following the path hewn by Emperor Menelik the
Second in wishing to modernize Ethiopia, in theory, the Empress
was by far the more powerful figure, but her position was
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weaker than any of her predecessors as ruler of
Abyssinia for the simple reason that.
She was a. Woman in a society which
prioritized male rule. As such, Tafari was able to
claim a great deal more influence than would have been
typical of the power dynamic between them in most other
circumstances. Both had their factions.
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She was favoured by the Ethiopian Church, which looked
kindly on her conservative values, while Tafari was
supported by a clear majority ofthe Council of Ministers.
Eventually, in the course of the1920s, he emerged as the more
powerful figure and long before her rule would end, Zodito had
begun to withdraw from government and allowed Tafari to
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continue his modernization efforts in the 1920's.
The modernization program which was implemented in the 1920s was
multifaceted. Much of it centered on trying to
modernize the government and administration of Abyssinia to
make it more like those of the European powers.
There was a precedent for this. The non European power which had
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modernized most effectively in the 19th century was the Empire
of Japan. It had done so by adopting
Western methods and had thus resisted western encroachments
and established itself as a major power itself in the Far
East by the 1920s. Abyssinia aimed to at least
partially emulate this approach.Thus, a Western style government
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was established by Tafari one, with ministers responsible for
individual aspects of governancein tandem.
There was a move. Away from the feudal nature of
Ethiopian government to a political system where
individuals were promoted based on their abilities rather than
their noble rank. Finally, Abyssinia applied for
membership in the newly established League of Nations, a
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forerunner of the United Nations.
It became a member in 1923, one of the few non Western nations
to ever become a member of the League.
Even more significant were the attempted economic and social
reforms which were introduced during the reign of Empress
Zeoditu and the Regency of Tafari.
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Already the first electricity grids had been introduced to
Addis Ababa in the mid 1910s, and this was expanded outwards
in the 1920s. At the same time, efforts were
initiated to begin linking the main cities with roads and
eventually railway lines. The Telegraph and other
communication systems, which hadbecome commonplace in the
Western world in the second-halfof the 19th century, also
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finally arrived to Abyssinia, albeit in a limited fashion.
The National Bank of Ethiopia was founded in 1927 to bolster
the economy, and excessive lending rates were prohibited.
Perhaps most importantly, the judicial system was overhauled
with the Feta Negas Law Code. A legal system which had been
used in Ethiopia for centuries and which imposed brutal
(13:49):
punishments for moderate crimes,such as the loss of a hand for
being found guilty of theft, wasgradually phased out in favor of
a Western judicial system based on elements of the civil and
common law. But there was a major backward
element to Abyssinian society which remained.
Slavery was still widespread here a century after it had been
(14:10):
prohibited throughout much of the Western world.
Tokenistic efforts were made to end this in the 1920s as the
Western powers criticized the retention of the system in
Ethiopia, but Tafari was unwilling to commit to any major
efforts to eliminate it from Abyssinian society at this time.
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Meanwhile, Tafari's international reputation was
growing, and by the end of the 1920s he was increasingly viewed
as the face of Abyssinia on the world stage rather than the
Empress. Much of this was owing to
numerous trips abroad and state visits.
For instance, in 1924 he undertook a tour of numerous
foreign capitals and major cities with other members of the
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extended Imperial family and thegovernment.
This was a fact finding mission as much as anything else, as
Tafari and others sought to gainfrom direct experience of the
Western societies they were attempting to emulate.
The Abyssinian delegation, with its ostentatious displays of
wealth and court ritual, made a significant impression in London
(15:16):
and Paris, where Tafari met KingGeorge the 5th and the French
Prime Minister Bremen Poincare. Another significant goal of this
foreign tour was to try to convince the British and French
governments to provide Abyssiniawith access to the Red Sea by
surrendering some territory in its colonial enclaves in
Somaliland. Elsewhere in the Middle East and
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North Africa, Tafari was greetedwarmly as the all but head of
state of virtually the only African nation which had
withstood European colonization in the 19th century.
All of this ensured that before he would ever become emperor,
Tafari was well established on the international stage.
By 1928, Tafari's position at home in Abyssinia was such that
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the Empress could not but promote him ever.
Further. But this time he had monopolized
power within the Council of Ministers and, more importantly,
had also moved to secure the loyalty of the heads of the
military and police forces. Thus, on the 7th of October
1928, he was crowned as Negus, an Abyssinian title.
Equivalent to a king, though still below that of emperor or
(16:24):
Empress. This replaced his earlier
honorific of Ras, which had signified his position within
the Imperial line. In the months that followed,
tensions began to brew between the Empress's faction and that
of Tafari, ultimately culminating in January 1930 in
the outbreak of a borderline civil war between Tafari and Gug
(16:45):
Siwela, the Empress's husband. He not only wished to reassert
his wife's authority within the Empire, but now had designs of
replacing Tafari as the head of the government and having
himself crowned as Emperor. Guxsouella's rebellion
culminated in a major meeting ofhis forces and the supporters of
Tafari at the Battle of Anhem onthe 31st of March 1930.
(17:09):
But with their superior Western armaments and methods, which
included the use of modern aircraft, Tafari's supporters
quickly defeated Gugzawela's army.
E himself was killed in the fighting.
Then, in a seemingly unconnecteddevelopment, the Empress died of
natural causes. Just two days later, clearing
the way for Tafari to claim absolute power in Abyssinia
(17:32):
after years of dual rule betweenhim and the Empress.
A mourning period of over. Half a year was imposed
following the passing of EmpressZoditu, but at last, on the 2nd
of November 1930, Tafari was proclaimed as the new Emperor of
Abyssinia and crowned that same day at the Cathedral of Saint
(17:53):
George in Addis Ababa. Emissaries from many Western
nations attended the event, and Tafari featured on the cover of
Time magazine. That November.
He also adopted a new name and title.
The title he obtained was now now Negusa Nagast, the King of
Kings, while his imperial name would be Haile Selassie.
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Haile means power of and Selassie means Trinity, so the
name Haile Selassie effectively means the power of the Trinity.
However, as we will see later, the former name he bore for much
of the 1920s, Rastafari, was to gain currency again in later
years and become increasingly well known globally more
(18:36):
immediately in the early just after his accession as emperor,
Haile Selassie the first the newruler of Ethiopia, quickly
oversaw the introduction of Ethiopia's first modern
constitution in 1931. This provided for the
establishment of a bicameral legislature with a parliament
and an upper House of Lords withwhom the emperor would share
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power. It was also intended that a new
constitution would further lead to the end of the Feta Nagast
legal system and its replacementwith a Western.
Judicial. Code.
The first. Years of Selassie reign as
emperor were marked by his efforts to continue and expand
the modernization program he hadfirst initiated as Regent in the
(19:19):
1920s. However, a shadow was.
Increasingly hanging over Ethiopia, back in 1922, the
Italian government had been taken over by the National
Fascist Party led by Benito Mussolini after the infamous
March on Rome by 30,000 paramilitary fascist Black
Shirts. One of Mussolini's great desires
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was to build Italy into a great power again and to resurrect the
empire Italians had enjoyed backin the days of Rome to millennia
earlier. To that end, in the 1920s he had
engaged in a series of aggressive actions, initiating A
brutal war of conquest in Libya,which had been a nominal colony
of Italy's since 1912 as well. As bombing the.
(20:03):
Island of Corfu during a disputewith the Kingdom of Greece,
annexing the city of Fume in what is now Croatia, and
establishing A protectorate overAlbania through a series of
treaties in the mid 1920s. With these advances made in the
early 1930s, Mussolini's attentions turned to the Horn of
Africa, where he increasingly wished to correct what he deemed
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to be an historical. Failing of Italy's It's lost to
Ethiopia in the first Italo Ethiopian war back in the 1890s.
If Abyssinia could be conquered,it would also make a continuous
colony of Italy's lands in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Italian
Somaliland, in turn making it the predominant colonial power
(20:46):
in the Horn of Africa. In 1934, tensions between
Selassie's government and the Italian colonial administration
in Eritrea and Somaliland began to flare over a long running
boundary dispute which had been caused by Italy's wish to build
a railway line through the region connecting it's 2 divided
colonies. Which Ethiopia was in the middle
(21:07):
of this? Had culminated in Italy building
a military Fort at Wawa in eastern Ethiopia in December
1934. The Italian presence here was
challenged by Selassie's government when Abyssinian
troops were sent to Wawa on the 5th of December.
This led to violent engagements between the Italians and The
Ethiopians, resulting in dozens of deaths on both sides.
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An international diplomatic standoff followed, now known as
the Abyssinia Crisis. In early January 1935,
Selassie's government protested to the League of Nations.
Months of diplomatic toing and froing would follow, but
essentially the British and French governments, who were
best placed to act as intermediaries, were unwilling
to block Italian aggression at atime when they were trying to
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win over Mussolini as an ally inEurope in the face of the rise
of the Nazis following Adolf Hitler's seizure of power in
Germany in 1933. Consequently, while negotiations
followed for months, it eventually became clear to
Selassie's government that the Italians were intent on using
the Wild wild. Incident in December 1934 and
(22:14):
the ensuing diplomatic standoff as an excuse to declare war on
Abyssinia and that the League ofNations was not going to take
any effective measures to try tostop Mussolini's aggression.
The second. Italo Abyssinian war commenced
on the 3rd of October 1935 when the Italian General Emilio de
Bono crossed over the border from Italies colony of Eritrea
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into Northern Ethiopia with 10s of thousands of Italian troops.
There was no formal declaration of war.
This was to be one of the most significant conflicts globally
during the interwar period between the First World War and
the Second World War, eventuallyinvolving hundreds of thousands
of troops and personnel on both sides, it would last for just
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over a half a year. The sides were evenly matched
throughout though. While The Ethiopians were
numerically superior, despite the best efforts to modernize
their army since the 1890s, their forces were still
resoundingly based on mass infantry divisions.
For instance, Selassie's government had just a handful of
tanks, and the Ethiopian Air Force consisted of little more
(23:20):
than a dozen planes. By way of contrast, Mussolini's
government was eventually able to deploy hundreds of tanks in
East Africa, as well as massive artillery barrages and a
significant Air Force presence. Thus, while.
The Italian army would be shown in later years to be enormously
deficient in European terms. The war which was initiated in
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the autumn of 1935, was clearly a David versus Goliath type
conflict in which the Italians had the upper hand in a way
which they had not back in 1895 when the first Italo Ethiopian
war was launched. In response.
To the invasion of Abyssinia. The League of Nations sanctioned
Italy on the 7th of October 1935, four days after the
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initial incursion by De Bonos troops.
The two primary countries withinthe League to whom the
responsibility fell for challenging the Italian
government's actions were Britain and France, who were the
foremost colonial powers across the African continent and who
had colonies nearby themselves in Somaliland and all across
Ethiopia's western and southern borders in Sudan and Kenya.
(24:29):
In the case of Britain. Yet while the Conservative LED
national government of Stanley Baldwin in Britain campaigned on
and won an election in in November 1935 on the premise of
supporting the League of Nationsand its mission.
Baldwin. 'S.
Government almost immediately capitulated to Italian
aggression. Within days of arriving in
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office, the new British Foreign Secretary, Samuel Hall, was
engaged in talks with his Frenchcounterpart Pierre Laval, who
was also the French Prime Minister at the time, about how
the war could be quickly broughtto an end.
Here, the desire to appease Italy and prevent it from
drifting closer to Nazi Germany was paramount, and the whole
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Laval Pact, details of which were leaked by the British press
in early December, effectively outlined a plan whereby
Abyssinia would lose roughly half of its territory to Italy,
allowing the Italians to connecttheir colonies of Eritrea and
Somaliland. This was completely unacceptable
to Selassie's government and a complete betrayal of the mandate
(25:33):
of the League of Nations. Outrage followed.
Hall resigned as British foreignminister and ultimately the
revelation of details of the pact brought to an end any
efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
The Hall of Al Pact and the wider Abyssinia Crisis is
generally seen as also sounding the death knell of the League of
Nations, an institution which had now conclusively proven its
(25:57):
inability to prevent aggressive nations like Italy and the
Empire of Japan from invading its enemies with no
justification. With the.
Termination of diplomatic negotiations In December 1935,
the war intensified on the ground in Abyssinia.
By now the Ethiopian government was making preparations for its
(26:18):
own counter offensive against the Italian incursion in the
north. This was led by Selassie in
person and had hoped to sever the Italian lines of
communication and launch a counter invasion of Eritrea.
Initially it met with considerable success.
But in the. Early months of 1936, the tide
turned once General Pietro Bardolio, who had previously
(26:41):
overseen the Italian campaign inLibya, was appointed as governor
of Eritrea and the leader of themilitary effort in succession to
De Bono, whose oversight of the invasion had been deemed too
cautious by Mussolini. Bardolio initiated a brutal
campaign in January 1936 in which poison gas was widely used
(27:02):
against the Ethiopian armies. Through these methods, a series
of victories were quickly won byBardolio at the battles of
Tenbien, Amba, Aradam and Shire in northern Ethiopia in the late
winter and early spring of 1936.A final effort to maintain the
northern front by Selassie was defeated at the Battle of Mechu
(27:24):
on the 31st of March 1936, following which northern
Ethiopia was effectively under Italian control.
On the 20. 6th of April 1936, Bardolio launched what he termed
the March of the Iron Will, a swift Dr. southwards from the
northern front around Desi in Wallow province towards the
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Abyssinian capital of Addis Ababa, a distance of some 200
kilometers. The campaign was accompanied by
much fanfare and propaganda in the fascist media.
Back home in Italy. A large mechanized column was
the centerpiece of this drive, with over 2000 tanks, cars,
trucks and other vehicles included in the operation which
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transported some 12,500 Italian troops speedily towards
Selassie's capital. By now, the Ethiopian armies
were decimated from the northernoffensive, and as the Italians
neared Addis Ababa in early May,the Emperor and his family fled
from the capital and made their way towards the border with
French Somaliland, crossing overas Selassie went into what would
(28:30):
be years of exile from his realm.
Three days later, at roughly 4:00 PM on the afternoon of the
5th of May 1936, Bardolio arrived in Addis Ababa at the
front of a column of 1700 vehicles.
In the hours that followed, Italian troops began entering
the city in what was more of a procession than an actual siege
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and occupied prominent buildingsall over the capital.
The. War was now effectively over.
The second. Italo Ethiopian war came to an
end in May 1936 with the fall ofAddis Ababa and the flight of
Emperor Haile Selassie from Ethiopia.
However, pockets of resistance remained, particularly in the
(29:13):
South and West of the country, which were still unoccupied by
any Italian forces. Accordingly, fighting would
continue for months and years tocome.
Indeed, all of Abyssinia was never actually brought under
effective Italian control, yet from May 1936, the Italian
government claimed to have won the war.
As such, the new colony of Italian Ethiopia was declared to
(29:37):
be in existence by Mussolini on the 9th of May 1936.
However, this was soon annexed into the newly proclaimed colony
of Italian East Africa, which incorporated Abyssinia, Eritrea
and Italian Somaliland and whichstretched all the way across the
Horn of Africa, completing the ambition for Italy to create a
(29:58):
contiguous colony here 40 years after it had first been
attempted in the mid 1890s. Here the Italians would impose A
brutal form of colonial governance, following many of
the quasi genocidal policies which had been developed in
Libya in the 1920s of confining thousands of people to
concentration camps and favoringa divide and rule policy whereby
(30:22):
the different ethnic peoples of Ethiopia were pitted against
each other. With the.
Italians now largely in control of his country, Emperor Selassie
made his way to Europe. His first mission was to present
Abyssinia's case at the League of Nations in Geneva.
However, his timing was far frompropitious.
In Europe, Nazi Germany had initiated an aggressive program
(30:45):
of military rearmament in 1935, and in the spring of 1936, while
Selassie was fighting in northern Ethiopia, Hitler had
ordered his troops into the Rhineland of western Germany,
which German troops had been prevented from entering under
the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
The Treaty. That brought the First World War
to an end. Consequently, the governments of
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Britain and France were no more willing to adopt an aggressive
stance against Italy in 1936 than they had been the previous
autumn. Nevertheless, while his efforts
at redress were in vain, Selassie gained a claim for a
speech he made at a meeting of the League on the 12th of May
1936, in the course of which he denounced the rise of fascism
(31:30):
and the use of poison gas by theItalians in East Africa.
He was subsequently named Time magazine's man of the year, but
the result for Ethiopia was the same.
The League was unwilling to takeconcerted action against Italy,
which in any event withdrew frommembership of it in December
1937. Meanwhile, Selassie headed for
(31:51):
England, where he would live in exile throughout the late 1930s.
While he was. In exile in England, the world's
politics was in continual flux. Germany's aggression intensified
in 1938 with the annexation of Austria and then Czechoslovakia
in 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland the following September,
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Britain and France declared war,triggering the start of the
Second World War. For the time being, Mussolini
adopted a cautious stance and did not enter the war.
But when the Germans undertook ablistering military campaign in
the summer of 1940 that effectively brought continental
Western Europe under Berlin's control, the Italians decided to
(32:34):
side with Hitler, declaring war on Britain and France on the
10th of June 1940 and invading southeastern France in an effort
to acquire territory there. What this now meant was that the
Italians and the British would square off to each other in East
Africa. On the 13th of June 1940.
An Italian air raid was launchedagainst British Kenya in the
(32:56):
first action. Of the East Africa campaign.
This was all part of a wider Italian industry initiative to
conquer Britain's colonies in Egypt and Sudan and thus unite
Italian East Africa with Italy'sgrowing expanse of territory in
North Africa. At first these campaigns
proceeded well for Mussolini, but by early 1941 the weaknesses
(33:18):
of the Italian military were becoming wholly apparent.
Early in 1941, with Italian operations in the Sahara Desert
faltering, Mussolini called on Hitler for aid.
A German Expeditionary force, the famous Africa Corps led by
Ellen Rommel, was dispatched to North Africa that much, but
there would be no major militarysupport offered to the Italian
(33:40):
position in East Africa. Thus, in the course of 1941, the
British gradually turned the tide here and began pushing the
Italians back into Ethiopia and Eritrea after their initial
advances into Sudan and Kenya. By this time, Selassie had left
Britain and had returned to the Horn of Africa to oversee parts
of the campaign to reclaim his homeland from the Italians
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himself. The fighting here was undertaken
by a broad mix of British, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Free French
and Free Belgian forces. Crucially, they had.
Naval superiority and by early 1941 a new front was being
opened in Eritrea following a naval operation in the Red Sea.
As a result, by the late spring of 1941, the Italian defence was
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collapsing on all fronts as the troops in East Africa found
themselves effectively cut off from major reinforcements by
Mussolini's government. Finally.
On. The 5th of May 1941, in an event
which was stage, managed to occur exactly five years after
Bardolio had arrived with his Italian forces to Addis Ababa
(34:48):
Selassie. Re entered the.
Capital of Ethiopia and proclaimed the liberation of the
country from Italy. The restoration of the Solomonic
dynasty and Emperor Haile Selassie to power in Ethiopia
carried a proviso from the British, who had largely
restored the emperor to power. Slavery had to be banned
entirely in Ethiopia. There had been piece meal
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efforts at doing so as far back as the 1850s, at which time
Britain was using its influence as the global superpower of the
19th century to try to curb the slave trade across Africa.
These had intensified under Emperor Menelik the Second and
during Selassie's time as Regentback in the 1920s.
But slavery had never fully beeneradicated in Ethiopia and was
(35:35):
still a feature of Ethiopian society when the Second Italo
Ethiopian War was initiated in 1935.
Following the conquest, the Italians had declared the
abolition of slavery A paradoxically humanitarian act
for a state which elsewhere in Africa was engaging in genocide
and whose German ally would soonbe using the slave labour of
(35:58):
millions of Jews, Poles, Czechs,Russians and other subject
peoples across Central and Eastern Europe to drive its war
economy. The British government made it
clear to Selassie that this abolition needed to continue
once he was restored to power, and that he would have to take
concerted steps to make a reality of that abolition.
(36:20):
A decree was issued by the emperor to that effect in 1942,
from which date we might say that slavery was finally
abolished in Ethiopia. Though the East.
Africa Campaign had resulted in a significant victory for the
Allies in 1941. It took four more years for the
Second World War to end in the defeat of Nazi Germany and its
(36:43):
allies. When it did, the League of
Nations was succeeded by the United Nations, which Ethiopia
became a charter member of in 1948.
Selassie had gained favorable consideration for his nation
when it came to the settlement of East Africa in the aftermath
of the conflict, when the Ogadenregion was granted to Ethiopia,
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a region which had long been disputed by the Italians,
British and Abyssinia prior to the war.
Selassie's main concern during these years was to continue the
modernization of his country. Considerable strides had been
made in doing so in the 1920s and 1930s, but there were still
deeply entrenched vested interests in the country within
(37:28):
the nobility and the Church, which were resistant to too much
change occurring too rapidly. Selassie was determined to
accelerate the pace of change asthe war came to an end in the
mid 1940s. Eventually this would result in
1955 with a revised constitutionwhich moved beyond the
constitution of 1931 and incorporated elements of the US
(37:50):
Constitution. However, in practice the
election of parliamentary delegates remained in the hands
of the nobility and other powerful bodies and Ethiopia
certainly did not become a western style democracy under
Selassie's rule in the post war years.
Many. Controversial issues began to
arise in Ethiopia in the post war period, particularly so
(38:13):
during the 1950s. One of these concerned one of
the former Italian colonies, Eritrea.
This small northern neighbor of Ethiopia's had been placed under
British administration followingthe conclusion of the East
Africa Campaign in 1941. In the aftermath of the war, the
Allied powers were in favor of Ethiopia's claims to Eritrea,
(38:35):
though a small section of the Western of the colony was to be
joined to British Sudan. Accordingly, when British rule
of Eritrea came to an end in theearly 1950's, the country was
joined with Ethiopia, but this was to be a federal union in
which Eritrea retained its own identity and had certain
devolved powers held in the hands of its own government.
(38:58):
Selassie, though, was determinedto bring Eritrea, which provided
Ethiopia with access to the Red Sea, under greater centralized
control. To this end, in 1962 he
dissolved the independent Eritrean parliament and annexed
the country. By that time, the Eritrean
Liberation Front, or ELF, an independence movement, had
(39:20):
launched an armed struggle against Ethiopian rule.
The Eritrean War of Independencewould continue for the next 30
years, with a conflict becoming a front in the Cold War as the
ELF and other independence movements drifted into the
Soviet bloc in order to acquire military aid from the USSR,
Cuba, and others. The Eritrean.
(39:43):
War of independence was not the only conflict which Emperor
Selassie's government faced. Ethnic tensions were also
becoming more severe in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ethiopia is a nation with approximately 80 different
ethnic groups. The empire had effectively been
formed through conquest over several centuries, and this had
(40:04):
resulted in many ethnic groups remaining unreconciled to the
dominance of Ethiopia, above allby the Otomo and Amhara peoples,
who made-up over half of the country's population.
Selasi himself was of Otomo descent.
The solution which was favoured by Selassie and the Ethiopian
government to this situation in the post war period was to
(40:26):
foster the concept of ethnic federalism, whereby Ethiopia was
divided into over a dozen major provinces in which different
ethnicities predominated. However, rather than fixing the
ethnic problem, this fueled it, ensuring that many Oromo,
Amhara, Tigrains, Somalis and others continue to shape their
(40:48):
identity around their ethnicities rather than their
shared identity as Ethiopians. This was already causing unrest
in the country during Selassie'sreign, but as we will see, this
has been compounded in more recent times.
Of all the. Ethnic peoples of Ethiopia.
Those who were most antagonisticto the government, were the
(41:10):
Tigrayans, who constituted A sizeable proportion of the
overall population, roughly 7 or8%, and were the dominant people
in Tigray province in the north of the country.
The antipathy of Selassie's government towards the Tigrayans
was clear for all to see in the 1950s, as the imperial
government persistently neglected the province despite
(41:32):
mounting evidence of pressure onits resources and the
possibility of famine as a result of the destruction of
crops by locusts, drought and disease outbreaks of smallpox,
typhus and other high mortality illnesses.
When Tigray eventually did enterfamine in 1958, the central
government in Addis Ababa did very little to try to relieve
(41:52):
the situation, leading to 10s ofthousands of deaths thereafter.
A more concerted effort was madein 1959 to address the
situation, with Selassie's government being provided with
considerable aid from the administration of U.S.
President Dwight Eisenhower. Nevertheless, by the time the
worst of the famine subsided in 1961, it is estimated that about
(42:15):
100,000 people had died in Tigray and surrounding regions,
while renewed famine struck northern Ethiopia again in the
mid 1960s, while Selassie. 'S reign was increasingly being
blackened by controversies at home, including famine in
Tigray, a war of independence inEritrea, and ethnic tensions
(42:35):
within Ethiopia. Selassie, and by extension
Ethiopia, continued to hold a position of considerable
international respect. As one of the.
World's longest serving heads ofstate.
He was usually afforded a position of considerable pre
eminence at major international events such as the funeral of
President John F Kennedy in in Washington DC in 1963 and the
(42:59):
former French President Charles de Gaulle in France in 1970.
Ethiopia also supplied. Peace contingents to many areas
of conflict, such as the Congo in the early 1960s and became a
prominent nation within the non aligned movement of nations
which were not members of eitherNATO or the Warsaw Pact.
The respective military alliances of the United States
(43:21):
and the Soviet Union in the ColdWar, Perhaps most significant of
all in terms of international diplomacy at this time, was
Selassie's leading role in the establishment of the
Organization of African Unity in1963, the forerunner of the
African Union. The headquarters of the
Organization of African Unity was located in Addis Ababa for
(43:43):
many years under Selassie's rule.
Not only did Selassie continue to enjoy a vaunted reputation on
the international stage in the second iteration of his reign
after the Second World War, but he was viewed by many as a
messianic character. In the 1930s a new quasi
religion and social movement emerged in parts of Africa and
(44:06):
the Caribbean, one which mixed elements of the Back to Africa
movement which proclaimed that people of African descent in the
Americas would wish to return tothe African continent now that
slavery was at an end. And also Ethiopianism, a branch
of Christian worship which had arisen in the late 19th century
amongst African Christians, one which looked to the Ethiopian
(44:29):
church as a native Christian Church within Africa, rather
than having African Christians take their directives from
European religious leaders in Rome, Canterbury or elsewhere.
This new movement combines specific belief in elements of
biblical theology and a wide array of different social
beliefs. It took its name from Selassie's
(44:50):
Regent title, dating from the 1920s, Rastafari.
Thus, the new religion was knownas Rastafarianism, and
proponents of it viewed Selassieas a Messiah, one who may be the
second coming of Christ. These views must be understood
in light of Ethiopia's position as the only African state which
(45:11):
resisted colonial conquest in the 19th century.
Selassie did not explicitly seekto be recognized as a messianic
character within Rastafarianism,but he also did not attempt to
refute efforts to exalt him in this way.
Thus, as Rastafarianism gained impossible popularity in the
1950s in countries like Jamaica,Selassie took on an unusual
(45:34):
significance for many people whohad never been anywhere near
Ethiopia. In.
Contrast to the view of him within Rastafarianism as a quasi
messianic figure, Haile Selassiewas actually becoming more
oppressive at home in Ethiopia. The last 20 or so years of his
reign saw the development of elements of a police state in
(45:55):
the country. There were reasons for
Selassie's increasing concern about the security of his
position. In 1960, while the emperor was
on a state visit to Brazil, elements from the Kabur Zabagna,
the imperial bodyguard, had attempted A coup d'etat back in
Ethiopia. Led by the brothers Gedimane and
Mengustu Newe, the insurrectionists had proclaimed
(46:18):
Selassie's son and heir, the Crown Prince Asphalwassen, as
the new emperor. The Prince appears to have been
held captive, but how complicit he might have been in the coup
attempt remains unclear to this day.
In any event, after four days ofviolence in and around Addis
Ababa in mid-december, resultingin over 300 deaths, the
(46:40):
attempted overthrow of the emperor had been suppressed and
the leaders were killed. Nevertheless, the 1960 attempted
coup was significant in the development of a more repressive
authoritarian regime in Ethiopiaunder Selassie in the 1960s and
into the 1970s. Hand in hand with the
(47:00):
development of this more authoritarian streak in
Ethiopian politics was a growingdisdain for human rights in the
country. In the 1960s, as student protest
movements emerged and as communism gained favor in some
circles, Selassie's regime dealtever more frequently in mass
arrests and the disappearance ofpolitical opponents, the press.
(47:22):
Was. Widely censored and intimidation
of groups which questioned Selassie and the government was
widespread by the 1960s. Compounding matters was the war
in Eritrea, where the Imperial Ethiopian army was engaging in
civilian atrocities by the late 1960s.
For instance, in December 1970 /800 civilians were killed by
(47:43):
Selassie's forces when they attacked the village of Honor.
Moreover, at Jazimor in July 1967 / 170 men were killed by
Ethiopian soldiers. Admittedly, some of these
atrocities appear not to have been state ordered, but the war
in Eritrea was ultimately of Selassie's making.
Unsurprisingly, by the early 1970s, despite the general
(48:07):
positive view of Selassie internationally, civil rights
groups such as Freedom House were declaring that Ethiopia was
moving towards being a repressive authoritarian regime
where human rights were being contravened.
By the early. 1970s Selassie's rule and government was becoming
increasingly unpopular among substantial sections of the
(48:28):
population of Ethiopia. He still garnered support
amongst traditional groups such as the Church and the nobility,
who had much to lose if the old imperial order was overthrown,
but many others had no affinity for the ancient ruling dynasty.
This disaffection was further compounded in 1972 by the onset
of a new severe famine in Ethiopia.
(48:51):
This time it was centred on Wallow Province in the north of
the country near Tigray. This was brought on by drought
and was compounded by an inadequate government response
and a failure to import extra foodstuffs and deliver them to
the affected areas. It is estimated that between
40,000 and 80,000 people died inWallow and the adjoining regions
(49:13):
in the course of 1972 and 1973. While the competition for
resources exacerbated ethnic tensions here between groups
such as the Oromos, Afas and Somalis, what was worse, news
soon spread that at the height of the famine, foodstuffs which
were actually being successfullyproduced in Wallow were being
exported out of the region to Addis Ababa and other parts of
(49:36):
Ethiopia. Eventually.
The unrest at Selassie's reign began to boil over.
Perhaps this was unsurprising in1972, as famine was gripping
wallow. The Emperor had turned 80 years
of age. He had been in power in one form
or another for over half a century, albeit as Regent for
the 1st 10 or so years and with a hiatus between 1936 and 1941.
(50:03):
The first signs of disturbance arose in January 1974 when
Garrison soldiers in the town ofNegele, Burana mutinied over a
lack of clean drinking water andpoor paying conditions.
In a symbolic gesture, they detained one of their commanding
officers, Lieutenant General Teresa de Bali, and made show of
(50:23):
him having to drink the water they were forced to consume.
This resonated with many across Ethiopia who were disgruntled at
the rigid social structure whichprevailed in the country and the
perception of there being an elite of individuals who were
connected to Selassie's regime. In early February, as news of
the mutiny spread, protests and insurrectionary movements
(50:46):
developed across the country. Crucially, many elements within
the military and the police services joined the
disturbances. This auged I'll for Selassie,
whose grip on power, like any authoritarian ruler, could only
be maintained so long as the military and security forces
remained loyal. By early.
(51:07):
March Selassie was under sufficient pressure that he made
a number of announcements that political concessions would be
made to make ministers and senior government officials more
accountable to the parliament. Moreover, the 1955 constitution
would be re evaluated to see howEthiopia's politics could be
made more inclusive of differentgroups within the empire.
(51:29):
Yet these compromises failed to stem the tide of unrest.
Instead, labor unions called forgeneral strike action across the
country in March 1974, and earlyin April, the significant Muslim
minority in the country began agitating for greater religious
freedoms. By that time, elements of the
(51:50):
military were evidently in charge of much of the running of
the government, and Selassie waslosing control of the situation.
However, it was not until June that the infamous Dirk was set
up. This was officially known as the
Provisional Military Administrative Council and
consisted of relatively low ranking army officers and
(52:10):
officials who effectively seizedpower in the summer of 1974.
That summer they began a campaign of arrests of prominent
political figures and issued a manifesto of proposed reforms.
Finally, on the 12th of September 19, 7444, years after
he first became emperor and nearly six decades since his
(52:31):
accession to a position of pre eminence in Ethiopian politics,
the Derg deposed Emperor Haile Selassie.
Following his. Deposition Selassie was placed
under house arrest. His son, Crown Prince Asfal
Wasson, who had been proclaimed as Emperor by the leaders of the
failed coup of 1960, was now again proclaimed by the Dirk.
(52:53):
He was not. In Ethiopia at the time and
decreed that his father's deposition and the actions of
the Provisional Military Administrative Council in
proclaiming him as emperor were illegitimate.
Accordingly, in March 1975, the Derg abolished the Ethiopian
monarchy altogether, bringing the empire to an end and
ushering in the creation of a new Ethiopian state.
(53:16):
Meanwhile, the new military hunter had spent.
Much of the winter of 1974 and the spring of 1975 overseeing
the execution of hundreds of those who were associated with
the old imperial regime. This included some collateral
members of the imperial family, notably Iskinda Desta, a
grandson of Selassies who had also been a prominent figure
(53:38):
within the Ethiopian Navy. The signs for the former emperor
were ominous and several months later, on the 28th of August
1975, state media announced thatSelassie had died the previous
day, the 27th of August. The official cause of death at
83 years of age was given as respiratory failure, but
(53:59):
Selassie had almost certainly been strangled to death by Derg
soldiers. His remains were interred under
a concrete slab in the grounds of the Imperial Palace in Addis
Ababa. They were only finally removed
in 1992 and placed in Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis
Ababa, near those of his auspicious predecessor, Emperor
Menelich the Second. By the time.
(54:22):
Selassie was killed. Ethiopia had descended into a
long civil war from which it would not emerge until the early
1990's. The Derg established Ethiopia as
a Soviet aligned country, espousing Marxist Leninist
principles in the mid 1970s. It was opposed by rival
revolutionary groups such as theEthiopian People's Revolutionary
(54:43):
Party and the Tigray People's Liberation Front.
Compounding matters was the ongoing war of independence in
Eritrea and from 1977 onwards a further regional conflict as
Ethiopia found itself at war with Somalia over possession of
the province of Ogaden. In this morass of political
(55:03):
conflicts, political violence amplified across the country,
with 10s of thousands being killed in the red terror
unleashed by the Derg regime in the second-half of the 1970s.
By the 1980's, the Ethiopian civil war was made even more
traumatic by the arrival of new famines, the biggest wave coming
between 1983 and 1985, in which upwards of half a million people
(55:28):
perished. The fighting only eventually
came to a conclusion in 1991, once the collapse of the Soviet
Union ended the flow of weaponryinto the Horn of Africa.
By the time it ended, nearly oneand a half million people had
died from the combined effects of military conflict, disease
and famine. The end of the.
(55:49):
Ethiopian civil war in 1991 brought about a brief respite
from the country's woes. A new constitution was
established in the mid 1990s, while Eritrea finally gained its
independence after three decadesof fighting.
There were then efforts to create an ethno territorial
federal state where different ethnic groups had control over
(56:10):
different provinces of the country where they were
dominant. However, renewed problems soon
arose. A new war erupted with Eritrea
in 1998. The initial fighting ceased in
2000, but border tensions and intermittent conflict have
remained A perennial problem in northern Ethiopia.
Internally, Ethiopia's efforts. To resolve its ethnic tensions
(56:32):
by creating a federal state havelargely failed.
In particular, the government's antagonism towards the Tigre
minority in northern Ethiopia, which is a deep rooted legacy of
Selassie's time as Emperor, has come to.
International attention in recent years In 2020, the
Ethiopian federal government effectively initiated a war
(56:53):
against Tigray, one which is ongoing as of late 2022.
And which has. Resulted in war crimes, mass
famine and behaviour by the government, which many
international observers see as genocidal.
Thus, while Ethiopia is viewed as having the potential to
become a major economic and political power in East Africa.
(57:13):
As Africa experiences considerable economic expansion
in the 21st century, the structural problems of the
country, which were not only left unresolved by Selassie but
exacerbated, remain a grave problem in the Horn of Africa.
Emperor Haile. Selassie was a paradoxical
character in 20th century history.
(57:35):
On the one hand, in the first half of his reign he made major
advances in modernizing Ethiopiaeven before he became emperor
himself, while in the 1930s he emerged as a figurehead in
opposition to the rise of fascism and brutality as the
Italians invaded and conquered his nation.
This reputation as a leading statesman was cemented in the
(57:56):
aftermath of the Second World War, when he forged an
independent stance on the world stage and was also well regarded
for his suppression of slavery in Ethiopia.
Overlying all of this is the most unusual position which he
has acquired as a messianic character within Rastafarianism.
However, Selassie also had many things which stand against him.
(58:20):
His reign became increasingly autocratic in his later years,
and there were manifold human rights abuses committed at home
in Ethiopia between the 1950s and 1970s.
Eventually these resulted in revolution and his overthrow.
Additionally, his handling of Eritrea's position resulted in a
war which persisted for 30 yearsand after Selassie.
(58:44):
'S own time, however, perhaps Selassie's greatest crime was in
failing to reconcile the ethnic and religious differences of his
nation during his long reign as both Regent and emperor, which
lasted over half a century. This failure has cast a long
shadow over modern Ethiopia and continues to create problems in
(59:05):
the Horn of Africa today. What do you?
Think of Emperor Haile Selassie.Do you think his deposition by
the Italians in the 1930s created undue sympathy for him,
which has caused popular opinionto overlook his own crimes?
Please let us know in the comments section.
And in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
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