Standing under a distinctive umbrella, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia addressed his subjects in July, 1935. He had been a modernizing regent and emperor, introducing printing presses, modern hospitals, airplanes and even a constitution to Ethiopia. But this was perhaps his finest hour, appearing dignified and inspirational even as the intense negotiations underwent in London and the Hague to avert an Italian invasion of his country.
Both Italy and Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) were members of the League of Nations. Yet its rules forbidding aggression among members, were proved to be ineffective when Italy started to encroach upon Abyssinian territory by building a fort at Welwel, an oasis in the Ogaden in 1930. In December 1934, it was the site of an international incident — a skirmish which both side blamed on each other, and which ended with the death of 150 Ethiopians and 50 Italians.
In February 1935, Mussolini began to send large numbers of troops to Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, massing for an invasion. Although Selassie’s Allies, France and Britain offered Italy large concessions in Ethiopia, war was inevitable. In October, Italy invaded Ethiopia without a declaration of war. Italy captured the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on May 5, 1936, and annexed the country into Africa Orientale Italiana.
“If by some unhappy chance the Italo-Ethiopian war should now spread into a world conflagration, Power of Trinity I, the King of Kings, the Conquering Lion of Judah [all being Haile Selassie’s titles] will have a place in history as secure as Woodrow Wilson’s. If it ends in the fall of Mussolini and the collapse of Fascism, His Majesty can plume himself on one of the greatest feats ever credited to blackamoors,” wrote Time magazine, nominating the Emperor as their person of the year.
The war spread, but not for a few more years. At the beginning of WWII, the Allied Forces liberated Ethiopia; on May 5, 1941, five years to the date after the Italians had captured his capital, Haile Selassie entered Addis Ababa in triumph.He ruled his Empire of Ethiopia for another 33 years, by the end of which he was the world’s longest-serving head of state. In 1974, after a devastating famine, he was deposed in a Communist-backed coup led by low-ranking military officers, the Derg.
His last years, spent in the Derg’s captivity, were recounted to The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, by Ryszard Kapuściński, an account of his reign’s last days and obscurantist workings of his royal court. The Derg announced the end of the Solomonic Dynasty, ending a royal line that traced its origins to the 13th century, and from there by tradition back to Prester John, King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
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