Haile Selassie

"Ras Tafari" redirects here. For the religion, see Rastafari.
Not to be confused with Haile Gebrselassie or Haile Selassie Gugsa.

Haile Selassie I
ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ
Negusa Nagast
Emperor of Ethiopia
Reign2 April 1930 – 12 September 1974[nb 1]
Coronation2 November 1930
PredecessorZewditu
SuccessorAmha Selassie
Prime Minister
List of prime ministers
Regent of Ethiopia
Reign27 September 1916 – 2 April 1930
PredecessorTessema Nadew
MonarchZewditu
SuccessorKirubel Abraham
BornLij Tafari Makonnen
(Täfäri Mäkonnän)
ልጅ ተፈሪ መኮንን
(1892-07-23)23 July 1892
Ejersa Goro, Hararghe, Ethiopian Empire
Died27 August 1975(1975-08-27) (aged 83)
Jubilee Palace, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Burial5 November 2000
Holy Trinity Cathedral, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Spouse
​
(m. 1911)​
Issue
Detail
Regnal name
ቀዳማዊ ኃይለ ሥላሴ
(Qädamawi Haylä Səllasé)
HouseHouse of Shewa
DynastySolomonic dynasty
FatherMakonnen Wolde Mikael
MotherYeshimebet Ali
ReligionEthiopian Orthodox Tewahedo
SignatureHaile Selassie I ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ's signature
Chief Minister
In office
12 December 1926 – 1 May 1936
Preceded byHabte Giyorgis Dinagde
Succeeded byWolde Tzaddick
1st and 5th Chairperson of the Organisation of African Unity
In office
25 May 1963 – 17 July 1964
Succeeded byGamal Abdel Nasser
In office
5 November 1966 – 11 September 1967
Preceded byJoseph Arthur Ankrah
Succeeded byMobutu Sese Seko
Military career
Allegiance Ethiopian Empire
Years of service1930–1974
Rank
CommandsCommander-in-chief
Battles / wars
See list:
Haile Selassie I's voice
Speech to the Ethiopian Parliament following the occasion of a new Constitution
Recorded 4 November 1955

Haile Selassie I (Ge'ez: ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ Qädamawi Ḫäylä Śəllase, lit. 'Power of the Trinity';[2][3] born Tafari Makonnen; 23 July 1892 – 27 August 1975)[4] was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as the Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia (Enderase) under Empress Zewditu between 1916 and 1930. Widely considered to be a defining figure in modern Ethiopian history, he is accorded divine importance in Rastafari, a relatively new Abrahamic religion that emerged in the Colony of Jamaica in the 1930s. A few years before he began his reign over the Ethiopian Empire, Selassie defeated Ethiopian army commander Ras Gugsa Welle Bitul, who was the nephew of Empress Taytu Betul, during the Battle of Anchem.[5][6] He belonged to the Solomonic dynasty, which was founded by Emperor Yekuno Amlak in 1270; Amlak's successors claimed that he was a lineal descendant of Menelik I, the legendary Emperor of Ethiopia who was supposedly born to King Solomon and Queen Makeda of the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Sheba, respectively. Modern historians regard the Solomonic lineage claim as an unfounded myth created by Yekuno Amlak to justify wresting power from the Zagwe Dynasty. [7]

Selassie, seeking to modernise Ethiopia, introduced a series of political and social reforms, including the 1931 constitution and the abolition of slavery. He led the empire during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and after its defeat was exiled to the United Kingdom. After the beginning of the Italian occupation of East Africa. In 1940, he travelled to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to assist in coordinating the Ethiopian struggle against Fascist Italy, and was able to return home following the East African campaign of World War II. He later dissolved the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1950, and annexed Eritrea as one of Ethiopia's provinces, while also fighting to prevent Eritrean secession.[8]

As an internationalist, Selassie led Ethiopia's accession to the United Nations as a charter member.[9] In 1963, he presided over the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, the precursor of the African Union, and served as the institution's first chairman. By the early 1960s, many prominent African socialists, such as Kwame Nkrumah, Ahmed Sékou Touré, and Ahmed Ben Bella, envisioned the creation of a "United States of Africa" to rival the similar concept of a federal Europe. The rhetoric of this faction, especially in light of the then-ongoing Cold War, was overwhelmingly anti-Western, and Selassie saw this as a threat to the alliance he had so calculably constructed. Therefore, he took it upon himself to attempt to influence a more moderate posture within the group.[10]

Amidst popular uprisings by the country's students, peasants, urban dwellers, merchants, political activists, and marginalised religious and ethnic groups, Selassie was overthrown by the Derg in the 1974 Ethiopian coup d'état. With support from the Soviet Union, the Derg began governing Ethiopia as a Marxist–Leninist state. In 1994, three years after the fall of the Derg military junta, it was revealed to the public that the Derg had assassinated Selassie at the Jubilee Palace in Addis Ababa on 27 August 1975.[11][12] On 5 November 2000, his excavated remains were buried at the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Addis Ababa.

Among some adherents of Rastafari, Selassie is referred to as the returned Jesus—that is, the Messiah and God incarnate. This distinction notwithstanding, he was a Christian and adhered to the tenets and liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.[13][14] He has been criticised by some historians for his suppression of rebellions among the landed aristocracy (Mesafint), which consistently opposed his changes. Some have also criticised Ethiopia's failure to modernise rapidly enough.[15][16] During his reign, the Harari people were persecuted and many left the Harari Region.[17][18][19] His administration was also criticised by human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, as autocratic and illiberal.[16][20] According to some sources, late into Selassie's administration, the Oromo language was banned from education, public speaking and use in administration,[21][22][23] though there was never an official law or government policy that criminalised any language.[24][25][26] His government also relocated many Amhara people into southern Ethiopia, where they served in government administration, courts, and church.[27][28][29] Following the death of Ethiopian civil rights activist Hachalu Hundessa in 2020, the Bust of Haile Selassie in the United Kingdom was destroyed by Oromo-speaking protesters, and an equestrian monument depicting his father Makonnen Wolde Mikael was also removed from Harar.[30][31][32]

  1. ^ Talbot, David Abner (1966). Ethiopia: Liberation Silver Jubilee 1941–1966. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Ministry of Information. pp. 64–66.
  2. ^ Gates, Henry Louis, and Anthony Appiah, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. 1999, p. 902.
  3. ^ "Haile Selassie I". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  4. ^ Page, Melvin Eugene; Sonnenburg, Penny M. (2003). Colonialism: an international, social, cultural, and political encyclopedia. Vol. 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 247. ISBN 978-1-57607-335-3.
  5. ^ Erlich, Haggai (2002), The Cross and the River: Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Nile. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 1-55587-970-5, p. 192.
  6. ^ Murrell, p. 148
  7. ^ Marcus, Harold G. (2002). A History of Ethiopia. University of California Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-520-22479-7.
  8. ^ Ewing, William H.; Abdi, Beyene (1972). Consolidated Laws of Ethiopia Vol. I. Addis Ababa: The Faculty of Law Haile Sellassie I University. pp. 45–46.
  9. ^ Karsh, Efraim (1988), Neutrality and Small States. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-00507-8, p. 112.
  10. ^ KELLER, EDMOND J. (1988). REVOLUTIONARY ETHIOPIA, From Empire to People's Republic. Bloomington and Indianapolis: INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS. p. 92.
  11. ^ Salvano, Tadese Tele (2018). የደረግ አነሳስና (የኤርትራና ትግራይ እንቆቅልሽ ጦርነት) [The Derg Initiative (The Eritrean-Tigray Mysterious War)]. Tadese Tele Salvano. pp. 81–97. ISBN 978-0-7915-9662-3.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference wapo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ Nov 2, 1930 CE: Haile Selassie Becomes Emperor of Ethiopia Archived 23 March 2024 at the Wayback Machine National Geographic
  14. ^ Barrett, Leonard E. (1988). The Rastafarians. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-1039-6.
  15. ^ Meredith, Martin (2005), The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair. Public Affairs. ISBN 1-58648-398-6, pp. 212–13.
  16. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference hrw was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  17. ^ Huurne, Dieneke. 'It's like carrying a heavy box with many people.' A study about the contributions of indigenous social security systems to poverty reduction (PDF). Radboud University Nijmegen. p. 36.
  18. ^ History of Harar and Hararis (PDF). pp. 141–144. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 October 2020. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  19. ^ Feener, Michael (2004). Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives. ABC-CLIO. p. 227. ISBN 978-1-57607-516-6. Retrieved 23 February 2017.
  20. ^ Dimbleby, Jonathan (8 December 1998), "Feeding on Ethiopia's Famine", The Independent, UK, archived from the original on 13 October 2019, retrieved 29 August 2017 (taken from Chapter 3 of Evil Days: Thirty Years of War and Famine in Ethiopia Alexander de Waal (Africa Watch, 1991))
  21. ^ Davey, Melissa (13 February 2016), "Oromo children's books keep once-banned Ethiopian language alive", The Guardian, archived from the original on 14 February 2016, retrieved 14 February 2016
  22. ^ Language & Culture (PDF), archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022
  23. ^ ETHIOPIANS: AMHARA AND OROMO, January 2017, archived from the original on 19 April 2021, retrieved 11 February 2021
  24. ^ Bender, M. L. (1976). Language in Ethiopia. London: Oxford University Press. pp. 187–190. ISBN 978-0-19-436102-6.
  25. ^ Scholler, Heinrich; Brietzke, Paul H. (1976). Ethiopia: Revolution, Law and Politics. Munich: Weltforum-Verlag. p. 154. ISBN 3-8039-0136-7.
  26. ^ Ewing, William H.; Abdi, Beyene (1972). Consolidated Laws of Ethiopia Vol. II. Addis Ababa: The Faculty of Law Haile Sellassie I University. p. 1105.
  27. ^ OROMO CONTINUE TO FLEE VIOLENCE, September 1981, archived from the original on 12 April 2021, retrieved 17 February 2021
  28. ^ Country Information Report ethiopia, 12 August 2020, archived from the original on 11 July 2013, retrieved 17 February 2021
  29. ^ Ethiopia. Status of Amharas, 1 March 1993, archived from the original on 25 January 2021, retrieved 17 February 2021
  30. ^ "Haile Selassie: Statue of former Ethiopian leader destroyed in London park". BBC News. 2 July 2020. Archived from the original on 14 June 2021. Retrieved 17 February 2021.
  31. ^ "Deadly protests erupt after Ethiopian singer killed". BBC News. 30 June 2020. Archived from the original on 30 June 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  32. ^ Ethiopians Angered At Singer's Death Topple Statue, 30 June 2020, archived from the original on 15 December 2020, retrieved 30 June 2020


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