Itraits of HIM: His Imperial Majesty (Haile Selassie 1st)

iTraits of H.I.M (His Imperial Majesty)

Haile Selassie I

by: Rohan Patrick

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Haile Selassie Ist Book Series

iTraits of H.I.M (His Imperial Majesty) Haile Selassie Ist

Rohan Patrick

GAP Publishing, Monticello, NY 12701 iTraits of HIM | 3

This Book was put together due to the popular demand after the multimedia presentation at the Catskill Art Society, Livingston Manor, NY iTraits of H.I.M (His Imperial Majesty) Haile Selassie I Copyright 2017, 2018 by Rohan Patrick . Printed and bound in the United States pf America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Gifted at Play, LLC , an imprint of GAP Publishing, 18 Prince Street, Monticello, NY 12701.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Patrick, Rohan

iTraits of H.I.M (His Imperial Majesty) Haile Selassie I 4 | iTraits of HIM

Table of Content Introduction Chapter 1: Early Life Chapter 2: Strong Leader Chapter 3: Life and Times of Empress Menen Asfaw Chapter 4: The First Italo-Ethiopian War Chapter 5: The Second Italo-Ethiopian War Chapter 6: Wal Wal Incident Conclusion References

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Introduction Upon the death of Menelik in 1913, the country was being run by his 16-year old grandson Lij Iyasu. Menelik had named him his successor and thus the council of ministers couldn’t prevent the minor from taking over. When Menelik passed away, Iyasu tried to keep the news a secret. He had Menelik’s wife and daughter removed from the capital and was “disrespectful to Menelik’s old nobles.” Iyasu wasn’t anti-muslim like the preceding rulers (his father used to be muslim). He tried to accommodate both followers of Christianity and Islam. He married into families of both religions. He founded churches and built mosques. However, his toleration towards Muslims was resented by the church and the ministers would, in 1916, use it as one of the reasons to oust him out of power. Menelik’s daughter, Zawditu, succeeded him. At the same time, Dajazmach Tafari was named Heir to the Throne (Pankhurst, R. 1998, 203-8).

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Fig. 1 Rohan Patrick (B. 1969), Lij Tafari Makonnen in 1895, age three, wearing pectoral cross, 2017, Digital Illustration.

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Fig. 1 Rohan Patrick (B. 1969), Lij Tafari Makonnen in 1895, age three, wearing pectoral cross, 2017, Vector Illustration.

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Tafari was born in Ejersa Goro near Harar on 23 July 1892. He was the last of 10 children and the only one to grow to an adult age. Tafari’s father, Ras Makonnen, had high aspirations for his son’s future. He made him dejazmach at the age of 13. He had a French tutor as well as “attended a traditional Orthodox school, learning Ge’ez and religious traditions.” (Henze, P. 2000, 189-190) After his father’s death in 1906, Tafari went to Addis Ababa and “Menelik insisted he stay as a palace page and gave him two successive appointments as titular governor of small Shoan region.” For one year, he was governor of Sidamo before returning to Addis. Quickly afterwards, in 1910 he was assigned governorship of Harar. A year later he wedded Menen Asfaw, whom would stay by her husband’s side until her death.

He would govern Harar until l916 and was reassigned by Iyasu to Kaffa in the same year. A few months later, however, Iyasu would be ousted out of power and Tafari would be named heir to the throne. Soon after finding out he had been overthrown, Iyasu was forced into hiding. His father, Ras Mikael of Wollo, was not quite ready to give up. He marched down south towards Addis Ababa with 80,000 men. The imperial army, on the other side, built its front with 120,000 men. Before too much damage was done Mikael was captured and his army dismantled. At a victory parade a month later, an observer described Mikael: Emperor Haile Selassie I worked to modernize Ethiopia for several decades before famine and political opposition forced him from office in 1974.

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Chapter 1: Early Years

Born in Ethiopia in 1892, Haile Selassie was crowned emperor in 1930 but exiled during World War II after leading the resistance to the Italian invasion. He was reinstated in 1941 and sought to modernize the country over the next few decades through social, economic and educational reforms. He ruled until 1974, when famine, unemployment and political opposition forced him from office.

Haile Selassie I was Ethiopia’s 225th and last emperor, serving from 1930 until his overthrow by the Marxist dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1974. The longtime ruler traced his line back to Menelik I, who was credited with being the child of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

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He was born in a mud hut in Ejersa Gora on July 23, 1892.

Originally named Lij Tafari Makonnen, he was the only surviving and legitimate son of Ras Makonnen, the governor of Harar.

Among his father’s important allies was his cousin, Emperor Menelik II, who did not have a male heir to succeed him. Tafari seemed like a possible candidate when, following his father’s death in 1906, he was taken under the wing of Menelik.

Menelik II was king of Shewa and emperor of Ethiopia (1889).

He expanded the empire, repelled an Italian invasion, and modernized Ethiopia.

Menelik II was born on August 17, 1844 in Ankober, Shewa, Ethiopia. He was king of Shewa and emperor of Ethiopia (1889–1913). One of Ethiopia’s greatest rulers, he expanded the empire almost to its present-day borders, repelled an Italian invasion at the great the Battle of Adwa, and carried out a wide-ranging program of modernization. He died in 1913.

In 1913, however, after the passing of Menelik II, it was the emperor’s grandson, Lij Yasu, not Tafari, who was appointed as emperor. But Yasu, who maintained a close association with Islam, never gained favor with Ethiopia’s majority Christian population. As a result Tafari became the face of the opposition, and in 1916 he took power from Lij Yasu and imprisoned him for life. The following year Menelik II’s daughter, Zauditu, became empress, and Tafari was named regent and heir apparent to the throne.

For a country trying to gain its foothold in the young century and curry favor with the West, the progressive Tafari came to symbolize the hopes and dreams of Ethiopia’s younger population. In 1923 he led Ethiopia into the League of Nations.

The following year, he traveled to Europe, becoming the first Ethiopian ruler to go abroad.

His power only grew. In 1928 he appointed himself king, and two years later, after the death of Zauditu, he was made emperor and assumed the name Haile Selassie (“Might of the Trinity”).

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Fig. 3 Rohan Patrick (B. 1969), Haile Selassie I, The Lion was Crowned The King, 2017, Digital Illustration.

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Chapter 2: Strong Leader

Over the next four decades, Haile Selassie presided over a country and government that was an expression of his personal authority. His reforms greatly strengthened schools and the police, and he instituted a new constitution and centralized his own power.

In 1936 he was forced into exile after Italy invaded Ethiopia.

Haile Selassie became the face of the resistance as he went before the League of Nations in Geneva for assistance, and eventually secured the help of the British in reclaiming his country and reinstituting his powers as emperor in 1941.

Haile Selassie again moved to try to modernize his country. In the face of a wave of anti-colonialism sweeping across Africa, he granted a new constitution in 1955, one that outlined equal iTraits of HIM | 13

rights for his citizens under the law, but conversely did nothing to diminish Haile Selassie’s own powers.

Final Years By the early 1970s famine, ever-worsening unemployment and increasing frustration with the government’s inability to respond to the country’s problems began to undermine Haile Selassie’s rule.

In February 1974 mutinies broke out in the army over low pay, while a secessionist guerrilla war in Eritrea furthered his problems. Haile Selassie was eventually ousted from power in a coup and kept under house arrest in his palace until his death in 1975.

Reports initially circulated claiming that he had died of natural causes, but later evidence revealed that he had probably been strangled to death on the orders of the new government.

In 1992 Haile Selassie’s remains were discovered, buried under a toilet in the Imperial Palace. In November 2000 the late emperor received a proper burial when his body was laid to rest in Addis Ababa’s Trinity Cathedral.

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Fig. 4 Rohan Patrick (B. 1969), Haile Selassie I, The Lion was Crowned The King, 2017, Vector Illustration.

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Chapter 3: Life and Times of Empress Menen Asfaw Empress Menen Asfaw (Baptismal name Wolete Giyorgis) (25 March 1883 Ethiopian Calendar, 3 April 1891 Gregorian calendar – 15 February 1962) was the wife and consort of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia.

Empress Menen was born in the Wollo province Ambassel Region at ‘Egua’. The daughter of Asfaw, Jantirar of Ambassel and Woizero Sehin and was baptized in St Delba George Church.

Asfaw was a direct descendant of Emperor Lebna Dengel (1532), through Emperor Gelawdewos (1551) of Ethiopia and his daughter Princess Enkulal Gelawdewos. The title of Jantirar has traditionally belonged to the head of the family holding the mountain fortress of Ambassel, and he was one of them.

Her mother was Woizero Sehin Mikael, half-sister of Lij Iyasu Emperor of Ethiopia from 1913-16.

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Empress Menen, bore a descent from the Prophet Mohamed through her mother, Sehin, daughter of Negus Mikael (Muhammad Ali) of Wollo. Male descendants of the Prophet are sharifs. The Emperor of Ethiopia at the time of the Prophet Mohammed was Armah who was Christian. When the early followers of Mohammed were being persecuted in Arabia, they fled across the Red Sea to the Axumite Empire where they asked for sanctuary. The rulers of Arabia asked Armah to return the refugees, but when he saw that they were mostly women and children, he refused saying that even if the Arabian rulers sent him a mountain of gold he would not hand over these poor people. Thus Islam has existed in Ethiopia since its very inception. Mohammed was deeply moved by this act and called Ethiopia and her monarch “righteous� and exempted Ethiopia from Jihad. When Armah died it is said that Mohammed wept for him. Thus Ethiopia escaped the conquest of the early Islamic period that swept away the Christian Kingdoms of North Africa

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Chapter 4: The First Italo-Ethiopian War This war was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from 1895 to 1896. It originated from a disputed treaty which, the Italians claimed, turned the country into an Italian protectorate.

Italy was supported by the two other triple alliance members Germany and Austria. Much to their surprise, they found that Ethiopian ruler Menelik II, rather than being opposed by some of his traditional enemies, was supported by them, so the Italian army, invading Ethiopia from Italian Eritrea in 1893, faced a more united front than they expected. In addition, Ethiopia was supported by Russia, an Orthodox Christian nation like Ethiopia[clarification needed] with military advisers, army training, and the sale of weapons for Ethiopian forces during the war. Ethiopia was also supported diplomatically by the United Kingdom and France in order to prevent Italy from becoming a colonial competitor.[6][7] Full-scale war broke out in 1895, with Italian troops having initial success until Ethio20 | iTraits of HIM

Fig. 7 Rohan Patrick (B. 1969), Haile Selassie, Ethiopian emperor and “elect of God”, 2017, Digital Illustration.

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pian troops counterattacked Italian positions and besieged the Italian fort of Meqele, forcing its surrender. Italian defeat came about after the Battle of Adwa, where the Ethiopian army dealt the heavily outnumbered Italians a decisive blow and forced their retreat back into Eritrea.

This was not the first African victory over Western colonizers, but it was the first time such an indigenous African army put a definitive stop to a colonizing nation’s efforts. According to one historian, “In an age of relentless European expansion, Ethiopia alone had successfully defended its independence.”[8] The Khedive of Egypt Isma’il Pasha, “Isma’il the Magnificent” had conquered Eritrea as part of his efforts to give Egypt an African empire.[9] Isma’il had tried to follow that conquest with Ethiopia, but the Egyptian attempts to conquer that realm ended in humiliating defeat. After Egypt’s bankruptcy in 1876 followed by the Ansar revolt under the leadership of the Mahdi in 1881, the Egyptian position in Eritrea was hopeless with the Egyptian forces cut off and unpaid for years. By 1884 the Egyptians began to pull out of both Sudan and Eritrea.[9] Egypt had been very much in the French sphere of influence until 1882 when Britain occupied Egypt. A major goal of French foreign policy until 1904 was to diminish British power in Egypt and restore it to its place in the French sphere of influence, and in 1883 the French created the colony of French Somaliland which allowed for the establishment of a French naval base at Djibouti on the Red Sea.[9] The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 had turned the Horn of Africa into a very strategic region as a navy based in the Horn could interdict any shipping going up and down the Red Sea. By building naval bases on the Red Sea that could intercept British shipping in the Red Sea, the French hoped to reduce the value of the Suez Canal for the British, and thus lever them out of Egypt.

On 3 June 1884, a treaty was signed between Britain, Egypt and Ethiopia that allowed the Ethiopians to occupy parts of Eritrea and allowed the Ethiopian goods to pass in and out of Massawa duty-free.[9] From the viewpoint of Britain, it was highly undesirable that the French replace the Egyptians in Eritrea as that would allow the French to have naval bases on the Red Sea that could interfere with British shipping using the Suez Canal, and as the British did not want the financial burden of ruling Eritrea, they looked for another power to replace the Egyp22 | iTraits of HIM

Fig. 8 Rohan Patrick (B. 1969), Haile Selassie, Ethiopian emperor and “elect of God”, 2017, Vector Illustration.

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tians.[9] After initially encouraging the Emperor Yohannes IV to move into Eritrea to replace the Egyptians, London decided to have the Italians move into Eritrea.[9] After the French had unexpectedly made Tunis into their protectorate in 1881, outraging opinion in Italy over the so-called “Schiaffo di Tunisi” (the “slap of Tunis”), Italian foreign policy had been extremely anti-French, and from the British viewpoint the best way of ensuring the Eritrean ports on Red Sea stayed out of French hands by having the staunchly anti-French Italians move in. In 1882, Italy had joined the Triple Alliance, allying herself with Austria and Germany against France.

On 5 February 1885 Italian troops landed at Massawa to replace the Egyptians.[9] The Italian government for its part was more than happy to embark upon an imperialist policy to distract its people from the failings in post Risorgimento Italy.[9] In 1861, the unification of Italy was supposed to mark the beginning of a glorious new era in Italian life, and many Italians were gravely disappointed to find that not much had changed in the new Kingdom of Italy with the vast majority of Italians still living in abject poverty. To compensate, a chauvinist mood was rampant in Italy with the newspaper Il Diritto writing in an editorial: “Italy must be ready. The year 1885 will decide her fate as a great power. It is necessary to feel the responsibility of the new era; to become again strong men afraid of nothing, with the sacred love of the fatherland, of all Italy, in our hearts”.[9]

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Chapter 5: The Second Italo-Ethiopian War This war was also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a colonial war from 3 October 1935 until 1939, despite the Italian claim to have defeated Ethiopia by 5 May 1936, the date of the capture of Addis Ababa. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and those of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia). Ethiopia was defeated, annexed and subjected to military occupation.

The Ethiopian Empire became a part of the Italian colony of Italian East Africa. Fighting continued until the Italian defeat in East Africa in 1941, during the East African Campaign of the Second World War. Italy and Ethiopia were members of the League of Nations yet the League was unable to control Italy or to protect Ethiopia when Italy violated Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Abyssinia Crisis of 1935 is often seen as a clear demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the League.

The Italian victory coincided with the zenith of the popularity of dictator Benito Mussolini and the Fascist regime at home and abroad. Ethiopia was consolidated with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland into Africa Orientale Italiana (Italian East Africa).

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Chapter 6: Wal Wal Incident

The Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928 stated that the border between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia was twenty-one leagues parallel to the Benadir coast (approximately 118.3 kilometres [73.5 miles]). In 1930, Italy built a fort at the Welwel oasis (also Walwal, Italian: Ual-Ual) in the Ogaden and garrisoned it with Somali dubats (irregular frontier troops commanded by Italian officers). The fort at Welwel was well beyond the twenty-one league limit and inside Ethiopian territory. On 23 November 1934, an Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission studying grazing grounds to find a definitive border between British Somaliland and Ethiopia arrived at Wal Wal. The party contained Ethiopian and British technicians and an escort of around 600 Ethiopian soldiers. Both sides knew that the Italians has installed a military post at Wal Wal and were not surprised to see an Italian flag at the wells. The Ethiopian government had notified the Italian authorities in Italian Somaliland that the commission was active in the Ogaden and requested that the Italians co-operate. When the British Commissioner, Lieutenant-Colonel Esmond Clifford asked the Italians for permisiTraits of HIM | 29

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sion to camp nearby, the Italian commander Captain Roberto Cimmaruta rebuffed the request.

Fitorari Shiferra, the commander of the Ethiopian escort took no notice of the 150 Italian and Somali troops and made camp. To avoid being caught in an Italian–Ethiopian incident, Clifford withdrew the British contingent to Ado about 20 mi (32 km) to the north-east and Italian aircraft began to fly over Wal Wal. The Ethiopian commissioners retired with the British but the escort remained and for ten days both sides exchanged menaces, sometimes no more than 2.2 yd (2 m) apart. Reinforcements increased the Ethiopian contingent to about 1,500 men and the Italians to about 500 and on 5 December shots were fired. The Italians were supported by an armoured car and bomber aircraft; the bombs missed but machine-gun fire from the car caused about 110 Ethiopian casualties.[7] From 30 to 50 Italians and Somalis were also killed and the incident led to the “Abyssinia Crisis� at the League of Nations.[8] On 4 September 1935, the League of Nations exonerated both parties for the Wal Wal Incident.[9] Ethiopian isolation Britain and France, preferring Italy as an ally against Germany, did not take strong steps to discourage an Italian military buildup on the borders of Ethiopia in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. On 7 January 1935, a Franco-Italian Agreement was made giving Italy essentially a free hand in Africa in return for Italian co-operation.[10] In April, Italy was further emboldened by participation in the Stresa Front, an agreement to curb further German violations of the Treaty of Versailles.[11] In June, non-interference was further assured by a political rift that had developed between the United Kingdom and France following the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.[12] A last possible foreign ally of Ethiopia to fall away was Japan, which had served as a model to some Ethiopian intellectuals; the Japanese ambassador to Italy, Dr. Sugimura Yotaro, on 16 July assured Mussolini that his country held no political interests in Ethiopia and would stay neutral in the coming war. His comments stirred up a furore inside Japan, where there had been popular affinity for the African Empire. Despite popular opinion, when the Ethiopians approached Japan for help on 2 August, they were refused, and even a modest request for the Japanese government to officially state its support for Ethiopia in the coming conflict was denied.[13]

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Conclusion

It was on this day in 1974 that the last Ethiopian monarch, Haile Selassie, was overthrown by a communist ruled military clique, known as the Derg. Because this was the work of communists and because western media tended to ignore anything unpleasant that occurred in African countries after colonialism ended (which was supposed to solve everything) there is not much awareness about what followed but it was a living horror to put even the “Reign of Terror� to shame. After World War II, the Soviet Union made Ethiopia something of a priority and turned out massive amounts of propaganda in an effort to turn the Ethiopian people against their monarch. This was the same country that had backed Haile Selassie so long as he was fighting Italian Fascists, which had been allied with Haile Selassie in World War II and which had awarded him the military Order of Suvarov in 1959. Haile Selassie had himself also been cheering on the downfall of the European colonial empires in Africa, failing to appreciate the fact that most of the forces behind the movement were under communist control and would be no friend to him later. Likewise, when Haile Selassie was 32 | iTraits of HIM

again overthrown, unlike the last time, in 1974 there would be no British Empire to set him back on his throne again. After a period of increasing unrest, instability and internal problems for the country, Haile Selassie was overthrown in a military coup and later murdered.

This military clique, known as the Derg, took absolute control of the country and was, of course, backed the whole time by the Soviet Union and their masters in Moscow. The emperor had certainly made mistakes which hurt his cause, however, he certainly cannot be held responsible for the treason of others and the issues they seized on in order to take power were almost invariably due to things far beyond the ability of the emperor to control (unless one assumes the King of kings should be able to control the weather or global oil prices). The mistakes he made shrink in insignificance compared to the mistake of his overthrow and the dismantling of the monarchy which was the only government Ethiopia had ever known in its entire, ancient history. Why was this so? A simple look at the subsequent history of the country proves it beyond all doubt.

How did Ethiopia fare without a monarch? Well, there was one coup after another in this communist dictatorship that couldn’t even manage to agree on a single dictator. There were numerous rebellions, all of them bloodily suppressed, there was drought, famine, massive starvation and soon Ethiopians were fleeing their homeland in record numbers. Part of the country was even conquered by the Somalis and the Somali incursion was only beaten back with massive assistance from the rest of the communist bloc. I do not wish to sound too offensive here but, when you need the help of the Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea and Cuba to defeat a country like Somalia -you are not doing very well.

The man in charge of all of this, the man who had taken the place of Emperor Haile Selassie, was Mengistu Haile Mariam. Remember that name. What Stalin was to Russia, what Choibalsan was to Mongolia, what Mao was to China, Mengistu was to Ethiopia. He instituted a reign of terror in Ethiopia on a scale that made even the French revolutionaries look like slackers. Hundreds of thousands of people were massacred, hundreds of thousands were arrested and tortured and hundreds of thousands more were starved to death. All told, even by conservative estimates, Mengistu caused the deaths of more than two million of his fellow Ethiopians. Some believe he may have killed his former emperor personally and given what a vicious, hateful man he is, it is not beyond the realm of possibility. The Ethiopian people experienced a level of suffering under his rule that none of them had ever known before.

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and barbaric toward the Ethiopian people as Mengistu was. He intentionally murdered people by slow starvation and if there was one constant throughout his decades in power it was probably widespread starvation, some of it purposely inflicted and much of it the result of his idiotic, Marxist policies. He remains one of the most despicable villains in African history. Thanks to him, even today, when foreign people think of “Ethiopia” they tend to picture starving children.

Now, most histories will tell you that the nightmare of Mengistu and his communist tyranny ended in 1991. Do not be fooled. The nightmare has not ended and will not until traditional government, the monarchy, is restored to Ethiopia.

As the Soviet Union began to fold, the primary source of aid to Mengistu dried up and his regime was toppled. He fled to Zimbabwe and the open arms of his friend and fellow tyrant Robert Mugabe where he remains to this day, despite being indicted by an Ethiopian court for genocide. However, the party that replaced Mengistu was the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a democratic socialist party. In other words, communism for slow learners. Unfortunately, this is not unique to Ethiopia as we have seen the same all over the world. When communist regimes fall, the party renames itself the social democrats or democratic socialists and continues on just as they did before. They took power and held on to it, giving the world some show-elections just to make everyone happy while continuing on the tradition of corruption, wars and poverty that characterized the preceding regime. It is still a country of starvation and repression.

What happened in Ethiopia, under communism, is not much remembered today but everyone would do well to learn from it. The misery, the mass murder, the oppression was on a scale such as was seen in Cambodia under Pol Pot with a death toll in the millions. In the “Qey Shibir” or ‘Red Terror’ alone the murdered numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The Derg tried to wash its hands of the matter but the bands of radicals who carried out the killings had been armed by them and organized by them as an instrument of punishment for “reactionaries”. They only came to care about the horror when some of these radical groups began to target Derg officials and sympathizers as well in a way not too dissimilar from that of Mao’s Red Guards in China. In the capital city alone, aside from the adults, well over a thousand young children were murdered and left in the streets. All of this would have been enough to retard the progress of even the most advanced countries and it certainly has in Ethiopia but recovery has been even more slow and painstaking since the government still, to a large extent, clings to the leftist policies of the communist era. This summer, 34 | iTraits of HIM

protests broke out against the oppression of the government as well as demands for more wealth redistribution (a learned habit) and this resulted in a crackdown that has been more violent than the country has seen in decades.

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References:

https://theethiopianworldfederationinc.com/life-and-times-ofempress-menen-asfaw/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Italo-Ethiopian_War https://www.biography.com/people/haile-selassie-i-9325096 https://ethiopianhistory.com/Haile_Selassie/

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iTraits of HIM - Unedited 8/3/2018