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Haile Selassie: Statesman, Colonizer, God? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, it's time for the coronet.
• 0:02
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we can see the future, and the future is
• 0:22
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• 0:24
  Speaker 1: twenty ninth, we're going to be at the Chevalier again
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  Speaker 2: and what is that August? August seventh, we're going to
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  Speaker 1: Right, And then we're gonna knock the year out of
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• 2:06
  Speaker 2: And we can't wait to see everybody all the rest
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: of this year. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a
• 2:13
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• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Chuck and it's just the two of us, and we
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: are here to just wrap it up. Rap rap rap,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I have a little chat, a little talk, and just rap,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: just the two of us. We do that every time
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Jerry's not here. That song every time we reference it
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: some way, shape or form. It's not that great of
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: a song.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Oh God, please tell me you're joking.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: No, I'm actually not. I think it's one of those
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: ones I've just heard too many times. Sorry, it's all right.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I can't listen to Journey any longer either, If that
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: makes you feel any better.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Well, this is Bill Withers, all right.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: But I'm sick of that song.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I think Austin Powers was the one that put it
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: over the top.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Was it in that movie? Yeah?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: He turned it into like a rap what yeah? With
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: him and Mini Me?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Oh god?
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: No, wonder who thought Mini Me was going to show
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: up in the Hyle Selassie I did not until just now.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, same here. This is a complicated episode about a
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: complicated story.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the reason why we should just come out
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: of the gate and explain why this is so complicated.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Number one, we're talking about a human being who ruled
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: a nation, one of the most powerful nations on the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: continent of Africa, for virtually his entire lifetime. Right, There's
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: a lot that can happen during that time. You can
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: make a lot of enemies, you can become revered, and
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: so as a consequence, the guy did a lot of stuff,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of good stuff, a lot of shady stuff,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of downright evil stuff. And over the course
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: of the time that he was ruling and then beyond,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: some people came to venerate him as a god, like
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: a god on earth. Other people came to loathe them
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: as a murderous colonizer. Other people saw him as a
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: modernizer of a nation. There's so many different opinions about
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: this guy that it's really gonna be tough to cram
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: it all in into this one episode. But we're gonna,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: we're gonna try. We're gonna make it if we try.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think aside from the god thing, which
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: you know, we'll get to. I think he kind of
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: was a lot of those things. He did modernize Ethiopia
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: and he was a progressive voice for Africans, but he
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: also did a lot of bad things, and it seemed like,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: I don't know, for my it seemed like the last
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: twenty years of his life he did a lot more
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: bad than the first like forty years of his rule.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: That's what I got to. He started to phone it in,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: I think, and be awful. Well that's a consequence of
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: phoning it.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: In, you know. Yeah, but when you if you do
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: a little research on Highly Selassie, you'll see a lot
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: of articles like praising him, like really strongly, and then
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of articles that are like, why are we
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: rewriting this the history of this person to not include
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: any of the bad stuff.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Well, what's amazing is you can actually there's an answer
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to that question. The reason why is because of reggae.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: You can thank reggae for reforming the image of Highly
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Selassie across the world. It's amazing, it's astounding, it's it's
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: been really effective. Yeah, So Chuck, we're going to talk
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: about Highly Selassie, who is the Ruler of Ethiopia, the
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Emperor of Ethiopia. In fact, he had one of the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: most amazing titles of any ruler anywhere. When he became emperor,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: his official title was His Imperial Majesty, the Conquering Lion
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: of the Tribe of Judah, highly Selassie, the First elect
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: of God, Emperor of Ethiopia. That was his full time,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: which is just straight up impressive.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were a lot of different titles that he
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: had over the years, and a lot of different names
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: for the different titles. He gets kind of can get
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: in the weeds with that stuff. I just did not well.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: But he also had another title at the same time,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: which I can't even find right now, but we'll get to.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about Ethiopia, the country
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: that he ruled. You know, those of us off the
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: continent considered Ethiopia is like a cohesive whole nation, But
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: like most nations across the world, on any continent, it's
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: actually an assemblage of different smaller units that were eventually
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: brought together and unified into a nation like we recognize today.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and unified as sort of a should be in quotes.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, that's a good point.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it is in the Horn of Africa, and
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: like you said, it was home to lots of civilizations
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: over the course of you know, ancient history and then
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: you know, over through time, and it was it was
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a pretty big power. It is unique for that area.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: And then it was one of the first Christian nations
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: and remained a Christian nation despite being completely cut off
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: from the rest of the Christian world on all sides basically.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was one of the oldest around. It's
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: state religion is Christianity, I think Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, that
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: branch of the Christian Church. And since like I think
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the fourth century see at least, so for a very
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: long time, it's been a Christian nation and that meant
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: that it had like pretty good relations with other Christian
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: nations around the world. But also it traded with the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: tribes in Arabia, it traded with others in the Middle East.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Like it was a really important power for a really
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: long time.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And we should probably talk about the
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Slomonic dynasty. Yeah, while is in King Solomon, the Coronation
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: of Yakuno, and you know, we're doing our best with
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of these names I tried to look most
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: of these up.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: By the way, Well how's this one go?
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Well, this one goes Yakuno Amlac in twelve seventy. And
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: this is important because, like I said, is in King Solomon.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: This dynasty basically says, we are the direct descendants of
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: King Solomon and Queen of Sheba from the Bible, and
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: the line of Judah is our symbol. And you know,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: this is the sort of solemn line that as we'll see,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: would you know eventually d Halli Selassie.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's found among the Amhara people, which are
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: one of the groups of people living in the Ethiopian
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: region at the time. And some people say that this dynasty,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: this lineage of rulers is the oldest in the world.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: If you credit that as factual or even roughly factual,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: that King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba produced Menelik
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the First as a son who became the first ruler
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: of this Solomonic dynasty, then that's we're talking like three
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: thousand years essentially of rule by this one group in
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: this one area. Historians say that's a great story. Also,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Menelik the First is said to have brought the arc
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: of the Covenant to Ethiopia where it's supposedly being hidden
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: or kept, but really we can date it as far
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: back as twelve seventy, which is nothing to sneeze at,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: when Yakuno Ambloc was definitely coronated. Since twelve seventy there's
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: been nothing but solomonic rulers ever since then. That's a
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty good track record.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Frankly, yeah, for sure. But again that's not to say
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: that there was like complete unity under that rule throughout
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: the years. In the eighteenth then early into the nineteenth century,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Ethiopia was very fractured. There were a lot of feudal kingdoms,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: a lot of different like you mentioned, really religions and
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: ethnicities are sort of you know, co mingling with one another.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And eventually, as far as our story goes, unification around
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: the eighteen fifties is when things really sort of get
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: well more unified.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Right, And I was wondering what the answer is, like
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: if there is a definitive answer. Is unification a good
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: thing because it keeps formerly warring neighboring groups from warring,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: or is it a bad thing because these groups were
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: warring for a reason and now they're kind of smushed together,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: whether they like it or not. Yeah, you know, I
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: wonder if it's a case by case basis, or if
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: there's a right way to do it or a wrong
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: way to do it, or that you shouldn't do it
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: at all. I don't know.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: It's a good question.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: So by the nineteenth century, Emperor Menelik the Second, who
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: took the throne six or so hundred years after his
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: namesake did, who found the Solomonic dynasty, became the ruler
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: of a unified Ethiopia. And that's really where the story
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: kind of begins as far as where our protagonist, Liej
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Tafari Makonan is concerned.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: That's right, because he was born July twenty third, eighteen
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: ninety two, just what three years after Menelik the Second
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: was crowned, right yep, So you know we're talking about
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: highly Selassie. But as you said, born Lidge Tafari. Lidge
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: means child of Tafari is one who is respected or feared.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: So Lidge Tafari Maconin is child of Maconin who is
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: respected and feared.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and his dad was raz which means Prince Macanin,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: So his dad was a prince already it's pretty good birthright,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: you know, especially in a feudal society that I was
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: born into. But even more than that, his great grandfather,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Sahale Selasse had been emperor of the Kingdom of Shuwa
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: before Ethiopia was unified. So this guy had like literal
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: royal blood and was part of that Solomonic dynasty just
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: by birth.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you said his dad was prince. The word
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: there would be ross, And that's important to just put
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: a pin in that because if you put Ross and
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Tafari together, you will eventually get Rastafari.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Which sounds vaguely familiar. I can't put a finger on you.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Already mentioned reggae music, so that's where this is all eading.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: But Ross means prince. His father was a governor of
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: the Harar province advisor to the emperor, which at this point,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: I believe you already said was Menelik the second ye
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: and the first During the Menelik the second years, and
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: when Tafari was young, this is when Italy had its
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: sort of first first push into trying to basically you know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: this is a period of rapid colonization from the Europeans
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: all over Africa, think it was called the Scramble for Africa,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: and this was Italy's first push because they had land
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: on both sides of Ethiopia and Eritrea and Italian Somaliland,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and Ethiopia was kind of right there in the middle.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: But they were defeated that first time when fifteen thousand
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Italians were beaten back by about seventy five thousand Ethiopians
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: in the Battle of Adwa.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so Menelik the second became just revered for that,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: like this African country beat back in a colonial power
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: from Europe, and it was a huge national black eye
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: on Italy that they carried a soreness for for decades afterward,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: as we'll see. But it was an enormous feather in
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the cap of Ethiopia because at the time this Scramble
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: for Africa, one group after another was falling prey to
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: these colonial powers who were just moving in, moving their people,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: in taking over, forcing a lot of these people in slavery,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: extracting their resources. In Ethiopia said no, nice, try Italy,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: We're going to remain self sufficient and self determined.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. His mother, Yeshimabet, died when
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: he was about two years old, and he went on
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: to get a really sort of unusual and vast education
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: under the teachings of French missionaries, other teachers and scholars.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: He learned which was unusual at the time for where
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: he was a lot of European history and languages, and
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: that education would set him up for his later life
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: on the international stage.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. I mean, his familiarity with Europe would
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: be extraordinarily helpful because Europe, even though some of the
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: former Age of Exploration powers like lost their clout, Europe
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: still remained super important in Africa because they were colonizers.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: So to have a rapport with European powers was very
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: helpful keeping them at bay and also making Ethiopia a
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: really treasured asset or ally to those European powers too.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: It was just a good position for him to be in.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, and he ingratiated himself. He was very much
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: loved on the international stage for most of his life,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: which you know, was kind of at odds with how
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: he was viewed at home for the last couple of decades.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, because he was born into that royal lineage,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: he kind of made moves throughout the court in at
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: age thirteen, he was made a de Jasmach, yeah, which
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: is essentially like a count. And from that point on
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: he just kept rising and rising further and further up
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: in importance in the aristocracy. Right, because we should say,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: at the time, and for a very long time, Ethiopia
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: was a feudal agrarian society and economy where peasants worked
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the land and had to give a lot of the
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: fruits of their labor over to land owners who didn't
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: do anything except extract labor and goods from the peasantry.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: And then it went up and up and up, and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: then you had an aristocracy that was sitting at the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: top that was also tiered, and at the very top
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: of this where the rulers of Ethiopia, of which ros
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Tafari was rising in rank and influence.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And slavery played a big part in
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: that and a big part in this story, as you'll see.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: So just sort of setting that up. Over the next
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: few years, he was, like you said, kind of rising
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: through these different positions. He got married in nineteen eleven
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: to a noble woman named men in Asphalt and had
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: six kids, and they stayed married until she died in
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two, and then in nineteen thirteen, Menelect the
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: second died, and there was a very sort of interesting
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: power struggle that went on because his literal successor was
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: his grandson Iyazu the fifth, and he was not good
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: enough for the job. Evidently he was not a good
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: manager of people, didn't show a lot of promise as
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: a ruler, and even more importantly, he was I mean,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: the rumor was that he actually converted to Islam. He
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: was not friendly to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and because
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: of these rumors and he was deposed as emperor. He
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: was arrested and spent the rest of his life in
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: detention wherein his I believe, in nineteen sixteen, his aunt
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: Zuditu was crowned empress.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then so I don't I didn't get this.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't understand why I couldn't find what maybe you know.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Simultaneously or shortly after Zuditu was crowned, Empress, Tafari became
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Ras Tafari and the de facto ruler of Ethiopia as
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the Supreme region an heir apparent? Was it because he
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: was young still? I guess he was twenty five at
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the time. Was it because he was a man and
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: she was a woman and a woman that always have okay, gotcha? Okay,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: So they were basically power sharing, even though because he
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: was a man, I'm guessing he was just deferred to
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: over her in a society that requires an empress to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: have like a male regent with her right.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's basically I saw that in two
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: or three different places that if he I'm sorry, if
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Zuditwo was was a man, he may have still had
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: that position, but he would not have nearly the power
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: that he had as a man because she was a woman.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. So as this de facto ruler of Ethiopi, he
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: started making moves on the world stage, and there was
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: a difference between his and Zudituo's politics from the outset.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: She was more conservative than he was. He was much
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: more being younger, I think was a big part of it,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: much more progressive minded, much more interested in modernizing, much
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: more interested in opening the country to internationalism. And so
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty three, Ethiopia became a member of the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: League of Nations, just the third African country to do so,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: and that was after South Africa and Liberia and that
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: was like one hundred percent Tafari's doing from what I understand.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Part of that required the pledge to you know,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: abolish slavery. As we'll see, that was in nineteen twenty three,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: and the abolition of slavery in Ethiopia did not happen
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: in full for many, many decades, So it was you know,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: that's another you know, sort of a thread that goes
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: to this story of just how long it took to
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: get slavery abolished there because it was such a part
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: of their tiered system in Ethiopia.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: And it's worth saying too, I think, Chuck, that African
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: continental style slavery was much different from the kind of
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: slavery that was developed through the Transatlantic trade that was
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: established here in the United States in the Americas.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I think literal human ownership was not the case.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there was still like a curtailment of liberty,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: but at the same time, you lived in the same
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: house and ate the same food that you're you know,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: putative owner ate. It was just you were just treated
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: much differently, and you don't want to sanitize it because
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: you're still you still didn't have freedom like an individual
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: human being should have. But just compared to just the
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: horrors of the transatlantic chattel slavery practices like the African
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: slave trade was, it was just not like it at
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: all in a lot of ways.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So in nineteen twenty eight he was
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: named Nebus, which is a title equivalent to king, but
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: it's not the same as, you know, the king, as
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: we would think, because it's still below emperor. And he
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: started traveling the world basically and every single way, basically
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: becoming the face of Ethiopia despite the fact that he
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: was not emperor, you know, going to Jerusalem, going to Rome,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: going to Paris, meeting with King George, to the Fifth
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: in London, and it was sort of a world tour
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: where he placed himself expressly, sort of in the limelight.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: As you said that, you know, he had different politics
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: than the Empress herself, and that combined with him sort
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: of putting himself on the world stage in front of
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: her essentially did not sit well to the point where
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: her husband led a rebellion goog Saulle where he wanted
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: to install himself as emperor, but he was defeated by
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Tafari was killed and then within a couple of days later,
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Zuditu died of unclear circumstances, and I think we all
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: know what that means.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, there's a rumor that she died of shock
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: at the news of her husband's death. But more likely
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: there's just kind of this idea that Holly Selassie was
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: not above poisoning opponents and rivals, and that's entirely possible
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: that's how she went away.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And we should also point out prior
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: to this, prior to nineteen thirty through the nineteen like
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: late nineteen twenties, he was really doing a lot of
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: that progressive work, building roads. He established a national bank,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: He redid the judicial system that kind of said, you know,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: we need a more you know, modern Western based judicial
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: system and not this, you know, you steal love for
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: bread and we cut off your hand Biblical style.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And yeah, he continued that on when he became ruler
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: after Zudido was gone November Tewod nineteen thirty, which is
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: the holiest day of days for the Rasta religion. As
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: we'll see, Tafari became highly Selassie again. His imperial majesty,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: the conquering line of the tribe of Judah. Highly Celassie
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the first elect of God Emperor of Ethiopia, and one
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: of the first things he did was to write the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: first written constitution that Ethiopia ever had, and it was
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: extremely progressive, especially considering again this is a feudal agrarian
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: society we're talking about.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, for them, it was very very much
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: a step forward. He did create their first parliament, but
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: it was pretty clear with this, and even when they
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: made further changes I think in the nineteen fifties to
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: the constitution that it was still you know, the emperor
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: had the last say over everything.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Right, So I think that kind of goes to show
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: the kind of governing he did, Like he was well
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: aware of if you, you know, agree to something but
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: figure out a way to not do it or to
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: keep it from taking any power away from you, it
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: can really placate people a lot. He was kind of
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: asterful with that, and that's a good example of that.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: All Right, Is that a good long intro?
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Forgot, we haven't taken a break yet, So we'll take
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: a break, we'll come back and we'll pick up with
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Italy's second push into Ethiopia in the nineteen thirties. Right
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: after this.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, so about five years after Holly Selassie or i
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: should say Tafari McConnon became Holly Selassie, Italy came a
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: call in again. Remember you said that Italy had Eric
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to kind of the north and the east and Somaliland
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: to the south in the east. Is that correct? Still?
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they wanted to build a railroad through Ethiopia
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: to connect those.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, So again, by this time, Mussolini has come to
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: power in Italy and he has revived national pride. That's
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: a big thing that you'll see in history. Fascism tends
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to follow a major humiliation of a country on a
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: world stage, like Germany was humiliated in the Treaty after
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: World War One and just really punished, and fascism developed
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: out of that. Italy lost a lot of standing as
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: a colonial European power after it was beaten back by
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Ethiopia in the nineteenth century. Fascism followed after that. You
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: really want to be careful about stuff like that, not
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: addressing the fascism that can follow, and this is another
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: example of that. So Mussolini came along and he's like, hey,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: you remember the time that Ethiopia defeated US, Well, we're
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: going to make that up. We're going to go invade
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Ethiopia again, and this time we're going to do it
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: with industrial warfare.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a much different deal. This time. They
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: had far better equipment and weaponry and ammunition. I believe
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: they were still maybe technically outnumbered, but the way Ethiopians
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: were fighting was sort of outdated to the war machine
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: of Italy at this point. So it was it was
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: a real David versus Goliath kind of situation. So this
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: is when Selassie has a real chance to kind of
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: take center stage internationally, even more so by you know,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: started you know, sort of rattling the chains of the
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: League of Nations, which Italy was a member of as well. Yeah,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: saying like, hey, what's going on here? Is it right?
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: We need some help. It was called the Obscenia crisis,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Obscenia being the exonym for Ethiopia that US all used
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: basically more than Ethiopia and my research. And it was
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: a dark time in this war. They were getting beaten
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: down really badly. He was exiled because the Italians were
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: literally encroaching to the capital. So he went to French
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Somaliland in May of nineteen thirty six, which effectively ended
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the war, like least as far as Italy's concerned. They
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: were like, the war is over and we won.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and now we're occupying Ethiopia. Like you said, we won.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: The way that they won was through mustard gas. It
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: was essentially a huge campaign of muster gas. There were massacres,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: they set up concentration camps. It was a horrible occupation,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: just exactly the kind you would expect from like a
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: first half of the twentieth century colonizing power. And yet
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: they historians still say that Ethiopian never was colonized. It
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: was occupied by Italy, but they didn't get a chance
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: to colonize, which is often follows occupation. They just remained
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: in the occupation stage for about five years. And over
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the course of that five years, Selassie was in exile.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I think he was in bath, England, where he ran
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: a government in absentia and still kind of tried to
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: keep his rule going, but from outside the country which
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: was occupied by the Italians, which is tougher than it
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: even sounds.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, So he is sort of rattling the saber
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: to the League of Nations, so much so that Time
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: magazine named him Man of the Year in nineteen thirty five.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: But the problem was is that Europe was still courting
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: Italy at this point. They weren't They hadn't fully jumped
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: over to Germany side, and so they were sort of
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: on a sort of a high wire there trying to
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: court Italy. And even though they're a member of the
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: League of Nations and they were attacking another member of
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: the League of Nations, they didn't want to do anything
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: to tick off Italy too much. So the new British
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Foreign Secretary guy named Samuel Horr got into private talks
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: with the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and they came
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: up with the Horror Laval Pact, which essentially said, Ethiopia,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: if you give up basically half of your land to Italy,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: we can make the fighting stop. They never released it,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: but it was leaked to the press and there was outrage,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: of course, and it essentially was sort of the first
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: blow to what would be the death of the League
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: of Nations.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think another thing that Holly Selassie's speech did
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: to contribute to the League of Nations was to basically
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: point out like, hey, you guys aren't doing anything that
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: you agreed to do, Like all of you condemned Italy's
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: invasion as a straight up invasion. And here I am
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: to ask you to help me buy arms. Don't even
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: give me, just give me money so I can go
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: buy arms, and you still won't do it. What's the
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: use of this thing? So that was another blow to it.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: And then subsequently Highly Selassie became even more I guess,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: kind of respected on the world stage. That speech was
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a huge watershed moment in his rule, in his lifetime,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: even he became essentially celebrity, like you said, Time magazine
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: named a Man of the Year. Apparently there was an
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: expression in America around that time that developed that was, well,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: if that's so, then I'm highly Selassie. And then there
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: was a song too. Olivia helps us with this. She
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: turned up a mention of him in a shanty and
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: old shantytown. I'd be just as sassy as highly Selassie
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: if I were a king.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: So things are not going well. He is, like you said.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: He went from Prince Somaliland in exile to England and
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: then finally in nineteen forty one, World War two as
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: well underway. And this is well after Italy had joined
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: up with the Germans and England, you know, finally helps
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: out mainly because Italy and Germany had threatened British territory
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: in Africa. England finally steps up in nineteen forty one
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: and says, all right, well you're going to help you
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: out here because we're sort of threatened as well. We
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: have some area here in the Sudan, and so we're
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: going to help you assemble an army here and take
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: back your capital.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, so that was a huge deal. It was not
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: just the British Army, but the British Army working in
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: conjunction with these fighters that were assembled in Somaliland. And
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: there was a guy who doesn't get his due, Lorenzo
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: teaz Oz, who on behalf of Selassie, organized this basically
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: guerrilla army that fought against the Italians and ended up winning,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: pushing the Italians out of Ethiopium back into Eritrea.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: That's right, and so he came back May fifth, nineteen
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: forty one, returned to the capitol, gave a big speech saying,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: you know, we need to get the Italians out of here.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: But we need to do it in a way that's
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: not like they were doing things, because you know, we're
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: above that kind of thing. And so he's finally back
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: on his throne. He begins in the early nineteen forties
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: to abolish slavery. I think in nineteen forty two is
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: when they say he officially abolished it, but it took
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: a long time for it to completely, you know, get
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: removed from the system. But you know, like I said,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty three is when they said, hey, get
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: rid of slavery. So that was a couple of decades.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And Marcus Garvey, who as we'll see, played a
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: huge role in the development of the cult of personality
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: for Higley Selassie, was turned out to be pretty critical
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: of him, and for one reason was because Selassie allowed
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: slavery to continue for decades after he became the ruler
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: of Ethiopia and Garvey. That didn't sit well with Garvey.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: He also called him a coward for leaving Ethiopia to
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: go run the government in Absentia. You can definitely see
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: both points of view for him staying or going. And
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: it worked out because he sat back on his throne
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: again five years to the day after the Italians invaded.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: But regardless of how that happened, when he came back
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: to rule again in nineteen forty one, he was more
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: well thought of by Ethiopians and the rest of the
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: world alike than he was even before the Italian invasion.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: So he got back to modernizing again, and he put
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: his foot on the gas I think a little harder
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: than he should. I think he was really trying to
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: make up for the enormous setback that the Italian occupation
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: had created.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, also a lot of internal strife within Ethiopia after
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: the United States actually stepped up and helped unite Eritrea
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: with Ethiopia again in nineteen fifty two. One thing it
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: did was it gave Ethiopia access to the Red Sea,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: which was a big deal, but it wasn't a true
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: like unification. Eritrea remained had like an independent government in
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of ways, still highly Selassie did not like this.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: He wanted more control, and in nineteen sixty two he
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: dissolved their parliament and basically sort of annexed them, which
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: led to the creation of the Eritrean Liberation Front the
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: ELF and basically three decade internal civil war of you know,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: kind of constant uprisings within Ethiopia from the Eritreans.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Eritrea finally regained its independence and I think nineteen
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: ninety four years and years of essentially civil war. Because
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: again we were talking at the outset of this that
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: these were groups of different people. These were different ethnic
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: groups that had lived in the same area but had
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: now been put under unification. They were all now considered Ethiopians,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: but they had their own ethnic consciousness and they did not.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: A lot of them did not like being considered Ethiopians.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: I think the Ormo people in particular bristled at the
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: idea the most because they had the largest population in Ethiopia.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: And yet the Amhara people of which Hiley Selassie was
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: one and the whole Solomonic dynasty was from the Amhara people.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: They were the ones who were ruling things. So imagine that.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Imagine that this other group that you've been kind of
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: rivals with for centuries now is telling your group exactly
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: what to do, where to live, which taxing you, is
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: saying you're with us now, whether you like it or not.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: That was the kind of like internal strife that was
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: just kind of rubbing Ethiopia at the edges throughout the
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: entire the entirety of the highly selassies rule.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, And like you said, he's got his
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: foot on the gas. In the nineteen fifties, in particular,
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: in fifty five, they passed a new, a brand new,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: brand spanking new, very shiny constitution, further modernizing the judiciary
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: for one. This time, parliament was elected by the people,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: more human rights were guaranteed, but it was still not
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: like a Western style democracy. Highly Selassi was still very
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: much in charge and more popular than ever on the
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: international stage. He's all of a sudden visiting the United States.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I believe FDR invited him after World War Two, but
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: he never went. So he finally came at Eisenhower's behest,
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: had a ticker tape parade in Manhattan. Highly Selassie went
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: to a Yankees game, went to Yosemite National Park, just
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: does this big, like kind of pr tour through America.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: It's really interesting, Yeah for sure.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: And again like this guy was like Americans couldn't believe
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: what they were seeing. Like this is a time where
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: there was still like segregation in America and here's this
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: black African leader's who just revered in the United States.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: It's just like cognitive dissonance. But they were just thrilled
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: by this guy, right, so highly Selassie ate that stuff up.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: He loved that. One of the big criticisms of him
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: in retrospect, and I think even at the time, was
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: that his preferred company were Europeans and Americans and other
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: people of wealthy countries. That's who he liked to rub
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: elbows with. That's who was invited to the parties that
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: he threw in the royal palaces. He didn't he didn't
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: seem to think that much about the people he ruled
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: and who essentially gave him all the power that he had,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: that he went and used to basically enrich himself in
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: his own image.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: I think that's a great setup for a break.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh sure, yeah, I don't like to toot my
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: own horn, So you just put me on the spot,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: all right.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back after this, all right. So when
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: we left off, you were talking about the fact that
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Hayley Selassie was very popular internationally, not so much or
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: not as much at home at least like with everybody.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: He had factions of people who loved him in Ethiopia,
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: but it was complicated and.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: They were probably mostly from the Amhara ethnic group too, remember.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So he's got a situation sort of
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: where he's getting older, he's trying to push progressive ideals
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: that are popular with the young people, not as popular
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: with the older guard, of course, and that creates a
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: lot of internal strife. And he's also got this sort
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: of ongoing problem with the Elf. All these ethnicities mixed together,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: there's going to be some strife. And finally, in December
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty, he was in Brazil and members of his
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: imperial bodyguard staged a coup and they proclaimed that his
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: son Selassie son Crown Prince Asphal Wolsen, was the new emperor.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: There were about four days of violence in about three
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: hundred deaths, but it was suppressed and those leaders the
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: formal imperial bodyguards were killed. And this really change things
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: as far as sort of setting up the last couple
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: of decades of Selassie's rule and reign as as basically
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: a police state.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and yet he still was a shrewd ruler, internal
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: ruler that the coup had set up shop in the
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Royal Palace while he was away, and he donated that
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: royal palace to establish the university, the first university in Ethiopia,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: which became a Disa Baba University, which is a highly
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: respected university today. And so like it was a it
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: was a really shrewd move on his part, basically placate
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the young intelligensia, who were definitely part of that coup,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: if not you know, in physically, at least in spirit.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: So they were they were like, Okay, we're getting a university.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, he knows he's taking his
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: foot off the modernizing gas and he needs to basically
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: consult his power even further, probably take them back and
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: remind everybody that he's still emperor.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. One of the truly seems like great
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: things he did was in nineteen sixty three when he
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: led the movement to establish the Organization of African Unity THEAU,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: which was basically thirty two African nations that had won
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: independence at that time getting together establishing this union, I
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: believe it's now called the African Union. And you know,
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: they had bold, you know, pretty great objectives. They wanted
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: to improve life for Africans, they wanted to protect the
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: sovereignty of the countries that had won their independence, and
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: he was of course chosen as the first president of
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: the OAU, And he was in his seventies at this point,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: like he was getting on up there in age. Yeah.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: And it's ironic because he was like an elder statesman
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: compared to the much younger, generally democratic leaders that were
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: the other that made up the rest of the African
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Union countries, right, And they were there, all those younger
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: rulers were there, or leaders, I should say, they weren't
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: rulers because this wave of decolonization had been kicked off
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: by Ghana and I think the early sixties, and so
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: that was one of the purposes of the African Union,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: or at first the OAU, was to basically say, okay,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: we need to like level set again. This is a
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: new continent. We're taking it back, we're setting up new
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: governments and all that. So it's kind of ironic that
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Higley Selassie was the first president of the Organization of
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: African Unity because he was exactly the kind of person
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: who was being toppled elsewhere around Africa, except he was
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: not toppled because he had never been colonized. Although other
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: groups in Ethiopia considered him a colonizer. He managed to
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: survive that wave and strangely was made the president of
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the OAU.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it was just because he was such
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: a popular worldwide popular figure, is what I can figure.
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: So it almost seemed like it was like it was
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: just sort of destined to be that he would be
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: their first president, even though if they really thought about it,
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: and I don't even know if they held a vote,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: actually I meant to look that up, yeah, or if
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: he was basically just like, I'll be president, right.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Right, he called president first, I call it.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: So toward the end of his run, more criticism coming
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: him way from within Ethiopia. Their inflation is really high,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: there are people living in poverty. Any descent was squash squashed,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Leaders of descent disappeared. He still had a positive view
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: internationally through all of this somehow, but that was not
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: the truth of the matter back home.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: No, and that kind of stuff was making people bristle
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: further and further, not just the other ethnic groups like
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the Oromo or the Somalis, but like even people in
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: his own you know, his own group. They were they
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: there was a huge problem. No matter how good a ruler.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: He was viewed as there was always going to be
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: a people who were saying, it's the nineteen sixties and
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: we still have an emperor. Can we look any more backwards?
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Just that alone, yeah, kind of put a time limit
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: on how much longer he was going to rule. But
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: then that whole kind of crackdown phase of his rule
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: also really really had a huge hit on his popularity
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: too among other quarters.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like when I was thirteen, man, emperors
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: were all the rage.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point that when he came into power,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: that was that was normal. But he stayed in power
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: for so long that he outlived the age of emperors.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Weirdly sixty something years. The other problem, or another problem,
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: was the fact that he as emperor had a very lavish, luxurious,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: some say wasteful lifestyle, which was not a popular thing
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: to do when your country is struggling in a lot
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: of ways, certainly when they were hit by their second
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: really huge famine at the beginning of nineteen seventy two.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: This was a famine in the Wallow Province where eventually,
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: over the course of three years, by nineteen seventy five,
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: more than I saw up to two hundred and fifty thousand,
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: maybe two hundred thousand people died. And he's how much
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: did he was his birthday party? Thirty something million dollars.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I spent thirty five million dollars on his eightieth birthday
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: party in nineteen seventy two while this famine was going on.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right in the middle of this thing, there was
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: actual food being I'm not sure what, but there was
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: food being produced and Walla and he was exporting it
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: elsewhere at the time.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, somebody pointed out I can't remember which article it was,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: maybe one from London School of Economics that said, like
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the areas that experienced famine and Ethiopia were the ones
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: that were the most restless against his rule.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Oh. Interesting, Like there was one.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: Region that he asked the Brits the bomb in nineteen
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: forty two while they were there, like, hey, before you go,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: do you mind bombing this restless region up to the north.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I think it might have been the Waller region. Yeah, Like,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: if you messed with him, there was a good chance
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: that you were going to suffer some sort of famine
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: and exporting the food that you were producing. Again, feudal society,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: you could do that kind of thing that would be
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: a great way to guarantee you famine. And then even
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: without meddling in it directly, whether he did or not,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: he definitely tried to downplay it internally and externally because
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: he didn't want it to tarnish his reputation. Apparently he
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: was mad at the people in the famine stricken areas
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: for starving because it looked it reflected badly in him.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a good look. So things are unraveling,
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: and it's pretty clear that it's unraveling a lot of
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: protesters happening. All of a sudden, the union, the labor
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: force has gone on strike. This is in nineteen seventy four.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: And finally, in the summer of nineteen seventy four, a
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: group called the DIRG, the Provisional Military Administrative Council, which
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: were this wasn't upper military brass. They were relatively low
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: ranking officers and officials. They seize power in nineteen seventy four.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: It was a coup and in September of nineteen seventy
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: four they deposed him, placed him under house arrest and said,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: your son, who previously was named emperor, even though that
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: never happened, was named emperor once again for a very
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: short time, from the summer of seventy four to March
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: of seventy five, when the DIRG abolished the Ethiopian monarchy altogether.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, so highly. Selassie is still living in the Royal Palace,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: but now he's under house arrest essentially, and the DIG
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: this new government is led by a guy named Mangiestu
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: hall Mariam, and they created what was known as a
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Red Terror like they essentially said we're no, no, committed
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: tons and tons of war crimes like killed thousands of people,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: tortured tens of thousands of more, and basically said we're
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: not We're not with the US any longer. We're now
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: with the Soviet Union and we're just redoing everything in
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: the most bloody way possible. Unfortunately, they held power for
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the next twenty years. It wasn't until they were deposed
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four and replaced by a more democratic
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: government that they were charged with all the horrible atrocities
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: that they had. But long before that happened, while the
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: DIRG was just brand new, Holly Selassie was reported as dead,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: I think in August of nineteen seventy five. He was
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: found dead in his little apartment in the Royal Palace,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: and the leaders were like, yeah, he had a prostate
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: operation a couple of months ago and probably was a
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: complication from that, but anyway, it's Ethiopian tradition to bury
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: people within twenty four hours, so we're going to do
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: it in twelve.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. I think that the inside story was
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: that he was strangled by Dirk soldiers. It seems pretty
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: obvious he was gotten rid of. I think there were
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: some people that said that he was in the Crown Prince.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: Actually his son said, you know, he was in pretty
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: good help as far as I knew before he died,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: So I know he was eighty three, but he was
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: not dying. No.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: There was another long standing rumor that he had been
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: smothered with a pillow. But yes, in just the way
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: that he had dispatched the Empress before him. It seems
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: he had been dispatched as well by the Dirk. And
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: then in probably the most insulting way your remains can
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: be handled. They found that after Mariam was deposed in
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, that he had been buried under the
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: laboratory in the Royal Palace.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, with a v laboratory.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it sounds like.
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: You said, laboratory.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: No.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: No, So that is highly Silassie. But we of course
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: have to close by talking about reggae, right.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's a lot of people out there, especially
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: in Jamaica, who said he didn't really die and those
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: weren't his bones that they found and reburied.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. If you you know, we mentioned early in the
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: thing Rastafari. Rastafarian theology is basically a reference to his
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: identity as God as the Messiah. African descended people in
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Jamaica had combined elements of Christianity other different religions in Africa.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: And this is also during the Back to Africa movement
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: when there were you know, potentially some people in Jamaica
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: that were like, no, we need to go back to
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: the homeland.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I said, Marcus Garvey figures big into the
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: cold of personality around Holly Selassie. That's largely because in
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, Marcus Garvey predicted that when a black
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: king shall be crowned in Africa, the day of deliverance
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: is at hand and that basically black people would be free,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: and that Ethiopia was that whole location that you wanted
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: to go to if you were going back to Africa.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: And it just had a huge impact on Jamaica in
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: part because on Coronation Day the rains came that ended
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: a long standing drought in Jamaica, and they were like, man,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: this Garvey cat knows what he's talking about. And they
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: became hyper focused on Holly Selassie. So his Coronation Day
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: was the holiest day or is the holiest day November
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: second in the Rastafarian religion. And we keep saying religion
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: and theology. That's because Rastafarians believed that Holly Selassee was
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: God incarnate and still is if you believe that he
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: didn't actually die and that he followed in a line
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: of I can't remember an ancient priest, Jesus and then
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Holly Selassie were the incarnations of God here on earth.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he never claimed to be that. I think
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: I've seen that he didn't expressly deny it either. I
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: think he only went to Jamaica one time though, so
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: it wasn't like I don't know, it's a very interesting
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: thing that I don't fully understand, to be honest.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: Well, that time that he went to Jamaica in nineteen
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: sixty three. That's the second holiest day in the Rastafarian religion.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: They call it ground Nation Day. And one hundred thousand
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Rastafarians showed up, and we're just like trying to tear
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: the plane apart to get him out of there, because
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: they wanted to see him so badly, like it was
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: a big deal. And because so the Rasafarians had generally
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: been mocked and made fun of by other Jamaicans for
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: the last few decades, like they've been following Highy Selassie
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: as their savior for thirty years by then, And after
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: he came and Jamaica got to see, like, oh, this
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: guy's actually pretty cool. A lot more people became Rastafarians,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: including one woman named Rita Anderson who converted after Holly
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Selassie's visit and she became Rita Marley.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, this one was a lot.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: It was a lot. Yeah, And he lives on in reggae.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about Holly Selassie, you
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: can listen to a bunch of reggae. You can go
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: read historical accounts, you can read all sorts of stuff
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: about him, and you'll get just this hugely complex, complicated picture.
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I hope he did a good job.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: You know what this one did is it as I
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: was researching it, it laid bare just how little African
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: history you're taught in an American school.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's one of the reason we wanted
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: to do this, is just to kind of shake that
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: up a little bit at least.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: Oh no, for sure. But usually when we're researching other
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: types of history, it's like, yeah, I've sort of heard
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: this here and there. I don't fully remember, but like,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: this was a ground up learning experience for me. I
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: knew nothing about the history of Ethiopia, so really interesting
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: stuff it is.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Is also kind of exciting too, because that means that
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: there's a whole continent with the rich history that we
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: haven't even begun to tap into. You know, yeah, totally
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: look out for more in twenty twenty four. That's right,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Highley Selassie. I
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: think I just explained how you could do that, which
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: means that we've already I guess begun.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: Listener mail, that's right. This is on ap classes from
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: our episode on What was that specifically about?
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: I think that was the pig Malian Effect episode.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Hey, guys, I'm a high
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: school teacher at a public school in suburban Cincinnata. I
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: currently teach AP human geography and AP World History. I've
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: also taught APUs history, AP government, and AP psychology in
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: the past. Just so you know, the big trend and
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: AP across the country the last decade plus has been
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: to open it up to as many students as possible.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: We still have a teacher, we still have teacher recommendations
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: for AP class at our school, but if any kid
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: wants to take a certain AP class, they can. For
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: the most part, classes like AP human geography are certainly
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: more accessible for a lot of students in a class
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: that requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge like apchemistry. In general, though,
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: AP classes have changed a lot since the nineties and
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: are far less exclusive than they once were. And of course,
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it was like this and you were there.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: You had a test to get into an AP class, right.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, they just thought they didn't stink at
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: at all.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: That's right. Thanks for all you do, guys. Listen to
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: all the episodes and I include what I learned from
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: you into my classes. Whenever I can. And that is
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: from Connor teacher in Cincinnati.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. I really hope that some of those AP
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: teachers who thwarted me time and time again are alive
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: to see that our work is being used in AP classes.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: That's right, man, what a turn of events.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Huh you showed them.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: If you want to be like Connor and give us
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: some great information that will just make our day. We
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: love to hear that kind of stuff. You can wrap
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 56:42
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