Emperor Haile Sellassie Research Articles

SLAVERY, SLAVE TRADE AND MANUMISSION IN GOJJAM, ETHIOPIA, 1940S-1950S.

Like in other African countries, in Ethiopia slavery and slave trade were practiced for centuries and had been endemic to the society In this article, I have made an attempt to bring out the efforts of different emperors, particularly Emperor Haile Sellassie’s period in order to regulate and prohibit slavery and slave trade in Ethiopia and to discuss the existence of the institutions and the practice until the 1950s. The attempt of the Ethiopian rulers to regulate or prohibit the slave trade in slaves failed to owe to several reasons. Anyway, the most serious laws making the beginning of the end for the institution of slavery in Ethiopia came in the 1920s. In an attempt to counter European criticism, Rastafari issued an edict in 1923 and 1924 imposing heavy penalties on the slave trade without, however, abolishing the legal status of slavery itself. Later, Ethiopia became a signatory to the ‘Slavery Convention of 1926.’ The official policy of the Ethiopian government against the slave trade, however, did little to stop the regional warlords from continuing to raid the borderlands for slaves. The continuation of slave trading and slavery itself in Ethiopia into the 1930s, the involvement of the state in the trade, and the continued use of slaves in the royal court were directly contrary to the public statements of Emperor Haile Sellassie I and the legal commitments of the Ethiopian state. Immediately after the evacuation of the Italian although Emperor Haile Sellassie made efforts to prohibit the trade in slaves, it continued to flourish. Even in 1942, he issued an edict imposing heavy punishment on those who were involved either in capturing or kidnapping, or selling slaves. Nonetheless, this does not mean that it came to an end. For this, I have discovered archival evidence in the Debre Markos Administrative Office and Higher Court House of Eastern Gojjam Zone, and in Dangla and Metekel administrative offices. Accordingly, the archives I discovered have three categories: the first deals with people who were accused of catching, kidnapping, and selling slaves on the basis of an eyewitness who was punished from seven to twenty years of imprisonment. The second category is dealing with people who were accused of kidnapping and selling individuals as slaves for money but for lack of witnesses, who were pardoned and set free. The third phase is connected with the people who after capturing and kidnapping individuals with the intent to sell them to slavery but because of the absence of a purchaser, treated them brutally. The sources are critically collected, scrutinize, and analyzed and their validities are cross-checked one against the other. Finally, as historical research, the paper is based on a systematic selection, collection, and analysis of archival documents, manuscripts, and secondary sources both published and unpublished.

Analyzing Narrative Structure of the Novel “The Afersata”

The purpose of this research is to show how Sahle Sellassie Berhane Mariam, who has proven his worth as an Ethiopian novelist, represents the Ethiopian social and political environment in a thoroughly realistic way. This research has four major chapters. The first chapter is the introduction which shows the background of Ethiopian literature in English, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, methodology of the study, significance of the study, delimitation and limitation of the study as well. Previous studies are reviewed under chapter two and narrative structure analysis is treated under the third chapter. The fourth chapter is the last chapter which deals with summary and conclusion based on the findings of the study. It is found that, in The Afersata novel of Sahle Sellassie, the story focused on the communal and traditional court system called the Afersata to investigate the arson which was a real experience of the Gurage people in the past. The author revealed different customs and beliefs. Besides political corruption, social insecurity and economic woes are revealed. The story evolves during Emperor Haile Sellassie’s regime where Ethiopia suffered from bureaucratic government system. DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/11-3-02 Publication date: February 28 th 2021

Slavery Beyond History: Contemporary Concepts of Slavery and Slave Redemption in Ganta (Gamo) of Southern Ethiopia

Slavery was officially abolished in Ethiopia by Emperor Haile Sellassie in 1942. Despite the abolitionary law slaves and their descendants have continually been marginalized in the country (especially in the peripheral parts of southwestern Ethiopia) from the time the law passed until today. In the Gamo community of southern Ethiopia, descendants of former slaves carry the identity of their ancestors and as the result they are often harshly excluded. Today, not only are they considered impure, but their perceived impurity is believed to be contagious; communicable to non-slave descendants during rites of passage. In order to escape the severe discrimination, slave descendants change their identity by redeeming themselves through indigenous ritual mechanism called wozzo ritual. However, the wozzo ritual builds the economy of former slave masters and ritual experts while leaving redeemed slave descendants economically damaged. This study is both diachronic and synchronic; it looks at the history of slavery, contemporary perspectives and practices of slavery and slave redemption in Ganta (Gamo) society of southern Ethiopia.

A Nationalization of a Bank of Issue Carried Out in a Soft Way: The Case of the Establishment of the Bank of Ethiopia

The Bank of Abyssinia, a private financial institution established in 1905 in Cairo under Egyptian Law, was given a 50-years concession for carrying out banking activity in Ethiopia by the Emperor Menelek II. This institution was engaged in issuing notes as well as in any kind of commercial banking business. The Emperor Haile Sellassie, after acceding to the throne in 1930, could not accept that the only country’s issuing bank was a foreign-owned share company and decided for nationalization. The institutional change was implemented, however, in a soft way, providing an adequate compensation to shareholders, and in agreement with the main foreign shareholder, the National Bank of Egypt. The Bank of Abyssinia went, therefore, into liquidation and a new institution, the Bank of Ethiopia, was established in 1931. The new bank, although under full Government control, retained management, staff, premises, clients and activity of the ceased financial institution. Italian occupation of the country, in 1936, brought the liquidation of the Bank of Ethiopia.

An early letter from Emperor Haile Sellassie to the Christian missionaries to the Jews

The Amharic letter published and translated here was sent to me by the learned Brad Sabin Hill, formerly of the Centre for Hebrew Studies at Yarnton, Oxford, and currently at New York.

Emperor Haile Sellassie's Arrival in Britain: An Alternative Autobiographical Draft by Percy Arnold

Emperor Haile Sellassie's Arrival in Britain: An Alternative Autobiographical Draft by Percy Arnold

The Italian Invasion, the Ethiopian Empire, and Oromo Nationalism: The Significance of the Western Oromo Confederation of 1936

The Italian Invasion, the Ethiopian Empire, and Oromo Nationalism:The Significance of the Western Oromo Confederation of 1936 Ezekiel Gebissa Background In 1916, a palace coup d'état led by the Shewan nobility brought to power Ras Taffari Mekonnen as the regent and heir apparent to the throne of the Ethiopian empire.1 Soon Taffari began to take measures to make himself the de facto ruler of the empire. In the 1920s, he focused on removing Menelik's stalwarts from office and cutting them off from their power base. After his accession to the throne in 1930 as Emperor Haile Sellassie, he embarked on a program of political centralization to end the limited autonomy of the regions that had maintained semi-independent status since their incorporation into Ethiopia. As he worked to concentrate power in his own hands, Haile Sellassie reversed the political arrangements of Emperor Menelik. The latter had ruled through a combination of coercion and consent, appointing military rulers where he encountered resistance and granting internal autonomy to hereditary rulers who agreed to accept his suzerainty peacefully and pay annual tributes.2 Haile Sellassie found his predecessor's administrative system incongruent with his vision of an empire ruled from the center by an all-powerful sovereign. He abolished the semi-independent status of such regions as Tigray, Gojjam, and Jimma, and appointed only Shewans to rule the subordinate regions.3 [End Page 75] When Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the deposed hereditary rulers felt that their time had come to settle scores. They defected to the Italian side in the hope of regaining their positions. Indeed, the Italians appointed them as governors of their former domains. In 1941, when Haile Sellassie returned to power, they were once again excluded from power. In response, they made common cause with the oppressed people in their regions and rebelled against an apparently "irreversible centralization under the hegemony of the Shewan Amhara nobility."4 In Oromo areas, grievances against the initial conquest and loss of autonomy ran deep. Ever since they had been conquered by Menelik, Oromos had expressed their rejection of Abyssinian rule through acts of defiance, ranging from embracing Islam to outright rebellion. When Italy invaded Abyssinia, Oromos seized the moment to reclaim their lost freedom and sovereign existence. In 1935, the Raya and Azeboo Oromos attacked the Abyssinian armies going to and returning from the Battle of Maichew. Even the fleeing emperor felt threatened enough to avoid passing through their land. In 1936, the Oromo of Jimma attacked and expelled Amhara officials and thereby demonstrated their rejection of colonial rule. In western Abyssinia, the hereditary rulers of the Oromo declared the establishment of an independent polity called the Western Oromo Confederation (WOC) and offered themselves as a mandate territory of the League of Nations.5 These acts of resistance have not been adequately documented in Ethiopian historiography. The neglect is not due to a lack of adequate sources. Contemporary observers have left a thorough record of events in the Oromo areas during the Italian invasion. British consular reports from Goré, for instance, maintain that several Oromo regions took advantage of the Italian invasion to reclaim their lands. According to one such report, the various factions (provinces) were always on the point of open war . . . with the Taffari party which was only a family government operating in Addis Ababa as events clearly proved on the Italian invasion every single province either going into open rebellion like GOJAM-TIGRE and OGADEN or passive rebellion by refusing to take part in the war like the western Galla provinces and the [End Page 76] southern provinces held in subjection with a light Amhara garrison of feudal soldiery holding the occupied provinces in serfdom. These Amhara garrisons were withdrawn to Northern front and the whole country has been seized by whatever tribe the province contains.6 As the above statement shows, most of the Oromo resistance movements have always sought freedom from Amhara domination, restoration of their land, and recognition of their cultural identity and political autonomy. These objectives ran contrary to the political desires of the Ethiopianist elite to maintain Ethiopia as a unified country. Documenting Oromo-led movements as worthy historical phenonema...

A Nation without a City [a Blind Person without a Cane]: The Oromo Struggle for Addis Ababa

A Nation without a City [a Blind Person without a Cane]:The Oromo Struggle for Addis Ababa Getahun Benti Cities as Centers of Civilization Scholars of various disciplines have underlined that the emergence of cities is one of the most important turning points in history1 and humankind's achievement that qualitatively changed human society.2 Throughout their long existence, cities have changed in form and scale. In the course of time, they have become centers for "control and coordination of the surrounding areas" by means of "specialized organization, extensive lines of communication, accumulation of wealth, diverse populations, change, and complexity—in short, civilization."3 Cities have played crucial roles in social, economic, political, and cultural transformations; they have served as centers of change and progress throughout history, a role that they are likely to continue in the future.4 Explaining the role of cities in history, Charles Tilly has affirmed that "Cities are special kinds of communities in which the coordination and control of widely dispersed activities take place."5 Raymond W. Mack and Dennis C. McElrath have also noted that "the city is the home of workers whose major functions involve coordinating and controlling wide-ranging economic, political, military, and religious activities."6 Likewise, Bert F. Hoselitz has pointed out that, without "an urban climate, it is difficult for commerce, financial institutions, industrial establishments, governmental bureaucracies, and advanced educational and intellectual infrastructures to develop and flourish."7 [End Page 115] Cities improve the standard of life of the population, ensure continuous "modernization," and enhance spatial integration of societies through the creation of an urban-rural equilibrium or interdependence between the two communities.8 For cities to play their proper role in society, they must be controlled by the people in whose territory they are located and avoid highly bureaucratized power structure. Control of cities by outsiders, according to John Friedman, retards the "frequency of innovation," that "in a given locality is a function of its internal structure of social order."9 And tight control of cities by a "rigid, hierarchical system of power" is "detrimental for innovations."10 Within this framework, this article will examine how Addis Ababa, once the Oromo village of Finfinne, has fared since it fell under the control and tight management of Abyssinians11 more than a century ago. At a glance, one observes that whatever innovation was achieved in Addis Ababa was geared to benefit the occupiers rather than the original inhabitants. The Oromo were excluded from integration into the urban economic, social, and politico-cultural developments in the city. They were marginalized and consequently lacked the power to develop within structures and to make a plan for what Michael Peter Smith and Thomas Bender call "a national project of modernization [that] is best represented by the city as a space of urban design."12 The Abyssinians introduced urban policies and structures that prevented Oromos from becoming residents in the city in groups. Put another way, the Oromos' lack of control over Addis Ababa impeded the development of their own institutional frameworks to promote changes and to adopt aspects of modern science and technology.13 My goal in this article is to argue that the policy of exclusion of Oromos from participating in the administration, economic activities, and cultural functions of Addis Ababa has had an adverse effect on Oromos and on Ethiopian politics as a whole. In Menelik's time, many Oromos were physically removed from the city and its environs. During the reign of Emperor Haile Sellassie (r. 1930-1974) and the military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam (1974-1991), government education and language policies, aimed at Amharizing the Oromo in the name of forging a "national" culture, effectively purged the city of its Oromo components and made it impossible for Oromos to succeed both individually [End Page 116] and corporately. The current government has taken steps that follow the pattern set by its predecessors, but with the aim of replacing Amhara hegemony with a Tigrayan one. To demonstrate the detrimental effects of Oromo exclusion, I will first look at some aspects of the policies three Amhara-dominated governments pursued to establish and maintain Amhara cultural and economic hegemony in Addis...

IDENTITY AND CHURCH: ETHIOPIAN–EGYPTIAN DIALOGUE, 1924–59

In June 1959, Emperor Haile Sellassie of Ethiopia paid a visit to President Gamel Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic, during which the two leaders aired matters of acute strategic importance. Several issues, some touching the very heart of ancient Ethiopian–Egyptian relations, were in the stages of culmination. These included a bitter dispute over the Nile waters (some four-fifths of the water reaching Egypt originates in Ethiopia1), the emergence of an Arab-inspired Eritrean movement, Egyptian support of Somali irredentism, the Ethiopian alliance with Israel, the future of Pan-African diplomacy, and Soviet and American influences.2 Both leaders did their best to publicly ignore their conflicts. They were able to use a rich, though polarized, reservoir of mutual images in their speeches to emphasize the dimensions of old neighborliness and affinity.3 In a joint announcement issued during the farewell party of 28 June, they even underlined a common policy of non-alignment. Though they hinted at the issues mentioned earlier in all their public speeches, they refrained from referring to one culminating historical drama.4 On that very same day, in the main Coptic church of Cairo, the Egyptian Coptic Patriarch Kyrillos VI had ceremonially appointed the head of the Ethiopian church, Abuna Baselyos, as a patriarch in the presence of Haile Sellassie and Egyptian officials. In so doing, he declared the Orthodox Ethiopian church autocephalous, and for the first time since the early 4th century, the Ethiopian church had become independent of the Egyptian church.

Primary health care in Ethiopia under three political systems: Community participation in a war-torn society

This paper examines primary health care (PHC) development with an emphasis on community participation in Ethiopia under the feudal regime of emperor Haile Sellassie, the socialist/military rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the sprouting democracy and free market economy of Meles Zenawi. In spite of the rapid expansion of primary care under Mengistu, community participation was hampered by the protracted war and centralized, urban-based, bureaucratic approaches and attitudes that failed to promote an enabling environment for community participation. The socialist government, although implementing various community programs and expanding the rural health services, did not succeed in revolutionizing the health services. A comparative examination of the democratized rebel health services of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) illustrates the inconsistencies between stated policies of the Ethiopian government and actual strategies, and identifies factors promoting and impeding participatory health care development in a war environment. Achievements, opportunities and potential dangers to PHC and community participation in the post-war era characterized by economic progress, democratization, decentralization, lingering ethnic conflict and private initiatives are briefly described.

Primary Health Care in Ethiopia: From Haile Sellassie to Meles Zenawi

This paper examines developments in primary health care (PHC) in Ethiopia under the authoritarian/feudal regime of emperor Haile Sellassie, the socialist/military rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam and the sprouting democracy and free market economy under Meles Zenawi. The focus is on health policy, progress and problems in implementing programs and on recent decentralization efforts. The primary health services of the Derg have been described1 but continuity and change under these three governments and the relationship with the health services of the rebel forces in Tigray and Eritrea has not been analyzed except for a paper on community participation.2 The grassroots, community based health services of the TPLF and EPLF have been characterized as efficient, equitable and community based, consistent with the PHC approach.3'4 Similar achievements were reported from other liberation movements, including those in Mozambique5 and Vietnam.6 Primary health care essentially is the application of the basic needs approach in the field of health, with a central focus on correcting inequities and improving the health status of the poor and dispossessed. The concept of PHC, developed at the WHO-UNICEF conference in Alma Ata in 1978, has been used during the last two decades in Ethiopia and most other developing countries with variable results. The Alma Ata Declaration of Health for All by the Year 2000

Emperor Haile Sellassie's Autobiography, and an Unpublished Draft

The story of the composition of Emperor Haile Sellassie's The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellasie /. My Life and Ethiopia's Progress and the related question of an English edition, is a long one, which has thus far never been told. The object of the present article is to indicate the principal stages through which the autobiography and its translations passed, and to provide the reader with an unpublished text almost certainly produced by the Ethiopian ruler himself, or under his closest control.

The Emperor's Clothes: A Personal Viewpoint on Politics and Administration in the Imperial Ethiopian Government 1941-1974 (review)

Book Reviews 155 The Emperor's Clothes: A Personal Viewpoint on Politics and Administration in the Imperial Ethiopian Government 1941-1974 Gaitachew Bekele East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1993. Pp. v, 206. Illustrations. If only belatedly, students of the Haile Sellassie era in Ethiopian history are beginning to get some interesting reminiscences by survivors of that regime. To this small but encouraging group of memoirs belongs the book under review. The author, a conscientious and highly independent-minded functionary of that regime, has given us a personal account of his career. Ato Gaitachew started his administrative career as a subordinate official in Ethiopia's fledgling maritime services in the early 1950s and ended it as Minister of Public Works in Endalkachew Makonnen's ill-fated cabinet in 1974. He was a member of the post-1941 educated elite, attending the prestigious schools of the time—Tafari Makonnen, Menilek ?, and Haile Sellassie I Secondary School (Kotebe). He was sent to England for his higher education, to join a group of students (Mikael Emiru, Zewde Gebre Sellassie, Endalkachew Makonnen, Mengistu Lemma, among others) who were to leave their own imprint on Ethiopian social and political life on their return. With them, in 1948, he set up one of the first Ethiopian student associations abroad, serving as its treasurer in 1950. Eritrea's federation with Ethiopia in 1952 posed for the latter the challenge of developing maritime administration and naval power. Ato Gaitachew's most distinctive contribution to Ethiopian administration remains in that realm. In the efficient and diligent execution of his assignment, he had a steady patron (Makonnen Habtawald) and an understanding superior (Dajjach Zewde Gabra Sellassie, who was director of the maritime development). He also had an inveterate enemy, Ras Andargachaw Masay, the emperor's son-in-law. Tainted by the abortive coup of 1960, banishment of one sort or another became Ato Gaitachew's fate. He was placed under surveillance successively in Waliso andJimma before being appointed as governor of Bahr Dar district for 1961-63. He was then posted as ambassador to Haiti, where he found himself at cross purposes with "Papa Doc" on the protocols of the emperor's reception during the latter's state visit, and to Mexico, where he was forced 156 Book Reviews to host a reception in honour of the Ethiopian delegation to the 1968 Olympics with funds one of the delegation's leaders was kind enough to advance him. His last government post before the 1974 revolution was as minister of state in Endalkachew's ministry of posts, telephone, and transport; in that capacity, he presided over the evolution of a model Road Transport Administration staffed by radical University graduates and the Ethiopianization of two major transport enterprises: Ethiopian Airlines and the Franco-Ethiopian Railway. There were two major events after 1974 in which he was involved before the Derg's merciless incarceration machine swallowed him, like so many others. The first revolved around the fruitless efforts to address the grievances of the Congo veterans, grievances which the author feels "more than any other factor ... led to the rise of the military junta." The second was membership of the Derg's land reform committee, which, according to the author, ironically pitted the Western-educated ideologues against the Easterneducated pragmatists. Ato Gaitachew tells his story well and with an amazing recollection of detail. While the overall thrust of the story is on political and administrative life in the period 1950-1974, the book also has some useful information on the Resistance (1936-1941) and on socio-economic life. Inevitably, Emperor Haile Sellassie occupies the center stage. The author's attitude toward his sovereign is marked by ambivalence and contradiction. In 1960, he felt that "every thinking man ... was ready for the removal of the emperor" (p. 101). Yet he felt saddened by his removal in 1974. Rather naively, he attributes the eruption of the 1974 revolution to the emperor's abandonment of traditional values, including the national dress; hence the choice of title for the book. Yet the work has many interesting instances of the emperor's consummate skill in balancing forces, including the celebrated raising of people like the author "from nowhere...

The End of the Cold War and U.S. Foreign Policy toward the Horn of Africa in the Immediate Post-Siyaad and Post-Mengistu Eras

American foreign policy toward the Horn of Africa between 1945 and 1990 was guided by a series of Cold War rationales that looked upon the region as a means for solving nonAfrican problems. Specifically, U.S. policymakers did not perceive the countries and peoples of the Horn of Africa as important in their own right but, rather, as the means for preventing the further advances of Soviet communism. As a result, U.S. relationships with various regimes in the region evolved according to their perceived importance within the EastWest framework. Emperor Haile Sellassie, for example, was courted from the 1940s to the 1970s due to the importance of Ethiopia as part of a worldwide telecommunications network directed against the Soviet Union. When the U.S. -Ethiopian security relationship was shattered during the 1970s, Siyaad Barre subsequently rose to preeminence due to Somalia's importance as an access country from which the U.S. could militarily counter a perceived Soviet threat to Middle East oil fields. Indeed, not only was the U.S. preoccupation with anti-communism manipulated by these leaders to obtain greater levels of U.S. economic and military aid over $600 million for the Sellassie regime and nearly $800 million for the Siyaad regime it also served as an important rationale for Washington's general disregard for the authoritarian excesses of these regimes, as well as for a host of interventionist practices designed to maintain U.S. influence within the region.1

The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: ‘My Life and Ethiopia's Progress’, 1892-1937, translated and annotated by Edward Ullendorff London, Oxford University Press, 1976. Pp. xxxii + 337. £6.00.

The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: ‘My Life and Ethiopia's Progress’, 1892-1937, translated and annotated by Edward Ullendorff London, Oxford University Press, 1976. Pp. xxxii + 337. £6.00.

The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: "My Life and Ethiopia's Progress," 1892-1937

The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: "My Life and Ethiopia's Progress," 1892-1937

Haile Sellassie I. <italic>The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: “My Life and Ethiopia's Progress,” 1892–1937</italic>. Translated and annotated by Edward Ullendorff. New York: Oxford University Press, for the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 1976. Pp. xxxii, 335. $13.75

Haile Sellassie I. The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: “My Life and Ethiopia's Progress,” 1892–1937. Translated and annotated by Edward Ullendorff. New York: Oxford University Press, for the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 1976. Pp. xxxii, 335. $13.75 Get access I. Haile SellassieThe Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I: “My Life and Ethiopia's Progress,” 1892–1937. Translated and annotated by Ullendorff Edward. New York: Oxford University Press, for the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 1976. Pp. xxxii, 335. $13.75. Brice Harris, Jr. Brice Harris, Jr. Occidental College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 82, Issue 1, February 1977, Pages 156–157, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/82.1.156-a Published: 01 February 1977

THE AMHARIC TEXT OF THE LAST TWO PRONOUNCEMENTS OF EMPEROR HAILE SELLASSIE (with two appendixes)

THE AMHARIC TEXT OF THE LAST TWO PRONOUNCEMENTS OF EMPEROR HAILE SELLASSIE (with two appendixes) Get access EDWARD ULLENDORFF EDWARD ULLENDORFF Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Semitic Studies, Volume 22, Issue 2, AUTUMN 1977, Pages 202–216, https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/22.2.202 Published: 01 October 1977

The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I. "My Life and Ethiopia's Progress," 1892-1937

The Autobiography of Emperor Haile Sellassie I. "My Life and Ethiopia's Progress," 1892-1937

Two versions of an Amharic proclamation

In July 1913 Dejazmatch Tafari (as the Emperor Haile Sellassie I was then styled), governor of the large Harar province of Ethiopia, issued a proclamation which was intended to counteract certain abuses in tax-collecting under which the peasants had been chafing. The text of this proclamation was recently printed in the Emperor's autobiography, but another version of the same proclamation is extant and was published in J. I. Eadie's An Amharic reader, CUP, 1924, 183 ff. Neither His Imperial Majesty nor the late Major Eadie is specific about the provenance of the text in his possession, and the only information vouchsafed by Eadie is a brief reference in the first sentence of the preface to his book that ‘the subject matter of this Reading Book was collected in Addis Abeba in 1913 from literate Amharas’.