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Haile Selassie I (Ge’ez: ቀዳማዊ ኀይለ ሥላሴ, romanized: Qädamawi Ḫäylä Śəllase, Amharic pronunciation: [kʼədäˈmäwi ˈhäjlə sɨlˈläse] , lit. ’Power of the Trinity’; born Tafari Makonnen or Lij Tafari; 23 July 1892 – 27 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as the Regent Plenipotentiary of Ethiopia (Enderase) under Empress Zewditu between 1916 and 1930. Widely considered to be a defining figure in modern Ethiopian history, he is accorded divine importance in Rastafari, an Abrahamic religion that emerged in the 1930s. A few years before he began his reign over the Ethiopian Empire, Selassie defeated Ethiopian army commander Ras Gugsa Welle Bitul, nephew of Empress Taytu Betul, at the Battle of Anchem. He belonged to the Solomonic dynasty, founded by Emperor Yekuno Amlak in 1270; Amlak’s successors claimed that he was a lineal descendant of Menelik I, the legendary Emperor of Ethiopia who was supposedly born to King Solomon and Queen Makeda of the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Sheba, respectively. Historians regard the Solomonic lineage claim as unfounded, created by Amlak to justify wresting power from the Zagwe Dynasty.
Selassie, seeking to modernise Ethiopia, introduced political and social reforms including the 1931 constitution and the abolition of slavery in 1942. He led the empire during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, and after its defeat was exiled to the United Kingdom. When the Italian occupation of East Africa began, he traveled to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan to coordinate the Ethiopian struggle against Fascist Italy; he returned home after the East African campaign of World War II. He dissolved the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1950, and annexed Eritrea as one of Ethiopia’s provinces, while also fighting to prevent Eritrean secession.
As an internationalist, Selassie led Ethiopia’s accession to the United Nations. In 1963, he presided over the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, the precursor of the African Union, and served as its first chairman. By the early 1960s, prominent African socialists such as Kwame Nkrumah envisioned the creation of a “United States of Africa”. Their rhetoric was anti-Western; Selassie saw this as a threat to his alliances. He attempted to influence a more moderate posture within the group.
Amidst popular uprisings, Selassie was overthrown by the Derg in the 1974 Ethiopian coup d’état. With support from the Soviet Union, the Derg began governing Ethiopia as a Marxist–Leninist state. In 1994, three years after the fall of the Derg military junta, it was revealed to the public that the Derg had assassinated Selassie at the Jubilee Palace in Addis Ababa on 27 August 1975. On 5 November 2000, his excavated remains were buried at the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Addis Ababa.
Among adherents of Rastafari, Selassie is called the returned Jesus. He was a Christian and adhered to the tenets of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. He has been criticised for his suppression of rebellions among the landed aristocracy (Mesafint), which consistently opposed his changes. Others have criticised Ethiopia’s failure to modernise rapidly enough. During his reign, the Harari people were persecuted and many left their homes. His administration was criticised as autocratic and illiberal by groups such as Human Rights Watch. According to some sources, late into Selassie’s administration, the Oromo language was banned from education, public speaking and use in administration, though there was never a law that criminalised any language. His government relocated many Amhara people into southern Ethiopia. Following the death of Ethiopian civil rights activist Hachalu Hundessa in 2020, his bust in the United Kingdom was destroyed by Oromo-speaking protesters, and an equestrian monument depicting his father was removed from Harar.