The Ethiopian Exception: The Crown and The Cross (Part 2)

Emperor Haile Selassie's journey from Ethiopian modernizer to exiled leader reveals the hypocrisy at the heart of international law when confronted with fascist aggression. His powerful 1936 speech to the League of Nations stands as one of history's great diplomatic addresses, documenting Italian war crimes while challenging world powers to live up to their promises of protection for sovereign nations.

Chapters

• 0:00 Haile Selassie at the League of Nations
• 3:35 Ethiopia Between Two Worlds
• 9:00 Haile Selassie's Coronation and Modernization
• 12:17 Mussolini's Revenge: Italy Invades Ethiopia
• 18:10 The Emperor's Appeal to Geneva
• 22:15 Exile and Resistance
• 27:42 Return and Rebuilding Post-Occupation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

At the League of Nations, a grave disturbance. Today, haile Selassie comes to plead for his lost empire. He wants them to make Mussolini give up Ethiopia. The Geneva crowds are for him, but the exiled emperor will need his imperturbable dignity before Geneva. Switzerland, june 30th 1936. A small, dignified man in a white cape walks into the assembly hall of the League of Nations and the room erupts. Italian delegates storm out their chairs scraping against the marble floors, journalists scramble for better positions, protesters in the galleries shout racial slurs until security forces them out.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Emperor Haile Selassie, I of Ethiopia, the Lion of Judah, elect of God, king of Kings, stands at the podium waiting for silence. He's traveled 2,000 miles from a country that no longer exists on any map controlled by European powers. In his briefcase are photographs that the world doesn't want to see Ethiopian children killed by poison gas, villages burned by Italian bombers, ancient churches reduced to rubble by modern warfare. Here's what makes this moment so profound. This isn't just about one African emperor appealing to European conscience. This is about the collision between two completely different ways of understanding sovereignty, civilization and what it means to be human in the modern world. Hailey Selassie adjusts his microphone and begins to speak in French, his voice, carrying across a room that has fallen, reluctant and quiet. I, haile Selassie, I, emperor of Ethiopia, am here today to claim that justice, which is due to my people, and the assistance promised to it eight months ago, when 50 nations asserted that aggression had been committed in violation of international treaties, had been committed in violation of international treaties. What follows will be remembered as one of the great speeches in the history of international diplomacy. It would also be remembered as the moment when the international system revealed its fundamental hypocrisy about the equality of nations, the sanctity of sovereignty and the protections of the weak against the strong. This is the story of the weak against the strong. This is the story of how Ethiopia's victory at Adwa created an impossible burden and how that burden nearly destroyed the very independence it was meant to preserve. This is part two of the Ethiopian exception the crown and the cross.

Speaker 1: 3:33

You know how they say you can't understand someone until you walk a mile in their shoes. Well, I'd argue you can't understand a nation until you've walked through its history, not just the highlight reel or the sanitized version you find in textbooks. I mean really getting into its DNA, those defining moments that shaped everything that came after, those moments where paths were chosen, where decisions were made in palaces and backrooms and city streets that changed the course of millions of lives. I'm your host, paul, and this is Double Helix Blueprint of Nations, where we unravel the genetic code of countries to their most transformative moments. Think of it like ancestry testing, but for entire nations. We dig deep into the historical DNA, finding those crucial moments that made countries who they are today.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Last time we witnessed Emperor Menelik II's stunning victory at Adwa, the moment when one African army shattered European assumptions about colonial inevitability. The military victory, as Menelik understood, was only the beginning of Ethiopia's challenge. The real test would be whether an African nation could navigate the modern moral system while maintaining its independence, its identity and its dignity system, while maintaining its independence, its identity and its dignity For the next four decades. That test would fall to a man whose name became synonymous with both Ethiopian pride and African tragedy Haile Selassie. I born Tafari Makonnen, the prince who would transform himself into an emperor, then into a symbol and finally into a cautionary tale about the limits of international law when confronted by imperial ambitions. The Ethiopia that Menelik bequeathed to his successor in 1913 was a nation caught between worlds. Adwa had secured its independence, but independence without modernization was just postponed. Colonization nation caught between worlds, adwa had secured its independence, but independence without modernization was just postponed. Colonization European powers were rapidly advancing their technological and administrative capabilities. The global economy was integrating in ways that made isolation impossible and, within Ethiopia itself, the delicate balance between central authority and regional autonomy that Menelik had maintained through personal charisma and military success was beginning to fray.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Addis Ababa, ethiopia, november 2nd 1930. Where is site St George's Cathedral for one of the most extraordinary coronation ceremonies of the 20th century? Heli Selassie, still officially Rastafari, kneels before the altar in robes that blend Ethiopian tradition with European court fashion. The ceremony itself is a masterpiece of political theater, designed to send multiple messages simultaneously. To the Ethiopian nobles gathered in the cathedral this is the restoration of ancient legitimacy the Lion of Judah claiming his rightful place in a dynasty that supposedly stretches back to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. To the foreigner diplomats filling out the front pews this is evidence that Ethiopia has joined a community of civilized nations capable of European-style pageantry and protocol. But watch the details that reveal the deeper complexity of what is happening. But watch the details that reveal the deeper complexity of what is happening. The crown that Haile Selassie receives was specially commissioned from a Swiss jeweler, not because Ethiopia lacked skilled craftsmen, but because a European-made crown would be recognized by European powers in a legitimate regalia. The ceremony follows Ethiopian Orthodox traditions, but it's time to accommodate international press schedules and diplomatic protocols.

Speaker 1: 7:50

I have this day assumed the throne of my fathers. Haile Selassie declares in his coronation address, speaking first in Amharic, then in French for the benefit of foreign observers. I have taken up the scepter of my ancestors. I pledge before God and my people to maintain the independence of Ethiopia, to defend the faith of my fathers and to bring my country into the modern age without sacrificing its ancient dignity. It is a promise that contains the seeds of its own contradiction. How do you maintain ancient dignity while embracing modern methods? How do you defend traditional faith while adopting secular governance? How do you preserve Ethiopian independence while participating in international systems designed by and for European powers? The young emperor believes he has the answer Selective modernization. Take the best of European technology, education and administration while maintaining Ethiopian sovereignty and identity. It is an approach that worked for Japan after the Meiji Restoration, and Haile Selassie sees no reason why it can't work for Ethiopia. He is about to discover that the world system of the 1930s is far less tolerant of independent African modernization than he imagined. Magit.

Speaker 1: 9:28

The Ethiopia that Haile Selassie attempted to modernize, was still fundamentally the Ethiopia that Menelik had cobbled together through conquest and negotiation. It was less a unified nation-state than a multi-ethnic empire, held together by personal loyalty, religious authority and the shared memory of Adwa. The emperor ruled through a complex network of regional governors, traditional chiefs and appointed administrators, each with their own power base and their own understanding of what Ethiopian identity meant. In the northern provinces, tigrayan nobles maintained their own militias and tax system, paying tribute to Addis Ababa but governing their territories according to local custom. In the south, recently conquered Oromo kingdoms had been incorporated into the Ethiopian system but retained their own languages, cultures and grievances. The capital itself was a cosmopolitan mixture of Amharic-speaking Highlanders, foreign advisors and ambitious young Ethiopians who had studied in Europe and returned with ideas about constitutional monarchy, economic development and social reform.

Speaker 1: 10:42

Haile Selassie's vision was to transform this sprawling, loosely organized empire into a modern nation-state that could compete with European powers while maintaining its African character. He established schools that taught both Ethiopian languages and European subjects. He created a modern army, trained by European advisors but commanded by Ethiopian officers. He built roads, telegraph lines and hospitals that connected remote provinces to the capital. But every modernizing reform created new tensions within Ethiopian society. Traditional nobles saw Western education as a threat to their authority. Traditional nobles saw Western education as a threat to their authority. Orthodox clergy worried that secular learning would undermine religious faith. Regional governors resented centralized administration that reduced their autonomous power Most dangerously. Modernization required resources, and the only way to get those resources was through increased taxation and more efficient extraction of wealth from Ethiopia's rural majority. The peasants who had fought so heroically at Adwaq found themselves bearing the financial burden of an independence they had helped secure, but whose benefits they rarely saw.

Speaker 1: 12:17

It is October 3, 1935, and Italian bombers are crossing the Eritrean border into Ethiopian airspace. This is in 1896. This isn't brave Italian soldiers marching into mountain ambushes. This is industrial warfare brought to bear against an African society that had spent 40 years trying to modernize on its own terms. Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator of Italy, has decided that the humiliation of Adwa must be avenged. More than that, he believes that a successful colonial conquest in Africa will demonstrate Italian strength to a European audience increasingly skeptical of fascist capabilities. Ethiopia, in Mussolini's calculation, represents the perfect target an African nation with no European protectors, minimal industrial capacity and military technology that, despite four decades of modernization efforts, still lag far behind European standards. But Mussolini also understands something that his predecessors in 1896 had missed this war won't be won through traditional military conquest. It will be won through the systematic application of terror against Ethiopian civilian populations, using weapons that no African army can match or counter. The Italian invasion force that crosses into Ethiopia in October of 1935 brings with it technologies of mass destruction that were specifically designed to break African resistance Poison gas that turns human lungs into burning tissue, high-explosive bombs that can destroy entire villages in minutes, mechanized units that can cover in hours distances that would take Ethiopian armies days to traverse.

Speaker 1: 14:21

Adwa, ethiopia. October 6, 1935, forty years after Menelik's great victory, italian bombers circled the town where Ethiopian independence was born. Below them, ethiopian civilians, descendants of the warriors who had defeated a European army, run for shelter that doesn't exist against weapons they cannot fight. Among them is an old man named Desta Ayana, who was 12 years old when he watched his father march with Menelik's army to victory in 1896. Now 71, he huddles in what remains of his house after the bombing, trying to explain to his grandson what has happened to the world when I was your age, he tells the boy through smoke and tears. We proved that Africans could defeat Europeans in a fair battlefield. This is not a fair battlefield. These are not soldiers. These are cowards who kill women and children from the sky because they are afraid to face Ethiopian warriors with honor. It is a perspective that captures both the tragedy and the complexity of what's happening to Ethiopia. The Italians have learned from their defeat at Adwa they cannot win a fair fight against Ethiopian forces on Ethiopian terrain, so they've chosen not to fight fairly. Instead, they've brought industrial war to bear against an agricultural society, using technologies of mass destruction, against civilians who have no means of defense or retaliation. The international response reveals a profound hypocrisy at the heart of the League of Nations system. When Ethiopia appeals for protection under international law, european powers express sympathy but take no meaningful action. When Hailey Selassie travels to Geneva to make his case in person, he's treated more like a curiosity than the head of a state whose nation is being systematically destroyed. Geneva, switzerland, june 30, 1936.

Speaker 1: 16:38

The emperor stands at the podium of the League of Nations Assembly, looking out at an audience that includes representatives from 52 nations, none of whom are willing to take meaningful action to stop the Italian conquest of his country. His speech, delivered in fluent French, is a masterpiece of control, fury masked as diplomatic discourse. It is my duty to inform the governments assembled in Geneva, responsible as they are for the lives of millions of men, women and children, of their deadly peril which threatens them by describing to them the fate which has been suffered by Ethiopia. He describes the systematic use of chemical weapons against Ethiopian civilians. He provides evidence of deliberate attacks on hospitals, schools and churches. He documents the mass execution of prisoners and the systemic attempt to destroy Ethiopian culture and identity.

Speaker 1: 17:36

I ask the 52 nations who have given the Ethiopian people a promise to help them in their resistance to the aggressor, what are they willing to do for Ethiopia? This voice carries across the assembly hall. You can hear it in the growing realization. He's not really asking a question, he's delivering an indictment. Will they set up terrible precedent of bowing before force? Your assembly will doubtless have laid the foundations of the international morality which the people of the world are crying out for. The delegates listen politely, applaud appropriately and do absolutely nothing. Within months, the League of Nations will formally recognize the Italian conquest of Ethiopia. The emperor who came to Geneva as the leader of an independent African nation will leave as a refugee in exile.

Speaker 1: 18:36

But here's what makes Haile Selassie's failed appeal so significant for our story. It demonstrates the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the international system that emerged after World War I. The League of Nations was supposed to protect the sovereignty of small nations against the aggression of larger ones. It was supposed to make international law more important than military force. It was supposed to create a world where right matter more than might. Ethiopia's case was the first real test of these principles, and the international community failed catastrophically, not because they didn't understand what was at stake, but because they understood it all too well. Accepting Ethiopia's appeal for protection would mean acknowledging that African nations had the same rights as European ones, that international law applied equally regardless of race, that the colonial system itself might be illegal under the standards of the League of Nations. It was easier to let Ethiopia fall than to confront the implications of defending it.

Speaker 1: 19:52

Hailey Selassie steps off of a train at Waterloo Station. It is May 5th 1936, in London, england. He is no longer an emperor, but not yet willing to accept the title of exile. He has been offered sanctuary in Britain, but sanctuary from what this country has been conquered, his people scattered, his capital occupied by Italian forces who are systematically dismantling four decades of Ethiopian modernization efforts. The man who has spent his reign trying to balance ancient Ethiopian traditions with modern international engagements now faces a choice that reveals the fundamental bankruptcy of that approach. He can accept exile and live comfortably in Europe while his country suffers under Italian occupation, or he can maintain his claim to sovereignty over a nation that no longer appears on any internationally recognized map. He chooses a third option to become a living symbol of the failure of international law and the persistent of imperial ambition in the modern world.

Speaker 1: 21:02

For the next five years, haile Selassie will travel through Europe and America, giving speeches, writing articles and meeting with political leaders who express sympathy for Ethiopia's plight but decline to take action to restore Ethiopian independence. It's during this period that he becomes something unique in modern history A head of state without a state, an emperor without an empire, a living reminder of the gap between international principles and international practice. But he's also something else practice, but he's also something else a man who refuses to accept that Ethiopian independence is dead simply because Ethiopian territory has been conquered. In his exile speeches, he consistently refers to the Italian occupation as temporary, to Ethiopian resistance as ongoing and to eventual restoration as inevitable. Ethiopia will rise again, he tells audiences in London, paris and New York. The spirit that triumphed at Adwa cannot be conquered by poison gas and aerial bombardment. The independence that my ancestors secured through blood and courage will be restored through the same means. Most of his listeners assume this is the rhetoric of a defeated ruler trying to maintain dignity in defeat. They don't understand that he is articulating something much more profound a theory of sovereignty that doesn't depend on international recognition, a concept of nationhood that survives military conquest and a vision of justice that transcends immediate political realities. These ideas will be tested sooner than anyone expects.

Speaker 1: 22:52

When World War II begins in 1939, the strategic situation that seemed to make Ethiopian conquests irreversible suddenly shifts. Mussolini's alliance with Nazi Germany brings Italy into conflict with Britain, and British forces in Sudan and Kenya find themselves facing Italian armies in occupied Ethiopia. For the first time since 1936, ethiopian independence becomes militarily feasible rather than diplomatically impossible. But restoration will require more than British military assistance. It will require Haile Selassie to return to a country that has been fundamentally changed by five years of Italian occupation and Ethiopian resistance and Ethiopian resistance. The men who left Ethiopia as a modernizing emperor, trying to balance tradition with progress, will return as a liberation leader whose legitimacy depends not on international recognition but on his ability to rebuild Ethiopian sovereignty from the ground up.

Speaker 1: 23:55

The Ethiopia that emerges from Italian occupation in 1941 is both the same country that Menelik unified and a completely different one from anything that had existed before. Five years of foreign conquests have destroyed much of the infrastructure, but they've also created something new a shared experience of resistance that cuts across ethnic, regional and class divisions. Ethiopian resistance to Italian occupation had taken many forms. In the mountains, traditional warriors used guerrilla tactics to harass Italian supply lines. In the cities, underground networks sabotaged Italian administration and smuggled intelligence to British forces. Sabotage Italian administration and smuggled intelligence to British forces. In the countryside, ordinary farmers refused to cooperate with Italian agricultural programs, choosing starvation over collaboration. But resistance has also revealed the deep divisions within Ethiopian society that modernization efforts had papered over but not resolved. Some Ethiopian nobles had collaborated with Italian authorities, calculating that accommodation offered better prospects than resistance. Some ethnic groups had seen Italian occupation as an opportunity to settle old scores with Amharic-speaking elites. Some regions had experienced the war as liberation from Ethiopian imperial control rather than conquest by foreign invaders.

Speaker 1: 25:25

The emperor, who returns to Addis Ababa in May of 1941, faces a challenge that makes pre-war modernization efforts look simple by comparison. He must rebuild Ethiopian sovereignty while reconciling Ethiopians who spent five years choosing different sides in a conflict that was simultaneously a war of national liberation, a civil war and a social revolution. His solution reveals both the strengths and limitations of the approach that had defined his entire political career. The limitations of the approach that had defined his entire political career Restore traditional authority while embracing selective modernization. Maintain Ethiopian independence while participating in international systems. Preserve ancient dignity while adapting to modern realities. But by 1941, the world had changed in ways that make this balancing act even more precarious than it was in 1930. The war that restored Ethiopian independence has also accelerated processes of decolonization, social transformation and ideological conflict that will reshape Africa and the entire global system. The emperor, who had once been unique as an independent African ruler, now finds himself competing for legitimacy with liberation movements, socialist governments and pan-African organizations that offer alternative visions of what African independence could mean.

Speaker 1: 27:04

The psychological DNA of Ethiopian exceptionalism that was born at Adwa and refined through four decades of careful modernization will face its greatest tests in the post-war world? Can a country that has always defined itself through its difference from other African societies maintain that distinctiveness in an era of African continental solidarity? Can a monarchy that traces its legitimacy to ancient traditions survive in an age of revolutionary democracy traditions survive in an age of revolutionary democracy? Can a nation that has always prided itself on never being colonized continue to claim moral authority as other African societies achieve independence through their own struggles? These questions will define the next phase of Ethiopian history and ultimately determine whether the victory at Adwa created lasting foundations for Ethiopian independence or merely postponed inevitable reckoning with forces that no single nation, however exceptional, can resist alone.

Speaker 1: 28:13

The crown and the cross, the symbols of imperial authority and orthodox faith that Haile Selassie had tried to balance with modern governance, would face challenges in the coming decades that would make Italian fascist conquests look straightforward by comparison.

Speaker 1: 28:32

Haile Selassie's failed appeal to the League of Nations didn't just reveal the hypocrisy of European powers of nations didn't just reveal the hypocrisy of European powers. It established an intellectual and moral framework that would eventually make European colonialism untenable across the entire continent. Its insistence that international law should protect African sovereignty as rigorously as European sovereignty planted seeds that would grow into the legal foundations of decolonization. Next time, on Double Helix, we'll explore how this psychological foundation was tested by forces that made fascist conquests look simple the Cold War, competition between superpowers who saw Africa as a chessboard, the rise of revolutionary movements that questioned the legitimacy of traditional authority, and internal contradictions within Ethiopian society that modernization had suppressed but not resolved. We'll witness how the Lion of Judah became a symbol of African liberation to some and African backwardness to others, how ancient traditions collided with modern ideologies and how the country that had always defined itself through its exceptionalism would finally confront the questions of whether exceptionalism was strength or weakness in the interconnected world. Until then, thank you for listening. We will see you soon.