Dear Reader,
In the monarchies where legitimacy is staged as well as inherited, names are rarely incidental. They are declarations and sometimes arguments. We see this in the tradition of programmatic naming, where rulers adopt or assign names to their sons and likely heirs to signal continuity, ambition, or rupture. The Popes in Rome have long understood this performance of naming: from Gregory to Benedict and now the current Leo XIV, pontifical names are a statement about the new occupant of the office, often casting the new pontiff as heir to a particular legacy or a correction, or sometimes both. Coptic Popes in Alexandria and Ecumenical Patriarchs in Constantinople have sometimes also changed their names upon elevation to their see. The Holy Roman Emperors, especially under the Staufen and later Habsburg dynasties, pursued a similar logic, often naming sons Frederick or Ferdinand as if invoking dynastic Catholic majesty and destiny through repetition. Even the British monarchy in the last century adopted throne names when Queen Victoria’s son, born Albert Edward, ascended as Edward VII, decided to keep the name Albert reserved for his father, Prince Albert’s memory, and to draw a straight line to the great Plantagenet kings. His grandson, also named Albert, became George VI in 1936, consciously invoking his father George V and to signal order and continuity after his brother, the reckless Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to marry the twice-divorced American, Bessie Wallis Warfield, known to us as Wallis Simpson. Edward VIII’s actions almost caused a constitutional crisis, and the new King George VI took that name to show he was his father’s son, as his father, George V, had saved the monarchy and restored British confidence in the Crown after the slaughter of the First World War. These were not mere preferences. These were political choices, signals to subjects and signs of their programmatic intentions. Reign names can be important branding.
Ethiopia was the most prestigious African state in the modern world. Full stop. Not simply because of its longevity, but because for over a thousand years it operated as a manifestly Christian and recognized sovereign civilization, continuing to do so when nearly every other African polity was stripped of that status by conquering European powers. Ethiopia, unlike any other African state, represented Biblical memory, Christian monarchy, and cultural gravitas. The ancient Ethiopian Kingdom of Aksum was a key link in the trade between India and the Roman Empire when most of northern Europe was an underdeveloped heathen backwater without urban centers we associate with civilization. By the fourth century, the great Axumite ruler King Ezana, a contemporary of Emperor Saint Constantine the Great, embraced Christianity and converted his lands; there was none of the modern assumptions about missionary “colonization.” Their national identity was and remains tied to the Ge'ez liturgy, a Semitic language in the same language branch as Hebrew, and the claim of a divinely annointed royal lineage tracing the Solomonic dynasty to the union of King Solomon, son of the warrior-poet King David, and the Queen of Sheba, a land identified with the Red Sea region of Yemen and the East African coast. The Ethiopian Church is a part of the Coptic Church, the southern branch of Christianity, as old as western Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The Abuna is the head bishop of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, a title meaning "Our Father," and in the early twentieth century, the Abuna was still appointed by the Coptic Pope of Alexandria in Egypt, the See of Saint Mark, just as the Roman Catholic Pope reigns over the See of Saint Peter.
The Ethiopian throne rooted its legitimacy in the House of David, a claim no European monarchy could rival. The Battle of Adwa in 1896 was not simply a military victory; it was a validation by force of arms. When Emperor Menelik II, formerly named Sahle Mariam, defeated the Italians, he was establishing, in the contemporary language of winning on the field of battle, that Ethiopia was a peer to a European power, not a meal to be gobbled. His reign name was programmatic, as the first Menelik was the alleged son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The second Menelik’s victory was a moment of African agency and would set Ethiopia, hopefully, on the path to modernization like the Empire of Japan. That was the thought. Such programs had been enacted before.
The Ethiopian sovereign is titled Negusa Nagast in his own language, meaning king of kings, but we call them an emperor in the West. The change is a translation technique known as functional equivalence, which means scholars are trying to render a term, or in this case, a monarchial title, into the closest culturally or functionally similar term in the target language. We could call them “king of kings,” but it doesn’t resonate the right way in European Christian royal usage. When we call the Negusa Nagast an “emperor,” we are properly noting the Ethiopian sovereign’s status in how the Western political and hierarchical system would recognize their overlordship and sovereign position within the Ethiopian structure. So in German it is Kaiser von Äthiopien.
Programmatically, it functioned this way in the 15th century, when the prince Zara Yacob took the throne after a series of brief reigns by his older brothers and his nephews. He signaled a new age was to come when he chose to rule as Negusa Nagast Qostantinos: the new Emperor Constantine. He reigned for 34 years, reforming the Church, crushing rebellions, and destroying invading Islamic armies. In 1930, with the world slipping into the Depression and fascism rising in Europe, Ethiopia needed such leadership and hope again.
At the beginning of 1930, the ruler of Ethiopia since 1917 was the first woman to rule since the legendary Queen of Sheba; she was the Empress Zauditu, daughter of Menelik II, who had defeated the Italians. During her reign, Ethiopia experienced a period of economic growth in the spirit of the Roaring 20s, boosted by its success in exporting coffee. However, because it was considered inappropriate for a woman to rule in her own right, Ras (duke) Tafari Makonnen, the son of Ras Makonnen and a cousin of Menelik, served as her regent and designated heir. Empress Zauditu died on April 1, 1930. Ras Tafari planned to modernize the country further and focused on foreign policy during the reign of Zauditu, as it allowed his reform push to appear less threatening to domestic power brokers. He especially had to deal with the Muslim slave-traders who plagued the region and whose presence made Great Britain less than enthusiastic about Ethiopia's pedigree, as while Christians were forbidden to trade-slaves, authorities looked the other way when they bought them from Muslims. Ras Tafari knew this had to be crushed, even if Ethiopian “slaves” were more like serfs and bore almost no resemblance to slavery in the Americas and West Africa, which the British had suppressed in the 19th century. Emperor Menelek II had tried to suppress it with limit success, but Ras Tafari renewed the effort, and his accomplishments pleased the British and the French. So much so that the British stopped cooperating with Italy due to Italy’s continuous coveting of Ethiopian lands, and they welcomed Ethiopia into the League of Nations. Then in 1924, he toured Europe and visited the tomb of the Emperor Napoleon the Great in Le Dôme des Invalides, and traveled to the UK to meet King George V. He went to Rome and met Pope Pius XI and even the new Italian prime minister, Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini. He made the most of his trip, meeting potential friends and foes alike. He was not always received with grace, and the British were perhaps the haughtiest. Nevertheless, Ras Tafari endured.
Now, in 1930, after the empress died of fever, Ras Tarfari was emperor, and the world was entering the Depression. He needed to solidify his status as fully sovereign and no longer merely regent. He was now de facto and de jure ruler and was eager to put his plans fully into action and make Ethiopia the Japan of Africa. His immediate move was to declare he would not be crowned immediately but rather would follow the custom of the crowned heads of Europe and wait for a coronation that foreign dignitaries could attend. His invitation was accepted by representatives from Belgium, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, the UK - who sent Prince Henry, the younger son of King George V - Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey, and America. On the second of November in St George’s Cathedral in the capital of Addis Ababa, the Abuna placed the crown on his head, and the former Ras Tarfari took his baptismal name and made it his throne name: Haile Selassie, meaning Power of the Trinity! Haile Selassie I, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, would indeed need to call on the God of his fathers in the trials ahead.
Kairos is a Greek word that means “the right moment” or “the perfect time to act.” It does not mean just any time, like a regularly scheduled appointment, but a special moment when something important should happen. A propitious time of opportunity.
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