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The book's narratvie consists of personal accounts from those who were once in royal inner circle of the emporer (Haile Selassie I) and contains a large volume of description of emperor's daily work routine. Although I went through the book fairly quickly and compressed reading to only necessary contents, I felt that the message conveyed in the book was very clear.
The main conclusion and the take-away message that I arrived at could be phrased in the follow sentences. Given Ethiopia's historical isolation, emperor's regime was perfectly absent of unrest until citizens who went abroad and retunred made comparison between their country and the rest of the world. Such comparison first stimulated unsatisfaction among a few elites and students, which later spreaded through the mass. In response, the emperor attempted to modernize and develop the country and permitted some movements urging for politcal and social changes. But the more development the emperor attempted, the greater anger the public had. And eventually, his regime was severely shattered by a coup and later overthrown.
The inference drew from the conclusion is significant, because it really suggests that the Ethiopian public was in fact dismissive of modernization and economic development to their deficient living standards as long as they didn't know outsiders had higher living standards. As the book put it this way: "Our Empire had existed for hundreds, even thousands, of years without any noticeable development, and all the while its leaders were respected, revered, worshiped." What made the public to start to care about their welfare were the comparison they made with outsiders and knowledge about their inferior status. This seems to verified one of my early thoughts about human nature that human's utility or happiness is partly derived from the perception that they are better off than their peers.
Nonetheless, the book portrayed emporer, Haile Selassie I, as an overall skeptic of modernization, especially in his later life. And along with his failure to provide immediate rise of living standards, Haile Selassie I was unable to permeate youth movements demanding such changes. This inability was also a necessity to the downfall of the empire.
The book was published in 1978 following the end of Haile Selassie I regime in 1974. The termination of the Ethiopia Empire was particularly interesting to the world, probably for two reasons. First her emperors were all descendents of King Solomon of Israel; and Ethiopia being the only nation that eluded European colonialism and with geographical isolation serves as a great example to study how an ancient monarch would contact and react to a modernized world. The answers in case were a social revolution and monarch's discontinuation. |
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