Editor's Pick

ON 21 MARCH 1975, the Provisional Military Administrative Council in Ethiopia—seen here holding a rally a few years later—abolished the country’s monarchy by annulling its appointment, the previous year, of Asfa Wossen as king-designate. It cancelled all royal titles and declared that the Ethiopian people would decide what form of government would run the country.

The PMAC, popularly known as the Derg, seized power on 12 September 1974 by overthrowing Haile Selassie, the emperor who had ruled the country since 1930. Selassie had led the resistance against the Italian invasion during the 1930s and, after being restored to power in the Second World War, enacted several measures to modernise the country. As social conditions deteriorated, however, dissent against the monarchy—which was first expressed by a failed coup d’état by the Imperial Guard, in 1960—began to grow. Having circumscribed the powers of parliament and the nobility, Selassie’s rule increasingly depended on his control over the military.

Selassie had been unable to increase military spending because Ethiopia’s chief supplier of arms, the United States, maintained restrictions on its offensive capabilities, despite an active insurgency by Eritrean separatists and the Soviet Union arming neighbouring Somalia. By early 1974, Ethiopia was struggling with an economic crisis caused by the outbreak of famine in the northern part of the country and the worldwide rise in petroleum prices. Frustrated by their working conditions and inadequate supplies, many soldiers went on strike, forcing the government to resign. The most militant soldiers consolidated themselves into the Derg, turning to Marxism for answers to their country’s travails.

After deposing Selassie and placing him under house arrest, the PMAC accompanied its abolition of the monarchy with a wholesale nationalisation of land and industry. Selassie died on 27 August 1975, with evidence later emerging that he might have been killed on the PMAC’s orders.