ÉGLISE ET ÉTAT EN ÉTHIOPIE PENDANT LE RÈGNE DU DERNIER NÉGUS HAÏLÉ SÉLASSIÉ (1916-1974)

Based on never-before-published documents from Italian, English and Ethiopian archives, this essay analyzes the Ethiopian empire’s rise and fall during Hailé Selassie’s long, last reign, highlighting the contradictions of a confessional notion of power and State, confronted by ethnic fragmentation, as well as social and political change in the 1900s. The Negus’s attempts to reconcile confessional tradition and political modernity – in which greater imperial power and the subjection of the Ethiopian Church became elements of legitimization - were suddenly interrupted by the 1935-41 Fascist occupation. Such efforts would resume after World War II, with the emancipation of the Ethiopian Church from the Egyptian Coptic Church. However, international success did not lead to an effective balance between tradition and modernity and the coup d’état of 1974 marked the end of an African State which, for centuries, had conceived itself as a “Christian empire”.