Ethiopian history

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes.

We’re looking at key moments in Ethiopian history, as it’s 50 years since Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in a military coup.

We start our programme looking at the moment a military junta called the Derg who ousted the monarchy in September 1974.

Then, we hear how, before this, the Emperor lived in exile in Bath, in the west of England.

Our expert guest is Hewan Semon Marye, who is junior professor at the University of Hamburg in Germany.

Then, Abebech Gobena who founded an orphanage and was known as Africa’s Mother Teresa.

Following that, the oldest skeleton of a human ancestor, discovered in 1994.

Finally, the Axum Obelisk, returned to Ethiopia in 2005, after being looted by Italy’s fascist dictator.

Contributors: Lij Mulugeta Asseratte Kassa – relative of Haile Selassie.

Professor Shawn-Naphtali Sobers – University of the West of England, Bristol.

Professor Hewan Semon Marye – Ethiopian Studies and Contemporary North-East African Studies at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Hannah Merkana – raised in Abebech Gobena’s orphanage.

Professor Yohannes Haile Selassie – Paleoanthropologist.

Michele Daniele – Architect.

(Photo: Haile Selassie in his study. Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,
0:10.4	the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:14.0	This week key moments in Ethiopian history as it's 50 years since the Emperor
0:18.4	Hile Selassie was overthrown in a military coup.
0:21.6	We'll hear firsthand memories of that event, plus his time as an exile in
0:26.0	Bath in the west of England.
0:27.8	He had mustard gas burns on his hands and on his arms, and Bath is well known for its healing waters and they ended up
0:35.0	coming a few times and then staying and buy on a property.
0:38.6	Also the discovery which points to Ethiopia as home to our oldest ancestors.
0:44.0	I started finding early human ancestor
0:46.0	apostles and I can see my advisor like really excited like,
0:50.0	hey this is great.
0:51.5	I'm like, wow. And the delicate task of returning the obelisk of
0:55.1	axum looted from Ethiopia by Italy in the 1930s when you do the job I do you behave a
1:02.3	little bit like a surgeon. You try not to get emotionally involved in order to be lucid when you are doing what you are doing.
1:09.4	That's coming up later in the podcast, but we begin with one of the towering figures from the last hundred years of
1:15.3	Ethiopian history, the Emperor Hilele Selassie. It's 50 years since he was overthrown in a military
1:22.0	coup ending centuries of imperial rule.
1:25.5	He was believed to be a direct descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
1:29.5	Ben Henderson has been hearing from a relative of Heiliseii who spent time with the Emperor in the days leading up to that coup which removed him from power.
1:38.0	My father was kneeling down and praying. His sister was there there she came up and said you shouldn't give in to
1:47.1	these people they would kill you and he said, my loyalty and allegiance to Emperor Hylaise Lassie is ironclad.
	...

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