Downfall of an Emperor: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Derg's Creeping Coup by Michael Ghebrenegus Haile (review)

Michael Ghebrenegus Haile's Downfall of an Emperor: Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the Derg's Creeping Coup provides a firsthand account of the first seven months of the Derg, the military junta that brought the reign of Haile Selassie and the Ethiopian empire to an end. A lawyer by training, the author had formerly served as legal advisor to the Ethiopian police and as a prosecutor and defense lawyer in a military tribunal in Eritrea. Upon formation of the Derg, Ethiopian police and armed forces elected Haile as their representative to the Derg. Within the Derg, Haile served as a member of two committees that had influential roles in the formative period of the military body: the Planning Committee and the Political, Legal, and Foreign Affairs Committee. Haile draws on his professional experience as well as his positions in these decision-making structures to shed light on events leading up to the consolidation of political power by the Derg and the overthrow of the imperial government.

Written as a personal account, Haile realizes the weight and political meaning of the first seven months and lets the biographical detail fade as he engages with critical events leading up to the deposition of the monarchy. The book is written in chronological order. The first two chapters explain the social and political context that gave rise to the Derg; the rest of the chapters follow the evolution of the Derg from its early days at the barracks of the Fourth Infantry Division to the imperial palace. What emerges as the overarching theme of the book is how an uncertainty of purpose and how the military body should mediate political transformation pervaded the Derg in its first seven months. The uncertainty extended the high point of the revolutionary moment (thus "creeping coup") and created power dynamic between the Derg and the other holders and contenders of power—"Mini-Dergs," General Aman Andom, and the imperial government—throughout the transition. Haile also explains the broader context of the transition. He explains the imperial government's poor response to the famine of the 1970s and the frustration of the Ethiopian Army concerning the war in Eritrea. These, according to Haile, were exasperated by the state of an aging emperor who was frail and indecisive, an imperial court consumed with palace intrigues, and imperial decorum painfully out of step with progressive sentiments of the time.

These broader historical events are of course familiar by now. What Haile provides is insight into the internal dynamics within the Derg that shaped the bigger events that occurred during the transition with attention to process and substance. Relying on contemporaneous notes, he details contests for power and influence, the drafting of martial and special court laws, conservative sentiment ("monarchist") in a supposedly revolutionary moment, the different attitudes of labor union leaders towards military rule, and the Derg's suspicion of Ethiopian students who would eventually oppose the Derg's autocratic impulses and challenge its ideological commitment to progressive politics.

On the international front, Haile explains the Derg's interaction with and interest of foreign powers, meeting Tanzania's Julius Nyerere at Addis Ababa airport who came to confide advice to the young revolutionaries (not to harm the emperor), and attempting to position themselves strategically in the geopolitics of the Cold War (neither too close to the East or entirely break with the West). Other entertaining anecdotes describe members of the Derg stumbling with etiquette during an oversee work visit that, the author admits, technocrats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could have avoided.

The account of the Eritrean question has wider significance. The Eritrean question, Haile argues, became critical from the Derg's early days, and the growing momentum of the Eritrean armed struggle added sensitivity to the issue: the Derg had to take a position on the future of Eritrea. Besides the...