22 Comments

I have read The Emperor from my parents library (more like a stack of books), I love Kapuściński prose ever since. But apparently there was no Lulu, there is a real monster of a book detailing Kapuściński errors and confabulations: https://www.amazon.com/Ryszard-Kapuscinski-Life-Artur-Domoslawski/dp/1781680817 (In Polish the title is "Kapuściński non-fiction"), and most probably Lulu is one of them :(

I have not yet read that other book - it is too long, and probably quite boring (without any Lulus), but it is said to be well researched.

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Thanks, I intend to read this as I haven't found many good sources on Kapuscinski's errors and omissions. Still very skeptical of the idea that he wrote the book as propaganda either for or against the USSR's leadership, though. His huge body of work and vast amounts of time spent abroad, rather than near the Soviet power centers gives him a lot of credibility in comparison to other Soviet journalists.

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Also you need to take into account that the coup that replaced Heile Selassie was an USSR client - so it was really convenient for Kapuściński to be critic of the emperor. I don't know man - I read nearly all of Kapuściński books and I really liked them.

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Thanks for the great review. It's good to see how far we've come in regards to corrupt elites and makes me hopeful the trend continues.

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Excellent essay, many thanks!

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This was a really interesting writeup; thanks for sharing! I'm definitely not an expert on this corner of the world, but I read a really interesting book on the history of Ethiopia's neighbor Eritrea, which touched a bit on Selassie. I did a pretty scattershot review with some highlights here, if that's relevant to your interests: https://queenlua.dreamwidth.org/296941.html

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Awesome, I'll definitely be reading this. I've been meaning to learn more about Eritrea after hearing it has the worst freedom of the press in the world, but I don't know much beyond it's entanglements with Ethiopia.

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"In any case, he is rarely thought of in the same light as the Idi Admins and Robert Mugabes of the world, and after reading this, WWII notwithstanding, I think he probably should be."

Zimbabwe seems to have gotten much worse after Mugabe gained power, whereas Ethiopia got worse after Selassie lost power. So maybe he should be blamed for letting the Derg take over rather than holding onto power better?

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I'd also like to note that it seems rather odd to say this supports Great Man Theory rather than Jared Diamond. Wouldn't it be quite the coincidence if Ethiopia just unluckily failed to have a Great Man as emperor, as were the rulers of so many other places in the Global South, but apparently England had one that fixed up the country in a way I've never heard of? The Netherlands also industrialized around the same time as England, so perhaps it was William of Orange, who also caused other adjacent countries to industrialize with a lag as well.

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I wasn't speaking in terms of industrialization but of the formation and maintenance of stable states post-colonization. It seems fairly clear to me at this point that early leadership was crucial in determining the viability of newly formed African nations. I should've made it clear though that this wasn't so much supported just by 'The Emperor' alone, but of later readings about the most politically stable countries, such as Botswana.

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Ethiopia isn't really a "post-colonization" state like most African countries. The Italians were there relatively briefly, and Selassie was in charge before they got there.

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If you want to marry Great Man history with more structural explanations, it's not too hard to establish that Selassie basically didn't have a choice and any attempt at reform would only make things worst.

Indeed, according to the book/your review, it was Selassie's tolerance/encouragement for the Ethiopian elite youth to get educated outside of Ethiopia that was the source of the problems.

In hindsight, it seemed he would have been better off keeping them at home, their ego pampered by high titles, their purses fattened by unearned commissions... and stupid/uneducated.

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This applies to the European colonies as well. To take Indonesia as an example: the leaders of the Indonesian revolution against Dutch colonial rule all went to Dutch universities. Strangely, only Sukarno, the leader of the revolution and first president never had been in Holland (although he spoke Dutch).

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That may be, I've only read a little bit about Derg's failures. But from what I've read, they don't seem to have done worse so much as continued on with a similar amount of corruption and incompetence in dealing with famines, foreign aid, etc. This strikes me as quite different than Mugabe's running one of the most prosperous countries in Africa into the ground.

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Brilliant writing. I'm picking up this book.

(Tiny point - when referring to the overall population of a country, it's 'populace', which is confusingly a homophone with the similar-meaning 'populous', that is, many-peopled.)

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Weird, I feel like I 'know' both words and their meanings, but clearly not well enough to catch it on an edit. Thanks.

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Nice! Thank you for an interesting summary as I too had kept the idea of Selassie as a positive stateman (he took power from his uncle, irrc, with some skills).

BTW, spelling for the French philosopher is Rousseau (last paragraph)

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Thanks, those eau-words always get me. Especially beauracrat.

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I'm always impressed by anyone trying to learn French when they didn't have to... :)

It's a nasty impractical language, not fit for purpose... :)

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Fantastic.

(Parallels to modern taxation left as an exercise to the reader. )

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Luttwak used Duvalier's Haiti as his example of "The Economics of Repression" in "Coup D'etat: A Practical Handbook", which I present here:

https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/the-economics-of-repression/

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Thank you for the review!

Typos (or not?)

> Idi Admins

> quasi-Rosseuian

> Rosseau

Rousseauian, Rousseau

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