Chapter Four - The First Tremors

CHAPTER FOUR

The First Tremors

FOR A MOMENT, it looked like Haile Selassie might actually pull it off.

The coronation wasn’t just for show — it came with momentum. Global recognition. Good press. Foreign advisors. Even some of the old nobles were nodding along. Ethiopia, after centuries of isolation and internal squabbling, was stepping into the twentieth century.

And Selassie? He was moving fast.

First order of business: drag the empire into modernity without blowing it up from the inside.

He expanded schools, streamlined tax systems, launched a national currency, and tried to pull power away from the old warlords without getting stabbed in the back. He reorganized ministries, hired experts, and built roads that actually connected cities instead of just leading to the next valley.

He wasn’t trying to westernize Ethiopia. He was trying to weaponize the modern world without losing the soul of the old one. It was a balancing act between telegrams and incense, rifles and rosaries.

But not everyone was thrilled.

The noble class — the mesafint — didn’t like losing influence. The church raised its eyebrows at secular reforms. The army was still under-equipped and decentralized. Most provinces still answered to local rulers, not the crown.

Selassie was trying to run a nation.

But he was standing on a religious monarchy, tribal alliances, and 3,000 years of tradition wrapped in holy scripture.

And while he was busy playing 4D chess at home, Benito Mussolini was licking his lips in Rome.

Italy had never gotten over its embarrassing loss at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 — when a European power was defeated by an African kingdom. It was one of the few colonial failures in Europe’s imperial fever dream.

Mussolini wanted payback. And headlines. And land.

He needed to prove Italian greatness, and Ethiopia — rich in symbolism and strategically placed in East Africa — was the perfect target.

So he started poking.

He built up Italian forces in Eritrea and Somaliland — territories Italy already controlled on either side of Ethiopia. He staged border disputes. He accused Ethiopian soldiers of aggression. It was classic dictator stuff: stir up a fake reason to invade, slap a flag on it, call it destiny.

Selassie saw it coming.

He tried diplomacy. He filed complaints with the League of Nations. He strengthened what little military infrastructure Ethiopia had. He sent emissaries, begged for international oversight, and scrambled for weapons.

But the League offered little more than sternly worded letters.

And Italy? Italy had tanks.

Back home, Selassie continued pushing reforms — even as the ground beneath him started to shift. He banned slavery (still quietly practiced in some provinces), which infuriated conservatives. He tried to centralize military command. He clashed with aristocrats. But war was no longer a whisper.

It was coming over the horizon.

By 1935, Italian forces were fully mobilized. Planes. Poison gas. Artillery. Over 400,000 troops, with more on the way.

And Ethiopia?

Mostly farmers with rifles.
A few outdated cannons.
Courage, sure — but no air force, no modern armor, and no international backup.

Selassie had done everything he could to prepare.

But he was about to find out what the world really meant when it said “Never Again.”