Haile Selassie

Tafari Makonnen rose through Ethiopia's Solomonic dynasty as regent under Empress Zewditu from 1916, defeating rivals at the Battle of Anchem before claiming the throne himself in 1930. He pushed modernisation - a constitution in 1931, slavery abolished in 1942 - while Italy invaded in 1935 and sent him into British exile; he returned after Allied forces expelled the Fascists in World War II. He dissolved the UN-brokered Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea to annex Eritrea outright, presided over the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, and steered a moderate line against the anti-Western pan-Africanists of the early 1960s. His autocratic administration suppressed rebellions, persecuted the Harari, banned Oromo from public life, and relocated Amhara populations south. The Derg junta overthrew him in 1974 and killed him a year later in the Jubilee Palace; his body went unburied until 2000.