Sheba's Sons - Haile Selassie goes to Tokyo
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Land of Gihon
Land of Gihon
Excerpt from The Black Star: Liberia in World War II by Tom Cooper
Marcus Garvey had closely followed events in Europe since the Italo-German intervention in the Spanish Civil War as members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association like William Tubman predicated it would spark another Great European War and was surprised when the Western Allies finally declared war on Germany when it invaded Poland in 1939. It was that the Germans managed to overwhelm the Allies so quickly which surprised the Liberian President when the British were driven off the Continent twice, at Dunkirk in June 1940 and after the fall of Greece in June 1941. The Italian invasion of Egypt only served to portray the Allies on the cusp of collapsing with so many defeats, their only victories having been in liberating Ethiopia from Italy's occupation with Ras Imru's help in November 1941. Loss after loss on Allied hands did much to bolster the pro-Axis faction in the UNIA who begun to push for Liberia to seize its chance while it could and begin the liberation of Africa that Garvey had promised while he'd been in the USA, despite the Liberian Frontier Force's protests. Charles Young had already made the LFF's case to Garvey in 1938 wherein he pointed out that it might be able to successfully occupy all of Sierra Leone, as well as bits of French Guinea and British Gold Coast at best before the Allied war machine turned on them.Excerpt from The Black Star: Liberia in World War II by Tom Cooper
It was in late June that border incidents with Sierra Leone experienced an uptick as Liberian troops carried out raids against Royal West African Frontier Force units, probing the weakened lines. Two regiments'd been withdrawn from Sierra Leone to be sent to the East African and Burmese fronts, leaving it with a skeleton force as the Liberian Frontier Force massed on the frontier and upped the raids. Despite the report after report that showed that Garvey's Universal African Corps were set to invade, London ignored them in favor of focusing on the East African, North African and Asian theatres. Thus, Garvey's armies were set to launch their invasion when Monrovia, in a move reminiscent of Italy over the 1934 Wal-Wal Incident, accused the British of having failed to adequately control their men and penetrated into Sierra Leone with no declaration of war in August 1940. Employing the Universal African Corps as a shock force, the LFF tore through the RWAFF positions and marched along the Sierra Leone Government Railway with the intent to march all the way to Freetown as Freetown attempted to secure reinforcements from the British metropolitan. It was in the Sierra Leonean interior where the RWAFF was dealt defeat after defeat and where a slew of prisoners numbering in the thousands were taken for transportation to Liberia as a labor force and moreover, a bartering tool in post-war negotiations.
Liberian soldiers escort British and West African POWs to Liberia, August 1940.
Within a month, Liberian forces overran the entirety of the Eastern Province and chunks of the Southern and Northern Provinces, operating dangerously close to Freetown. Despite the rapid advance, the RWAFF had put a surprisingly staunch resistance and melted into the surrounding areas to fight as guerrillas sporadically attacking Liberian units. However, these guerrillas and RWAFF defenses were being undermined by Wallace Johnson's Garveyites [1] who served as a fifth column providing intelligence to Liberian forces as Johnson had supported the UNIA's ideas of a pan-West African nation but was jailed for it in June '36 after putting forward a scathing criticism of European colonialism at the time. This allowed them to strike without warning from areas thought to be safe and by the UAC's well-trained and equipped veterans, its Garveyite sources being put to good use by the Liberian High Command as the pro-Liberia Creole elite openly expressed pro-UNIA sentiments that had been present since March 1920 [2]. It was not long before Freetown fell into Liberian hands with the colonial authorities' surrender by the end of September and Liberian troops marched into the capital of British West Africa. To cheering crowds in Monrovia, Garvey now proclaimed that Sierra Leone was finally freed of European colonialism and eyed the neighboring British Gold Coast and French Guinea colonies who seemed to be next.
Excerpt from A History of African Radicalism by Paul Gilroy
Aware of European tensions and wary of Italy's growing army in Libya, Husayn pursued the expansion of the Egyptian Army that led to increase from its standing size of 23,000 men in 1936 to 100,000 by 1939 as Germany drove the Western Allies off the Continent by June 1940. The pro-Axis sentiment in Egypt and particularly the Young Egypt government grew with the slew of victories gained by the Germans in the West European campaigns and Italians in the Balkans with the popular opinion that the Axis would sweep into Egypt and restore to them their freedom from the British. This sentiment was not confined to Egypt but reached to encompass the Arab world where independence movements modeled on the Fascist powers - such as the Iraqi Al-Muthanna Club and Syrian Social Nationalist Party - had come to the forefront of the anti-colonialist struggle. With Young Egypt's determination to become the Arab world's leader, Cairo started fostering links with these movements who were often more than not involved in their government where they proved influential in Iraq who'd secured her independence in 1932. It may have been this which allowed for Rashid Ali al-Gaylani to become Prime Minister with the support of the Golden Square and establish a pro-Nazi government in April 1941, often including members of the Al-Muthanna Club and Party of National Brotherhood at the highest levels of Iraqi government.
When Britain invaded in May 1941, Rashid Ali ordered that an offensive be carried out against British forces at Habbaniya under the cover of night. Negating British aerial superiority, Iraqi soldiers attacked with no warning and with the close support of their artillery as British forces were taken off-guard and overwhelmed. Despite suffering heavier casualties than their British counterparts, Habbaniya fell to the Iraqis in a single night with British forces were unable to receive reinforcements from Shaiba and the Iraqis receiving their own from Baghdad. Meanwhile, operating from the airfields of Baghdad, German air units would launch bombing raids against the Abadan oil refinery in southwest Iran which was vital to the British war effort in the North African/Middle Eastern and Mediterranean theatres. However, owing to the lack of the much needed fuel and stores that were instead going to the future Operation Barbarossa, this failed and German bombers were either shot down by British planes operating out of Iran or forced to turn back. Its failure to give the German air units adequate support was the downfall of German efforts in Iraq, even if it did manage to prolong the survival of Rashid Ali's government who hadn't installed demolition charges at the bridge over the Euphrates at Falluja, ultimately doing little else than giving the Iraqi Army more time to defend these sites and Baghdad against the British.
Despite heavy Iraqi resistance and heavier British losses, Baghdad eventually fell into British hands by mid-June and military occupation naturally followed the fall of the Iraqi capital. However, even with Rashid Ali's decision to flee to Iran after the collapse of his National Defense government, the Iraqi Army continued resisting through the use of guerrilla tactics and interestingly, came into the orbit of the Al-Muthanna Club in the power vacuum that opened when so many members of Rashid Ali's government made the decision to flee the country. Material support from the Axis by way of Vichy Syria continued until the colony fell to Allied forces in July 1941 but covert arms support was also occurring from another unexpected source - Egypt, which had dedicated itself to the pan-Arab cause and maintained close links with exiled Iraqi government officials in Berlin. Iraq's valiant struggle was, in the eyes of many Egyptians, exactly what should be done in response to blatant European imperialism and this uptick in anti-British sentiments were eventually the cause behind the 1942 Abdeen Palace incident when Farouk was placed under pressure to replace the Young Egypt administration with a Wafd one and Ahmad Husayn with Mustafa el-Nahhas.
An Egyptian soldier mans his searchlight, 1941-42.
Excerpt from Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1945 by Jeff Pearce
It didn't help London's case that British officials were responsible for stewing up ethnic tensions in the areas and in an alarming move, Major Walsh - the Governor of Berbera - announced that the Somali people of the arranged Reserved Areas were no longer to be under Ethiopian jurisdiction in February 1942 and tried to rally support from Jijiga's Somalis. This attempt fell flat with Somalis reacting apathetically or with hostility to the British advances into the town, Imru's efforts during the Italian occupation to forge a common movement amongst all Ethiopians having seemed to pay off. Nasibu promptly reacted to the edict in overwhelming force, rallying support from his loyal Somali commanders and arrived in the city with 2,500 men welcomed by Somalis waving the Ethiopian tricolor and desecrating the Union Jack. This scene had shown the utter failure of London's attempt at implementing divide-and-conquer tactics in Ethiopia [4] and only served to isolate Britain when Imru reminded the British that they were signatories of the Atlantic Charter in August 1942 and turned to Washington for assistance. Having effectively been an Allied Power since June 1940, Ethiopia was now eligible for the Lend-Lease program and Imru used it not only for the purpose of equipping the Imperial Ethiopian Army and Ethiopian Expeditionary Force but to acquire the necessary tools and materials for developing the country.
Lorenzo Taezaz poses with Nasibu's Somali veterans in Jijiga, January 1942.
Although it may have proved detrimental to Ethiopia's recovery, the termination of the agreement showed how willing Imru was to protect Ethiopian sovereignty and this willingness was seen in that recruitment of skilled Italians [8] in order to maintain the few industries left intact. Well aware of the Italians' propaganda that if abandoned, the Italian settlers in Ethiopia were to be slaughtered [9] by the Ethiopians so as to satisfy their thirst for revenge on the Italians for their occupation, Imru ordered that any man who hurt or killed an Italian to be put to the gallows and as many as 152 were hanged for such crimes. Imru had been aware of the need for proper government in Ethiopia, having outlined his own plans for reform and was willing to listen to the ideas proposed by the educated in the Black Lions Association. By the mid-30s the Ethiopian intelligentsia moved away from its liberal stances in favor of a combination of state-led national development programs, "Ethiopian capitalism," militant nationalism, rapid industrialization and their other radical stances [10] that had characterized the Japanizers. Led by Kidane Mariam and Bashaward Hapte Wolde, the Japanizers were fervent advocates for emulating Imperial Japan and Garveyite Liberia in the hopes of modernizing Ethiopia and with the onset of liberation, saw a fresh start for Ethiopia and pushed Imru to start anew.
These Black Lions were not the only ones to advocate for establishing an entirely new government from scratch - the period in between the Italian invasion of France and Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor would see a number of Ethiopians return to their freed homelands, many of them being educated and eager to modernize. This was led primarily by Lij Araya Abebe and Princess Kuroda Masako when they returned to Ethiopia in late 1940 and were attached to Alula's Legion when it pursued Italian forces in Gojjam, clashing with the Italians at Gondar in November 1941. The royal couple were personally received by Imru in a pompous welcome where Araya and Kuroda put forward their proposals to the Regent, often taking inspiration from the model of wartime Japan and urged him to establish a system based upon the Imperial Aid Assistance Association which he did in April 1942. It was intended to restore the centralized government that Haile Selassie established by early 1935 and to transcend ethnicity, religion and provincialism, all its ills which Italy had adopted to divide Ethiopians and something which remained even with the collapse of Italian administration. Thus, it was in April 1942 that Imru signed into existence the Union of Gihon, the state body that was intended to not just oversee the establishment of a modern Ethiopian government but supersede the BLA by absorbing the educated, promoting reforms and generally acting in a vanguard's role where there had been none for the intelligentsia.
In spite of the many difficulties suffered after World War II, the Union of Gihon seems to have stood the test of time and even outlived Imru himself, lasting to this day.
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[1] I.T.A Wallace Johnson was a prominent Sierra Leonean journalist and politician. ITTL, he's joined the UNIA and become the leading member of the Sierra Leonean chapter.
[2] See The Garvey Movement in British West Africa by R. L. Okonkwo for more.
[3] Alimirah Hanfare is the soon-to-be Sultan of Aussa and ITTL, he ends up joining the Patriots and overseeing the command of the Patriotic movement in the autonomous Aussa Sultanate.
[4] These tactics were used extensively in the Ogaden and other southern provinces by British officials during World War II and even into the early 1950s, laying down the problems that still destabilize the area to this day. See THE ROOT CAUSES OF POLITICAL PROBLEMS IN THE OGADEN, 1942-1960 by Tibebe Eshete for more.
[5] Although Moscow attempted to establish diplomatic relations with Ethiopia as early as December 1925, they were never established until April 1943. See The Soviet Union and Ethiopia: A Case of Traditional Behavior by Sergius Yakobson and Reds and Whites in Ethiopia before the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935 and 1936 by Joseph Calvitt Clarke for more.
[6] This was also a serious issue ITTL and was possibly the main cause behind the Ethiopian termination of the 1942 agreement, paving way for the talks of the 1944 agreement. See Ethiopia at Bay: A Personal Account of the Haile Selassie Years by John H. Spencer for more.
[7] This was actually planned IOTL. See A Modern History of Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde for more.
[8] This happened IOTL. See Haile Selassie and the Italians, 1941-1943 by Alberto Sbacchi for more.
[9] See Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935-1941 by Jeff Pearce for more.
[10] See THE RISE OF ETHIOPIA’S EDUCATED ELITE AND RACIAL TENSIONS WITH FOREIGNERS IN ETHIOPIA by Joseph Calvitt Clarke and Evolution of Development Oriented Ideas in Ethiopia (1900-1991) by Kassa Belay for more.
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Well, it's nice to see that Imru is cracking down on the British subversion, it was responsible for enough of the Horn's problems that we see today. I think the Soviets will be eager to exploit this newfound friendship with an old friend of Russia's and we'll probably see an earlier pro-Soviet Ethiopia ITTL.
So Liberia's annexed Sierra Leone, Britain is faced with a restive Iraq and Ethiopia is moving closer to the Soviets very early on. Absolutely fascinating.
I'm surprised no one's pointed this out earlier. Garvey's also eyeing the colonies next door and the Western Allies aren't exactly happy at the idea of a pro-Soviet Ethiopia which will certainly have ramifications down the line once the Second World War ends.
London is certainly pissed at the loss of such a strategic colony and Charles Young has already pointed out that the LFF isn't capable of expanding any further without suffering heavy losses.
Over There
Over There
Excerpt from The Black Star: Liberia during World War II by Tom Cooper
Excerpt from The Black Star: Liberia during World War II by Tom Cooper
Encouraged by the wave of popularity that swept Liberia, Marcus Garvey turned to the British Gold Coast and begun preparing for an invasion. However, the Royal West African Frontier Force had also started to prepare for Garvey's invasion, learning from its failings in 1940 and the domestic situation there was not as favorable there as it was in Sierra Leone. Garveyism there had fostered a genuine African nationalism that was staunchly opposed to any sort of Liberian "liberation," coming to see Garvey as the personification of African-American imperialism [1] or "the Black Man's Burden." The sight of Liberian soldiers singing George M. Cohan's "Over There" during their march into Sierra Leone didn't help to dissuade this notion nor to garner any more favor like which the UNIA had enjoyed in Sierra Leone. It was both the failures of the UNIA in the Gold Coast [2] and to adequately plan for this aforementioned Gold Coast campaign that would lead to the relatively heavy losses that the Liberians sustained in their attempted invasion and the British counterattack which threatened to extend to Liberia proper. Despite Charles Young's warnings and protests from the Liberian High Command, Garvey went on to approve this invasion that was demanded of him by the ecstatic UNIA officials and even the public at large with the euphoria of "liberating Sierra Leone from the accursed Anglo-Saxon" still in the minds of millions by December 1940.
The initial Liberian thrust was rapid, resembling Germany's Blitzkrieg in West Europe and European Russia, and punched through the RWAFF's defenses on the Liberian frontier where it threatened to move to its capital in the same way it had to Freetown. Unlike its counterparts in Sierra Leone though, the RWAFF brigades put up a staunch resistance that saw entire battalions get wiped out to a man and the Liberians in front forced to halt to receive their reinforcements, often being skeleton garrisons holding down the fort. These men were veterans from Ethiopia and Burma who'd been faced with the worst of the worst that its Axis opponents had to offer either in the midst of Italian veterans raining down hell from the Ethiopian Highlands or fanatic bayonet-wielding Japanese soldiers from the Burmese jungle. Although Liberian troops too were experienced and often on par with other colonial West African soldiers, the men spearheading the thrust were Garvey's dogmatic "African Legionnaires" and on average, consisted of men that had been recruited not on ability but of their devotion to Garvey. They were also subject to coordinated guerrilla raids coordinated by British intelligence officers - attacks that were proving too effective for Liberian troops to react sufficiently enough to heavy casualties. This often led to Liberian soldiers going about committing atrocities, massacres and wanton looting, doing nothing but garnering support for the British.
Back home, the reports of mounting losses was being censored by Monrovia but news steadily filtered to the home front about the fine young men that went to die in another land. It didn't help that the Liberian conquest of Sierra Leone was followed by periodic bombardments of the coastal cities by the Royal Navy who'd outmaneuvered the pitiful excuse that the Liberian Navy and patrolled the waters of the Atlantic in order to prevent the Liberians from receiving outside assistance or from exporting its raw materials and finished products. It impacted not just civilian morale but the effectiveness of Liberian industry which was already under heavy pressure when Garvey ordered the relocation of Liberian industries and workers from the coast to the safety of the interior. It forced Monrovia to turn toward Vichy France, the only one that was willing to move Liberian exports across its West African colonies - the same that Garvey had promised to liberate - and export arms shipped in from German-occupied Europe, pressing the Liberians for cash in such duties. Even while pretending to be pro-Liberia with its positive remembrance of African-American and African soldiers in World War I that played such a prominent role in its propaganda [3] by then, the Vichy government was only interested in seeing the Liberians and British bleed each other white so it could retake the colonies under Free French control at the right moment.
By mid-December, the wide gap between Britain and Liberia was beginning to show with British forces launching the ironically named Christmas Offensive, completely expelling the Liberians from the Gold Coast and driving the Liberian Frontier Force back into Liberia in early January 1941. It was at that point that there was mounting pressure on Garvey to end the war with Britain from the public, LFF and UNIA when it seemed that Britain's West African army were going to overwhelm the Liberian heartland and colonize it just as the Italians had done in Ethiopia. Thus, Monrovia dispatched a team of diplomats to London where negotiations were started for a conclusion to the war, opened with the hopes of Liberia holding onto Sierra Leone and financially compensating the British for her troubles. Although the final terms were tweaked and Liberia was forced into sending a regiment to the North African front, Monrovia got what it originally bargained for at the negotiating table in London and managed to retain Liberia under the Allied facade. It was most likely due to the opening of Japan's Centrifugal Offensive after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent Japanese conquest of nearly all of Britain's colonies in East Asia and the Pacific that made the British more favorable to Liberian offers - or really, more opposed to the idea of wasting more manpower on another guerrilla-ridden hellhole that was going to be another Iraq.
Liberian soldiers defend against British offensives, December 1941.
The failed campaign in the Gold Coast also had ramifications on Liberia's home front where Marcus Garvey's popularity begun to ebb when it was made known that several thousand Liberian lives were lost in its advances and thousands more wounded. Monrovia's commitment to North Africa and later, Italy were lackluster and owing to the shortfalls of Liberian industry that were compensated for by American help, had relied on either British or American-produced equipment to arm its men there while they were attached to the 92nd Infantry Division or "Buffalo Soldiers." Garvey himself seemed to recognize this, handling that issue by handpicking his successors and ultimately choosing the (relatively) moderate William Tubman, a Liberian-born Americo-Liberian formerly apart of the pre-UNIA government, who was to be supported in his administration by Carlos Cooks, the fiery American-born orator who'd been a veteran of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Garvey was also aging, distributing day-to-day tasks amongst his subordinates in the Association and laying down the foundations for a more collective system of governance by the UNIA in the future. In this, he turned to foreign events where he was successful in re-establishing links with Addis Ababa after Allied forces liberated the country in November 1941 and fostered not just economic cooperation but Pan-African coordination with the 1944 Pan-African Conference being held in Addis Ababa.
Excerpt from A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 by Bahru Zewde
Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the commencement of the Centrifugal Offensive had now drawn His Imperial Majesty's Provisional Government and Imperial Ethiopian Army into World War II onto the side of the Axis and this did not sit well with many Ethiopians. Many had accompanied him to Japan in 1936 not just to escape the brutal atrocities committed by Italian forces but in the hopes that Haile Selassie would figure out some way to free Ethiopia with Japanese and German assistance [4] in a war of liberation. They'd put up with Sadao Araki's requests for "volunteers" when it was apparent that China was not going to roll over in 1937 and was resolutely defending its positions past the Yellow River, leading Araki to declare that able-bodied Ethiopians were to join the Imperial Ethiopian Army in China. It was now apparent that Haile Selassie was willing to submit to Tokyo and send his loyal subjects across the sea to get involved in some Asiatic venture that Sub-Saharan Africans had no business in, simply because the Japanese would fail to conquer the weakened Chinese state when Chiang Kai-Shek was assassinated and his son, Chiang Wei-Kuo, came to power in 1936.
The IEA was first deployed to serve in the general Shanghai-Nanjing area that the Chinese National Revolutionary Army (NRA) transformed into a battlefield resembling World War I on the French front. The IEA fought reasonably well, having been drilled and raised to the standard of the average Imperial Japanese Army unit which was often leagues above its average Chinese Central Army counterpart. When it came to the NRA's German-trained divisions, the Imperial Ethiopian Army was roughly on par with these elite soldiers and soon sustained heavy casualties whilst making contact with it, especially in winter where African soldiers were unsuited to the climate. The IEA was withdrawn from the frontlines in the winter of 1939-40, subsequently committed to the Burmese front where it fought alongside Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army and partook in the failed Japanese invasion of India in junction with it. Haile Selassie was noted to have held positive views of Bose's Azad Hind (Free Indian government) and supported his desire to establish an independent Indian state on combined National Socialist and Stalinist lines, reflecting his own moves toward establishing an independent Ethiopia on the wartime Japanese model.
The Imperial standard is presented to Haile Selassie in China, July 1939.
Excerpt from The Black Circle: A History of Negritudean Haiti by C.L.R. James
Jean Prince-Mars observed the Second World War with wariness, having already proclaimed Haiti neutral in the conflict but maintained friendly relations with the Axis. He possessed little interest in joining a war that was mostly between the Eurasian powers but took a friendly stance toward Japan who'd been willing to grant loans to Haiti in keeping with their policy of supporting Black nationalists. Port-au-Prince was to also continue to support an unofficial alliance with Garveyite Liberia and sent more bright Haitians to Monrovia on subsidized scholarships to establish a Haitian elite of Negro background. The HNU government's desire to rid itself of the "Mulatto menace," as Prince-Mars referred to it, was often one of the main reasons behind the avid pursuit of development because it saw Haitian Mulattoes in much the same way Hitler saw European Jews. The Haitian-Dominican War in 1937 facilitated the popularization of anti-Mulatto sentiment when Mulattoes were implicated in possessing close links to Trujillo to whom Haiti's Mulatto elites, especially those like Stenio Vincent or Elie Lescot, were in debt to and this is what allowed the HNU government to purge Mulatto elites after it was found out that Stenio's backing was coming from Trujillo.
Negritudean Haiti was quite similar to Garveyite Liberia in admiring and emulating aspects of Fascist regimes in Europe, especially on the issue of "the Mulatto Question," as some called it. Prince-Mars admitted to agreeing in many areas with Mussolini and Hitler that wasn't necessarily limited to dealing with ethnic minorities. It often included an admiration and desire to emulate particularly the Nazis and Garveyists in the area of establishing a racial empire, as well as pursue large-scale public works project and develop modern infrastructure for Haiti. This tended to translate into a pan-Caribbean Empire dominated by Blacks and governed in much the same way that Liberia was by the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Jean Prince-Mars pushing for an expanded Haitian Empire to encompass the area and calling upon Haitian memory of Bishop James Theodore Holly [5] in doing so. However, it is unlikely that Holly would've been happy with Prince-Mars' decision to adhere so rigorously to the African Orthodox Church and promote its syncretic Orthodox Christian denomination that combined with Voodoo in the process. It led some to refer to the Haitian National Union's plans to expand to include a racial empire as the "Black Circle." It would only be after World War II that the Black Circle idea was to lead to the establishment of the West Indian Federation as decolonization left Haiti the most vibrant state and led others to link arms with her.
However, Haitian sympathies with the Axis faded away when the Japanese made the decision to attack Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and drew the United States of America into war with the Axis members as they declared war on Washington in support of their Japanese ally. Although Haiti continued to maintain a friendly disposition toward Germany and Japan, it was placed under pressure to declare war on them in tandem with the United States, a decision that Prince-Mars utterly despised and opposed until pressure from his own Cabinet and the Haitian National Union Party forced him to issue a declaration of war. Haiti's actual contribution to the Allied war effort would be little else than Port-au-Prince's export of raw materials to the United States while she received a full package of modern equipment that allowed the Garde its own modern kit of arms in stark contrast to the World War I surplus it'd been fighting with. The American aid not only allowed the Haitian Garde to become one of the stronger states in the region but also went toward the development of Haitian infrastructure to facilitate economic modernization and bolstered the burgeoning industrial sector as the NFC suddenly found itself competing with American investment.
New Haitian Shermans on parade on Independence Day, January 1941.
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[1] Since the appearance of Black nationalism in the 1850s, a dominant focus has been on the repatriation of African-Americans to West Africa where they could establish for themselves an independent republic free of the rampant discrimination that characterized race relations in the United States. This often included themes of the well-known civilizing mission, blatant expansionism, etc. as can be seen in the writings of men like Alexander Crummell and H.B. Parks. See "The Black's Man's Burden" - African-Americans, Imperialism and Notions of Racial Manhood, 1890-1910 by Michele Mitchell for more.
[2] IOTL, the Universal Negro Improvement Association never really managed to gain much traction in the Gold Coast as it did in Sierra Leone or Nigeria and that may've been due to the lack of attention that Western Blacks like Edward Wilmot Blyden paid attention to as well as the failure of the Black Star Line to capitalize on opportunities there in stark contrast to Nigeria where both flourished.
[3] The contribution made by African soldiers to the defense of France and her Empire in WWI/WWII was a prominent feature of Vichy propaganda in West Africa. See Marshal Petain Spoke to School-Children: Vichy Propaganda in French West Africa, 1940-1943 by Ruth Ginio for more.
[4] During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Berlin would be one of only two countries to successfully supply Ethiopia with much-needed arms that came in the form of rifles, machine guns, submachine guns and grenades up until Italy's recognition of the German annexation of Austria in 1938. The only other country to supply Ethiopia with anything was Japan, although that was primarily medical supplies for Red Cross missions in wartime Ethiopia.
[5] An American-born Haitian Episcopalian missionary, Bishop James Theodore Holly was determined to bring Haitian Protestantism to the forefront of Haitian religious life in stark opposition to the Catholicism and Voodoo that was so heavily prevalent at the time. Holly also desired to install in Haitians an "Afro-Saxon" character and advocated not just for African-American emigration to Haiti but for the formation of a pan-West Indian state under American tutelage. See Garveyism in Haiti during the US Occupation by Brenda Gayle Plummer for more.
Yeah, I think Imru is going to claim the throne or place Lij Araya Abebe on it as his puppet very soon.
My money's on Araya but with Imru's son being confirmed to be Emperor by 2008, we're probably going to see Imru claim the throne for himself some time down the line.