With the end of the Sidamo and Wollo Campaigns, Haile Selassie turned towards the rest of Ethiopia where he viewed the reactionary aristocracy following their attempt at overthrowing him and replacing him with Lij Menelik Iyasu as a puppet Emperor. The Emperor and his Cabinet begun planning to liquidate them in the future so that the more reformist government in power could successfully reform and modernize Ethiopia, targeting their support bases as reforms were implemented throughout Ethiopia. Haile Selassie planned to officially abolish slavery before 1930, hoping that this newly liberated force of peasants could back him over their former masters in the nobility which would predictably revolt against the Imperial government in the case of said reforms being instituted. The Imperial Guard had become the most modern fighting force in the entire Ethiopian Empire, having received new training from European advisors and its new equipment had been imported from multiple European countries as it underwent continued expansion. The role of the Imperial Guard was to suppress what could be a nationwide revolt against the Imperial government as a result of any reforms that abolished slavery and robbed them of their large estates. With assistance from Ethiopian and European military advisors, he wrote the "Menelik Plan" - this outlined the official plans for liquidation of the reactionary aristocracy, suppression of any nationwide revolts and Ethiopian modernization. Haile Selassie had already managed to secure loyalists in the forms of Ras Seyoum Mangesha and Ras Imru Haile Selassie who had not only become pro-Haile Selassie but were in favor of Rastafarianism as it became quite appealing to more nationalist and reformist nobles. To bolster the number of loyalists, a system of meritocracy was instituted throughout Ethiopia which weakened hereditary nobles as it allowed for non-northern Ethiopian and non-Orthodox Christian Ethiopians to rise to prominence as Haile Selassie received support from the less traditionalist Ethiopians in the southern provinces. This also allowed for these southern Ethiopian nobles to form a counterbalance of power and influence to the positions of the established northern Ethiopian nobility, the elected nobles all over Ethiopia forming a support base for Haile Selassie. The Emperor saw the importance of expanding his support base and influence from the traditional circles to avoid becoming reliant on the aforementioned traditionalists that had been the main pillars of support for Ethiopian Emperors in the past, coming to see the importance of the peasantry.
To further modernize the military, another Military Mission was invited to Ethiopia in 1926 - it was a German Military Mission headed by the famed General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck who had fought in East Africa as a guerrilla during the World War. The German Military Mission consisted of other German veterans of the World War, accompanied by a shipment of several thousand Gewehr 98 rifles, MP18s and MG08s to arm the Ethiopian troops that were to be trained under their command. Haile Selassie had personally asked for von Lettow-Vorbeck, having heard of his feats in Eastern Africa and wanting to establish better relations with Germany, and Berlin had obliged his request by putting at the head of the GMME. The GMME was put to work in the southern provinces where pro-Haile Selassie southerners volunteered and southern nobles provided men from their own armies, Haile Selassie requesting that the GMME train the southern forces into elite men. 20,000 new Imperial Guardsmen and southern troops formed the 1st Ethiopian Stormtrooper Division, placed under the GMME's administration whilst under the overall command of the Imperial Guard which was commanded by the Emperor himself. London and Rome were alarmed at the German Military Mission in Ethiopia, suspicious and wary of German intentions in the Horn of Africa before Addis Ababa and Berlin assured them that the Germans had no harmful intentions towards the present colonial powers. Haile Selassie, having heard of the decisive Polish victory at the Battle of Komarow that had been secured by Polish cavalry, requested that Polish cavalry veterans from the said battle assist in training Ethiopian cavalry as the 3rd Imperial Cavalry Guardsmen Division was to be trained by the Polish Military Mission to Ethiopia. Warsaw agreed to this, sending the necessary Polish advisors to Ethiopia as they were put to work. As recommended by the leadership of the Imperial Guard and European military advisors, construction of fortifications in the Tigrayan mountains begun in 1926 as Haile Selassie was suspicious of an Italian invasion coming from Italian Eritrea and sought to establish a line where Ethiopian forces could stop advancing forces and eventually push them back into their northern colony. Similar defensive fortifications were being built in the western and central provinces, the defenses in the western mountains acting not only as a point to halt any advancing forces but to launch offensives from as well and the defensive works in the interior mountains served as a base where guerrilla warfare was to begin against occupying powers.
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Soldiers of the 3rd Imperial Cavalry Guardsmen Division undergo training under Polish advisors, circa. 1925-26)
As he consolidated his power over the recently conquered provinces and expanded his influence into other ones, Haile Selassie implemented reforms in southern Ethiopia where the minority of northern nobles were outnumbered by the growing numbers of elected southern nobles. The Bale Revolt of 1926 was an uprising by the northern nobles in the southern Bale province as their sizable estates were dismantled and redistributed amongst the peasantry and nobles of the province, the Imperial government promising to compensate the nobles. Unfortunately, the northern and more reactionary nobles of Bale refused to accept this as they mobilized their peasant armies in defiance of Emperor Haile Selassie and the Imperial government. However, a good number of the peasant soldiers had heard tell of the Imperial Guard which had become legends among all of the Ethiopian Empire and the decisive defeat suffered by the armies of the rebellious Dejazmach Balcha Safo and Ras Gugsa, refusing to fight. Many of those refusing to fight were executed by the more loyal men, causing a chain reaction in which the bulk of some armies simply revolted against their noble commanders, collapsing as the Imperial Guard detachments made their way into Bale and surrendering en masse to the Imperial Guardsmen as it took hold of the entire province. On the orders of Haile Selassie, Ras Bitwoded Makonnen Endalkatchew - a reformist intellectual - was chosen as the new Governor of the Bale province as he received the backing of Haile Selassie's Imperial Guard and enforced the new reforms with his own experienced and professionally trained force. With the end of the Bale Revolt, Emperor Haile Selassie adopted a new strategy which focused on establishing a special system of reservists in every Ethiopian province that would come to the aid of any pro-Haile Selassie leader, if the Emperor himself was in trouble and when the Ethiopian Empire was being invaded. This allowed for around 1,000 Imperial Guardsmen to be concentrated in one province outside of the central Shewan province where the Imperial Guard was based, leaving roughly 18,000 men in Shewa under the personal command of the Emperor. If necessary, these reservists would form the nucleus of organized guerrilla units throughout Ethiopia in the event of invasion from the European colonial empires that completely surrounded her. Military academies headed by aforementioned reservists were opened with the assistance of European military advisors in provinces outside of Shewa to recruit local men into the Imperial Guard and/or Mahel Sefari in the event of war.
Haile Selassie ordered the construction of roads and railways to connect the major population centers to Addis Ababa, considering this as a means of being able to further spread more of his influence throughout the Ethiopian Empire. The Emperor utilized French and Italian capital to do so, the first railroad being the one that was to link Harar and Dire Dawa together before connecting to Nazret where it would ultimately be centered at Addis Ababa. To add to his transportation infrastructure projects, he wished to improve communications infrastructure in all of the Ethiopian Empire to better allow for further centralization and unification of the Ethiopian peoples at the periphery of the core provinces. Telephones, telegrams and wireless services as a whole had been introduced in 1921 in the central provinces where it expanded from as the Imperial government built up the necessary infrastructure in the particularly isolated regions of Ethiopia, mainly in the southeastern provinces. Haile Selassie ordered the construction of agricultural centers in the southern provinces on the tracts of government-owned land and what the pro-Haile Selassie southern nobles held, the latter seeing they could make quite a profit when cooperating with the Imperial government. Cash crops were to be grown in agricultural centers that dotted northern, western and southern Ethiopia in the more arable and rich lands that belonged to the Imperial government after it had confiscated rebellious nobles' estates or nobles aligned with Selassie's government. A particularly important Ethiopian export was coffee, Ethiopian coffee becoming quite popular in Western Europe and North America where there were increasing demands for Ethiopian cash crops as Haile Selassie expanded the cash crops Ethiopia grew. Other cash crops such as tobacco, tea, sugar cane and cotton were imported for the purpose of growing these on the new government-owned lands as the Ethiopian agricultural sector expanded with the new cash crops. Another sector of the Ethiopian economy included the textile and handicraft industries, the European expatriate communities dominating them as the Emperor established a government program for the purpose of teaching Ethiopians how to handle their own handicraft industries. Haile Selassie invited investment from European powers, the most interested being France and Italy who were competing for influence in Ethiopia while the Emperor continued to play them off against one another when it benefitted him the most. Whenever foreign companies became interested in investing in Ethiopia, Haile Selassie had decreed there be partial ownership on the behalf of the Ethiopians to prevent any foreign power from dominating Ethiopia through economic means. As apart of modernization, Haile Selassie recruited the Orthodox Church in a nationwide literacy campaign that was to increase literacy rates amongst the population and spread the Amharic language despite protesting of lingual minorities.
Haile Selassie's regime was becoming more authoritarian as he expanded and consolidated power over the Ethiopian Empire during his modernization programs, taking examples from the new authoritarian governments rising in Europe such as the Portuguese Estado Novo and Polish Sanation movements. Haile Selassie and his government had become attracted to the ideas of fascism as had a group of Ethiopian students who had received their educations in Rome, coming to the Selassite Imperial government with an Ethiopian-style fascist ideology that they had named Rastafarianism. The Emperor embraced it as a possible unifying factor amongst the Ethiopian people that could allow for him to properly modernize and Westernize Ethiopia to a point matching the European colonial powers encircling her. Rastafarianism's key points included:
- Ethiopian Nationalism: Rastafarianism promoted Ethiopian nationalism that was mainly centered around the expansion of the northern highlander Amharic culture and its values into the Ethiopian Empire as well as promoting Ethiopian history and the successes of the Ethiopian people against imperialism in the past. Other vital components of Rastafarian Ethiopian nationalism included Oriental Orthodox Christianity and the establishment of a pan-Habesha/Ethiopian identity.
- Ethiopian Monarchism: Rastafarianism promoted the Ethiopian monarchy as one of the factors that unified the Ethiopian people in the face of any danger to the Ethiopian state and her society.
- Anti-Imperialism: Rastafarianism viewed any imperialist expansion into the Ethiopian Empire as a danger to the Ethiopian people and their livelihoods.
Rastafarianism was quickly becoming prominent amongst the Orthodox Christian highlanders in northern, western and central Ethiopia whereas the Muslim and Pagan southern lowlanders possessed a more negative view towards the expansion of northern Amharic culture into their territories which caused some unease among the elected southern nobles, many of whom were Oromos or Somalis. Haile Selassie would attempt to play the Amharic cultural expansion aspects down in favor of promoting a more pan-Ethiopian ideology throughout his empire but some anti-Haile Selassie sentiment remained amongst the southern people who continued to remain aligned with Haile Selassie as a result of being freed by his reforms. The Emperor just continued with modernization as he kept a close watch on the Ethiopian southern peoples and nobles, balancing them out with newer elected nobles and hereditary nobles that had sworn allegiance to the Emperor. These recently elected nobles underwent a bit of Rastafarian indoctrination before becoming apart of the National Royalist Party which continued to see growth in membership, albeit mainly in the traditionalist circles that were becoming more reform-oriented as a result of Haile Selassie's successful reforms. An organization similar to the National Royalist Party was established in Addis Ababa - the Organization of Young Royalists, a group of young Ethiopians who were undergoing indoctrination to provide a support base for Emperor Haile Selassie in the future generation and assist him in modernization. It started with a few hundred Ethiopians before the Selassite Imperial government encouraged it to expand, seeing a growth in a couple thousand members by the end of 1927.
However, there were still some Ethiopians who opposed Rastafarianism and the institution of such an ideology throughout Ethiopia as they convened in the city of Dire Dawa to discuss the eventual overthrow of Haile Selassie and his government. Lij Yohannes Iyasu, the son of Lij Iyasu V, was to be the unifying factor amongst these Ethiopians with different ideologies and from different backgrounds as the decision was made to establish a coalition of underground organizations that opposed the Selassite government.