Reconstruction
On 2 November 1930, Tafari Makonnen was crowned Haile Selassie I at St George’s Cathedral in Addis Ababa, while Menen Asfaw was crowned empress. The ceremony followed six months of preparation and drew Ethiopian nobles, clergy, troops, and delegations from Britain, Italy, France, Belgium, Sweden, Japan, Egypt, the United States, Germany, Greece, Turkey, and Poland. Roads were improved, sidewalks and electric lighting installed, monuments erected, and photographers enlisted to project an image of an ancient Christian monarchy mastering modern spectacle. Feasting was part of that political theater.
The best-documented food event occurred on Monday, 3 November, and was a mass imperial banquet, often called a gebr or gebbur in later accounts, rather than a recoverable menu for one diplomatic state dinner. Contemporary reports disagree on attendance, giving roughly 20,000 to 30,000 guests, sometimes served in relays of about 5,000. Evelyn Waugh’s newspaper report described gray Ethiopian bread; small pieces of cooked mutton and bread with a sharply pungent red-pepper sauce; abundant local beer; and, as the centerpiece, raw beef called broundo. Diners held pieces of beef in one hand and cut mouthfuls upward with a knife, a technique requiring skill. The bread was probably injera or a closely related highland flatbread, but the report does not identify it securely.
Such a feast required livestock, grain, fermentation, brewing, butchery, baking, sauce making, and tightly organized service on a huge scale. Raw beef carried prestige in Ethiopian court and celebratory eating long before 1930; early modern travelers also described royal banquets where fresh beef was eaten with pepper, salt, and sour teff bread. Meat signaled generosity and abundance, while seating, order of service, and access embodied hierarchy. The coronation feast therefore addressed several publics at once: soldiers and subjects received conspicuous largesse, Ethiopian elites recognized a royal idiom of power, and foreign visitors encountered a court presenting national tradition alongside imported diplomatic protocol.
Evidence for the coronation’s diplomatic receptions, luncheons, and formal dining is strong, but an authenticated complete menu for the 1930 court banquets has not been located in the sources used here. Later descriptions of Haile Selassie’s state table show French menu language, European service conventions, and gold plate, yet these cannot simply be projected backward onto every coronation meal. Likewise, lurid foreign press stories about animals being consumed while alive reflect sensational and racialized reporting and should not be treated as secure observation. The safer reconstruction rests on the foods independently named in contemporary reportage.
The banquet’s lasting significance is not a single recipe but the deliberate pairing of Ethiopian hospitality with international statecraft. Injera-centered communal meals, peppered stews, local fermented drinks, and raw-beef dishes such as tere siga remain recognizable parts of Ethiopian food culture, including in diaspora restaurants. That continuity does not make today’s dishes unchanged survivals of the 1930 feast; it shows that foods once used to stage imperial abundance still carry meanings of celebration, identity, and social connection.
Historical context
The Great Depression was disrupting economies and trade worldwide. Ethiopia, admitted to the League of Nations in 1923, remained independent while much of surrounding Africa was under European colonial rule. The railway from French-controlled Djibouti connected landlocked Addis Ababa with the sea and carried foreign delegations and imported ceremonial goods to the capital. Addis Ababa was still a young city, founded in the late nineteenth century; estimates place its population between roughly 100,000 and 200,000 by 1935. Haile Selassie introduced Ethiopia’s first modern written constitution in 1931, but Fascist Italy invaded the country in October 1935.
Evidence
Written sources
StrongContemporary journalism and later scholarly editions document the coronation, the mass banquet, disputed attendance estimates, and named foods including raw beef, cooked mutton, bread, red-pepper sauce, and local beer.
Iconographic
StrongCommissioned and press photography securely document the coronation ceremony, foreign delegations, urban staging, court display, and ceremonial settings, although they do not provide a complete banquet menu.
Food identification
ModerateRaw beef, mutton, bread, pepper sauce, and beer are directly named in contemporary reporting. Identifying the gray bread specifically as injera and the beer specifically as tella is probable but not directly established by that account.
Dating
StrongThe coronation is securely dated to 2 November 1930, and contemporary reports place the large public banquet on the following day.
Preparation method
ModerateThe knife technique used to portion raw beef is directly described. Large-scale slaughter, baking, brewing, fermentation, and sauce production are necessary and reasonable reconstructions, but their exact organization is not documented.
Geographic attribution
StrongWritten and photographic evidence securely locates the coronation festivities in Addis Ababa, particularly around St George’s Cathedral and the imperial palace precincts.
Recipe evidence
LimitedNo authenticated complete recipe collection or full menu for the 1930 coronation court banquets was located. Later imperial menus cannot be assumed to reproduce the coronation meals.
Historical interpretation
ModerateInterpreting the feast as royal largesse, hierarchy, hospitality, and international political display is supported by the scale of service, established Ethiopian court-feast traditions, and scholarship on the coronation’s deliberate staging.
Visual reconstruction
LimitedThe settings and participants are photographically documented, but the appearance, arrangement, vessels, portions, and service of individual foods remain incompletely recorded.
Sources
- 1.Estelle Sohier (2013). The Coronation of Hāyla Sellāsē in Addis Ababa: Staging of a City, Reinvention of a Ceremony. Annales d’Éthiopie 28: 399–402. doi:https://doi.org/10.3406/ethio.2013.1550Scientific literature
- 2.Evelyn Waugh (1930). Coronation Banquet in Abyssinia, 30,000 Guests. The Times; reprinted in Essays, Articles, and Reviews 1922–1934, edited by Donat Gallagher, Oxford University Press, 2018.Historical primary source
- 3.Luke Seaber (2021). Private Faces in Public Places: Auto-Intertextuality, Authority and 1930s Fiction. The 1930s: A Decade of Modern British Fiction, edited by Nick Hubble, Luke Seaber, and Elinor Taylor, Bloomsbury Academic.Modern synthesis
- 4.Hiroki Ishikawa (2023). Increase in Teff Consumption in Northern Ethiopia between the 16th and 18th Centuries and the Birth of Injera. African Study Monographs, Supplementary Issue 61: 7–40. doi:https://doi.org/10.14989/282789Scientific literature
- 5.Semeneh Seleshe, Cheorun Jo, and Mooha Lee (2014). Meat Consumption Culture in Ethiopia. Korean Journal for Food Science of Animal Resources 34(1): 7–13. doi:https://doi.org/10.5851/kosfa.2014.34.1.7Scientific literature
- 6.Satheesh Neela and Solomon Workneh Fanta (2020). Injera (An Ethnic, Traditional Staple Food of Ethiopia): A Review on Traditional Practice to Scientific Developments. Journal of Ethnic Foods 7, article 32. doi:https://doi.org/10.1186/s42779-020-00069-xScientific literature
Limitations
- moderatetitle
The title may imply one specifically documented diplomatic banquet. The clearest surviving food account instead concerns a mass public imperial banquet on 3 November 1930, while no authenticated complete menu for the coronation’s formal court dinners was located.
