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Primary sourceNewspaper article18 December 1878

The Kings of Abyssinia

The Somerset Herald · 18 December 1878

An 1878 American newspaper report describing how King John of Abyssinia yielded his throne to Menilek, who then restored the kingdom under his rule.

Reports a dramatic rumored episode of Menilek's rise, describing him receiving the Abyssinian throne graciously from King John.

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Full front page of The Somerset Herald newspaper, Somerset, Pa., Wednesday, December 18, 1878, Vol. XXVII No. 28. Dense columns of text, advertisements for businesses, dentists, lawyers, and patent medicines, and short articles including one titled 'The Kings of Abyssinia'.
The Somerset Herald, Somerset, Pa., 18 December 1878. Library of Congress. Text is an AI-generated OCR copy of the original page, which may contain errors.

About this source

What it is

This is the front page of The Somerset Herald, a newspaper published in Somerset, Pennsylvania, on 18 December 1878. It contains a short article titled 'The Kings of Abyssinia', based on a report relayed by telegraph from an Arabic journal. The original page is held by the Library of Congress.

Why it matters

The article describes a dramatic episode involving King John of Abyssinia and the young Menilek, later Emperor Menelik II, claiming John gave up his throne after priests opposed his planned war, and that Menilek then treated him graciously and restored the kingdom under his own rule. It shows how news about Ethiopia's rulers traveled, often unreliably, through international telegraph networks to small American towns.

Look closer

  • Why does the newspaper itself say it 'distrusts' the story but prints it anyway?
  • What does this tell us about how slowly and unreliably news crossed continents in 1878?
  • Whose voices are missing from this account of Ethiopian politics?

This newspaper article is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Emperor Menelik II on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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