The Central African Empire (French: Empire centrafricain) was a short-lived, self-declared autocratic monarchy that replaced the Central African Republic and was, in turn, replaced by the restoration of the Republic. The empire was formed when Jean-Bédel Bokassa, president of the Republic, declared himself Emperor Bokassa I on 4 December 1976. Bokassa spent the equivalent of over 20 million United States dollars, a quarter of the country’s government annual income, on his coronation ceremony. The monarchy was abolished and the name “Central African Republic” was restored on 21 September 1979, when Bokassa was ousted with French support.
Read more about Central African Empire: Proclamation of The Empire
Famous quotes containing the words central, african and/or empire:
“The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are responses to a disease thought to be intractable and capricious—that is, a disease not understood—in an era in which medicine’s central premise is that all diseases can be cured.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,—a denizen of the woods. “The pale white man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The “paper tiger” hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is saying what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the White Man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still an empire at my feet.”
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)