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:
“But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?—the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world—a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“... the Black woman in America can justly be described as a “slave of a slave.””
—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)