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Ethiopianism, Back to Africa, and Marcus Garvey

Rastafari owed much to intellectual frameworks arising in the 19th and early 20th centuries. One key influence on Rastafari was Christian Revivalism, with the Great Revival of 1860–61 drawing many Afro-Jamaicans to join churches. Increasing numbers of Pentecostal missionaries from the United States arrived in Jamaica during the early 20th century, climaxing in the 1920s.

Further contributing significantly to Rastafari's development were Ethiopianism and the Back to Africa ethos, both traditions with 18th-century roots. In the 19th century, there were growing calls for the African diaspora located in Western Europe and the Americas to be resettled in Africa, with some of this diaspora establishing colonies in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Based in Liberia, the black Christian preacher Edward Wilmot Blyden began promoting African pride and the preservation of African tradition, customs, and institutions. Also spreading throughout Africa was Ethiopianism, a movement that accorded special status to the east African nation of Ethiopia because it was mentioned in various Biblical passages. For adherents of Ethiopianism, "Ethiopia" was regarded as a synonym of Africa as a whole.

Of significant influence on Rastafari was the Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, who spent much of his adult life in the US and Britain. Garvey supported the idea of global racial separatism and called for part of the African diaspora to relocate to Africa. His ideas faced opposition from civil rights activists like W. E. B. Du Bois who supported racial integration, and as a mass movement, Garveyism declined in the Great Depression of the 1930s. A rumour later spread that in 1916, Garvey had called on his supporters to "look to Africa" for the crowning of a black king; this quote was never verified. However, in August 1930, Garvey's play, Coronation of an African King, was performed in Kingston. Its plot revolved around the crowning of the fictional Prince Cudjoe of Sudan, although it anticipated the crowning of Haile Selassie later that year. Rastas hold Garvey in great esteem, with many regarding him as a prophet. Garvey knew of Rastafari, but took a largely negative view of the religion; he also became a critic of Haile Selassie, calling him "a great coward" who rules a "country where black men are chained and flogged".