British Somaliland

Location of British Somaliland or today's Somaliland

British Somaliland was a British protectorate from 1884 to 1960 in what is now Northern Somalia, or the de facto autonomous Somaliland .

history

Great Britain had signed a first protection treaty with a local clan on the north coast of the Somali- inhabited area in 1827 and had deployed envoys in the port cities of Zeila and Berbera since 1839 to secure the sea trade routes through the Red Sea to India . From 1884 to 1886 it concluded further contracts with various clans and thus secured the area that was predominantly inhabited by nomadic Somali cattle herders from the Isaaq clans as well as Dir and Darod .

From 1884 to 1898 the protectorate was administered from Bombay and was in close contact with the province of Aden (later Aden colony ). The borders of British Somaliland were set in treaties with Italy (1894) and Abyssinia (1897 and 1954). An agreement was made with France as early as 1888 . Among other things, the island of Musha in the Gulf of Tajura was bought and assigned by the Indian government for the price of ten sacks of rice. After that, British Somaliland was administered by the Foreign Office and from 1905 by the Colonial Office .

The British used the colony as a military base and supply station for ships and, above all, established an extensive export trade in live cattle, which they needed to supply their nearby colony Aden . Until 1942 the administrative seat of the colony was the port city of Berbera , through which these exports were handled. Inland, the growing trade meant that Hargeysa and Burao emerged as larger towns and centers of trade. The export of livestock as an important economic factor remained beyond the colonial period, as from the 1950s there was a high demand for Somali cattle from the Arab states that had become wealthy through oil production.

Flag 1950-1960

In contrast to the Italians in the neighboring Italian Somaliland, the British were hardly interested in more extensive control and development of their Somaliland . They were largely limited to an indirect rule over the area, hardly invested in its development and did little to intervene in internal conditions. Local structures such as the councils of elders (guurti) , which are traditionally responsible for peace-building between the clans, were largely retained.

Not all clans submitted to foreign rule without resistance. The border treaty with Abyssinia of 1897, which recognized Abyssinia's sovereignty over the Ogaden, including the important pastureland in the Haud region , caused displeasure . Between 1899 and 1920, the Dolbohanta (Dhulbahante) -Darod led by Mohammed Abdullah Hassan in particular waged a religiously and nationalistically motivated guerrilla war against colonial rule. In the course of this war, combined with a famine in 1911/12, around a third of the population perished.

The new Baldwin government in office offered its short-term ally in the Stresa Front , Mussolini, the Ogaden in August 1934 . At the same time, Abyssinia was to be compensated by a strip of land as a corridor to the port of Zeila .

In the late summer of 1940 , Fascist Italy occupied British Somaliland as part of its East Africa campaign . In the spring of 1941, Great Britain recaptured British Somaliland and, together with Italian Somaliland, which had also been conquered, placed it under military administration until 1950. Its seat was from 1942 Hargeysa. The Somali were now included in the administration, from 1947 an Advisory Council consisted of local representatives who met once a year.

With the reconquest of British Somaliland in 1941, the East African shilling was introduced as currency.

In 1950, Italian Somaliland was returned to Italy as the Italian Somalia Trust Territory , while British Somaliland remained with Great Britain as a colony. In 1957 the political participation of the local population was expanded by the formation of an Executive Council and a Legislative Council . These were partly elected and partly appointed by the governor. In the first elections to the Legislative Council in February 1960, the Somali National League party received 20 out of 33 seats.

When the independence of Italian Somaliland was scheduled for July 1, 1960, the Legislative Council called for British Somaliland's independence to be swiftly achieved in order to achieve unification with Italian Somaliland as a step towards the unification of all Somali in one state. Independence was prepared within two months and finally granted on June 26, 1960, five days later it merged with Italian Somaliland to form the state of Somalia.

See also

• Somaliland (British Somaliland today)
• History of Somalia

literature

• Maria Brons: Somaliland. Two years after the declaration of independence (= work from the Institute for Africa Customer. 89). Institut für Afrika-Kunde, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-928049-23-2 , p. 4 ff., 39.
• Mark Bradbury: Becoming Somaliland. Progressio et al., London 2008, ISBN 978-1-84701-311-8 , p. 23 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Philip J. Haythornthwaite: The Colonial Wars Source Book. Arms and Armor Press, London 1995, ISBN 1-85409-196-4 , p. 174.
2. ↑ Piers Brendon: The Dark Valley. A panorama of the 1930s. Jonathan Cape, London 2000, ISBN 0-224-06038-4 , p. 70.