Alien Incursions into Somali Territory and Incipient Colonialism
Commercial treaties had been concluded between the Government
of Zaila and the East India Company as early as 1840. (2) There had
ever been some sale of plots of land in the Kismayu area by Somali
elders to Indian speculators, the title-deed of which were registered
at Zanzibar. (3)
But it was only in the last three decades of the nineteenth century
that the Somali peninsula was divided both by treaty and by conquest
among Britain, France, Italy and Ethiopia. The first, if only short
lived, alien occupation of Somali territory was by Egypt.
In 1875, the Egyptian took possession of Zaila and father marched
inland and occupied Harar in 1885, ten years. (4)
After the evacuation of the Egyptian garrison in Harar in 1885 and a brief independence Lull under the Emir of Harar, Menelik himself led an army of 30,000 in 1887, fought the HARARIS at Celenko, routed them and installed as Governor Ras Makonen, one of his thrusted generals and incidentally further of more famous Haile Selasie. The Ras soon extended the Egyptian empire eastwards into the Ogaden region which was inhabited by various Somali tribes and in 1897, the Ethiopians were consolidated enough for British to grudgingly recognize the transfer of a large tract of the Haud to Ethiopia. (5)
The French, the Italian and the British were also busy partitioning the Somali
peninsula in the 1880s. France concluded a treaty with the Sultan of Gobad in 1884 where by the latter agreed to place his foreign relations under French control and also at the same time coded much of his territory ( roughly corresponding to present day D-jibuiti). Thus a French law of August 12, 1885 enacted the foundation of a colony of Obok and protectorate over Tajura and the adjacent territories.<6>
In the south, the Imperial British East Africa company in 1889 sublet Italy the southern Banadir port which it had lease from the Sultan of Zanzibar. In the same year, the sultantes of Obbia an Mijertein to the north of this area also came under Italian protection. In 1892, the Sultan of Zanzibar added the ports of Barawa, Merca, Mogadishu and Warsheikh to the Italians and they brought this area under colonial rule. (7)
South of Banadir, the East Africa company had earlier
acquired a concession in Jubaland from the Sultan of Zanzibar, but
following a Somali rebellion there in 1895, the region between the
rivers Tana and Juba was brought under colonial rule and became part
of the British East Africa Protectorate. (8)
The focus of Mohammed Abdille Hassan resistance was not in any way, if the
above regions, but in the north eastern part of the Somali peninsula where the British had carved up a Protectorate as a result of a number treaties concluded between
1884 with the principle northern Somali clans. On their
basis, the British set up an administration with officials called
vice-consul stationed in ports of Zeila, Bulahar and Berbera and whose
superior, the consul, was stationed at Aden, under the authority of
the India office. (9) The British rationale for occupying the coast
was to secure a supply of meat and other commodities for their Aden
garrison, which was considered vital to the defense of British
India. (10)
By the turn of the century, therefore the Somali peninsula bad been divided into French, Italian, British and Egyptian colonies and Protectorates. This was broadly the situation that obtained when the Mullah returned to British Somaliland in 1895 and set up a religions schools in Berbera.
Mukhtar Web Site (Mukhtar Abdullahi Ismail)
Salahdin Maow
Last modified: Tue Mar 16 16:46:52 MET
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