The Somaliland Protectorate, more informally and better known as British Somaliland, was created in 1884 and ruled by Great Britain until independence was won in 1960, when the Somali Republic was formed. Strategically important at the mouth of the Red Sea, Britain wanted to control this coastline of the Horn of Africa to maintain vital links between Europe and British India via the Suez Canal. The Somaliland Protectorate was the scene of a long and infamous rebellion to colonial rule led by the inspirational Muslim leader Sayyid Muḥammad 'Abdallāh Hassan, whom the British called the 'Mad Mullah.'
Somalia Before the 19th Century
The area in the Horn of Africa where the Somali people live has an environment that is largely subdesert steppe, making it an area unsuitable for high-density populations and prone to periods of extreme drought. Much more advantageous is its geographical position at the mouth of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. An Arab sultanate in the medieval period, this coastal region was known as the Cinnamon Coast (for its import of that precious spice from the Indian subcontinent), with Mogadishu to the south (in what would later become Italian Somaliland) flourishing as one of the major ports of East Africa. The region was the northernmost part of the trade network that thrived along the Swahili coast of East Africa.
Somali individuals claimed allegiance to a complex web of specific tribes, clans, and the descendants of prominent rulers. The Somali people adopted Sunni Islam from Arab traders from as early as the second half of the 7th century. The inland Somali people were mostly transhumant herders, that is, they moved regularly with their livestock (cattle and sheep) each season to find the most favourable grazing areas. Although the Somali people are “divided into many traditionally autonomous and warlike groups … [they have] a powerful sense of cultural unity” (Oliver, 85). Two unifying factors are the Somali Cushitic language (both spoken and written) and Islam. The Somali people adopted the Arabian camel and proved to be adept long-distance traders. By the 19th century, the northern coast of the Horn of Africa was a dependency of the Ottoman Empire, while the southern part was a dependency of Zanzibar. Following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt began to exert more control over the coast of northern Somalia. The two major ports that Egypt helped develop were Zeila and Berbera.
Britain's Strategic Ambitions
The British acquired control of northern Somaliland in 1884 when they took over governance from Egypt, itself a British protectorate (unofficially since 1882 and then bearing the name 'protectorate' from 1914). Britain already had a well-established presence at Aden in Yemen, located a short distance across the Gulf. Aden had once been part of the British East India Company but became part of the Crown's territories from 1858. By 1884, Aden was made a British protectorate. The advantage of controlling both sides of the Gulf's entrance to the Red Sea was obvious in this busy trade route between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea, a vital link between Europe and British India provided by the Suez Canal.
At first, there was no official British presence at the Somali coastlands, and diplomatic ties were deemed sufficient. As with other protectorates elsewhere, the British were largely satisfied if no rival European power exerted influence on this particular part of the African coast. This attitude changed when other European powers, particularly France, began to take a much more active interest in the region. British-Indian troops were stationed in Somaliland, and in 1886, treaties were signed with tribes along the northern coast. In accordance with its status as a protectorate, the Somali people promised not to create ties with other European powers. In 1887, British Somaliland's borders were more clearly defined, and in 1888, the northern frontier with French Somaliland was agreed with France. In 1894 and 1897, the border between British Somaliland and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) was agreed upon, with the former conceding pastureland to the latter, ignoring the Somali people who lived there. Some measure of British governance – although even on the coast this remained minimal – was seen in the appointment of three British vice-consuls, who reported to the government in British India via Aden. The vice-consuls resided at Berbera (the capital), Zeila, and Bulhar. In 1898, another step towards full colonial control was made when a consul-general of the British Foreign Office was appointed, and the British-Indian garrison was replaced by a local Somali police force. The job of this new constabulary was to police not the people but the trade routes of Somaliland.
The historian Roland Oliver explains the expectations of British control:
The prime responsibility of government in the new colonies was to establish a general framework of law and order that would encourage African farmers to produce exportable surpluses, and European entrepreneurs to enter and acquire these in exchange for European exports or to develop mining and other large-scale economic activities. Colonial administrations were intended to support themselves from taxes levied on the expected increases in wealth and trade.
(163)
As in other British colonies, local markets were expected to produce goods for export and provide buyers for British- or British Empire-made imports. In 1907, a law was passed to protect overhunted game in British Somaliland, and two large game reserves were created in 1912, although these were intended to guarantee game for hunters, rather than protect the wildlife per se. Indeed, the export of animal skins was a major industry in the protectorate. Imported goods to exchange for animal skins included manufactured goods and vegetable foodstuffs. Trade routes ran deep into the interior, connecting wealthier Abyssinia to the coast.
While relations were largely friendly between colonisers and traders, Muslims living in Somaliland near the border with Christian Abyssinia, in particular, felt abandoned by the British administration. “Ethiopians seemed to have destroyed tarīqa settlements as deliberate policy. Clans and lineages were displaced from their traditional ranges” (Fage, 671). This led to over 20 Somali lineages fighting each other or building up grudges that would burst into violence at some future date.
As in other protectorates, postage stamps were issued promoting a connection between the British monarchy and Somaliland. Initially, the local post offices used Egyptian stamps, but from 1903, British India stamps overprinted with the words 'British Somaliland' were issued. From 1938, stamps bore the current monarch's face and imagery reflecting local features of the economy and culture, such as the Berbera blackhead sheep, Greater Kudu, the Somali Scouts, the tomb of Sheik Isaaq, and the Taleh Fort. The currency of these stamps and the protectorate was the rupee (with 12 pies equal to one anna and 12 annas equal to one rupee), a reminder of the close connection of the protectorate to British India and the trade routes between these two areas of the vast British Empire. The Somaliland Protectorate's currency was changed to cents and East Africa shillings (100 cents = one shilling) in 1951.
The 'Mad Mullah'
In reality, the cost of administering poorer regions like Somaliland proved far more expensive than any taxes on local trade could support. The Somali people were understandably hostile to tax demands and suspicious of new forms of commercialism. Rebellions by various Somali tribes against British rule were not uncommon, with major outbreaks sporadically occurring from 1901 to 1904. The revolts were quashed, and to all intents and purposes, the protectorate became a full British colony in all but name in 1905. The same year, Italian Somaliland was created along the southern coast of the Horn of Africa. In the vocabulary of the colonisers, though, Somaliland was not fully 'pacified' until 1920, when it did become a full colony within the British Empire.
The most significant threat to British rule had come from Sayyid Muḥammad 'Abdallāh Hassan (aka Muḥammad ibn 'Abdallāh Hassan or Sayyid Muhammad Abdille Hassan). Muhammad 'Abdallāh (whose birth date is variously given as 1856 or 1864) was a charismatic religious leader around whom all kinds of legends began to accumulate. He was said to have learnt the entire Quran by heart in less than three years while he travelled extensively around the Horn of Africa and to Mecca. By 1890, he had managed to unite the Somali tribes in a resistance movement against the British and Italian administrations. The campaign was less about colonial control – indeed, the British could be fairly charged with not bothering enough to establish any sort of meaningful control – and more about the danger to Muslims of having an infidel overlord.
As Muhammad 'Abdallāh set about uniting the Somali tribes through the 1890s – no easy task given their long history of feuds and rivalries – the British at first regarded him as a force of peace rather than a direct threat to their administration of Somaliland. Muhammad 'Abdallāh had other plans, though, and was shrewd enough to observe that he could most hurt the colonial powers by disrupting the infidels' one true god: commerce. By 1899, Muhammad 'Abdallāh was convincing the Somalis that God had instructed him to free them from foreign rule. He was convincing enough to amass a group of at least 5,000 armed followers.
In 1899, after Muhammad 'Abdallāh famously wrote a letter to the British authorities accusing the local government of repressing Islam and audaciously asking them to pay him taxes instead of vice versa, the British changed their tune and declared him not only a rebel but an obviously mad one. Muhammad 'Abdallāh now became popularly known as the 'Mad Mullah' to the British (mullah being one particularly learned in Islamic texts). Muhammad 'Abdallāh responded by calling for a jihad or holy war, but this seems to have been first directed at rival Somali groups, rival Muslim sects, and those in general sympathy with the British rather than the British authorities themselves.
Muhammad 'Abdallāh had stirred up a hornet's nest of inter-Somali rivalries. He survived an assassination attempt by one such rival group but continued to grow his following of fighters known as 'dervishes'. The dervishes were committed to die for their cause and wore distinct white turbans. Although the dervishes were fierce fighters, they had no answer to British machine guns. What the dervishes did have was mobility. Colonial troops required water wherever they went, especially in the fierce heat of Somalia, but the hardened dervishes could rely on camel milk, and so they drifted in and out of skirmishes, frustrating the British with their inability to put down the rebellion once and for all. The British did not help themselves either by refusing to assist those Somali groups, like the Dulbahante, who were eager to fight Muhammad 'Abdallāh and stop his troublesome raids on their property, raids which provided vital booty and slaves for the dervishes.
Muhammad 'Abdallāh taunted the British with another infamous letter in 1903, pointing out that they were fighting for control of a harsh land with not a great deal to offer: “If you want wood and stone you can get them in plenty. There are also many ant-heaps. The sun is very hot” (Fage, 676), wrote the rebel leader. Even the Somali people, in general, were getting tired of all the unrest, though, and a succession of punitive British expeditions drove Muhammad 'Abdallāh into effective exile. Undeterred, the 'Mad Mullah' used his extraordinary charisma and gift of poetry (which was highly prized in Somali culture) to build up a brand new following of dervishes. The British, Italians, the Ethiopians, and no small number of Somali tribes were exasperated as to how they could rid themselves of this thoroughly annoying figure. At least Muhammad 'Abdallāh was now limited to the largely worthless (from a colonial perspective) interior of British Somaliland, and so the government need not waste any more resources on chasing down this rebel.
Muhammad 'Abdallāh remained in or around his fortress at Taleh from where he continued to launch cavalry and guerrilla attacks to acquire booty for his followers. It was only the 'Mad Mullah's' death from natural causes, probably influenza, in 1920 that allowed Britain to finally claim full control over its Protectorate. Muhammad 'Abdallāh later became a Somali national hero, but his history is one that tended to “divide rather than to unite Somalis” (Fage, 678). It is significant that Muhammad 'Abdallāh insisted his followers be called dervishes, and only his enemies, those who collaborated with the British or defied his brand of ultra-conservative Islam, were to be called Somalis. Nevertheless, the vision of a unified Somali homeland proved to be an inspirational one with enduring appeal.
Somaliland & Two World Wars
The two world wars also threatened British control in the Somaliland Protectorate. When the First World War broke out in 1914, the Somaliland Camel Corps was formed to deter local revolts while the British government and its armed forces were focused on protecting other, more important colonial areas more directly threatened by rival European powers. The Somalis continued to resist any threats to the predominance of Islam, and education in schools, which included teaching the tenets of Christianity, was resisted, notably in the form of two major riots in Burao in 1922 and Baro in 1936.
The Somaliland Protectorate was occupied by Italian forces between 1940 and 1941 during the Second World War (1939-45). Italy had controlled the coastal region to the south, known as Italian Somaliland, and Italian Eritrea was located to the northwest. Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1936, and then, by grabbing British Somaliland, managed to briefly establish control of the Horn of Africa, a colonial state known as Italian East Africa. In 1941, British forces regained control of the Somaliland Protectorate and removed Italian forces from the entire region. The Somali people began once again to call forcefully for independence, particularly from 1954, when grazing lands traditionally used by Somali nomads were transferred to Ethiopian administration.
Post-Colonial Somalia
Democratic elections were held in British Somaliland in February 1960, and all parties supported a union with the former Italian Somaliland. In July of that year, a new and independent country was declared, the Somali Republic. However, trouble was brewing as various parts of the country claimed allegiance to separatist movements. The British had hoped that a more logical border for Somalia could be created by adding the Ogaden desert, then an eastern province of Ethiopia but sparsely populated by Somali people. Ethiopia rejected the idea despite the Ogaden desert having no particular value to anyone except the people who raised cattle there. A coup d'eat by the military in the Somali Republic in 1969 established the Somali Democratic Republic.
To the north of the Somali state, French Somaliland gained independence and became Djibouti in 1977. There were also Somalis in the north-eastern part of Kenya. The Somali people, then, found themselves spread between various states, which only led to the creation of several more Somali separatist movements supported by the government of Somalia. Not for nothing did the blue flag of Somalia have a white five-pointed star in its centre.
In 1991, the region that had once been under British control declared itself an independent state, but this new status was not recognized by the international community. A civil war began, and various governments came and went. Intervention by the United Nations ended in failure. An Ethiopian invasion occurred in 2006, and in 2008, the Islamic Emirate of Somalia was declared by the militant group Al-Shabaab. After more years of fighting, the Federal Republic of Somalia was formed in 2012. This troubled region, still not wholly unified under a single central government and with a civil war still ongoing, continues to suffer one of the lowest development rates in the world.
