Britain’s indecision, not Somali haste, caused the Anglo-Somali rupture

Evidence

What could be said, however, with some degree of confidence was that the breach between Britain and the Republic need not have occurred. This, of course, is not to make the facile and uncomprehending judgement that the Somali Republic acted too precipitately: but rather to suggest that the British government acted too indecisively and too slowly. For several years prior to the 1962 Kenya conference, the Provincial Administration of the N.F.D. had consistently reported on the direction and strength of Somali feeling. Had these reports received serious attention it would clearly have been possible for the British government to have prepared the ground for the eventual secession of the N.F.D. without, at that stage, incurring serious opposition from African opinion in Kenya. This, however, was not done and the problem was left until it became insoluble except at the cost of alienating one side or the other. — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 481

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Lewis’s counterfactual reasoning style and his ongoing assessment of British colonial/imperial mismanagement in the N.F.D. crisis, tying back to earlier chapters. — connects to: The Britain-Somalia rupture could have been avoided had London heeded N.F.D. reports; British indecision, not Somali haste, caused the diplomatic breach; Britain’s administrative handoff preceded a twenty-year Somali rebellion — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 191 (+2 more)

Related

• British indecision, not Somali haste, caused the diplomatic breach (similarity 0.90)
• The Britain-Somalia rupture could have been avoided had London heeded N.F.D. reports (similarity 0.90)
• Britain shifted to insisting Kenyan consent governed the N.F.D.’s fate (similarity 0.85)
• Pan-African opinion legitimized Britain’s refusal of N.F.D. secession (similarity 0.83)
• Britain’s administrative handoff preceded a twenty-year Somali rebellion (similarity 0.82)
• British gradualism produced a chaotic rush at Somaliland independence (similarity 0.82)
• Pan-Somali nationalism forced British Somaliland into sudden premature independence (similarity 0.80)
• British Somaliland’s gradualist path ended in a hectic independence scramble. (similarity 0.80)
• A fixed trusteeship deadline forced Somalia while British Somaliland drifted (similarity 0.79)
• British reversal on the N.F.D. stemmed from Anglo-Ethiopian relations and Kenyan pressure (similarity 0.79)
• Britain placed the N.F.D. into Kenya’s regional constitution, rejecting secession (similarity 0.79)
• The NFD demanded the same self-determination Britain granted British Somaliland (similarity 0.78)
• Britain abandoned Somali unification because its strategic stakes there were too low (similarity 0.78)
• The N.F.D. commission was secretly instructed to rule out pre-independence secession (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• British gradualism produced a chaotic rush at Somaliland independence #corroborates (0.85) — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 393