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🪵 The Threshold

Britain's Somaliland empire grew as an unintended consequence of the Dervish war

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@lewis_modern_1980, loc. 249

5 min read

Britain’s Somaliland empire grew as an unintended consequence of the Dervish war

Evidence

When Britain, not without reluctance, assumed Egypt’s place on the northern Somali coast, there was no intention of extending her dominion into the interior and hinterland. Britain’s interest was strictly limited to seeing that no hostile power held the shore opposite Aden and to ensuring that the Aden garrison’s meat supplies from the Somali coast were unhampered. The long-drawn out, costly, and unrewarding operations against the Dervishes, which were not by-products of any attempt to carry the British flag inland, caused the British government to assume greater responsibilities in Somaliland than had ever been foreseen and which were out of all proportion to Britain’s very secondary interest in this area. — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 249 (#expands, via linked claim)

Britain’s interest in the Somali area stemmed from her possession of Aden which had been acquired by force in 1839 as a station on the short route to India. With its poverty in local resources, the Aden garrison was almost entirely dependent upon northern Somaliland for supplies of meat. There was also a considerable Somali community at Aden, many of whom found employment with the new rulers there. The Aden authorities and the Bombay government were thus directly concerned that orderly conditions should prevail on the Somali coast, and more especially that the feeder caravan routes from the interior, and the ports of Berbera and Zeila, should function freely. But although travellers like Burton and local officials at Aden might advocate a definite British occupation of the Somali coast, their plans fell on deaf ears in Westminster. The British government was only interested in Somaliland’s meat supply as a necessary ancillary to the garrisoning of Aden. Only if this were seriously threatened would any occupation of the Somali coast be justified. This attitude on the part of Whitehall towards the Somali coast, given different emphasis by different administrations in England, was still the guiding policy when events had driven Britain to establish a Somaliland Protectorate in 1887. This evaluation is also reflected in the character of the Anglo-Somali treaties of protection. It figures strongly in the negotiation of the 1897 treaty with Ethiopia, and it later bred a tradition of parsimony and neglect which dominated British action in her Somali Protectorate throughout most of its life. — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 140 (#complicates, via linked claim)

By contrast, as has been seen, the extension of British rule to cover a large area of the hinterland of the Somaliland Protectorate was the result rather than the cause of the Dervish war. The Sayyid’s campaigns had also engendered a tradition of Anglo-Ethiopian collaboration against Somali and had drawn the slender arm of Ethiopian rule farther into the Ogaden, thus considerably strengthening Ethiopia’s position in relation to Somali. No doubt this would have happened eventually without British support and prompting, but its occurrence at this time, and in these circumstances, was one of the paradoxical consequences of the Dervish fight for freedom. Hence, although Sayyid Muhammad’s image was at the time of his death, and still remains, that of a national hero and patriot, his holy war – despite all the courage and tenacity of his supporters – not only failed in its purpose of driving the ‘infidels’ into the sea, but actually led to a further extension and entrenchment of alien rule. — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 259 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: The Dervish holy war strengthened alien rule rather than ending it; The Dervish holy war backfired by entrenching alien rule deeper — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 259; Britain’s Somaliland commitments ballooned far beyond its minimal original aims — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 249 (+2 more)

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