Italian Somaliland

Along the Indian Ocean coast of the Horn of Africa, Italy built up a colony from the late 1880s that it called Somalia Italiana, covering most of the south and north-east of present-day Somalia. Begun through protection treaties with Somali sultans and a string of coastal ports, it was extended inland only after decades of armed Somali resistance. British forces occupied it in 1941, Italy returned as a United Nations trustee in 1950, and in 1960 the territory joined former British Somaliland to form an independent Somali republic.

Italy's interest was strategic: Somali harbours lay on the sea route through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden. In 1889 two northern rulers, Sultan Yusuf Ali Kenadid of Hobyo and Boqor Osman Mahamuud of the Majeerteen Sultanate, signed protection treaties, each hoping to use Italian arms and subsidies against rivals while keeping control of their own affairs. In the south, Italian agents occupied Adale in the early 1890s and, in 1893, the Benadir ports of Merca, Mogadishu, Barawa and Warsheekh, which had been claimed by the Sultanate of Zanzibar. For years the ports were run by chartered companies with little authority beyond the coast.

Resistance began almost at once. In November 1896 Bimaal and Wa'daan fighters ambushed the Italian consul Antonio Cecchi and his party at Lafoole, near Afgooye, killing 14 Italians. A punitive expedition in 1897 burned villages, seized livestock and killed residents, but Italian control stayed confined to the coast. Bimaal opposition, led partly by local Islamic teachers and fuelled by Italian measures against the slave trade on which some clans depended, flared again in 1905–1908; Italian accounts record more than 100 Bimaal dead at Danane in 1907 alone. Further inland the Dervish movement of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan held the Hiraan region against an Italian advance in 1913 and raided Italian posts during the First World War.

After the war Britain handed the Trans-Juba region to Italy in 1925, partly as a reward for Italy's wartime alliance. Under the Fascist governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Italy moved to disarm and annex the northern sultanates; after about two years of fighting, the Campaign of the Sultanates gave Italy control of the whole territory by the end of 1927, and the sultans of Hobyo were sent into exile. Plantations growing sugar, bananas and cotton were laid out along the Shebelle, notably at Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi (Jowhar), linked to Mogadishu by a railway. Italian settlers clustered in Mogadishu and farming districts; estimates of their number vary widely, from about 22,000 in 1930 to some 50,000 by the mid-1930s. Colonial policy kept existing clan structures and Islam in place while drafting many Somalis into colonial units.

In October 1935 Italian Somaliland served as the base for the southern front of Benito Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. More than 40,000 Somali soldiers reportedly served alongside Italian troops. In 1936 the colony became the Somalia Governorate of Italian East Africa. During the Second World War Italy briefly overran British Somaliland in 1940, but British Commonwealth forces conquered Italian Somaliland in early 1941.

A British military administration followed. In 1943 the Somali Youth Club, later the Somali Youth League, was founded in Mogadishu and became the leading voice for independence. In 1949 the United Nations entrusted the territory to Italy for ten years on condition that it then become independent. The Italian administration from 1950 at first clashed with the League, but elections in 1956 and 1959 brought it to power. On 1 July 1960 the trust territory united with former British Somaliland as the Somali Republic, with Mogadishu as its capital.

Our 1914, 1920, 1930 and 1938 maps show Italian Somaliland along the coast of the Horn, beside Ethiopia inland and, in 1914, the East Africa Protectorate to the south-west. Its lands today lie within Somalia.