Italian Somaliland

Italian Somaliland. Italian Somaliland (1889-1960) was Italy's colony on the Horn of Africa, created piece by piece along the Benadir coast. Italy had acquired the port of Aden and footholds on the coast in the 1880s, and in 1889, as the European powers partitioned the Somali lands, it established protectorates over the southern sultanates and founded Mogadishu as its capital. For years Italian rule barely reached beyond the coast, and the interior was controlled by the Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, whose dervish movement fought the Italians, British, and Ethiopians for two decades until 1920.

Under Fascism the colony was tightened and used as a springboard. In 1935-36 Italian Somaliland served as the southern base for the invasion of Ethiopia, after which it was folded into the vast Italian East Africa. Roads were built, plantations of bananas and cotton spread along the Shabelle and Juba rivers, worked by coerced Somali labor, and Mogadishu was rebuilt as a colonial capital. The empire collapsed quickly: in 1941 British forces conquered Italian East Africa, and Somaliland passed under British military administration.

After the war Italy returned under a United Nations trusteeship. From 1950 the Italian administration, working with the Somali Youth League and other parties, prepared the territory for self-government, establishing schools, elections, and a Somali administration. The trusteeship ended on schedule, and on 1 July 1960 Italian Somaliland became independent, uniting five days later with the former British Somaliland to form the Somali Republic.

The colonial period left Somalia with its capital at Mogadishu, an educated elite, and the infrastructure of the south, but also with the legacies of plantation labor, regional imbalance between north and south, and the boundaries that still define the troubled politics of the Horn.

To read more about this topic:

Wikipedia: Italian Somaliland Diana Garvin: Fruit of Fascist Empire: Bananas and Italian Somaliland Google Books: Italian Colonialism in Somalia (Robert L. Hess) BBC News: Somalia Profile: Timeline