Author: Cedric Barnesa
| Affiliation: | a School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, |
DOI: 10.1080/17531050701452564
Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year
Download PDF (~176 KB) View Related Articles To cite this Article: Barnes, Cedric 'The Somali Youth League, Ethiopian Somalis and the Greater Somalia Idea, c.1946–48', Journal of Eastern African Studies, 1:2, 277 - 291
Abstract
From 1946 to 1948 the Somali Youth Club (SYC) grew from a small Mogadishu based urban self-help group into a burgeoning nationalist organisation calling for the unification of all the Somali-speaking lands into Greater Somalia, changing its name to the 'Somali Youth League' (SYL) in the process. The reason for this rapid expansion and radicalisation was a conjuncture of several factors, but it is most immediately attributable to the international deliberations over the future of the Italian East African Empire. In 1946 the international community began to address the future of the Italian Empire, and the British raised the possibility of creating a Greater Somalia administration (under British trusteeship) as a basis for future independence. The SYC, which had until then concentrated on a more limited and arguably more achievable political programme for the furtherance of Somali interests in ex-Italian Somalia, became mesmerised by the idea of Greater Somalia. Greater Somalia became a popular rallying call for the expanding nationalist project. However, as this article argues, although the Greater Somalia project galvanised the SYC into a mass nationalist organisation (the SYL), the expansion of its activities into the greater Somalia hinterland, such as the Ethiopian Ogaden region, brought different priorities and perspectives to project. The differing histories of clans and regions dissipated the cohesion, discipline and aims of the SYL at a crucial historical juncture. Ultimately the SYL was unable to create a Greater Somalia, nor prevent the repartition of the Somali-lands and the return of former colonial and imperial powers.
Territorial Divisions in the Somali-lands
The territorial divisions of the Somali inhabited lands of Northeast Africa had been a problem from the outset of colonial administration in the Horn of Africa. In the late nineteenth century, the growing Ethiopian Empire and the Ethiopian defeat of the Italian colonial army at Adwa in 1896 made Ethiopia a direct threat to colonial possessions and spheres of influence in the region. Faced with an armed and aggressive African state, European colonial powers in the Somali-lands were forced to curtail their territorial claims for the sake of greater imperial stratagems.1 Colonial administrators in British Somaliland saw the territorial concession to Ethiopia as a mistake and the subsequent boundary agreement as unworkable, storing up problems for the future. The boundary with Ethiopia became an obsession upon which the many woes of an economically poor and administratively volatile colony were blamed. A similar case applied to Italian Somalia.2 However to the Ethiopians, for whom their independence and sovereign territory became an article of faith, any adjustment to colonial boundaries seemed like a concession to colonial aggrandisement. Soon, however, all the Somali-lands became engulfed in the twenty-year 'Dervish' religious revolt led by Sayyid Maxamad Cabdille Xasan, forcing Ethiopia, Britain and Italy to cooperate, and the differences over the boundaries faded from view.In the 1920s and 1930s, as 'peaceful' administration returned to the borderland areas between the colonial Somali-lands and the Ethiopian Empire, the unresolved boundary issues came back into view. Throughout the inter-war period there were continual skirmishes on the boundaries between the Somali-lands, not only between the colonial administrations and Ethiopia, but also between the colonial administrations themselves.3 However it was on the boundary with Italian Somalia at the wells of Wal Wal that the issue became altogether more serious. A clash between Italian and Ethiopian border patrols well inside the Ethiopian boundary in the Ogaden region provided the pretext for the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Despite the international outcry that the Italian annexation of Ethiopia occasioned, the absorption of the Ethiopian Empire into the Italian empire was quickly recognised by the British whose colonial territories shared the longest boundary with Ethiopia. After the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36, the Italian Empire incorporated Eritrea, Ethiopia and Italian Somalia into one regional bloc of semi-autonomous governorships and rationalised some of the old international boundaries. One of the most significant adjustments the Italian Empire made was the creation of a much larger Somali administration by excising the Ogaden region from the Ethiopian governorships and combining it with the coastal colony of Italian Somaliland, creating a 'greater' Italian Somalia.
Britain's initial sympathy and cooperation with the enlarged Italian Empire ended abruptly with the Italian entry into the Second World War, on the 'wrong' side. In 1940, as France capitulated and Italy joined the Axis powers, suddenly the Italian Empire changed from a benign modern administration (the very opposite, it was thought, of the ex-Ethiopian Empire), to a belligerent power in the midst of the British Empire in Africa. After initially successful Italian offensives, including the brief invasion and occupation of the British Somaliland Protectorate, British and Commonwealth forces aided by Ethiopian exiles and internal 'patriot' resistance defeated the Italian forces in East Africa. The collapse of the Italian East African Empire came surprisingly quickly, and the upshot of this rapid victory was the need for a British Military Administration (BMA hereafter) over the Empire's vast area, now designated as Occupied Enemy Territory (since the Italian conquest had been legally recognised by the British in 1938). The occupation of this territory, justified as a military necessity, then became entwined with larger and older imperial questions in northeast Africa, such as frontier rectification and rationalisation.4 However, the British maintained territorial adjustments made by the Italians for the duration of the war, and left decisions over the future of the Italian Empire until the projected post-war peace conferences. Continued
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