JAN-GEORG DEUTSCH
Women, Work & Domestic Virtue in Uganda 1900–2003
GRACE BANTEBYA KYOMUHENDO & MARJORIE KENISTON McINTOSH
Cultivating Success in Uganda
GRACE CARSWELL
War in Pre-Colonial Eastern Africa
RICHARD REID
Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa
Edited by HENRI MÉDARD & SHANE DOYLE
A Modern History of the
SOMALI
Nation and State in the Horn of Africa
FOURTH EDITION
I.M. LEWIS
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology
London School of Economics
James Currey OXFORD
Ohio University Press ATHENS
eBook edition published 2016
Ohio University Press
James Currey
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge
Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB)
Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue
Rochester, NY 14620-2731 (US)
© I.M. Lewis 1965, 1980, 1988 & 2002
Fourth edition published 2002
2 3 4 56 12 11 10 09 08
Originally published in
The Modern History of Somaliland: From Nation to State Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1965 First edition A Modern History of Somaliland: Nation & State in the Horn of Africa Longman 1980 Second edition A Modern History of Somalia: Nation & State in the Horn of Africa Westview 1988 Third edition
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available on request
ISBN 978-0-85255-483-8 (James Currey Paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on request
ISBN 10: 0-8214-1495-X (Ohio University Press Paper)
ISBN 13: 978-0-8214-1495-8 (Ohio University Press Paper)
New material typeset in 10/13pt Adobe Garamond
by Long House Publishing Services, Cumbria, UK
ISBN 978-1-78204-787-2 (James Currey eISBN)
ISBN 978-0-8214-4573-0 (Ohio University Press eISBN)
CONTENTS
Chapter
I. The Physical and Social Setting
III. The Imperial Partition: 1860–97
IV. The Dervish Fight for Freedom: 1900–20
V. Somali Unification: The Italian East African Empire
VI. The Restoration of Colonial Frontiers: 1940–50
VII. From Trusteeship to Independence: 1950–60
VIII. The Problems of Independence
IX. The Somali Revolution: 1969–76
X. Nationalism, Ethnicity and Revolution in the Horn of Africa
XI. Chaos, International Intervention and Developments in the North
PREFACE
As a social anthropologist (and amateur historian), I have had the unusual experience of studying an African people whose traditional cultural nationalism has fathered more than one contemporary ‘nation-state’. In the turbulent context of northeast Africa, however, since formal independence from European rule in 1960, Somali political fortunes have experienced many vicissitudes. The passionate nationalism which brought Somaliland and Somalia together in 1960, and fuelled ambitions to extend the resulting Somali Republic to include the entire nation, unexpectedly burned itself out in the 1980s and 1990s. Then, with a reversal of external and internal pressures, the segmentary divisions within the nation reasserted themselves with an explosive vengeance.
This impressive demonstration of the continuing power of more immediate clan and kinship loyalties revealed the enduring tension, in a traditionally politically uncentralized culture, between these lower-level identities and cultural nationalism. The many attempts at different levels in society and at different times to devalue and even extirpate these internal divisions, which always threatened national solidarity, assumed many forms, ranging from denial to political suppression. The most colourful, perhaps, were the public burials (and other measures) instituted by the dictator General Siyad at the height of his powers and in his ‘Scientific Socialist’ phase. Earlier politicians had resorted to the linguistic sophistry of pretending that they had surpassed clan and tribe by substituting in spoken Somali the English (or Italian) term ‘ex’ (understood as meaning ‘ex-clan’) when identifying people. Since Siyad had banned all reference to clans, this even included this circumlocutory usage of ‘ex’. On visits to Mogadishu in this period, I thus could not resist wickedly asking my apparatchik Somali friends if one could now safely enquire about a person’s ‘ex-ex’. They were not amused.
So all embracing and insistent were these disclaimers of persisting clan realities, that even foreign academics, who should have known better (although they were usually handicapped by an inadequate understanding of Somali language), were taken in. Consequently, their writings helped to sustain this illusion, which played a significant role in mystifying Somali political realities, and encouraged their misrepresentation in