Introduction

This chapter examines the history of the Ethiopian-(colonial) British Somaliland border, through the lens of local society. It is clear that the territorial claims and administrative ambitions of the respective governments provided both problems and opportunities for borderland Somali subjects. In the British Colonial Office archives the local Somalis are portrayed as the victims of Ethiopian manipulation, but the colonial voice does not allow for the Somalis’ astute manipulation of the border in their individual, local and group interests. Yet careful reading of British Foreign Office records detailing events at the eastern Ethiopian periphery, reveals various repertoires employed by the trans-border Somali communities and the affordances of state boundaries in the first half of the twentieth century.

The background

The borderland area dividing the Somali-inhabited territory of northeast Africa has a complex administrative history. Large parts of the northwestern Somali peninsula were claimed as part of the British Somaliland Protectorate. The Ethiopian victory at Adwa in 1896 and Ethiopia's effective occupation of large tracts of Somali-inhabited areas at its eastern periphery, forced the British to relinquish their original territorial claims in 1897 (Marcus 1965). The British colonial administration in Somaliland, along with many of its Somali subjects, bitterly regretted this cession. In fact, shortly after the British government reduced its territorial claims, the administration of what became the British Somaliland Protectorate desperately sought a solution that would reintegrate the lost areas back into the Protectorate territory (Silberman 1961; Drysdale 1964).