In Majerteenia in the nineteenth century, violence – once the exception in inter-state relations in the region – evolved into a diplomatic strategy that could be instrumentalised for political and financial gain. Chapter 2 reconstructs a series of confrontations between British colonial officials and the rulers of north-eastern Somalia over Somali attacks on seaborne and wrecked ships. The Majerteen coastal elites engaged in a cycle of attacking shipwrecks and signing treaties with the British colonial rulers in Aden to increase regional recognition for their rights as coastal rulers. As the nineteenth century wore on, the British reneged on their promises, relied on duress in negotiations, and engaged in double-dealing with Sultan Uthman’s political rivals, especially a regional governor named Yusuf ‘Ali. Their treaty relations with the British echoed but modified existing agreements with other port-rulers in the region, including the Hadhramis, the Omanis and the Ottomans. By the end of the century, the Majerteen Sultanate would be split in two, carved into mutually antagonistic northern and southern spheres which continue to this day to be rivals, as can be witnessed in the tensions over the extent of Puntland and Galmudug federal states jurisdictions.

Chapter 4 moves westward, to the French settlement in the Gulf of Tadjoura, recounting the career of the French merchant Henry de Monfreid, which spanned the early decades of the twentieth century. Henry de Monfreid is most widely recognised for his writing. He told the stories of some of the southern Red Sea’s most memorable and archetypal characters: the old men who manufactured pearls on remote uninhabited islands, where the poor and wretched fished sea snails, where blind Somali captains navigated treacherous reefs and rocky shores, and where pirates preyed on the unwitting. But as we see in this chapter, beneath the surface de Monfreid was a protagonist of the same destabilising geopolitical forces unleashed by colonial conquest we saw at work in earlier chapters. De Monfreid sought to further his own and France’s interests in the region by perpetrating violence at sea and adding parts of the Arabian Peninsula to the French empire. He helped transform international politics and diplomacy in the region into an anarchic scramble for influence and power. His example shows the extent to which the culture of international relations was transformed, with private individuals vying for influence and recognition in the colonial system of sovereignty.

In Chapter 3, the narrative moves eastwards, to the south-western Arabian Peninsula, as well as forwards in time, to the early twentieth century. In the midst of escalating imperial competition for control of the southern Red Sea coastline, the Ottomans and various Europeans vied for military clients along the coast. Through the careers of two militia leaders, Shaykh Nasr Ambari and his lieutenant and successor Ahmad Fatini, we see colonial chaos spurred the creation of entirely new socio-political groupings. Ambari and Fatini’s men – the Zaraniq – emerged as a band of mercenaries and sea raiders from the south-western tip of the Arabian Peninsula in the late nineteenth century. At the height of their power in the 1910s, they numbered some 10,000 men and their families. The Zaraniq began perpetrating acts of violence against shipping to enhance their value as proxies. In the process they brought local shipping to a standstill. But the strategic, realpolitik alliances that underpinned their rise were ephemeral; after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, the group dissipated and by the late 1920s, their leadership was dislodged. Colonial chaos proved highly disruptive to the region’s stability.