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Italian Somalis () are Somalia-born citizens who are fully or partially of Italy descent, whose ancestors were Italians who emigrated to Somalia during the Italian diaspora, or Italian-born people in Somalia. Most of the Italians moved to Somalia during the Italian Somalia.
From the outset, the Italians signed protectorate agreements with the local Somali authorities.Mariam Arif Gassem, Somalia: clan vs. nation, (s.n.: 2002), p.4 In doing this, the Kingdom of Italy was spared bloody rebellions like those launched by the Dervish State king Diiriye Guure and their emir Mohammed Abdullah Hassan (the so-called "Mad Mullah") over a period of twenty-one years against the British colonial authorities in northern Somalia, an area then referred to as British Somaliland.Laitin, David. Politics, Language, and Thought: The Somali Experience Section: Italian Influence. p. 73
In 1908, the borders with Ethiopia in the upper river Shebelle ( Uebi-Scebeli in Italian language) were defined, and after World War I, the area of Oltregiuba (l"Beyond Juba") was ceded by Britain and annexed to Italian Somaliland.
The dawn of Italian Fascism in the early 1920s heralded a change of strategy for Italy. With the arrival of Governor Cesare Maria De Vecchi on 15 December 1923, the then-ruling northeastern Somali were soon to be forced within the boundaries of La Grande Somalia. Italy hitherto had access to these areas under various protection treaties, but not direct rule. Under its new leadership, Italy mounted successive military campaigns against the Somali Sultanate of Hobyo and Majeerteen Sultanate, eventually defeating the Sultanates' troops and exiling the reigning Sultans. The colonial troops called dubats and the gendarmerie zaptié were extensively used by De Vecchi in this military campaign. In the early 1930s, the new Italian governors, Guido Corni and Maurizio Rava, started a policy of assimilation of the local populace, enrolling many Somalis in the Italian colonial troops. Some thousands of Italian settlers also began moving to Mogadishu as well as agricultural areas around the capital, such as Genale and the Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi.Bevilacqua, Piero. Storia dell'emigrazione italiana. p. 233
In 1928, the Italian authorities built the Mogadishu Cathedral ( Cattedrale di Mogadiscio). It was constructed in a Norman Gothic style, based on the Cefalù Cathedral in Cefalù, Sicily. Following its establishment, Crowned Prince Umberto II made his first publicized visit to Mogadishu.
In 1929 the Corriere della Somalia, the first newspaper of the colony, began publication. It was initially written in Italian language.
Crowned Prince Umberto I would make his second publicized visit to Italian Somaliland in October 1934.
In 1936, Italy then integrated Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Italian Somaliland into a unitary colonial state called Italian East Africa ( Africa Orientale Italiana), thereby enlarging Italian Somaliland from 500,000 km2 to 700,000 km2 with the addition of the Ogaden and so creating the Somalia Governorate.
From 1936 to 1940, new roads such as the "Imperial Road" from Mogadishu to Addis Ababa were constructed in the region, as were new schools, hospitals, ports and bridges. New railways were also built, such as the Mogadishu-Villabruzzi Railway (Italian language: Ferrovia Mogadiscio-Villabruzzi).
During the first half of 1940, there were about 50,000 Italians living in Italian Somaliland. In urban areas, the colony was one of the most developed on the continent in terms of standard of living.Tripodi, Paolo. The Colonial Legacy in Somalia. p. 66 In the late 1930s the triangle area between Italian Mogadiscio, Merca and Villabruzzi was fully developed in agriculture (with a growing export of bananas to Europe), and was even experiencing an initial industrial development thanks to the presence of asphalted roads, railways, and a new international airport & port in the capital.
In the second half of 1940, Italian troops invaded British Somaliland and ejected the British. The Italians also occupied areas bordering Jubaland around the villages of Moyale and Buna. However, Britain retained control of the almost exclusively Somali-inhabited Northern Frontier District.Africa Watch Committee, Kenya: Taking Liberties, (Yale University Press: 1991), p.269Women's Rights Project, The Human Rights Watch Global Report on Women's Human Rights, (Yale University Press: 1995), p.121Francis Vallat, First report on succession of states in respect of treaties: International Law Commission twenty-sixth session 6 May-26 July 1974, (United Nations: 1974), p.20
In the spring of 1941, Britain regained control of British Somaliland and conquered Italian Somaliland with the Ogaden after some months of bloody fighting in all Italian East Africa. However, until the summer of 1943, there was an Italian guerrilla war in all the areas of the former Italian East Africa.
In 1945, the Potsdam Conference was held, where it was decided not to return Italian Somaliland to Italy.Federal Research Division, Somalia: A Country Study, (Kessinger Publishing, LLC: 2004), p.38 and that the territory would be under British Military Administration (BMA). As a result of this failure on the part of the Big Four powers to agree on what to do with Italy's former colonies, Somali nationalist rebellion against the Italian colonial administration culminated in violent confrontation in 1948. 24 Somalis and 51 Italians died in the ensuing political riots in several coastal towns.
In November 1949, the United Nations finally opted to grant Italy trusteeship of Italian Somaliland, but only under close supervision and on the condition—first proposed by the Somali Youth League (SYL) and other nascent Somali political organizations, such as Hizbia Digil Mirifle Somali (later Hizbia Dastur Mustaqbal Somali, or HDMS) and the Somali National League (SNL), that were then agitating for independence—that Somalia achieve independence within ten years.Zolberg, Aristide R., et al., Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World, (Oxford University Press: 1992), p.106Gates, Henry Louis, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, (Oxford University Press: 1999), p.1749
Despite the initial unrest, the 1950s were something of a golden age for the nearly 40,000 remaining Italian people in Italian Somaliland. With United Nations funds pouring in and experienced Italian administrators who had come to see the territory as their home, infrastructural and educational development blossomed. Relations between the Italian settlers and the Somalis were also generally good. This decade passed relatively without incident and was marked by positive growth in many sectors of local life.
The economy was controlled by the Bank of Italy through emissions of the Somalo shilling, that was used as money in the Italian administered region from 1950 to 1962.
In 1960, Italian Somaliland declared its independence and united with British Somaliland in the creation of modern Somalia.
In 1992, after the fall of the Siad Barre administration, Italian troops returned to Somalia to help restore peace during Operation Restore Hope (UNISOM I & II). Operating under a United Nations mandate, they patrolled for nearly two years the southern riverine area around the Shebelle River.Tripodi, Paolo. The Colonial Legacy in Somalia p. 88
By the early nineties, there were just a few dozen Italian colonists left. All were elderly and still concentrated in Mogadishu and its surroundings. The last Italian colonist, Virginio Bresolin, died in Merka in early 2010.
The colonial period emigration to Italian Somaliland initially mainly consisted of men. Emigration of entire families was only later promoted during the Italian Fascism, mainly in the agricultural developments of the Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi (Jowhar), near the Shebelle River. In 1920, the Societa Agricola Italo-Somala (SAIS) was founded by the Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi in order to explore the agricultural potential of central Italian Somaliland and create a colony for Italian farmers.
The area of Janale in southern Somalia (near the Jubba River) was another place where Italian colonists from Turin developed a group of farms. Under governor De Vecchi, these agricultural areas cultivated cotton, and after 1931, also produced large quantities of banana exports.
In 1935, there were over 50,000 Italians living in Italian Somaliland. Of those, 20,000 resided in Mogadishu (called Mogadiscio in Italian), representing around 40% of the city's 50,000 residents. Other Italian settler communities were concentrated in the Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi, Adale ( Itala in Italian language), Janale, Jamame, and Kismayo. The same year, during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, there were more than 220,000 Italian soldiers stationed in Italian Somaliland.Nicolle, David, "The Italian Invasion of Abyssinia 1935–1936", p. 41
By March 1940, over 30,000 Italians lived in Mogadishu, representing around 33% of the city's total 90,000 residents. They frequented local Italian schools that the colonial authorities had opened, such as the Liceum.
Italian Somalis were concentrated in the cities of Mogadishu, Merca, Baidoa, Kismayo and the agricultural areas of the riverine Jubba and Shebelle valleys (around Jowhar/Villaggio Duca degli Abruzzi).
After World War II, the number of Italians in Somali territory started to decrease vastly. By 1960 and the establishment of the Somali Republic, their numbers had dwindled to less than 10,000. Most Italian settlers returned to Italy, while others settled in the United States, United Kingdom, Finland and Australia. In 1972, there were 1,575 Italians remaining in Somalia, down from 1,962 in 1970. This decline was largely due to the nationalization policy adopted by the Siad Barre administration. By 1989, there were only 1,000 of the settlers left, with fewer after the start of the civil war and the fall of the Barre regime in 1991. Many Italian Somalis had by then departed for other countries. With the disappearance of Italians from Somalia, the number of Roman Catholic adherents dropped from a record high of 8,500 parishioners in 1950 (0.7% of Mogadishu's population) to just 100 individuals in 2004.
| + The Italian Somali population in Somalia, from 1914 to 2015 | |||
| 1914 | 1,000 | 365,300 | <1% |
| 1930 | 22,000 | 1,021,000 | 2% |
| 1940 | 30,000 | 1,150,000 | 3% |
| 1945 | 50,000 | n/a | n/a |
| 1960 | 10,000 | 2,230,000 | <1% |
| 1970 | 1,962 | 3,601,000 | <1% |
| 1972 | 1,575 | n/a | <1% |
| 1989 | 1,000 | 6,089,000 | <1% |
| 2015 | <1,000 | 10,630,000 | <1% |
By 1952, the majority of Somalis had some understanding of the Italian language. In 1954, the Italian government established post-secondary institutions of law, economics and social studies in Mogadishu. These institutions were satellites of the University of Rome, which provided all the instruction material, faculty and administration. All the courses were presented in Italian. By the end of the trust period in 1960, over 200,000 people in the nascent Somali Republic spoke Italian. In 1964, the institutions offered two years of study in Somalia, followed by two years of study in Italy. After a military coup in 1969, all foreign entities were nationalized, including Mogadishu's principal university, which was renamed Jaamacadda Ummadda Soomaliyeed (Somali National University).
Until 1967, all schools in Central and Southern Somalia taught Italian. In 1972, the Somali language was officially declared the only national language of Somalia, though it now shares that distinction with Arabic. Due to its simplicity, the fact that it lent itself well to writing Somali since it could cope with all the sounds in the language, and the already widespread existence of machines and typewriters designed for its use,Andrew Simpson, Language and National Identity in Africa, (Oxford University Press: 2008), p. 288 the government of Somali president Mohamed Siad Barre, following the recommendation of the Somali Language Committee that was instituted shortly after independence with the purpose of finding a common orthography for the Somali language, unilaterally elected to only use the Latin alphabet script for writing Somali instead of the long-established Arabic alphabet script and the upstart Osmanya script.Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi, Culture and Customs of Somalia, (Greenwood Press: 2001), p.73 During this period, Italian remained among the languages used in higher education. In 1983, nine out of the twelve faculties in the Somali National University used Italian as the language of instruction. Until 1991, there was also an Italian school in Mogadishu (with courses of Middle school and Liceum), later destroyed because of the civil war.
The Somali language also contains a few Italian loanwords that were retained from the colonial period. The most widely used is ciao, meaning goodbye. As part of a broader governmental effort to ensure and safeguard the primacy of the Somali language, the post-independence period in Somalia saw a push toward replacement of such foreign loanwords with their Somali equivalents or neologisms. To this end, the Supreme Revolutionary Council during its tenure officially prohibited the borrowing and usage of Italian and English terms.
Alongside English language, Italian was declared a second language of Somalia by the Transitional Federal Government in the Transitional Federal Charter adopted in 2004. Somali (Maay and Maxaa-tiri) and Arabic were the official national languages.According to article 7 of Transitional Federal Charter for the Somali Republic: The official languages of the Somali Republic shall be Somali (Maay and Maxaatiri) and Arabic. The second languages of the Transitional Federal Government shall be English and Italian. Following the adoption of the Provisional Constitution in 2012 by the Federal Government of Somalia, Somali and Arabic were retained as sole official languages.According to article 5 of Provisional Constitution : The official language of the Federal Republic of Somalia is Somali (Maay and Maxaa-tiri), and Arabic is the second language.
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