British Somaliland

British Somaliland was a British protectorate in the north part of the Horn of Africa, and later part of Somalia and presently the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland.

Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty dominated the area in the 1870s, but withdrew in 1884, upon which the British established a protectorate and garrisoned it from Aden. The protectorate was administered from British India until 1898, then by the Foreign Office, and after 1905 the Colonial Office.

Generally the British did not have much interest in their Somali protectorate which they called "Aden's butcher's shop" from where they got supplies of meat for their British Indian outpost of Aden.

But the colonial power was forced to spend considerable efforts when in 1899 the resistance movement of Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan whom they called the "Mad Mullah" rose against their rule. Britain reacted with harsh force in a colonial war lasting for 20 years which killed about a third of the population. The Mullah's resistance finally was crushed when after the end of World War I the British employed the new technology of military aircraft for the first time on African soil.

The Italian invasion of British Somaliland in august 1940

During the East African Campaign, the protectorate was occupied by Italy in August 1940, but recaptured by the British in March 1941, the final remnants of Italian guerillas were done fighting by the summer of 1942. The Italian conquest of British Somaliland was the only victory of Italy without the cooperation of German troops in WWII against the Allies.

The protectorate gained independence as the State of Somaliland on 26 June 1960. Days later, as a referendum indicated support for unification with the Italian administered Trust Territory of Somalia, it joined with that territory to form a new Somali Republic (Somalia) on July 1, 1960.

After the breakdown of Somalia's central government in 1991, the former area of British Somaliland declared independence in May 1991 as the Republic of Somaliland which regards itself as a successor to the briefly independent State of Somaliland.