ABSTRACT
The long-drawn out campaigns against the Dervishes in British Somaliland, and the gradual extension of Italian rule in Somalia, left little time or resources available for economic or social improvement. In Somalia, however, from the beginning of the period of direct control, the aim was to attract settlers from the mother country and to develop colonial plantations along the Shebelle and Juba River. The twenty-years Dervish war had been a period of stagnation when all the efforts of the Administration were directed towards overcoming Sayyid Muhammad's movement and there was virtually no time or money for anything more productive. With the conquest of Ethiopia, Somalia was enlarged by the addition of the Ogaden and the regions occupied by Somali on the upper parts of the Shebelle and Juba rivers. This added three new administrative Provinces to the territory and brought together Somali clansmen who had hitherto been arbitrarily separated by the Somalia–Ethiopia 'boundary'.
