ABSTRACT

The epitaph of the new state was written before its first Government was installed. In 1960, Mark Karp published The Economics of Trusteeship in Somalia, a book that considered the prospects of the state about to be born. His verdict was not favourable. ‘Anticolonialism’, he wrote,

is, without doubt, one of the most important ideological forces in our time, and in the light of this fact it is hardly surprising to find an increasing number of Africans demanding their dependent status be ended as soon as practicable. What is significant in this respect is that African nationalists tend to view the achievement of self-government as a task involving nothing more than changes in government personnel and machinery, and in law. The possibility that a modern nation state, if it is to maintain itself with a tolerable degree of stability, may also require other changes in social organisation is hardly ever given serious consideration. The possibility that changes in the economic structure may also be needed is sometimes raised but is usually treated with suspicion, if not with outright hostility. The suggestion that economic difficulties may exist is apt to be regarded not as something to be examined in an objective spirit but as a political argument designed to frustrate what are felt to the legitimate aspirations of colonial peoples. There is a feeling, in other words, that if the principle is accepted that the creation of modern nation-states depends upon the fulfillment of certain economic conditions, support will be given to the idea of maintaining colonial rule for a long time, perhaps indefinitely. 1