ABSTRACT
This chapter examines British Somalia's lack of development in the context of the country's revenue-earning capacity and the people's general antipathy for British colonial rule between 1905 and 1939. It explains the details of the Sayyid Muhammad Abdille Hassan's resistance and of Britain's expeditions between 1900 and 1905. It was in 1905 that Britain, having failed to defeat the anti-colonial Dervish movement of Sayyid Muhammad in four costly military expeditions, decided on retrenchment, and subsequently on stagnation, as the policies she would henceforth pursue in her Somali territory. This attitude persisted until the late 1930s when Italy defeated Haile Selassie's regime in Ethiopia and thereafter embarked on a policy of massive industrialization and modernization in new Fascist acquisition. Britain's initial motive in acquiring the territory was to defend her strategic interests in the Red Sea. Throughout the war period, the British government had promised the Somali administration that a full-scale assault would be undertaken against the Sayyid as soon as the War was over.
