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Abstract
This article explores the history of Somali piracy in the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Majerteen Sultans, and especially the late nineteenth century rulers Uthman Mahmud Yusuf and Yusuf ‘Ali, who ruled over the coast of contemporary Puntland, I argue that Majerteen rulers used piracy as a political tool to consolidate their power over the Somali littoral in the face of colonial conquest. They used piracy to goad the European powers into signing treaties of mutual protection and channelled European patronage to buttress their rule over the Majerteen population. In contrast to the literature which frames piracy in terms of state collapse and maritime anarchy, I argue piracy was a diplomatic strategy to exploit inter-imperial competition. As well as offering a historical perspective on Somali piracy, the article takes a comparative approach, drawing on theories about non-state actors and violence to bring interdisciplinary and historical insight to bear on the topic of the Somali piracy.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Jonathon Glassman and David Schoenbrun for repeated careful readings of various drafts of this paper. Thanks to David Anderson and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their encouragement and input. Thanks to Jeff Fleisher and Kathryn M. de Luna and the participants of the Rice University and Texas Southern University annual African studies workshop, 2013, for generous feedback on the ideas in an earlier draft of this paper. Thank you to the participants of the African Studies Seminar at the Programme of African Studies at Northwestern University for giving early drafts of this paper a generous hearing.
Funding
Research was supported by the Department of History, the Programme of African Studies and the Buffet Centre, all at Northwestern University.
Notes
1. Letter from Captain R.L. Playfair to A. Kinloch Forbes, Acting Secretary of the Government in Bombay, 26/10/1861, enclosed in R/20/E/64.
2. The origin of the name ‘Guardafui’ is contested; I follow Captain Mile’s usage, who stated it was the name assigned to the region by the Majerteen, who called the Cape ‘Girdifo’. The Arabic name is Ras Asiir. Miles, “On the Neighbourhood”, 72.
3. Examples of partly historical treatments of the recent upsurge in Somali piracy include: Hansen, “Debunking the Piracy Myth”, 26–30; Hansen, “Piracy, Security”, 181–2; Weir, “Fish, Family, and Profit”, 15–29. Note, by contrast, David Anderson’s article in Wijk, Anderson, and Haines, “The New Piracy”, esp. 44; and Dua, “A Sea of Trade”, esp. 353–60.
4. Analyses of the recent upsurge of Somali piracy tend to frame the issue in similar terms: state collapse and anarchy on land, analysts argue, drives violence at sea. However, others have tempered, or indeed contradicted this explanation. For an argument which claims to establish a causal link between Somali state collapse and piracy, see Pham, “Putting Somali Piracy in Context”. For a more critical approach to the connection between state collapse and piracy, see Hansen, “Debunking the Piracy Myth”, 26–30. On the relationship, by contrast, between piracy and state-building in contemporary Puntland, see Jarle, “Piracy, Security”, 181–2.
5. Armitage, “The Elephant and the Whale”, 23–36; Mazrui, “Towards Abolishing the Red Sea”, 98–103; Pietsch, “A British Sea”, 423–46.
6. Chabal and Daloz argued that in contemporary Africa, disorder was an ‘instrument of political control’. Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works, 141.
7. Cooper, Africa since 1940, esp. ch. 7.
8. See for example Hodgson, “The Role of Islam”, 99–123; Hourani, Arab Seafaring, esp. 61; Sheriff, Dhow Cultures, passim, but note 4–6; Risso, Merchants and Faith, passim; Simpson and Kresse, Struggling with History, passim. For a critique of this literature, see Prange, “Scholars and the Sea”, 1382–93.
9. For an interesting historical-linguistic account which argues that, on the contrary, violence existed in the Indian Ocean in the pre-modern period, see Risso, “Cross-Cultural Perceptions”, 293–319.
10. The father of academic Somali history, Ioan Lewis, described his interpretation as ‘historical’ and ‘structural functionalist’, but the historicism of Lewis’ functionalism has been strongly challenged. As Ahmed Samatar puts it, Lewis’ argument is ‘an extravagant essentialization of the coexistence of primordiality and violence in Somali history’. Lewis, A Pastoral Democracy, xii; Samatar, “Review of Lewis”.
11. Simons, Networks of Dissolution, 189. See also, Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing in Somalia, 2–3. Menkhaus, “State Collapse in Somalia”, 405–22.
12. Dua, “A Sea of Trade”, 353–70; Bahadur, The Pirates of Somalia, 62–6.
13. Grotius, Mare Liberum, passim; St Augustine, The City of God, 101.
14. Hill and Rediker focus on pirates as ‘proletarian outlaws’ waging class warfare against their superiors aboard ship and – more broadly – on pirates’ political struggles against national monopolies and the mercantilist system. See Hill, “Radical Pirates?” 164–80; Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 8. By ‘political’ I mean more simply that distinguishing between a pirate and emperor is principally a question of perspective. FootnoteSee note 11.
15. Spruyt, The Sovereign State, 153.
16. Lane, “Economic Consequences”, 19–31; Tilly, “War Making”, 169.
17. Abrahams, Vigilant Citizens, 76.
18. Ahram and King, “The Warlord as Arbitrageur”, 174–7.
19. Braudel, The Mediterranean, 692. See also, Rediker, “The Seaman as Pirate”, 155.
20. See al-Qasimi, The Myth of Arab Piracy, 32; Rubin, Piracy, Paramountcy and Protectorates, 20. Clulow, “The Pirate”, 523–42.
21. Prange, “A Trade”, 1281.
22. Tagliacozzo, Secret Trades, Porous Borders, esp. 6.
23. Newbury, Patrons, Clients and Empire, 125–37.
24. On definitions of statehood in African history, see Tymowski, “Early Imperial Formations”, 112–4.
25. Grovogui, “Regimes of Sovereignty”, 324.
26. FootnoteSee Note 20 above.
27. Shahriyar, The Book of the Wonders, 23, 54, 66; Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei, 7. But note, Vansina, “Slender Evidence, Weighty Consequences”, 393–7.
28. See Pankhurst, “The Trade of the Gulf”, 465–6.
29. See Cruttenden, “On Eastern Africa”, 137–8.
30. C. J. Cruttenden to Captain Haines, Political Agent at Aden, “1844, Aden: Report on the Myjerthyn Tribe of Somalia”, 17/04/1844, enclosed in IOR R/20/E/23. In addition, the Sultan earned income from customs taxes on Arab and Indian merchants in his territory.
31. C. J. Cruttenden to Captain Haines, Political Agent at Aden, “1844, Aden: Report on the Myjerthyn Tribe of Somalia”, 17/04/1844, enclosed in IOR R/20/E/23. In addition, the Sultan earned income from customs taxes on Arab and Indian merchants in his territory.
32. C. J. Cruttenden to Captain Haines, Political Agent at Aden, “1844, Aden: Report on the Myjerthyn Tribe of Somalia”, 17/04/1844, enclosed in IOR R/20/E/23. In addition, the Sultan redistributed customs taxes levied against Arab and Indian merchants trading in his territory. See Ferrand, Les Çomalis, 137; Baldacci, “The Promontory”, 62.
33. Rigby, “On the Origin”, 93.
34. Miles, “On the Neighbourhood”, 61–2. On Bunder Marhaya in this period, see also Ferrand, Les Çomalis, 130.
35. Ferrand, Les Çomalis, 67.
36. Graves, “Le Cap Guardafui”, 29–42.
37. See Hamilton, “Imperialism Ancient and Modern”, 14, 19.
38. Révoil, La Vallée, xi–xii. The connection between famine, anarchy and piracy nevertheless entered the historiography of Somalia through an article on the Majerteen authored by Wayne Durrill, who relies heavily on Graves’ papers to argue that ‘shipwrecks and the patronage it generated’ created an anarchic, bandit-economy in the nineteenth century. See Durrill, “Atrocious Misery”, esp. 289, 303–4.
39. Battera, Della tribù allo Stato, 68–80, 94–6. Kaptjeins and Spaulding, “Indian Ocean Diplomacy”, 21–8.
40. Battera, Della tribù allo Stato, 68–80, 94–6. Kaptjeins and Spaulding, “Indian Ocean Diplomacy”, 46.
41. Cruttenden, “1844, Aden: Report”.
42. FootnoteSee Note 20 above.
43. Miles, “On the Neighbourhood”, 69.
44. Battera, Della tribù allo Stato, 78, 98–110.
45. Révoil, La Vallée, 29.
46. Letter from Brigadier General J. Blair to the Secretary of Government, Bombay, 23/1/1884, in Political Department, Aden, Notes, Vol. IV, No. 5 of 1884: Mijertteyn Chiefs: Agreement, enclosed in IOR R/20/E/143.
47. Miles, “On the Neighbourhood”, 66.
48. Hunter, An Account, 179–80.
49. Hunter, An Account, 180.
50. Baldacci, “The Promontory”, 70.
51. Hamilton, “Imperialism Ancient and Modern”, 11.
52. “Treaty: Government Resolution No. 1279, 14th March, 1883, signed by Sultan Yusuf of Alula”, in 1884: Mijertteyn Chiefs: Agreement.
53. Letter from Under Secretary of State to the Government Of India to the Chief Secretary of the Government of Bombay, 12/03/1884, in 1884: Mijertteyn Chiefs.
54. Aden Residency Memorandum No. 129766, 19/04/1884, in 1884: Mijertteyn Chiefs.
55. Aden Residency, Memorandum No. 129766, 19/04/1884, in 1884: Mijertteyn Chiefs.
56. J. Blair to Chief Secretary of Government, Bombay, 5/05/1884, in 1884: Mijertteyn Chiefs.
57. Hess, Italian Colonialism, 27, 126–8.
58. Healy, “British Perceptions”, 176–80.
59. Senate House Library, 19th Century House of Commons Sessional Papers, Actes de la Conférence de Bruxelles (1889–1890). Ch. III.
60. Healy cites a letter from Uthman to Consul Swayne. See Healy, “British Perceptions”, 181.
61. Baldacci, “The Promontory”, 69.
62. Baldacci, “The Promontory”, 62, 67. On the date see Battera, Della tribù allo Stato, 104.
63. Hess, Italian Colonialism, 25.
64. Hess, Italian Colonialism, 26.
65. Hess, Italian Colonialism, 128–30. On the strategic significance of watering holes to the Sultan’s control over the pastoral interior population see, Cassanelli, The Shaping, 70–2.
66. Ferrand, Les Çomalis, 137.
67. Hess, Italian Colonialism, 130–1.
68. Ferrand, Les Çomalis, 131.
69. Baldacci, “The Promontory”, 70.
70. Baldacci, “The Promontory”, 70.
71. Hess, Italian Colonialism, 142.
72. Schmitt, The Nomos, 172.
73. Benton, A Search for Sovereignty, esp. chs. 3, 5.