19th century Daarood Expansion=Somali expansion

[xirsi95]

This is from I.M. Lewis's "A modern history of the Somali"

"But the main Somali advance did not long halt at the Juba. Darod from the north(galgadud and southern Mudug areas like Gelinsoor,etc) and Ogaden continued to push south, often against the fierce resistance of those who had preceded them. Eventually these new northern invaders reached the Shabelle, and began to press hard on the Digil of the region early in the 19th century. Their progress was arrested, however,by the Rahanweyn, from about by the strong leadership of the Geledi clan based on the Shabelle. This opposition forced these new Darod immigrants to move up to the Juba and brought them into contact with the Galla on the right bank of the river. Although so much of their territory had been lost in the Somaliland(land lost to the Digil and Mirifle and Gaalkacyo lost to the Majeerteen), the Galla were still tenaciously clinging to what land was left to them, and from their centre at Afmadow,launched occasional raids across the river into what was now Somali territory. Their power in this region was thus by no means yet broken; and from time to time their raiding parties meanies the Somali religious centre at Baardheere, founded in 1820 on the middle reaches of the Juba. Thus the new Darod invaders encountered a formidable neighbour to whom,for the present, it was more expedient to appease than to provoke. Hence having gained their protection, parties of Darod clansmen crossed the river as clients and allies of the Oromo. The trans-Juban Oromo seem to have welcomed this new support and to have turned it to advantage in their relations with the turbulent Akamba and Masai to their west.

As time passed, the Darod movement continued and further Darod clans men entered the area,sought an alliance with the Galla,and crossed the river to join their kinsmen. Thus the strength of the Darod immigrants under Oromo protection gradually increased. This situation of uneasy Darod-Galla alliance, however continued for some time and is that described by the French explorer Charles Guillian when he visited the southern Somali coast in 1847. Much the same position is recorded also by the ill fated German traveller, von der Decken, who, in 1865, made history by sailing up the juba river in his shallow-draught steam ship Welf, only to founder in the rapids above Baardheere.

It was apparently in this same year that a severe epidemic of smallpox amongst the Galla provided the opportunity for which their Darod neighbors had obviously been waiting. Almost immediately, the Darod fell upon their Galla hosts on all sides and inflicted very heavy losses. The few Oromo who survived fled to the south; and by the turn of the century, most of the southern Galla had been cleared of the area, retaining footholds only at Wajir and Buna. A new factor now made itself felt in the form of desperate Ethiopian raids into the Ogaden and down by the Juba. This, with further waves of new Somali immigrants-some of whom had sailed down the coast by dhow-maintained and even increased the Somali pressure(Cali Saleeban,Siwaaqroon and Osman Mahmoud Majeerteen) . Indeed, by 1909, parties of Darod immigrants had pressed as far south as the Tana River with livestock estimated as many as fifty thousand beasts.

By 1912, when administrative and military posts were opened by the British in this turbulent northern part of the East African Protectarate, the situation was still fluid. The Darod were still on the move and we're now seeking to dominate completely the whole region from Buna in the west, through Wajir, to the Tana in the south-east. Many of these non-Hamitic WaBoni hunters who had survived the tides of migration and battle had now become the seeds of the Darod, and most of the Warday Galla who remained had to be moved across the Tana River to prevent their extinction by the Somali.

A good number, however, chose to stay with their former Darod subjects as clients, thus completely reversing the earlier positions when the Oromo had been masters of Jubaland. To the west, the once powerful Ajuran, who after their defeat in the 17th century had been ignominiously harried southwards, has now lost much of their cohesion and were rapidly being infiltrated by other Somali. Finally, the southern Boran Galla were being thrust north-west by the continued Darod pressure.

By 1919, feeling between the Darod and those Warday Galla who had been moved across the Tana River reached such a pitch that it was again necessary for the British authorities to intervene. The consequences was an undertaking by both sides, known as the Somali-Orma (Galla) agreement, which allowed the Galla who remained with the Darod on the left bank to choose finally between accepting the formal position of serfs, or of moving across the river to join their free kinsmen. Those who decided to cross the Tana were obliged to leave behind them with their Somali patrons half of the cattle which they had acquiring during their bondage. Under these conditions it is perhaps not surprising that the few of the Warday Galla moved.

Some twelve years later, further unrest broke out among the Galla subjects of the Darod, and a rumour began to circulate that the Somali were about to disregard the 1919 agreement. Whether on this account, or for other reasons, about eight hundred Oromo dependents with ten times as many heads of livestock made a forlorn bid for freedom, trekking towards the Tana River at the very height of the dry season. The result was disastrous; nearly half their number perished, and the few who survived were ignominiously returned to the left bank of the river. In 1936, the agreement ended and the government of Kenya tacitly recognized that, except for those on the right bank of the Tana, the Warday Galla with whom the Somali had long been struggling had long been finally assimilated. Of the Oromo who had once occupied so much of this territory, only the Boran and Gabra remained.

Thus ended the great series of of migrations which, over a space of nine hundred years, had brought the Somali from their northern deserts into more fertile regions of the centre and south and finally into the semi-deserts of northern Kenya. These movements had far-reaching social repercussions."

[xirsi95]

If Somalis weren't stopped by Europeans we would've made many ethnic groups extinct and tooken over lager amounts of land. Inshallah we expand to Tanzania and beyond lmao

[PrinceNugaalHawd]

If only the Somalis were united we would of been recognized as an independent nation and stopped Abyssinian expansion.

[Adali]

What have noticed is that somalis are most prosperous when invading others, like 1977 albeit that being more self defense. But the spirit of somalinimo was at its peak. I really enjoy reading these stories despite it being written by a white. I would have preferred a somali explore to have passed by jubba region during those turbulent times. I reckon somalis really lack focus at the moment we need to adopt a strategy of war. Similar to that of the US. This will put our efforts in realignment. Now I don't suggest building an army like said barre and beating the shit out of habesha to the point where cubans had to rescue them. But I do suggest building large businesses, cooperations and social enterprises that can unite us and invade foreign economies.

[xirsi95]

Yeah man if somalis were united we'd come to occupy most of Eastern Africa and probably become the richest African nation. Inshallah though, inshallah

[thegoodshepherd]

What have noticed is that somalis are most prosperous when invading others, like 1977 albeit that being more self defense. But the spirit of somalinimo was at its peak. I really enjoy reading these stories despite it being written by a white. I would have preferred a somali explore to have passed by jubba region during those turbulent times. I reckon somalis really lack focus at the moment we need to adopt a strategy of war. Similar to that of the US. This will put our efforts in realignment. Now I don't suggest building an army like said barre and beating the shit out of habesha to the point where cubans had to rescue them. But I do suggest building large businesses, cooperations and social enterprises that can unite us and invade foreign economies.

Somalida wrote their own history before the white man came. A lot of wadads wrote taariikh in Arabic or Somali with arabic letters, at places like Camuud, Jameecada Baardheere, Barawe and a lot of other places. It is just that most of it is in Italian or British museeums collecting dust.