The Emergence of a Colonial Developmentalist Discourse

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Italian government reluctantly took charge of the occupation of Somalia. After Italy's decisive defeat by Ethiopian forces at Adwa in 1896, Italy's expansionist policy became particularly unpopular among the Italian public.Footnote ⁷ In the late 1800s, Italian-chartered companies—Compagnia italiana per la Somalia, later replaced by Società anonima commerciale italiana per il Benadir—negotiated the occupation of the Somali coastal region of Banaadir with the Sultan of Zanzibar. But these were soon involved in a series of scandals that developed in the Italian press. Among different charges, Italian administrators were accused of tolerating the practice of slavery and slave trade “under the Italian flag.” When the Benadir company went bankrupt in the early 1900s, the government in Rome was urged to step in using the campaign against slavery as a legitimation for colonial occupation.Footnote ⁸ But the new colonial venture was not supported by a coherent colonial strategy. There was no plan as to how to implement the abolition of slavery. There were no ideas about what to do with the freed slaves once they were emancipated. And, more generally, it was not clear what the Italians intended to make of the new colonial occupation.Footnote ⁹ The early phase of colonial occupation, then, became a “laboratory” for policymakers to investigate possibilities for Italian rule that would help define the long-term objectives of the new colonial venture.

This lack of preconceived ideas helps explain the timid approach with which Italy attempted to abolish slavery. Between 1903 and 1904, Italy enacted a series of decrees to abolish slavery and the slave trade. This early legislation against slavery was hampered by the colonial government's anxieties about possible rebellions of slave-owning clans.Footnote ¹⁰ In spite of the public commitment to end slavery, the colonial government decided to seek a compromise with slave owners and called for a policy of “gradualism” that would purportedly replace slavery with forms of “domestic servitude.”Footnote ¹¹ Accordingly, officers in the field were instructed “to treat all questions related to slavery with more tact and prudence” and to encourage freed slaves to find some kind of accommodation with their masters.Footnote ¹² When freed slaves moved to urban areas, officials often accused them of vagrancy and prostitution, and of increasing crime rates in the towns.Footnote ¹³ As some sought refuge and assistance in Italian posts, colonial officials began to perceive them as potential threats to the social order.Footnote ¹⁴ And in some cases, Italian troops escorted freed slaves back to their former masters.Footnote ¹⁵ Justifying these measures, colonial officials and missionaries dealing with the liberation campaign typically emphasised their responsibility “to protect slaves from themselves,” contending that freed slaves were not in a position to understand the requirements of their renewed social position and that they often “mistook freedom for idleness.”Footnote ¹⁶ But it was unclear what directions these abolitionist interventions should take beyond claiming obligations of a moral nature.

Admittedly, in the early 1900s, colonial legislation was limited by the fact that Italian presence in Somalia was confined to a few towns on the coastal region of Banaadir and to a few posts, or residenze, inland. Thus, Italy's attempts to abolish slavery were sidelined by the more pragmatic preoccupations to control local society.Footnote ¹⁷ One of the first colonial governors appointed to Somalia expressed these worries openly, warning that abolishing slavery “just for the sake of a humanitarian principle” would threaten “the interests of the colony, upset the current tranquillity and harm the very same cause of the slaves themselves.”Footnote ¹⁸ But Italy's cautious policy against slavery also pointed to the fact that colonial officials struggled to define what the goals and the interests of the colonial venture were.

The course of events forced policymakers to define their objectives. A matter of major preoccupation was the mobility of labor and concerns that, once liberated, slaves would abandon the fields, putting the future of the colonial economy at risk. Since the late nineteenth century, groups of liberated slaves had begun to join independent or religious farming settlements that had proliferated along the Jubba River. Although at this stage the Italians did not hinder their movements, colonial officials started discussing the perceived necessity to regulate the mobility of freed slaves because this represented “a kind of freedom that [wa]s not compatible with [Italy's] sovereignty and administration.”Footnote ¹⁹ When the Italian government decided to expand the occupation of Somalia beyond the coastal regions of Banaadir in the early 1910s, discussions on how to manage and control Somali agricultural labor continued to preoccupy colonial planners. Extending the colonial conquest, officials began to realize that Italian legislation would possibly emancipate a large number of slaves residing in the newly occupied regions, thus causing more rebellions from slave-owning clans.Footnote ²⁰ At the same time, policymakers became increasingly preoccupied that their legislation against slavery would increase the mobility of freed slaves, putting the source of labor supply for future colonial agricultural enterprises at risk. To legislate the end of slavery in Somalia, colonial officials argued, was not enough. There was a compelling need to make sure that, once liberated, slaves would continue to be economically productive subjects and, more precisely, that they would not leave the fields uncultivated.Footnote ²¹ This early phase contributed to the conviction that the colonial government should enhance the expansion of the agricultural sector—indicated as the backbone of colonial economy—and focus on the regulation of farm labor.

The first attempt to put together a broader framework defining Italy's intervention was provided by the colonial governor De Martino. With a report at first presented to the Parliament and then published in 1912, De Martino drafted some tentative ideas for colonial valorizzazione that would “create the ideal conditions of social living.”Footnote ²² De Martino's ideas were an attempt to combine the exigencies of the broader colonial policy of the Italian government and the local efforts undertaken to control farm labor. At the time, Italy's Committee for Emigration sought to find a solution to the movement of migrants leaving the Italian peninsula in great numbers, including possibly redirecting the migratory flux to the colonies.Footnote ²³ Scholars such as Bellucci have demonstrated how these plans were extremely complicated due to the disparities between imperial planning and colonial realities.Footnote ²⁴ Like other Italian policymakers at the time, De Martino thought that the colonial government should encourage, to some extent, the settlement of these migrants in the colonies. His valorizzazione plan, thus, suggested raising the productivity of the colony by increasing the number of European concessions producing crops for export and thus generating profits for colonial investors and better conditions for the colonial subjects. How exactly these plans would take care of the interests of colonial subjects remained unclear. The governor's general claim was for a valorizzazione intended as “a policy for the [colonial] people.”Footnote ²⁵

These broad objectives were explored in a number of studies for agricultural development to be presented before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The colonial governor was particularly optimistic about the series of economic possibilities that the colony offered to private investors and future settlers—especially in the agricultural sector. Somalia had an “excellent climate,” the governor stated, and offered a large amount of fertile yet “unused” land.Footnote ²⁶ Discouraging the emigration of a great number of Italian peasants whose labor was deemed to be too expensive, the colonial governor promoted the settlement of a few Italian farmers who would become landowners and cultivate commercial crops on private concessions. These settlers would join cooperative agricultural societies, consorzi agrari, set to facilitate their activities, to manage the irrigation work of agricultural concessions, and to provide Italian concessionaires with technical assistance and Somali labor.Footnote ²⁷ To corroborate this scheme, the governor included a study that discussed Italy's efforts against slavery, conducted by the colony's chief for civil affairs, Jacopo Gasparini.

Early concerns about regulating the mobility of freed slaves and rising anxiety over losing their workforce had pushed some commentators to advocate the implementation of emancipation programs that would replace “the tie of servitude with the free-tie of wage labor.”Footnote ²⁸ In a similar spirit, Gasparini proposed establishing a program to enroll freed slaves as wage laborers for agricultural or public work with the goal of fostering the process of proletarianization of Somali agricultural laborers so as to bring about a “transformation of Somali society.”Footnote ²⁹ The stated purposes of this program were the support and “protection of slaves from themselves” and the fostering of their “intellectual development” in such a manner that freed slaves would appreciate the “benefits” of wage labor and the practice of wealth accumulation.Footnote ³⁰

The aim of this campaign for the transformation of Somali society was clearly to create a stable supply of farm labor and to avoid the dangers of groups of freed slaves moving to coastal towns and abandoning the fields.Footnote ³¹ But these goals were also shaped by more pragmatic concerns to make freed slaves “active” participants rather than passive beneficiaries in the process of emancipation. As the colonial government had usually paid compensation to slave owners for the liberation of slaves, this program was envisioned as a way for laborers to pay for their own emancipation, reimbursing the administration for having advanced the expenses.Footnote ³² The duration of the program and the contribution of laborers were calculated accordingly. Freed slaves would work for two years, remitting half of their salary to the colonial government. The scheme anticipated that some forms of coercion, or “benevolent” and “convenient” compulsion, would be necessary to compel laborers to attend the programs.Footnote ³³

Presenting these efforts and plans was not only a way to publicize the opportunities the colony offered to future settlers and investors: These plans suggested that Somali society, specifically former slaves, could provide labor for future European concessions.Footnote ³⁴ Although Gasparini's plan was not implemented in a systematic way, it is important to understand this scheme because it represented the first attempt to control and to mobilize Somali workforce under the rhetoric of valorizzazione based on the assumption that this would purportedly benefit both the Italians and the colonial subjects. With a further communication to the metropolitan government in October 1911, De Martino announced the launch of a pilot governmental estate in Kaitoi, later moved to Janaale, with both settlements situated in the fertile regions along the Webi Shabeelle River in Southern Somalia. Prepared by a team of Italian agronomists and technicians with irrigation and mechanical facilities, the site was divided in a governmental estate, an allotment for Italian settlement, an area intended to host small concessions, and a larger area allocated for concessions financed by private investments.Footnote ³⁵ The goal of the experimental estate was three-fold: to study cultivation possibilities and practices for the region; to research the conditions for future settlers; and to plan the recruitment and employment of freed slaves or liberti. For the latter purpose, the colonial government was working on a contract for freed slaves “considering the[ir] special social and political conditions.”Footnote ³⁶

There were, however, a number of shortcomings to these plans. It soon became clear that the colony had little to offer to the masses of Italian migrants. Most of the fertile land was under cultivation by Somali farmers and private concessions, the colonial government stated, and “could only be granted in areas that were not already under cultivation,” which also meant in areas that were less densely populated.Footnote ³⁷ Although colonial propaganda had publicized the availability of large areas of “unused” land, these were left uncultivated by local farmers because of their limited productivity.Footnote ³⁸ Moreover, it also became clear that Somali farming communities could not provide sufficient labor supplies for European plantations. Encouraging the migration of Somali farmers to colonial plantations was also deemed unfeasible. As Romolo Onor, the colonial agronomist in charge of the pilot governmental estate put it, ideas about encouraging the proletarianization of farm labor were without foundation because the “reality in practical terms is that Somali cultivators are free landowners”; thus, the agronomist concluded, it would be impossible that “indigenous [cultivators] would voluntarily give up their status of free landowners … [to become] wage-laborers.”Footnote ³⁹

The research undertaken by Onor represented a turning point in the colonial discourse that informed agricultural planning. Not only had Onor launched a scheme that influenced, although in a convoluted manner, later agricultural schemes (as we shall see), his results also provided evidence that there were few options for the Italians to directly exploit Somalia's resources. This, the agronomist argued, was particularly true for the agricultural sector. By the end of 1910s, the colonial government thus came to the conclusion that allocating private concessions to Italian settlers would not boost, on its own, the colony's economy because they required major public investments in capital and labor. The solution, as it emerged in Onor's research, lay in shifting the attention to Somali cultivators.

After having researched Somali agriculture for several years, Onor believed that the only possible way to increase the value of Somali agriculture was with direct state intervention.Footnote ⁴⁰ Accordingly, he introduced the principle of compartecipazione—or shared participation—into the system of production.Footnote ⁴¹ Compartecipazione was based on the notion that colonial planning had to be directed toward the enhancement of Somali cultivations and to the promotion of “cultivations made by Somali laborers on their own land, but with the help and direction of the enterprises.”Footnote ⁴² The scheme thus called for collaboration between the colonial administration and Somali subjects according to which the state would “contribute with the capital and the indigenous people with their labor.” In the words of Onor, such collaboration was the only possible future for the colonial economy because “the development of the colony” was based on “the development of indigenous agriculture.”Footnote ⁴³

To be sure, the majority of Onor's points were later dismissed. While the agronomist insisted on the need to promote indigenous smallholders in order to boost economic growth, successive colonial regimes would target commercial farming and the export sector rather than small producers. Nevertheless, the agronomist's study, specifically the attention placed upon Somali laborers, left a certain legacy on future agricultural development planning. By the end of the 1910s, a colonial developmentalist discourse had emerged that began presenting Somali cultivators as the key element and as “the colonial settlers” in Italy's agricultural planning.Footnote ⁴⁴ For the next two decades, colonial rhetoric continued to emphasize the pivotal role played by the “indigenous population” within Italy's agricultural planning scheme.Footnote ⁴⁵ Consider, for instance, the propaganda through which the government tried to publicize and stimulate support for Italian colonialism. In a public conference held in Naples in the mid-1920s, one of the foremost agricultural policy makers in Somalia, Bertonelli, reminded his public that they should not consider the colony as a “mine to exploit for a few years and then leave it.” Bertonelli alleged that Italian colonial planning was part of a bigger project that intended to “give value” to the whole area, to bring about “agricultural prosperity for the region” and “profit for everyone.” The only way to achieve agricultural prosperity, he argued, was to invest “capital, love and knowledge,” to combine Somali labor with “Italy's wise management.” He further contended that “there will be no agricultural prosperity unless [Somali] laborers equally benefit from the land”.Footnote ⁴⁶

This rhetoric reached a climax in the 1930s. By this time, development planning appeared not only as a justification for colonial occupation but served as a rationale to defend the creation of Italy's East African Empire before the international community. Insisting on the “benefits” that Italian rule had brought about to its colonial subjects became particularly important following a number of protests and critiques on Italy's brutal attack on Ethiopia.Footnote ⁴⁷ A number of publications, sponsored by the Italian government, insisted on the “progressive” character of Italy's racist colonial rule. “The basic principle of our colonization,” one of these publications contended, was not “the contempt or the oppression of the indigenous” but “a close collaboration between the [Italian] national and the indigenous”; a collaboration based on the principle of “complete racial separation” that “respect[s]… the linguistic, religious, juridical and ethnic heritage of colonial subjects”.Footnote ⁴⁸ As in the past, Italian attention focused on plans for the valorizzazione of local agriculture:

But the implementation of Italy's development agricultural planning became increasingly problematic. As the next section illustrates, plans for the promotion of intensive farming in Somalia institutionalized practices of forced labor and disrupted the local production of foodstuff, ultimately making the colony dependant on imported grain products.

Shared-participation, intensive farming, and forced labor

As the attention of the metropolitan government focused on the developments of the First World War, agricultural planning was put on hold and revised with significant changes in the 1920s. While Onor had discouraged the plans for intensive farming in Somalia, the colonial government pursued its commitment to facilitate the influx of private investors in colonial agriculture through the settlement of Italian farming concessionaires. Yet, the notion of share participation, understood as the key part played by Somali cultivators in colonial agricultural plans, provided an underlying framework to later development schemes. The most important example of these was the Società Agricola Italo-Somala (SAIS), by far the largest private agricultural enterprise in Somalia producing commercial crops for export, founded in 1920 by Luigi di Savoia, an Italian duke related to the royal family.

After an expedition to Somalia in 1918 and in agreement with the colonial government, the duke decided to settle in the newly occupied region of the Shidle and Mobilen people. According to statistical data gathered in 1925, approximately 23,294 Shidle and Mobilen inhabited a region of 1,000 square kilometers, distributed among 73 villages along the river and cultivating 6,000 hectares of land.Footnote ⁵⁰ An earlier report explained that the Shidle and Mobilen were agro-pastoral communities mainly made up of former slaves, or “liberti [who] achieved emancipation several generations ago”.Footnote ⁵¹ In fact, slavery was only one among many categories of farm labor in the riverine regions. But although agriculture was practiced by a number of cultivators whose statuses ranged from former slaves, client farmers, and independent laborers who had different relations to the land they cultivated, colonial officials tended to arbitrarily divide these groups into liberti and freemen.Footnote ⁵² To some extent, these simplifications were criticized by colonial ethnographers, most notably Enrico Cerulli, who argued that these communities had a much diverse ethnic background and constituted a confederation of several groups, or several qabila.Footnote ⁵³ Yet, this vague definition was left open to different interpretations and provided a “scientific” basis for the racialized discourse with which colonial officials tended to exemplify Somali society.Footnote ⁵⁴

Drawing upon the alleged inherent differences that existed among different groups, the colonial administration tended to distinguish between the supposedly “pure” Somali clans whose communities were devoted to pastoralism, and the “non-Somali” clans, populations with mixed ethnic backgrounds—including descendants of slaves—which practiced agriculture.Footnote ⁵⁵ These early racialized and simplified classifications of Somali society also served to identify the social groups that would be targeted by forced conscription for colonial estates and public work.Footnote ⁵⁶ As a result, early plans for colonial occupation singled out the loosely defined category of liberti as the only possible source of labor for future enterprises. Thus in the 1910s, colonial officials considered the occupation of Shidle and Mobilen region as an opportunity for exploiting the fertile riverine areas along the Webi Shabeelle River and for accessing a pool of farm labor.Footnote ⁵⁷ An occupation that was allegedly conceived for the benefit of the Shidle and Mobilen—those who lived “in extremely dire conditions” colonial officials argued in 1912—and “for them [we are thinking of] a future economic solution.”Footnote ⁵⁸

A “solution” was later implemented by the establishment of SAIS at Jowhaar in 1920. Through negotiations with representatives of the Scidle and Mobilen, SAIS occupied an area of 25,000 hectares under a lease of 99 years.Footnote ⁵⁹ Supported by considerable capital from private investors and Italian banks, SAIS devoted its enterprise to intense ploughing, initially for the cultivation of cotton, and later specializing in sugarcane. SAIS also enjoyed a great deal of assistance from the colonial government that financed the construction of a railway line, connecting Jowhaar to Mogadishu, to facilitate the transport of sugar for shipment abroad. SAIS's economic plan was based on the belief, also shared by colonial officials in Somalia, that a comprehensive system of irrigation canals would counterbalance the uneven distribution of rainfall and guarantee soil fertility in the long term.Footnote ⁶⁰

Adopting the principle of shared participation of Somali cultivators in the system of production, SAIS envisioned a resettlement scheme for agricultural development on a grand scale. After leasing arable lands from the Somali cultivators, the enterprise would prepare the soil with irrigation schemes and agricultural facilities. Entire farming families would then resettle on allocated plots of land and cultivate both commercial crops for export and crops for their own consumption.Footnote ⁶¹ Specifically, irrigated plots of one hectare each were allocated to farming families, that were required to cultivate a half hectare of commercial crop to be sold to SAIS at a fixed price, leaving the other half for their own cultivation. As one of the SAIS pioneers announced a few years later, the resettlement scheme intended to initiate a “civilizing developmental transformation of the whole area.”Footnote ⁶²

SAIS managers further claimed their enterprise did not simply produce crops in demand in Italy, but was part of a bigger vision for the transformation of Somali society: SAIS was conceived “as a means of progress, an actual school, intentionally meant to be innovative, rich in humane values, almost revolutionary for the masses that for the first time got acquainted with the discipline, the duties and the rights of organised labor.”Footnote ⁶³ By participating in the development scheme, commentators at the time insisted that laborers would understand the merits of wealth accumulation and the benefits of being part of a wage-labor system. As the enterprise's statute summarized it, SAIS activities were “a valorizzazione endeavour … with the twofold aim to come to the aid of the motherland and to give life to the wealth of these lands permanently.”Footnote ⁶⁴

Ironically, SAIS efforts to establish a modern system of production clearly attempted to recreate what they believed to be a “traditional” environment for Somali laborers. For example, the villages constructed for the resettlement of Somali laborers allocated settlers according “to ethnic groups that resembled their old indigenous groups and [we]re ruled by their old chiefs.” The intention was for laborers to “feel like they were still living in their own villages” but with the difference “that laborers found plenty of foodstuff, more wealth, and more protection and security at [SAIS] irrigated lands.”Footnote ⁶⁵ This system also tried to imitate the division of labor of precolonial client cultivators that regulated the relationship between patrons and laborers, their reciprocal rights and obligations. As Lee Cassanelli has pointed out, SAIS established “a paternalistic system which managed workers by guaranteeing security of tenure, regulating social behaviour, and recognising the reciprocal rights and obligations of both supervisors and workers.”Footnote ⁶⁶ Although there has been little research on the relations between SAIS managers and Somali workers, it seems likely that the appointed chiefs acted as intermediaries between the two.

Besides providing a rationale for the enterprise, the system of shared participation became a mechanism for controlling labor and labor mobility. In spite of a number of incentives offered to laborers to encourage their settlement in the enterprise, it became clear in the early years of SAIS activities that the laborers preferred to return to their original fields, especially during the rainy season. To hinder this mobility, the principle of shared participation requested laborers to settle with their families in the colonial estates on a permanent basis. And to regulate the relations between SAIS and laborers, the enterprise issued contracts of colonìa, which prescribed that laborers remit a fixed share of the cultivated crops to SAIS, making laborers responsible for the business risk of the whole enterprise.Footnote ⁶⁷ According to the agrarian director at SAIS, Scassellati-Sforzolini, enforcing these requirements was necessary to guarantee stable outputs and to overcome the shortage of labor. More precisely, he explained,

By the early 1930s, the system of shared participation at SAIS posed a number of difficulties. The scheme did not necessarily imply wage labor, and laborers’ compensation was often, at least in part, in kind.Footnote ⁶⁹ Moreover, although the enterprise fared better than other colonial estates and managed to maintain high levels of production until the British occupation during the Second World War, laborers continued to abandon their allotted plots, preferring to return to cultivate their own land.Footnote ⁷⁰ To hinder labor mutinies, SAIS relied on strict labor surveillance with the assistance of the colonial government. And even though the company employed thousands of Somalis on a permanent basis for a variety of works, including clearing the canals and harvesting the cultivations, labor relations remained very tense at SAIS until the end of the 1940s.Footnote ⁷¹ When British forces occupied Somalia in 1941, military authorities reported that laborers lived in a climate of threat and fear and that the director of SAIS passed for a man with a particular “grip of his labor.”Footnote ⁷² Although complaints and protests against this working regime were frequent, British forces hardly accommodated the laborers’ demands for improved working conditions and for better pay.Footnote ⁷³

Although SAIS began making considerable profits with the production of sugarcane in Jowhaar, other private attempts to settle arable farms along the Jubba and Webi Shabeelle rivers proved to be fruitless investments.Footnote ⁷⁴ By 1921, the majority of private concessions were abandoned or went bankrupt. Colonial officers usually explained this failure as the result of limited capital, the difficulties in recruiting labor, and the little assistance concessionaires received from the colonial government.Footnote ⁷⁵ The appointment of a fascist governor to Somalia at the end of 1923 marked a significant departure from earlier labor policies and development plans.

The Fascistizzazione of Somali Agriculture

In spite of previous ill-fated attempts, the new fascist government called for the “fascistization” (fascistizzazione) of Somali agriculture and decided to boost the number of private concessions, offering Italian settlers “major opportunities” for managing intensive farms for export. The government's support to concessionaires included a series of incentives, subsidies, and loans and a guaranteed access to the Italian market at favorable rates.Footnote ⁷⁶ Publishing highly optimistic forecasts for economic investments in agriculture, this rhetoric and these measures served, at least in part, to celebrate the alleged effectiveness of fascism as opposed to the failure of previous governments’ agricultural policies. Moreover, the propaganda of the new government served to attract Italian entrepreneurs to develop profitable agricultural enterprises in Somalia. To some extent, this propaganda was successful in attracting new settlers. Many of these belonged to groups of militant fascists who obtained their concessions as a reward for their support of the colonial conquest and participation in the campaigns against the northern Somali sultanates in the mid-1920s.Footnote ⁷⁷ Contemporary fascist propaganda presented the new settlers as “young squadristi and fighters,” pioneers of the new fascist era that would bring about an “Empire of labor” in the African colonies. They had “moved to Somalia with the idea to give value to these lands [following] a new colonial awareness made of faith, sacrifice, and fight” and to start “a period of deep moral, political, and economic change.”Footnote ⁷⁸

Under this rhetoric, the fascistizzazione of Somali agriculture resulted in the occupation of large areas of “unused land” along the fertile riverine regions. The process of land expropriation was facilitated by new colonial legislation that made all land in Somalia property of the government.Footnote ⁷⁹ The new governor focused his attention on Jaanale, a locality situated along the Webi Shabeelle River, fifteen kilometers from the important coastal city of Marka, to introduce intensive farming. Previous experiments conducted in the area had indicated that plans for industrial agriculture were not feasible. More precisely, agronomist Onor informed that there was no way to obtain sufficient supplies of labor for colonial plantations unless the government would resort to an “irrational” degree of coercion.Footnote ⁸⁰ Yet, these opinions were dismissed, and the colonial regime continued to target commercial agriculture even in the face of labor recruitment shortages.Footnote ⁸¹

In the mid-1920s, the government erected a dam on the Webi Shabeelle River and a web of canals for irrigation that extended for eighteen thousand hectares. Once irrigated, government planners divided this vast area into plots, ranging from one hundred to five hundred hectares, distributing these among Italian concessionaires.Footnote ⁸² Moreover, the government conceived a special office, Ufficio Agrario, to assist concessionaires in recruiting labor and to control the production and cultivation of both Italian concessionaires and of the independent Somali farmers in the area.Footnote ⁸³ By the early 1930s, there were ninety-nine concessions in Janaale, occupying an area of twenty thousand hectares of which seventeen thousand were being farmed.Footnote ⁸⁴

Plans for the fascistizzazione of colonial agriculture resulted in the introduction of systematic practices of forced labor and recruitment. Throughout the 1920s, labor recruitment was organized by the concessionaires who generally offered temporary seasonal occupations, from one to six months, mainly to male laborers. Initially, labor recruitment drew upon the communities living in nearby Janaale.Footnote ⁸⁵ As laborers frequently abandoned colonial plantations to return to their villages, concessionaires extended their search for labor to northern areas, especially in the regions of Buur Hakaba and Baydhabo.Footnote ⁸⁶ There is little archival evidence on how labor recruitment was carried out by private concessionaires in the 1920s. Surely, successive colonial governors admitted that this “chaotic and disorganised recruitment” generated degrees of “resentment” and “disruption” into the lives of sedentary riverine communities.Footnote ⁸⁷ It also seems likely that the search for new recruits coupled with labor mutinies in the concessions generated a considerable movement of laborers in the area. In this way, the colonial government estimated that overall, between 1924 and 1929, about 100,000 laborers had been employed for some time in colonial estates in Janaale.Footnote ⁸⁸

In 1929, the colonial government drafted a new labor contract with the aim of regulating labor mobility, which by then was seen as the major obstacle to the development of the colonial economy.Footnote ⁸⁹ Modeled on the resettlement scheme implemented at SAIS, the new contract introduced a quota system. This required each community living in the proximity of cultivations to provide concessions with a certain amount of laborers for a fixed and renewable term. Moreover, the new contract called for the recruitment of entire farming families, rather than single laborers, in the hope that this would hinder labor mutinies.Footnote ⁹⁰ To facilitate this process, the fascist regime began arranging forced marriages.Footnote ⁹¹

Previous studies have identified the 1929 contract as a turning point in the history of labor in Somalia because it institutionalised coercion and practices of forced labor.Footnote ⁹² What is less well known is how the new labor contract related to the broader plan for agricultural valorizzazione in Somalia. Reporting to the Italian parliament in 1930, the colonial government presented the new labor contract as a “just and enlightened action” that aimed to promote the interests and the valorizzazione of both local and colonial cultivations. The introduction of a system of quotas, the governor argued, was intended to limit the number of laborers employed in private concessions, reducing these to fifteen thousand permanent residents, and improving their working conditions. The contract thus served to provide concessionaires with a stable supply of labor and to reduce the contribution of Somali laborers in colonial plantations. In addition, this would protect Somali “rightful demands” to continue farming independently for the market.Footnote ⁹³

The governor's views were also shared by other key officers dealing with agricultural development planning at the time. For instance, Pietro Barile, the commissioner for the lower Webi Shabeelle region, claimed that the resettlement scheme at Janaale was proof of the colonial government's “passionate effort for the development of these people.” The project was also envisioned as a mechanism of social engineering. The resettlement of entire farming families in private concessions would create, Barile claimed, a new ethnic group whose offspring will constitute the future generation of laborers of the fascist “Greater Somalia.” It was further argued that the resettlement scheme provided many impoverished families with an opportunity to improve their standard of living.Footnote ⁹⁴

But, as at SAIS, employment in private concessions became questionable: laborers were required to work six days per week, harvesting commercial crops while devoting the remaining time to their own crops; laborers’ retribution was allocated by piecework; a laborer's piecework was not transferable to another; and the completion of piecework did not necessarily provide laborers with salaries.Footnote ⁹⁵ In the 1970s, social historian of Somalia, Cassanelli, collected vivid memories of abuses and coercion in the colonial plantations, bitterly remembered by Somalis as the tragic “years of colonya.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Although the Italians have later denied these charges before an international commission of the United Nations, reports about the abuses in colonial plantations were well known among colonial circles and brought the colonial government under closer scrutiny in the 1920s.Footnote ⁹⁷

Critiques came from within the Fascist Party. The federal secretary in Mogadishu, Marcello Serrazanetti, for instance, published a review of slaverylike conditions in colonial plantations in 1933, where he accused the colonial government of offering little assistance to laborers; of promoting forced marriages that were often arranged before the resettlement scheme; and, more generally, of covering up the abuses laborers endured in the concessions.Footnote ⁹⁸ It seems likely that the assistance the colonial government provided to concessionaires went beyond the regulation of labor recruitment. Colonial police was also used to hinder laborers’ mutinies, to chase laborers who had abandoned the fields, and to bring them back to the concessions.Footnote ⁹⁹ Sometimes, colonial assistance was also sought for punishing laborers.

Although the colonial government assisted and facilitated labor recruitment and surveillance in the plantations, its relations with Italian concessionaires did not come without problems. Officials in the field often complained that the brutality and violence concessionaires inflicted upon laborers compromised the results and credibility of the entire project of valorizzazione in Somalia. Reporting on labor relations in the plantations, one political officer asked for the colonial government's intervention in favor of Somali laborers. In this way, the officer explained, “the population would believe that the government endeavours to promote their wealth and not their destruction”; “it [was] only through these [development plans] that we can justify our presence in the colony in political and economic terms.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Yet, these critiques remained isolated voices. In fact, the officers that tried to oppose the concessionaires, like Federal Secretary Serrazanetti, were later removed from their posts.Footnote ¹⁰¹

In the long term, the fascistizzazione of Somali agriculture restricted the ability of Somali cultivators to produce for the local market, making the country dependant on foreign supplies. This shift was also the result of the emphasis colonial planning placed upon commercial crops.Footnote ¹⁰² Throughout the nineteenth century Somali producers were able to export great quantities of grains and maize to the Arabian Peninsula. Although the abolition of slavery and colonial occupation disrupted this trade, Somalia continued to export, to some extent, agricultural products until the 1920s. By 1924, Somalia's agricultural outputs had fallen sharply. For the first time since its establishment the colonial government began importing foodstuffs from the metropole to meet the local demand. The situation deteriorated in 1929, when poor rainfalls and a severe drought were reported in the regions of Buur Hakaba, Baydhabo, Xuddur, and Luuq.Footnote ¹⁰³ Further disruptions were caused by Italy's plans to attack Ethiopia and the consequent efforts to redirect Somali labor in support of the war effort.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Warnings that intensive farming would cause serious disruptions to local economy had already been issued in the 1910s. Colonial agronomist Onor claimed that the Somali agricultural sector was a closed, yet perfectly balanced, economic system and predicted that plans for the production of commercial crops for consumption in Italy would seriously affect the local production of grains. Once again, the agronomist's warnings were dismissed. The coercive recruitment of thousands of Somali laborers into colonial plantations constrained the ability of Somali cultivators to farm their own lands and produce their own food crops. And the colonial shift in agricultural production, from grains to intensive farming of commercial crops like cotton, sugar, and kapok, was accompanied by a decrease in the production of basic foodstuffs, in particular of maize, millet, and rice. This shortage was particularly felt in the late 1920s.

Commenting on the situation in 1930, the colonial governor in Mogadishu acknowledged that labor recruitment for colonial plantations disrupted the production of food for local consumption. In some cases, farmers abandoned their cultivations to escape recruitment for colonial plantations.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ As a result, the quantities of local food supplies dropped drastically, pushing people to migrate in search of employment.

In the long term, plans for fascistizzazione of Somali agriculture placed increasing pressures on Somali cultivators. Throughout the 1930s, colonial Somalia continued to import basic foodstuffs for local consumption and became increasingly dependent on subsidies from Rome.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Following the defeat of the Italian army during the Eastern African campaign in 1941, Somalia was placed under a temporary British military administration. In the words of one of the first British officers to report from Somalia during the wartime, “The whole economic structure of the colony was unsound to the extent of absurdity … The country is quite incapable of supporting more than a fifth of the present population and it existed, at the expense of the Italian taxpayer, on subsidies of kind and cash from Rome.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Although British occupiers were clearly unsympathetic to Italian rule, this report is telling of the long-term distress placed upon Somali economy by Italy's agricultural scheme. Nevertheless, colonial schemes provided the basis for future development planning in Somalia.

When the United Nations decided for a ten-year Italian trusteeship administration for Somalia starting in 1950, it placed a great deal of attention on plans and initiatives to boost economic growth. British rule formally ended in early 1950. The establishment of the trusteeship system of the UN was entirely embedded with the notion of “development.” The Italian administration in Somalia was expected to fulfil a series of achievements in the economic, political, and social systems, coupled with the establishment of structural infrastructures.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ By 1950, considerable funds were established for the implementation of socioeconomic development plans in Somalia. But in spite of a series of debates and discussions that took place at the time, postwar economic plans ended up favoring the previous colonial interests, in particular the economic initiatives centered on the production and export of bananas, controlled to the greatest extent by Italian farmers.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Further arrangements established that the Italian government would support Somalia with two million US dollars per year after independence.Footnote ¹¹¹ As scholars have pointed out, these economic initiatives ultimately increased Somalia's dependency on Italian aid and support, while negatively shaping state/society relations.Footnote ¹¹²