The creation of the Republic radically altered the position of the northern regions, and also affected the balance of power between opposing clan groups in the state as a whole. The capital both of polities and of business was now in the south, and northerners were forced to adjust to this situation and to adapt their British colonial experience to fit the Italian pattern in the south.
The resolution of the inevitable problems which this process involved, and particularly that posed by the northerners’ attachment to English and that of the southerners to Italian, was to some extent eased by the ten-year period of British administration (1941-50) which the south had experienced after the Italian defeat in East Africa. Nevertheless, there was initially considerable friction between the exponents of these two rival colonial traditions. The northern political, administrative, and commercial elite did not immediately accept that to further their interests effectively they had now to work through Mogadishu.
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[…] Barre, now about 80, took power in a bloodless coup in 1969. He began his rule of Somalia, an impoverished country in the Horn of Africa, with promises to end […]