The Politics Of The 1969 Somali Coup

In this context, the fact that the Somali people — today estimated to number some four million — did not form a single, united political group in the pre-colonial era is scarcely relevant (except, perhaps, to those who confound the concepts of state and nation). The significant thing is that they possessed a vigorous sense of cultural nationalism of a kind familiar to students of nineteenth-century European nationalism and this, in the colonial period, gained new political meaning. It is worth emphasizing that here we see an example of the politicization of an existing cultural identity.

This is the reverse of the elaboration of cultural distinction to give substance and moral weight to political interests — a process which, although already well known to historians, has received a great deal of attention and emphasis in the recent discussion of politics in the Third World.³

It is also, I consider, equally pointless to debate whether the Somali people are a ‘tribe’ or a ‘nation’. While in political rhetoric the first is currently a term of abuse and the second of approbation, this simply serves to highlight the essential relativity of the two concepts which is indeed self-evident when one considers the meaning attached to the term ‘nation’ in an international context.

Clearly, both words connote the same thing — a group — and the only significant distinction which might be conceded is that of scale; in that case, ‘tribes’ are little nations and ‘nations’ are big tribes.⁴ When, however, we are dealing with populations several million strong we are surely entitled to employ the larger, more inclusive term.

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