French Somaliland

A colony that was a port and its hinterland, held for the port. France acquired footholds at Obock and Tadjoura in the 1860s and 1880s, and in 1888 began building Djibouti on the far side of the gulf, choosing the site for its deep-water anchorage. The Suez Canal had made the Red Sea the artery of European trade with Asia, and a coaling station on it was worth having for its own sake. What made the colony pay, however, was Ethiopia. The railway from Djibouti to Addis Ababa, begun in 1897 and completed in 1917, gave landlocked Ethiopia its only modern outlet to the sea and gave the colony a permanent transit revenue. Almost everything that happened afterwards followed from that line. The population was divided between Somali Issa, oriented towards the Somali territories to the south, and Afar, whose lands ran north into Ethiopia and Eritrea - a split France managed, and at times sharpened, by favouring the Afar in the administration and by controlling who was counted as a resident. Two referendums, in 1958 and 1967, returned votes to stay with France amid credible allegations of expulsions and manipulated rolls; after the second the colony was renamed the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas, a name that stated the problem outright. Independence came on 27 June 1977, the last French possession on the African mainland to leave. Djibouti kept the port, the railway and the strategic position, and has rented that position to foreign militaries ever since.

• Type: Polity
• Government: Colonial administration