HiLiN

Between 1934 and 1954, the Horn of Africa underwent a profound transformation shaped by the militarisation of empire and the disruptive force of World War II. Italy’s 1936 invasion of Abyssinia led to the creation of the so-called “Italian East African Empire,” extending fascist control from the Somali coast to Eritrea. Aerial bombardment emerged as a defining technology of modern warfare, described by Somali poet Mohamed Ali Beenaley as a “marvel in the sky,” instilling awe and fear among colonised populations. Although Italy’s imperial project was brief, Britain’s 1940 counter-expansion redrew colonial boundaries, deepening the region’s entanglement with global conflict. This paper explores how the war and its aftermath reshaped political imaginaries and territorial configurations in the Horn. Drawing on untranslated Somali poetry from the period and critical literature, it traces how a zone once cast as savage was reframed by local voices as a site of black resistance, even as postwar settlements embedded Eritrea and Ogaden into a reconstituted Ethiopian imperial order.