The Colonial Foundations of Scottish-Somali Relations

In 1910, an item ran in the Scottish Herald announcing the success of a Scottish emissary in reaching Djibouti (then French Somaliland) with the intention of recruiting ‘natives’ to populate a planned installation of a ‘Somali Village’ in the pleasure gardens of Portobello, a seaside suburb of Edinburgh (see Fig. 3.1). Shortly after, seventy Somali men, women and children arrived in Scotland and were taken to Portobello (Freeman, 2015, p. 28), where they were housed in ‘traditional’ Somali huts that had been constructed on site, and were expected to showcase ‘Somali’ ways of living to the Edinburgh locals who came to view them (see Fig. 3.2). The Village was reported as immediately popular, attracting audiences until 1914, when it was disbanded at start of the First World War, and the Marine Gardens was requisitioned for military use.