Time after Time in the Horn of Africa

Andrew Gordon explores the joint, amphibious assault on the dervish stronghold of Illig, in Somaliland, in 1904. The operation exactly matched the task, and the skills employed were taken down from the Royal Navy’s shelf without rehearsal or conscious innovation. Those in command had not been to Staff College, yet at Illig one can check off today’s Principles of War, one by one. The quintessentially Victorian ‘littoral warfare era’ was soon eclipsed by the blue-water rivalry of the twentieth century, but it has enjoyed renewed interest at the start of the twenty-first—especially where the security condition of the Horn of Africa is concerned.