In these centres, where the impact of western influence was experienced most keenly, and where the traditional system of collective indemnification for wrongs was now less necessary than in the nomadic world of the interior, amongst merchants and traders especially there arose a new feeling of dissatisfaction with the particularism of the past. This, with the traditional Somali national consciousness, which the experience of Italian patriotic fervour presented in a new light, and the long suppressed reaction to alien rule, all combined to provide conditions favourable to the emergence of new aspirations. Thus, in the last few years of the shortlived Italian East African Empire, the first definite steps towards the creation of a modern nationalist movement began to be taken in Somalia. These took the form of small clandestine meetings, organized mainly, it appears, by some of the new generation of Somalis who had been to school and were employed by the Italian government.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 314