Thus by the middle of the nineteenth century the Somali coast was no longer isolated, and locally it was now rather the nomads of the hinterland who controlled the ports than the other way about. To a large extent the coastal and hinterland traditions had merged, and the centre of political pressure had swung from the coast to the interior. The new external links between the coast and the outside world, however, served in the following decades of the nineteenth century to pave the way for a new colonial impact in which the pressure, initially at least, was again mainly from the coast towards the hinterland.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 138