For more than 2,500 years, Somalia has been inhabited by a range of ethnic groups, but the Somalian people led an independent government until the rise of European colonialism in the 1800s. In the late 1880s, Somalia was conquered and divided into three separate colonies by Britain, Italy, and France.
Led by nationalist leader Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the Somalian people fought for independence from their colonialist rulers, but to no avail. Until 1949, the three colonial powers struggled for dominance