Today, the countries bordering the Red Sea are riven with instability. Why are the region's contemporary problems so persistent and interlinked? Through the stories of three compelling characters, Colonial Chaos sheds light on the unfurling of anarchy and violence during the colonial era. A noble Somali sultan, a cunning Yemeni militia leader, and a Machiavellian French merchant ran amok in the southern Red Sea in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In response to colonial hostility and gunboat diplomacy, they attacked shipwrecks, launched piratical attacks, and traded arms, slaves, and drugs. Their actions contributed to the transformation of the region's international relations, redrew the political map, upended its diplomatic culture, and remodelled its traditions of maritime law, sowing the seeds of future unrest. Colonisation created chaos in the southern Red Sea. Colonial Chaos offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the relationship between the region's colonial past and its contemporary instability.

‘Colonial Chaos is an important work of international, imperial, and Indian Ocean history. It defamiliarizes concepts like democratization and diplomacy by thoroughly interrogating their colonial genealogies, revealing them to be just as much terms of redistribution and accessibility as they were terms of violence and chaos.’

Wilson Chacko Jacob - Concordia University

‘This is a remarkable revisionist history of colonialism and violence in the Red Sea. Drawing on meticulous research that stitches together three colonial archives, Smith reads not merely against the grain but transcends these archives to reveal the anarchist tactics that undergird the colonial civilizing mission.’

Johan Mathew - Rutgers University, New Brunswick

‘This stridently argued book traces the creation of a new style of diplomacy and law-making on the fringes of European imperialism. It shows that this new international order emerged not from the desks of imperial strategists or legists but was forged in the fundamentally violent contestation over maritime space.’

Sebastian Prange - University of British Columbia

‘Shines a light on how the East India Company transformed the Horn of Africa and Red Sea into a zone of unfettered anarchy … Based on archival research, ‘Colonial Chaos’ documents in enlightening detail the period after the British takeover of Aden in 1839 and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, showing how local rulers were diminished and turned against one another in Somalia … By examining the imperial roots of violent competition, Smith challenges complacent modern notions that Yemen and Somalia were predetermined to become zones of unfettered anarchy.’

Samir Puri - International Institute for Strategic Studies

‘The book is a welcome contribution to the growing field of studies of the Western Indian Ocean world, offering an important scholarly interpretation for those interested in the history and politics of the Red Sea region viewed through a transnational lens and maritime law.’

Özgül Özdemir Source: The English Historical Review

‘The book is a welcome contribution to the growing field of studies of the western Indian Ocean world, offering an important scholarly interpretation for those intrested in the history and politics of the Red Sea region viewed through a transnational lens and maritime law.’

Nicholas W. Stephenson Smith Source: Historical Review