History
Historical affiliations French Somaliland 1896-1967
British Occupation 1942-1943
French Territory of the Afars and the Issas 1967-1977
Republic of Djibouti 1977–present
From 1862 until 1894, the land to the north of the Gulf of Tadjoura was called Obock and was ruled by Issa Somali and Afar Sultans, local authorities with whom France signed various treaties between 1883 and 1887 to first gain a foothold in the region.
The French subsequently founded Djibouti city in 1888, with the area at the time uninhabited. A few years later, in 1896, the French made the town the capital of French Somaliland.
When Nazi Germany invaded France in 1940, Djibouti became the Vichy French control. In response, the United Kingdom closed the port, but it could not prevent local French to provide information on the passing ship convoys. In December 1942, British invasion of French Somaliland about 4,000 British troops occupied the town.
Since independence in 1977, the city has served as the administrative and commercial capital of the Republic of Djibouti.
| Historical population | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
| 1915 | 14,120 | — |
| 1922 | 21,023 | +48.9% |
| 1931 | 34,300 | +63.2% |
| 1945 | 49,345 | +43.9% |
| 1951 | 58,789 | +19.1% |
| 1964 | 70,600 | +20.1% |
| 1975 | 79,973 | +13.3% |
| 1979 | 85,932 | +7.5% |
| 1983 | 90,385 | +5.2% |
| 1989 | 130,345 | +44.2% |
| 1994 | 167,896 | +28.8% |
| 1999 | 201,142 | +19.8% |
| 2005 | 400,120 | +98.9% |
| 2012 | 604,013 | +51.0% |
Read more about this topic: Djibouti (city)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)