Sagallo : Russia’s Forgotten African Colony and Its Modern Implications

Imperial Russia is infamous for its rapid and unrelenting colonization efforts in central Asia and Western Europe. However, an oft-overlooked aspect of the Russian Empire’s colonial aspirations was its interest in establishing overseas colonial holdings in North America and Africa. One such holding was that of the colony of Sagallo, or New Moscow, in modern-day Djibouti, established in 1889 during an ill-fated mission led by notorious Cossack Nikolai Ivanovich Ashinov and a group of accompanying Russian Orthodox pilgrims. The mission was religious in nature and held the primary goal of establishing both an ecclesiastical and economic connection with the Orthodox Christian empire of Ethiopia. Although the attempt at founding a colony in what was then French Somaliland was short-lived and unsuccessful in its original goals, the purpose behind the expedition still managed to originate a pattern of soft power-based control tactics, chiefly involving religion, that Russia continues to employ in Africa into the modern day. This work aims to explore past and present applications of Russian soft power in Africa through an analysis of the brief yet meaningful establishment of its colony in Sagallo.