page_title: Djibouti (city)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Djibouti (city) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Djibouti City in the 1970s at Place 27 June. Français&#160;: Djibouti City dans les années 1970 à Place 27 juin.
context_page_description: Djibouti City is the eponymous capital and largest city of Djibouti. It is located in the coastal Djibouti Region on the Gulf of Tadjoura.
  Djibouti City has a population of around 562,000 inhabitants, which counts for over 70% of the country's population. The settlement was founded in 1888 by the French, on land leased from the ruling Somali and Afar Sultans. During the ensuing period, it served as the capital of French Somaliland and its successor the French Territory of the Afars and Issas.
  Known as the Pearl of the Gulf of Tadjoura due to its location, Djibouti City is strategically positioned near the world's busiest shipping lanes and acts as a refueling and transshipment center. The Port of Djibouti is the principal maritime port for imports to and exports from neighboring Ethiopia. Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport is the main domestic airport, connecting the capital to various major global destinations. Djibouti City has the second-largest economy of any city in the Horn of Africa after Addis Ababa.
context_section_description: There is evidence of human settlement on the eastern coastline of Djibouti dating back to the Bronze Age.
  
  From 1862 until 1894, the land to the north of the Gulf of Tadjoura was called Obock and was ruled by 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 exchange of Franco-British notes of February 2 and 9, 1888 fixes the territorial limit between the colonies of the two countries. It leaves explicitly under French authority the southern coasts of the Gulf of Tadjoura, including a peninsula composed of insubmersible plateaux, Ras Djiboutil as a highly strategic location, a future bridgehead for their African and Asian interests. It is then that this point begins to be used as departure for caravans towards Harar. 
  The French subsequently founded Djibouti City in 1888, in a previously uninhabited stretch of coast. Ambouli was a small village before the French arrived it was about 3 km south of Ras Djiboutil, Ambouli is identifies the city with Canbala by O.G.S. Crawford. Canbala appears in Muhammad al-Idrisi's map of 1192 on the coast of the Horn of Africa, southeast of the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and with Cambaleh, a town where the Venetian traveler Bragadino, a thirteenth-century European visitor to Ethiopia, resided for eight years. In 1896, the settlement was made the capital of French Somaliland.
  The main purpose of French interest was to protect the trade route to Madagascar and Indochina from the British and Italian. The town later grew considerably in size following the construction of the Imperial Ethiopian Railway. In 1895, Djibouti, which, not so long ago, was just a peninsula, already had 5,000 inhabitants. Many Issa and Afar nomads leave their herds to settle here, build houses on what is now the downtown plateau. They become dockers and constitute the first local proletariat. French and natives built hotels, houses, mosques and churches. The Yemeni, Egyptian, Greek, Armenian and Italian merchants and traders flock to this promise that Djibouti represents. Additionally, the rich agricultural southern area of Ambouli continued to flourish due to an abundance of date palm farms and orchards. Djibouti certainly does not attract as many boats as Aden, far from it. In 1896, Léonce Lagarde became the first governor of the French Somali Coast, a new name for the French dependencies in the region. At the start of the 20th century, Djibouti had 10,000 inhabitants and was considered a major regional port. Its main activity remains the supply of French ships en route to Indochina or Madagascar. Only 150,000 tonnes of freight per year are handled there. In addition, the railway line is not yet fully exploited.
   Although the initial company failed and required a government bailout to avoid falling under British administration, the Franco-Ethiopian Railway itself was a success and allowed Djibouti city's commerce to quickly eclipse the former caravan-based trade carried on with nearby Zeila in British Somaliland. Djibouti became the center of exports from southern Ethiopia and the Ogaden, including trade in Harari coffee and khat. Djibouti City began to develop as a commercial center. In 1932, Djibouti City was the first town to be wired to electricity in French Somaliland. On the 12 July 1926, the Fontainebleau, a Messageries Maritimes steamer loaded with cotton and heading for China caught fire while approaching Djibouti. The captain decides to flood the holds and run aground his ship in the middle of the harbor of Djibouti. The inconvenience will be significant for the port traffic. But we then decided to use the wreck as a promontory of a new deep-water port, connecting it to the Marabout plateau by a 700 m jetty. The brilliant idea was accepted and work began in 1931. The first phase was completed in 1935 and considerably increased port and rail traffic. An oil terminal was built in 1937. 
  During World War II, Djibouti City was hit by Italian airstrikes on June 21, 1940, which killed more people in the town. The a
caption: The Place 27 June in the 1970s.
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