Fourth Shore

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Fourth Shore or Italy's Fourth Shore (in Italian quarta sponda) was the name created by Mussolini to refer to Libya while it was an Italian colony. The term derives from the fact that Italy is a peninsula with roughly three shores and Libya would be a fourth.

The name belied the fact that for much of the early colonial period Italy waged a war of subjugation against Libya's population.

Libya was made an integral part of Italy in 1939 and the local population were granted a form of Italian citizenship.