History of Libya as Italian Colony

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History of Libya

Periods

Ancient Libya

Islamic Tripolitania
and Cyrenaica

Ottoman Libya

Italian Colony

Modern Libya

See also

For a full treatment of the Italian invasion of 1911, see Italian invasion of Libya.

The attempted Italian colonization of the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica was never wholly successful. On October 3, 1911, the Italians attacked Tripoli, claiming somewhat disingenuously to be liberating Libya from Ottoman rule. Despite a major revolt by the Libyans, the Ottoman sultan ceded Libya to the Italians by signing the 1912 Treaty of Lausanne. Tripoli was largely under Italian control by 1914, but both Cyrenaica and the Fezzan were home to rebellions led by the Senussis.

Several reorganizations of the colonial authority were made necessary, in the face of the armed Libyan opposition. From 1919 (17 May) to 1929 (24 January) the Italian government maintained the two traditional provinces, with separate colonial administrations. A system of controlled local assembies with limited local authority was set up, but it was revoked 9 March 1927. In 1929 Tripoli and Cyrenaica were united as one colonial province, then in 1934, as Italy struggled to retain colonial power, the classical name "Libya" was revived as the official name of the colony, which was split into four provinces, Tripoli, Misurata, Bengasi, and Derna.

In 1920 (25 October) the Italian government recognized Sheikh Sidi Idris the hereditary head of the nomadic Senussi, with wide authority in Kufra and other oases, as Emir of Cyrenaica, a new title extended by the British at the close of World War I. The emir would eventually become king of the free Libyan state.

[edit] Mussolini and Libya

Fighting intensified after the accession to power in Italy of the dictator Benito Mussolini. Idris fled to Egypt in 1922. From 1922 to 1928, Italian forces under Gen. Badoglio waged a punitive pacification campaign. Badoglio's successor in the field, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, accepted the commission from Mussolini on the condition that he was allowed to crush Libyan resistance unencumbered by the restraints of either Italian or international law. Mussolini reportedly agreed immediately and Graziani intensified the oppression. The Libyans continued to defend themselves, with the strongest voices of dissent coming from Cyrenaica. Omar Mukhtar, a Senussi sheikh, became the leader of the uprising.

After a much disputed truce on 3 January 1928, the Italian policy in Libya reached new depths of brutality. A barbed wire fence was built from the Mediterranean to the oasis of Al-Jaghbub to sever lines critical to the resistance. Soon afterwards, the colonial administration began the wholesale deportation of the people of the Jebel Akhdar to deny the rebels the support of the local population. The forced migration of more than 100,000 people ended in concentration camps in Suluq and Al-'Aghela where tens of thousands died in squalid conditions. It's estimated that the number of Libyans who died - killed either through combat or starvation and disease - is at a minimum of 80,000 or even up to half of the Cyrenaican population. After Al-Mukhtar's capture September 15, 1931 and his execution in Benghazi, the resistance petered out. Limited resistance to the Italian occupation crystallized round the person of Sheik Idris, the Emir of Cyrenaica.

In March 1937 Mussolini made a widely canvassed state visit to Libya, where he opened a new military highway running the entire length of the colony. Cynically, he had himself declared protector of Islam and was presented with a symbolic sword. Mussolini's publicized encouragement of the Arabic nationalist movement suited his wider policies of confronting Britain and France. He also sought to fully colonise Libya, introducing 30,000 Italian settlers which brought their numbers to more than 100,000. These settlers were shipped primarily to Sahel al-Jefara in Tripolitania and the Jebel Akhdar in Cyrenaica, and given land from which the indigenous inhabitants had been forcibly removed.

In 13 September-15 1940, Mussolini's highway sped the invasion of Egypt by Italian forces stationed in Libya. Counterattacks of British Allied forces from Egypt, commanded by Wavell and their successful two-month campaign (Tobruk, Bengasi, El Argheila), and the counteroffensives under Rommel, 1940-43, are a classic part of the wider history of World War II. In November 1942 the Allied forces retook Cyrenaica; by February the last German and Italian soldiers were driven from Libya. In the early post-war period, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica remained under British administration, while the French controlled Fezzan. After almost three decades of Italian occupation, a quarter of Libya's population had died.

In 1944, Idris returned from exile in Cairo but declined to resume permanent residence in Cyrenaica until the removal in 1947 of some aspects of foreign control. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty with the Allies, Italy relinquished all claims to Libya. In July 1999 the Italian government offered a formal apology to Libya and it is reported that Italy agreed to pay USD $260 million as compensation for the occupation^{[citation needed]}.