Quarta Sponda ("Fourth Shore" in Italian) was the name given to the Libyan coast as the fourth shore of Greater Italia. The other three shores were the Tyrrenian, Adriatic and Ionian seas. In November 1942 was included even Tunisia in this "Fourth Shore".
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The Fourth Shore, in Italian Quarta Sponda, was the name created by Benito Mussolini to refer to the Mediterranean shore of coastal colonial Italian Libya and WW II Italian Tunisia in the fascist era Kingdom of Italy, during the late Italian Colonial Empire period of Libya and the Maghreb. In 1939 Mussolini called "Quarta Sponda" only coastal Libya (where most of the Italians of Libya lived), excluding the Libyan internal areas of Fezzan (included in the colonial Italian empire, as Territorio Sahara Libico). In his requests for Tunisia that started to be done after 1938, he claimed that even Tunisia should be Italian and be part of the Italian "Quarta Sponda". And after the Italian occupation of Tunisia in november 1942, he boasted of the enlargement of his "Fourth Shore" (with the inclusion of Tunisia).
The term "Fourth Shore" derives from the geography of Italy being a long and narrow peninsula jutting into the Mediterranean with two principle shorelines, the First Shore on the east along the Adriatic Sea and the Second Shore on the west along the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Adriatic Sea's opposite southern Balkans shore, with Dalmatia, Montenegro, and Albania, was planned for Italian expansion as the Third Shore, with Libya on the Mediterranean Sea becoming the fourth. [1] Thus the Fourth Shore was the southern part of Greater Italy, an early 1940s Fascist project of enlarging Italy's national borders around the Italian Mare Nostrum.
After the Italian Empire conquest of Ottoman Libya in the 1911-1912 Italo-Turkish War, much of the early colonial period had Italy waging a war of subjugation against Libya's population. Ottoman Turkey surrendered its control of Libya in the 1912 Treaty of Lausanne, but fierce resistance to the Italians continued from the Senussi political-religious order, a strongly nationalistic group of Sunni Muslims. This group, first under the leadership of Omar Al Mukhtar and centered in the Jebel Akhdar Mountains of Cyrenaica, lead the Libyan resistance movement against Italian settlement in Libya. Italian forces under the Generals Pietro Badoglio and Rodolfo Graziani waged punitive pacification campaigns which turned into brutal and bloody acts of repression. Resistance leaders were executed or escaped into exile. The forced migration of more than 100,000 Cyrenaican people ended in Italian concentration camps. After nearly two decades Italy predominated.
Afterwards Libya was predominantly 'Italianized,' and many Italian colonists moved there to populate Italian North Africa. The Italians in Libya numbered 108,419 at the time of the 1939 census (12.37% of the total population). They were concentrated on the Mediterranean coast around the city of Tripoli (constituting 37% of the city's population) and Benghazi (31% of the city's population). Libya was made an integral part of Italy in 1939 and the local population were granted a form of Italian citizenship. Tunisia was conquered by Italy in November 1942 and was added to the Fourth Shore - Quarta Sponda - because of the large community of Tunisian Italians living there.
During less than thirty years (1912–1940) in Libya the Kingdom of Italy, as Italian North Africa (1912–1934) and Italian Libya (1934–1940) - Fourth Shore of Greater Italia, developed the cities and countryside. They built huge public works, such as new town districts with streets and buildings, modern ports, the Italian Libya Railways, and long highways. The Libyan economy and trade flourished, similar to that during the ancient Roman empire colony era. Italian farmers cultivated lands that had returned to being native desert for many centuries. Even archeology flourished, with ancient city of Leptis Magna rediscovered and used as a symbol of the Italian right to recolonize the region. Libya was considered the new "America" for Italian emigrants of the 1930s.
In 1938 the governor, Italo Balbo (1934-1940), brought 20,000 Italian farmers to colonize Italian Libya, and 26 new villages were founded for them, mainly in Italian Cyrenaica. The 22,000 Libyan Jews were allowed to integrate without problems in the society of the Fourth Shore. However after the summer of 1941, with the arrival of the German Nazi Afrika Korps, they started to be moved into temporary internment camps within Italian Libya under Nazi SS control).
Mussolini even wanted to assimilate the Islamic peoples of Libya, whom he called "Muslim Italians", and so in 1939 ten villages were created for Arabs and Berbers: "El Fager" (Alba), "Nahima" (Deliziosa), "Azizia" (Profumata), "Nahiba" (Risorta), "Mansura" (Vittoriosa), "Chadra" (Verde), "Zahara" (Fiorita), "Gedina" (Nuova), "Mamhura" (Fiorente), "El Beida" (La Bianca). All these new villages each had a mosque, a school, a social center with sports facilities and a cinema, and a small hospital.
On January 9, 1939, the colony of Italian Libya was incorporated into metropolitan Italy and thereafter considered an integral part of the Italian state. The French, in 1848, had incorporated French Algeria in this manner. By 1939 the Italians had built 400 kilometres (250 mi) of new railroads and 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) of new roads. The most important and largest highway project was the Via Balbo, an east-west coastal route connecting Tripoli in western Italian Tripolitania to Tobruk in eastern Italian Cyrenaica. Most of these projects and achievements were completed between 1934 and 1940 when Italo Balbo was governor of Italian Libya, as it became the Fourth Shore. [2]
"...Once pacification had been accomplished, fascist Italy endeavored to convert Libya into an Italian province to be referred to popularly as Italy's Fourth Shore. In 1934 Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were divided into four provinces—Tripoli, Misratah, Benghazi, and Darnah—which were formally linked as a single colony known as Libya, thus officially resurrecting the name that Diocletian had applied nearly 1,500 years earlier. Fezzan, designated as South Tripolitania, remained a military territory. A governor general, called the first consul after 1937, was in overall direction of the colony, assisted by the General Consultative Council, on which Arabs were represented. Traditional tribal councils, formerly sanctioned by the Italian administration, were abolished, and all local officials were thereafter appointed by the governor general. Administrative posts at all levels were held by Italians. An accord with Britain and Egypt obtained the transfer of a corner of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, known as the Sarra Triangle, to Italian control in 1934. The next year, a French-Italian agreement was negotiated that relocated the 1,000-kilometer border between Libya and Chad southward about 100 kilometers across the Aouzou Strip, but this territorial concession to Italy was never ratified by the French legislature. In 1939 Libya was incorporated into metropolitan Italy. During the 1930s, impressive strides were made in improving the country's economic and transportation infrastructure. Italy invested capital and technology in public works projects, extension and modernization of cities, highway and railroad construction, expanded port facilities, and irrigation, but these measures were introduced to benefit the Italian-controlled modern sector of the economy. Italian development policy after World War I had called for capital-intensive "economic colonization" intended to promote the maximum exploitation of the resources available. One of the initial Italian objectives in Libya, however, had been the relief of overpopulation and unemployment in Italy through emigration to the undeveloped colony. With security established, systematic "demographic colonization" was encouraged by Mussolini's government. A project initiated by Libya's governor, Italo Balbo, brought the first 20,000 settlers – the ventimila – to Libya in a single convoy in October 1938. More settlers followed in 1939, and by 1940 there were approximately 110,000 Italians in Libya, constituting about 12 percent of the total population. Plans envisioned an Italian colony of 500,000 settlers by the 1960s. Libya's best land was allocated to the settlers to be brought under productive cultivation, primarily in olive groves. Settlement was directed by a state corporation, the Libyan Colonization Society, which undertook land reclamation and the building of model villages and offered a grubstake and credit facilities to the settlers it had sponsored. The Italians made modern medical care available for the first time in Libya, improved sanitary conditions in the towns, and undertook to replenish the herds and flocks that had been depleted during the war. But, although Mussolini liked to refer to the Libyans as "Muslim Italians," little more was accomplished that directly improved the living standards of the Arab population."
In 1941, the year after 'Fourth Shore' Libya was incorporated into metropolitan Italy, the war started between Italy and the British Empire. The Allies Western Desert Campaigns against the Axis powers in the North African Campaign of World War II left Libya under British and French control. The final defeat of Kingdom of Italy in World War II was followed by the expulsion of all the Italians from Libya.[3]
All the Italian colonization projects ceased after the Italian defeat. Libya, in the late 1940s, experienced the beginning of the worldwide process of decolonization, that characterized the colonies of Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. Only a few hundred Italians have been allowed to return to Libya in the 2000s.
In the French Protectorate of Tunisia a numerous community of Italian Tunisians had a critical economic and social weight in many fields of the social life of the country since the first half of the 19th century. During the 1920s, initially Italian Fascism promoted only the defense of the national and social rights of the Italians in French Tunisia against the attempts at amalgamation made by France. [4] Mussolini opened some Italian banks in Tunisia such as the Banca Siciliana, Italian newspapers such as L'Unione, and some Italian theaters, cinemas, schools (primary and secondary), and health assistance organizations and hospitals.
In the 1926 census of French Tunisia there were 173,281 Europeans, of which 89,216 were Italians, 71,020 French and 8,396 Maltese.[5] Regarding this relative majority, Laura Davi wrote in his 1936 Memoires italiennes en Tunisie that "Tunisia is an Italian colony administered by French managers" ( "La Tunisia è una colonia italiana amministrata da funzionari francesi" ).
However in the late 1930s the ideals of Italian irredentism (Italia irredenta), the unification of all ethnically Italian peoples, started to appear amongst the Tunisian Italians. As a consequence, mainly after 1938, Fascism promoted a moderate form of Italian irredentism between the Italians of Tunisia - based on their right to remain Italians.[6] The Fascist party of Tunisia actively recruited volunteers for wars in Spain, Ethiopia, and others. They also began promoting the idea of the Fourth Shore (Quarta Sponda) with a view to legitimising the wresting of Tunisia from French control.
The March of Time, a documentary radio and companion newsreel series by Time Magazine, reported in 1939:
"...With 1 million trained soldiers and its powerful navy, Italy is in a position to execute its plan for Mediterranean conquest. Of all Mediterranean plums, none is so tempting to land-hungry Italy as France's North African protectorate — Tunisia. For nearly 60 years, Tunisia was reasonably contented. The country is fertile — a major producer of olive oil and fertilizer, it may also have oil. Tunisia has strategic importance in a major Mediterranean war and could make Rome again master of this sea. The French employ a Muslim figurehead, who, in return for his keep, is supposed to ensure that the Muslim population is content. The fascist imperial state of Italy has sent advance men sent into Tunisia, so that there are more Italians in French Tunisia than in all African colonies. Well supplied with fascist funds, Italy's consuls and their agents have long been busy systematically undermining French influence and authority. Italian banks are generous to Italian colonists, Italians have their own schools loyal to the fascist state of Italy, and many Tunisian newspapers are subsidized by Italy. Professional agitators are actively encouraging trouble, magnifying grievances, imaginary or real. Radio programs tell Muslims that Mussolini alone is their protector. Membership in the Fascist Party is all but compulsory for every Italian male in Tunisia, and refusing to join means virtual banishment. Granted free speech and free assembly by French law, fascist leaders in Tunisia have become loud and aggressive in demanding special privileges for Italians, at the same time denouncing the French government, which tolerates their activities. Italy is making buildings that are easily convertible to military use, and building up the civil population to support a mass takeover....." [7]
With the fall of France to the Axis in 1940, and after Italy's ill-fated South of France invasion, Mussolini demanded Tunisia, along with Djibouti, Corsica and Nice from France.[8] However it wasn't until November 1942 that Italian troops seized Tunisia, with German Field Marshal Rommel's Afrika Korps troop support, from the French Vichy regime colonial administrators. Tunisia was added administratively to the existing northern Italian Libya Fourth Shore, in Mussolini's last attempt to accomplish the fascist project of Greater Italy.
Some Tunisian Italians did join the Italian Fascist Army. In May 1943 the Allies victorious Tunisia Campaign (1942—1943), part the Western Desert Campaign, regained all the Tunisian territory for France. The French colonial authorities then closed all Italian schools and newspapers. [9] After the Tunisia Campaign victory the resident Italians with their possible Fascist-Axis loyalties were under surveillance and 'harassment' by the French. That started the dissipation of the Tunisian Italian community. The disappearance was escalated during the Tunisian independence movement (1952—1956) from France. [10]
In the 1946 census the Italians in French Tunisia numbered 84,935, in 1959 there were 51,702, and in 1969 less than 10,000 remained in independent Tunisia. In 2005 there were only 900 Tunisian Italian residents, mainly concentrated in the Tunis metropolitan area. The Italian Embassy in Tunis also reported another 2,000 Italians had temporary resident visas, to work as professionals and technicians for Italian companies in various parts of Tunisia.
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