The Italian Colonization of Libya: 1911 to 1940

Abstract

On September 28, 1911, the guns of Italian warships began to bombard the coast of Tripolitania, thus commencing the Turco-Italian War. This was Italy's first major effort to expand its colonial empire since the humiliating defeat at Adowa in 1896. From the modern perspective, it is hard to see what could have drawn the Italians to Libya unless they knew of its vast oil resources. This, in fact, was definitely not the case since Libya's oil deposits were not discovered until after the Second World War. Ostensibly, Italy's purpose in obtaining the deserts of Libya was to make them into an agricultural "promised land" for Italy's excess peasant population so that they would not have to emigrate to other countries. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which the Italians seriously tried to develop Libya into a rural paradise under both the Liberal and the Fascist regimes and to compare and contrast Liberal and Fascist policies toward the Libyan colony.