By the early twentieth century the overextended Ottoman Empire was disintegrating, and all of Africa—except tiny Liberia in the west, the ancient Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, and Libya— had fallen under European rule. After Italy, a relative newcomer to imperialism, failed to conquer Ethiopia during the 1890's, it turned its gaze across the Mediterranean Sea to Libya. Anxious to turn Italy away from supporting Germany, France encouraged an Italian plan to invade Libya in 1911. However, the Italian invasion was met by stiff resistance in Tripolitania and guerrilla warfare in Fezzan.
In 1916, at the height of World War I, an agreement was reached granting Italian control of Libya's cities, and local autonomy in the countryside. However, any form of Italian rule in Libya was opposed by the Sanusi and a guerrilla force of several thousand led by Omar Mukhtar. To a lesser degree, resistance was also led by King Idris al-Sanusi, the former Turkish emir of Cyrenaica.
By 1930 Italy was under Mussolini's Fascist rule. It decided to take control of all of Libya by using modern military equipment, terror tactics, and a large invading force under General Rodolfo Graziani. Libyan resistance was brutally crushed. In September, 1931, Omar Mukhtar's forces were defeated. After a mock trial, Mukhtar was hanged in front of 20,000 Libyan prisoners at Soluk, gaining immortality as a national hero. (Actor Anthony Quinn played Mukhtar in Lion of the Desert, a 1981 film financed by the Libyan government.)
Italian subjugation of Libya was complete by 1932. Tens of thousands of Italian settlers were transported to Libya to work the best farmlands. The Bedouins were driven from their grazing grounds, and Sanusi lodges were closed. Libyan resistance was met with mass executions. Although the Italian reign of terror lasted only ten years, it became permanently etched in the national memory.
Adding to the trauma, Libya became a major World War II battleground on which Italian and German forces fought the Allies. Between 1930 and 1943 Libya appears to have lost half its population, directly through repression and warfare, and indirectly to
Starvation. In 1943 Fezzan came under French control, and the remainder of Libya was placed under temporary British rule.
World History
