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Who colonized Libya?

North Africa — the powers that ruled Libya, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Libya?

Italy, which invaded in 1911 and used concentration camps in Cyrenaica that killed a large share of the population before independence on 24 December 1951.

Italy's pacification of Cyrenaica between 1929 and 1933 emptied the interior into desert camps and destroyed the pastoral economy along with much of the population.

Reference

Who ruled Libya, and when

1551–1911
Ottoman provinces
1911–1943
Italian Libya
1943–1951
British and French administration

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Italy, Ottoman Empire (previously)
Independence
24 December 1951
Camps
Around 100,000 people interned; tens of thousands died
Population loss
Cyrenaica's population is estimated to have fallen by a third to a half
Settlers
Italy planned mass settlement of Italian farmers in the 1930s

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1911

    Italy invades Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.

  2. 1923–32

    Pacification campaign against Senussi resistance.

  3. 1929–33

    Concentration camps in Cyrenaica.

  4. 1931

    Omar Mukhtar captured and hanged.

  5. 1951

    Independence.

Context

What the record shows

Italy acknowledged the colonial period in a 2008 treaty that promised investment in compensation, an agreement suspended after 2011.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Libya?
Italy, from the 1911 invasion until 1943, followed by British and French administration until independence in 1951.
What happened in the Cyrenaica camps?
Between 1929 and 1933 Italian forces interned around 100,000 people to cut off support for the Senussi resistance; tens of thousands died from starvation and disease.
When did Libya become independent?
24 December 1951.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Libya

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.