The Embarrassment of Libya. History, Memory, and Politics in Contemporary Italy

Abstract

The past weighs on the present. This same past can, however, also constitute an opportunity for the future. If adequately acknowledged, the past can inspire positive action. This seems to be the maxim that we can draw from the history of Italy in the Mediterranean and, in particular, the history of Italy's relationship with Libya. Even the most recent "friendship and cooperation agreement" between Italy and Libya, signed August 30, 2008 by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, affirms this. Italy's colonial past in Libya has been a source of political tensions between the two nations for the past forty years. Now, the question emerges: will the acknowledgement of this past finally help to reconcile the two countries? The history of Italy's presence in Libya (1912-1942) is rather different from the more general history of the European colonial expansion. The Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (referred to by the single name "Libya" in the literary and rhetorical culture of liberal Italy) were among the few African territories that remained outside of the European dominion, together with Ethiopia (which defeated Italy at Adwa in 1896) and rubber-rich Liberia. This did not come about because of the combative traditions of Libyans, nor as a result of the economic power of Libya (which did not yet exist), but because of European imperialist rivalries and the Old Continent's fear of suddenly aggravating the health of the declining Ottoman Empire ("sick man of the East,") and above all, the weaknesses of the only European power that could aspire to its control: liberal Italy. Moreover, as a consequence of Mussolini losing the war, Italy would lose control of Libya by 1943. Democratic and republican post-Fascist Italy attempted in vain to regain control of Libya and, when the possibility of controlling Tripolitania alone materialized, was even prepared to renounce the unification of Libya's territory, which had been a great source of nationalist pride. By then, however, the colonial period of Italy in the Mediterranean had passed, and Rome had lost both Benghazi and Tripoli. 1 Thus, the early relationship between Italy and Libya was characterized by the following factors: Libya's prolonged noninvolvement with the colonial European dominion, the colonialist awakening of Italy (the last of the Great Powers), and the brevity of Italy's colonial rule in Libya. It may seem strange, but that thirty-year period, however brief, had its own unique characteristics and had important repercussions for Italian relations with Libya and with the entire Mediterranean. Some decades ago, the historiographic conflict between the old-style colonial history and the young history of Africa coincided with the opposition between those who affirmed that colonialism had transformed the Third World and those who claimed that colonialism had been a mere parenthesis in the history of the "dark continent." Today, postcolonial histories of European expansion seem more interested in understanding how this "parenthesis" transformed Europe itself and Europeans. From this point of view, the Italian presence in Libya had a surprising influence on the people, culture, and politics of Italy.