초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Recently, some scholars shed new light on the Italian colonialism in Libya against the general amnesia surrounding Italy’s colonial history. Based on these researches, this article approaches Italian conquest and colonization in Libya. Interesting in Italian colonialism is the phase of “demographic colonization” of which the focus was the emigration of domestic overpopulation, in particular, in the South. Libya was seen as an ideal theatre for the Italian settlement after the failure in East Africa in the late nineteenth century. Liberal Italy began the conquest of Libya, but did not seize the actual control of this country. Italian liberals engaged themselves to re-conquest Libya, but it were the fascists who completed the riconquista in a way that was unprecedentedly brutal. Certainly, Italian colonial violence and oppression, which ranged from old-fashioned savageries to industrial killing methods, remind us of the totalitarian nature of the Italian fascist state. In particular, Italian practices of deportation and internment in concentration camps committed over an entire population in order to stop anticolonial resistance must be taken seriously. More important is the fact that those practices in colonies had been rehearsed in metropole since the Italian unification. Surely,this encourages us to reconsider issues of continuity and rupture between colony and metropole as well as liberal Italy and fascist Italy. Italian fascists tried to introduce modern administration to conquered Libya, but failed to establish the effective state apparatuses only leaving behind the traditional methods. Yet, the Fascists envisioned an ambitious plan to make colonia di Libia an integral part of Mare Nostrum, considering Libya as Italy’s “fourth shore.” The Fascists thus started to build the “coastal highway (strada litoranea)” running from the Tunisian border to the frontier with Egypt and the “Marble Arch (Arco dei Fileni).” Furthermore,the Fascists excised a plan, the “twenty thousand (ventimila),” in which twenty thousand colonists were transported to Libya in a single convoy. More interestingly, opening the highway and arch in 1937, fascist dictator Mussolini was presented with the “Sword of Islam” in an extraordinary ceremony. Mussolini’s “Sword of Islam”implied that fascist Italy would offer Muslims a true “Roman”protection against the other Western powers. And this meant an end to the hopes of eventual cooperation among Italy, Britain and France in the Mediterranean. There after, in the North African Campaign of 1940-43, Tripoli was occupied by the Allied and the Italian settlements were fully destroyed. The Fascists could not protect themselves, let alone Muslims. In this context, it can be illustrated that fascist colonialism revealed the structural weakness behind the brutal force and the traditional methods under the modern projects. This explains why the resistances against Italian rule were so strong, and Libyan memories of colonialism were so persistent.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Italy, Libya, Colonization, Colonialism, Imperialism, Fascism
