With a POD of 1911, could Italy possibly have held Libya to this day, and possibly assimilated most of Libya?
Remaining neutral in WW2. 'Tis all it really takes.
Wouldn't they have run into the problem of the UN's decolonisation anyway though?
Doubt it. Libya, at worst for Italy, would become their Algeria.
That didn't really work out so well for France over the long term though.
That didn't really work out so well for France over the long term though.
Well big difference between Lybia and Algeria will be that italians make the majority of the population at least on the coastal zone. Mussolini (and the goverment before him) always envisioned Lybia as an outlet for excessive population so greatly encouraged the migration of people here...and after the pacification campaign there are a lot less arab there, lot less.
Fair enough I hadn't taken that into account. I wonder how much of an impact it would have on Italy.
For it to work in the long run, Italian immigrants would have to flood the country and become 80 percent of the population by the end of World War Two. But the Italian leaders would have to become aware early on, like in the early 1920s, of the vast oil wealth--that would be the only incentive that would cause them to focus on this and allocate the vast financial and other resources necessary. Giving the limited oil drilling technology at the time, I'm not sure how they would develop such awareness of the region's potential.
Incorporating Libya into Italy permanently would mean deferring dreams of empire elsewhere, and not allying with Hitler in World War Two. But if Italy succeeded in building this greater Italy, it would be a co-equal of Britain, France and Germany in post-war Europe and might even rank number one in standard of living.
As to the Libyan Arabs and Berbers, Italy would have three choices: either extreme repression of incessant protests and uprisings, ethnic cleansing, or a policy of making sure, scrupulously, that the Arabs share equally in the oil wealth and other advantages of an industrial society. This would mean a policy that Arabs get good jobs, good education, and good homes, and do not become a servant class for European immigrants. Let the immigrants do their own cooking and clean their own homes, or bring in other Europeans to do this work for them.
The whole idea is pretty utopian. Certainly Mussolini would have been incapable of carrying it to success.
Libya has a very small population - it could easily be out-populated by Italian emmigrants and if control over the population centres is maintained then rebellion is nearly impossible.