Fate of Libya if Tunisia is Italian?

Hey Guys,

IOTL the Italians missed out quite heavily on the Scramble for Africa, as France got Tunisia and Italy had to fight the Ottomans for a colony in North Africa - Libya. A part of the reason was the desire to not give Italy that much influence over the Strait of Italy, another was because Italy didn't fight for Tunisia and instead focused on Albania.

Let's say in an ATL the Italians put up a proper attempt to annex Tunisia, and the British support them, realising it'd be better to get on the good side of Italy and try to bring them further away from Germany diplomatically.

What would be the effects on Libya? Would France then be given control over that area of North Africa? Or would it remain Ottoman?
 
Hey Guys,

IOTL the Italians missed out quite heavily on the Scramble for Africa, as France got Tunisia and Italy had to fight the Ottomans for a colony in North Africa - Libya. A part of the reason was the desire to not give Italy that much influence over the Strait of Italy, another was because Italy didn't fight for Tunisia and instead focused on Albania.

Let's say in an ATL the Italians put up a proper attempt to annex Tunisia, and the British support them, realising it'd be better to get on the good side of Italy and try to bring them further away from Germany diplomatically.

What would be the effects on Libya? Would France then be given control over that area of North Africa? Or would it remain Ottoman?

Three points:
1) Italian "focus" on Albania is considerably later than any attempt to annex Tunisia. It really was not an issue until about the same time we first messed into Libya around 1911.
2) Italy will still want Libya and is likely to try getting it as early as possible. However, there might be more willingness to share, say, all or part of Cyrenaica might end up in the Anglo-Egyptian sphere and Fezzan at least partly French.
3) Britain is very difficult to be amenable to support an Italian Tunisia for strategic reasons. London was unhappy with the French taking over, but won't be significantly happier about Italians doing so. The need of a diplomatic counterbalance to Germany was not a big issue for British policy maker at the time.
 
3) Britain is very difficult to be amenable to support an Italian Tunisia for strategic reasons. London was unhappy with the French taking over, but won't be significantly happier about Italians doing so.

If it is obvious that some Euro country will take over Tunisia, and the choice is between France and Italy... Would Britain prefer Italy? Would that preference be strong enough for Britain to act on?
 
If it is obvious that some Euro country will take over Tunisia, and the choice is between France and Italy... Would Britain prefer Italy? Would that preference be strong enough for Britain to act on?

AFAIK, IOTL the British were quite preferring to take over Tunisia themselves, but failing that, when France took over they didn't make that much of a big deal about it. They just took Egypt in response. :cool:
They were moderately opposed to Italy taking over because that would give Italy a stranglehold in the middle of the Med that would potentially nullify the strategic value of having Malta, while a French takeover, although they were unhappy with it, would not pose that problem so seriously.
However, a diplomatic context where Franco/British rivalry is stronger and London feels letting France into Tunisia would be unacceptable is conceivable.
That would alter world diplomacy quite a bit, but may work for the OP purposes: in such a context, Britain might see Italy as a lesser evil, especially if Italy has a history of friendliness.
We are talking, however, of a fairly major shift from IOTL's British policy as I understand it. ITTL, Britain is prioritizing strategic containment of French ambitions and possibly committing to stronger continental bonds to do so (the Italian takeover would foster Franco-Italian rivalry like the French one did IOTL, but the Italians would need British support anyway so they'll turn to Britain, not Germany. By the way, Bismarck was actaually pretty happy with France focusing on colonies and stuff in places that weren't in Lorraine).
And that may backfire, as of course the Italians are not that much of a useful ally if you enemy is France and you can't count on Germany.
 
They did try, but their main concern was keeping the French and the Italians out, not to step in themselves.
In the end, the French were the ones with an army in the vicinity.

When did they try and why were they unsuccessful?
 
When did they try and why were they unsuccessful?
1876-1880 was the period when the countries involved were busy jockeying for influence and control in Tunisia IIRC, as the country was in a deep debt crisis and modernization had sparked internal unrest.
I don't remember the specifics, but it was all about diplomatic chessplaying such as putting your embassy's protegé higher up at court, until the French put the game into a different level putting the boots on the ground. I sorta recall that the Italian and British ambassador did not get along at the time, but don't quote me on that.
 
1876-1880 was the period when the countries involved were busy jockeying for influence and control in Tunisia IIRC, as the country was in a deep debt crisis and modernization had sparked internal unrest.
I don't remember the specifics, but it was all about diplomatic chessplaying such as putting your embassy's protegé higher up at court, until the French put the game into a different level putting the boots on the ground. I sorta recall that the Italian and British ambassador did not get along at the time, but don't quote me on that.

Might have been interesting to have a three-sided war in 1876 or so involving Britain, France, and Italy, especially if it has butterflies which keep those powers disengaged from the Bulgarian Crisis.
 

katchen

Banned
If the Italians had managed to put boots on the ground in Tunisia in the late 1870s, it is likely that they would have settled it with enough Italians to make up a majority of the Tunisian population. And that marginalized Muslim Tunisians would have settled in Italy, giving Italy a persistent Muslim minority. The same might well have occurred in Libya. And if Italy followed up Tunisia with an early on settlement of Libya (1880s), I think that there's an excellent chance that this TL would have seen Italian expansion south to Agadez, Bilma, Chad and perhaps the Ubangi and the Congo Rivers by rail. And an Italian railroad across the Sahara would have sparked French railroads across the Sahara as well, leading to early migration of sub-Saharan African people to the Mahgreb and very likely to metropolitan Italy and France, further changing the demographics of both nations out of recognition from OTL by 2014 while giving both nations increasing rather than stagnant populations and economies and thus radically changing the relationship between France and Italy and other European nations, particularly Germany and thus the history of Europe in the 20th Century.
 
If the Italians had managed to put boots on the ground in Tunisia in the late 1870s, it is likely that they would have settled it with enough Italians to make up a majority of the Tunisian population. And that marginalized Muslim Tunisians would have settled in Italy, giving Italy a persistent Muslim minority. The same might well have occurred in Libya. And if Italy followed up Tunisia with an early on settlement of Libya (1880s), I think that there's an excellent chance that this TL would have seen Italian expansion south to Agadez, Bilma, Chad and perhaps the Ubangi and the Congo Rivers by rail. And an Italian railroad across the Sahara would have sparked French railroads across the Sahara as well, leading to early migration of sub-Saharan African people to the Mahgreb and very likely to metropolitan Italy and France, further changing the demographics of both nations out of recognition from OTL by 2014 while giving both nations increasing rather than stagnant populations and economies and thus radically changing the relationship between France and Italy and other European nations, particularly Germany and thus the history of Europe in the 20th Century.

I don't think that Italy had the political, monetary and industrial capacity to express that sort of power projection, although some people were talking about such things a couple decades later.
 
Might have been interesting to have a three-sided war in 1876 or so involving Britain, France, and Italy, especially if it has butterflies which keep those powers disengaged from the Bulgarian Crisis.

Unlikely without a prior POD.
Britain did not want to commit. Italy had no appetite for a European war (we were actually pretty broke at the time).
 
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