Italian Libya

Avoiding World War 2 might be enough. Libya had a pretty small population and Italy planned to settle large numbers of Italian people there. By the start of WWII Italians were already 12% of the population. By the 1960s Italy planned to have half a million settlers in Libya. If enough Italians settled there before the decolonization era got going then they could form something like a third of the population. It would be pretty tough for the Libyans to win independence in those circumstances.
 
Avoiding World War 2 might be enough. Libya had a pretty small population and Italy planned to settle large numbers of Italian people there. By the start of WWII Italians were already 12% of the population. By the 1960s Italy planned to have half a million settlers in Libya. If enough Italians settled there before the decolonization era got going then they could form something like a third of the population. It would be pretty tough for the Libyans to win independence in those circumstances.

Italy had been trying to settle people there for decades and made little progress. That number seems too high, and I'll bet it includes military personnel. Only a few tens of thousands of people could be persuaded to go there. If you are going to emigrate, are you going to go to Libya, or the USA or Argentina? And if you love North Africa, wouldn't you prefer Tunisia or Algeria?
 
Italy had been trying to settle people there for decades and made little progress. That number seems too high, and I'll bet it includes military personnel. Only a few tens of thousands of people could be persuaded to go there. If you are going to emigrate, are you going to go to Libya, or the USA or Argentina? And if you love North Africa, wouldn't you prefer Tunisia or Algeria?

The number gets quoted a lot in discussions of Italian Libya, I think it comes from Italy's own census at the time. I can't vouch for how accurate that is but it is true that during the 30s Italy managed to get tens of thousands of settlers to go there. The half a million figure may not be a realistic goal, I guess my prior post was predicated on Italy's plans for Libya being successful, I don't know if they actually would have been or not
 

Eurofed

Banned
The number gets quoted a lot in discussions of Italian Libya, I think it comes from Italy's own census at the time. I can't vouch for how accurate that is but it is true that during the 30s Italy managed to get tens of thousands of settlers to go there. The half a million figure may not be a realistic goal, I guess my prior post was predicated on Italy's plans for Libya being successful, I don't know if they actually would have been or not

Which 'decades' ? The Libyan insurgency only got quelled in the late 20s-early 30s, and until it was quelled, it was hardly an environment apt to settle large numbers of colonists.
 

Markus

Banned
If Italy stays out of the war they could offer displaced persons to settle in Libya after the war. Well, they could even start while the war is still going on. Libya might not be as attractive as other places but there weren´t many alternatives during the war and vast numbers of DP afterwards. And after the discovery of oil in 1956 it would be a moot point anyway.

Another thing we need to remember. While allied propaganda nothing but ridiculed the Italians, they could be as brutal and ruthless as the Germans. They killed 200,000 to 400,000 in Ethiopia and over 100,000 on the Balkans.
 
I would have thought the settlements for Italians would largely have been on the coast. Therefore there ought to be the potential to tie these into Italy itself, as extensions of the mother country. Expand the coastal cities over time and you expand the percentage of Italians in the country since almost everybody is living in the coastal areas.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
The Libyan coast would be pretty easy to have a clear Italian majority if you like mixing ethnic cleansing of Berbers and Arabs with some forced migration of Italians to populate the now empty cities that you depopulated of your native populace.
 
Also, cultural assimilation could be a trump card here.
Italy is not so keen on ethnic-racial policy as Germany is, and the whole libyan coastline is littered of Roman ruins.
Add investments to build schools and hospitals, and you could have born libyan willingly turning in model italian citizens
(assuming this expression is not a contradiction in itself :D )
 
Also, cultural assimilation could be a trump card here.
That is pretty much the only chance. Avoid the generalized massacres and take over the Ottoman Provencial administration then they _might_ end up establishing the place as Sicily south (the country would be effectivly bilingual but....)

HTG
 
Oh yeah, there were a lot of Italians there and if Italy continued to hold Libya, the percentage would increase dramatically. And when the Italians werent killing the locals, they actually made improvements in infrastructure to the country. As mail suggested, a continuation of this policy would greatly help. Add this to largescale Italian colonisation and you have a clear road to Italian Libya.
 
Italy had been trying to settle people there for decades and made little progress. That number seems too high, and I'll bet it includes military personnel. Only a few tens of thousands of people could be persuaded to go there. If you are going to emigrate, are you going to go to Libya, or the USA or Argentina? And if you love North Africa, wouldn't you prefer Tunisia or Algeria?


It's not necessarily true that Italy had made big attempts to settle Italians in Libya until 1938. Only after Italo Balbo became Governor-General (and later First Consul) in 1934 did the Italian government make serious attempts at demographic colonization. The biggest push was with the construction of 26 agricultural villages in the late 1930s. In 1938 the 20,000 Italians arrived in Libya to be settled and in 1939 another 18,000 joined them in these villages. The stated goal of the Italian government was to have 100,000 agricultural settlers by 1942 and 500,000 Italian settlers in the agricultural settlements by 1960.

As for emigrating to the Americas, it wasn't as easy at it had been before World War I. In 1924 the U.S. capped annual Italian immigration with a quota of 3,845 people per year, so even if an Italian wanted to go to the U.S. it was very hard to get in. Keep in mind these quotas weren't abolished until 1965.

Brazil too imposed quotas in 1933 that capped the entrance of non-Portuguese immigrants. These would remain in effect until the 1980s. Because of this Brazil took in a mere 106,360 Italians in the 1945-1959 period.

In Tunisia the Italians made up the majority of the European population, however the French government was wary of Fascist Italy's meddling in the protectorate and limited the entry of new Italian immigrants whilst encouraging the naturalization of existing Italian immigrants. Algeria hadn't had much European immigration after World War I and by 1954 some 78% of the Europeans there were born in the territory.

Argentina took in Italian immigrants, however the worsening economic conditions in that country in the 1950s meant that few Italians were interested in emigrating there.

In contrast to the aforementioned destinations, Libya was considered part of Italy so moving there did not mean having to renounce Italian citizenship or culture. For landless peasants from Southern Italy, being offered free passage to a new house with 30 hectares of land wasn't unappealing. Going to Libya or Italian East Africa as a settler was simply a matter of applying to the government.

Below I've included a link to a 1938 Italian video showing the first of the 20,000 settlers disembarking in Benghazi and being brought to the new villages in trucks. As it mentions in the video, the land being cultivated receives more rainfall than parts of Sicily or Puglia and is fertile.

http://www.archivioluce.com/archivi...atograficoCINEGIORNALI&findIt=false&section=/
 

Cook

Banned
... and the whole libyan coastline is littered of Roman ruins.

That was Mussolini’s argument in favour of Fascist expansion.

The Libyan coastline is also littered with Phoenician, Carthagean, Greek, and Ottoman ruins; all totally irrelevant.
 
That was Mussolini’s argument in favour of Fascist expansion.

The Libyan coastline is also littered with Phoenician, Carthagean, Greek, and Ottoman ruins; all totally irrelevant.

It could be irrelevant to some, however to the Italian government it was a way of legitimising their claim to Libya in the eyes of the Italian people and the settlers themselves. The Fascist government in particular saw itself as the heirs to the Roman Empire and the Italian archaelogists were given the task of unearthing any Roman ruins they could. The ruins of Sabratha and Leptis Magna were restored and showcased as physical symbols of Italy's presence in North Africa. Many of the agricultural settlements of the 1930s were built based on the locations of ancient Roman wells and irrigation systems that had been discovered.
 
It's not necessarily true that Italy had made big attempts to settle Italians in Libya until 1938. Only after Italo Balbo became Governor-General (and later First Consul) in 1934 did the Italian government make serious attempts at demographic colonization. The biggest push was with the construction of 26 agricultural villages in the late 1930s. In 1938 the 20,000 Italians arrived in Libya to be settled and in 1939 another 18,000 joined them in these villages. The stated goal of the Italian government was to have 100,000 agricultural settlers by 1942 and 500,000 Italian settlers in the agricultural settlements by 1960.

Italy did its best to encourage emigration to Libya - that was the whole point of seizing it - to "solve the mezzogiorno problem". It wasn't until the "native problem" was solved and the government was of a type to offer "stronger inducements" to settlers that they could get anyone to go there.

As for emigrating to the Americas, it wasn't as easy at it had been before World War I. In 1924 the U.S. capped annual Italian immigration with a quota of 3,845 people per year, so even if an Italian wanted to go to the U.S. it was very hard to get in. Keep in mind these quotas weren't abolished until 1965.

Brazil too imposed quotas in 1933 that capped the entrance of non-Portuguese immigrants. These would remain in effect until the 1980s. Because of this Brazil took in a mere 106,360 Italians in the 1945-1959 period.

Italians poured into the USA despite the quotas. Brazil took in a "mere" 106K, but 1.5M moved to Argentina.

In Tunisia the Italians made up the majority of the European population, however the French government was wary of Fascist Italy's meddling in the protectorate and limited the entry of new Italian immigrants whilst encouraging the naturalization of existing Italian immigrants. Algeria hadn't had much European immigration after World War I and by 1954 some 78% of the Europeans there were born in the territory.

You're taking for granted continued Fascist rule in Italy.

Argentina took in Italian immigrants, however the worsening economic conditions in that country in the 1950s meant that few Italians were interested in emigrating there.

Few? Few Italians were interested in emigrating anywhere, let alone Libya.

In contrast to the aforementioned destinations, Libya was considered part of Italy so moving there did not mean having to renounce Italian citizenship or culture. For landless peasants from Southern Italy, being offered free passage to a new house with 30 hectares of land wasn't unappealing. Going to Libya or Italian East Africa as a settler was simply a matter of applying to the government.

Below I've included a link to a 1938 Italian video showing the first of the 20,000 settlers disembarking in Benghazi and being brought to the new villages in trucks. As it mentions in the video, the land being cultivated receives more rainfall than parts of Sicily or Puglia and is fertile.

http://www.archivioluce.com/archivi...atograficoCINEGIORNALI&findIt=false&section=/

Yes, I've seen the propaganda film. It's incorrect. I'm extremely familiar with the agricultural potential of Libya. It's not more fertile than Sicily or Puglia, it's A FREAKIN' DESERT! There are a few oases and costal strips, but they can't accommodate 500,000 agriculturalists, and there's no way Italians are going to go somewhere where they have to adapt to an entirely different way of life in a harsh environment over a) staying home or b) moving somewhere nicer than Italy.

Let's face it, the Italian conquest of Libya was loopy and a colossal waste of money and manpower that could have been better invested at home.
 

Cook

Banned
Few? Few Italians were interested in emigrating anywhere, let alone Libya.

You may want to clarify what you mean by that since the Italian Diaspora didn’t end until the 1960s economic revival and there was a significant surge in the 1940s and 1950s. Granted that a lot of that was to do with leaving behind the ruins of WW2, but a lot was to do with the large population growth and poverty of southern Italy anyway.

Yes, I've seen the propaganda film. It's incorrect. I'm extremely familiar with the agricultural potential of Libya. It's not more fertile than Sicily or Puglia, it's A FREAKIN' DESERT!


Coastal Cyrenaica is not a desert.

Most speculation here seems to have settled on Italy staying out of World War Two, in which case I imagine Tripolitania and coastal Cyrenaica would have developed along the lines of Spanish Morocco. Right up to the moment they discover oil in the late 1950’s and then boom, development surge.
 
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