Civic Development
The Italians in less than thirty years (1911–1940) built huge public works, allowing the Libyan economy to flourish to a level unseen since the time of the Roman Empire. Italian farmers cultivated lands that had been lost to the desert for centuries. Even archaeology flourished. Leptis Magna was rediscovered and viewed as a symbol of the Italian right to colonize the region. Libya was considered the new "America" for Italian emigrants in the Thirties.
The Italian population numbered 108,419 (12.37% of the total population) at the time of the 1939 census, concentrated on the coast around the city of Tripoli (37% of the city's population) and Benghazi (31%). In 1938, Marshal of the Air Force Italo Balbo, the Governor, brought 20,000 Italian farmers to colonize Libya, and 26 new villages were founded by them, mainly in Cyrenaica. The 22,000 Libyan Jews were allowed to integrate without problems in the society of the Fourth Shore (but after summer 1941, with the arrival of the German Afrika Korps, they started to be moved to temporary internment camps in Libya under Nazi SS control).
Mussolini sought to assimilate the Arabs of Libya (whom he called "Muslim Italians") and so in 1939 ten villages were created for Arabs and Berbers: "El Fager" (It. Alba, En. Dawn), "Nahima" (It. Deliziosa, En. Delicious), "Azizia" (It. Profumata, En. Perfumed), "Nahiba" (It. Risorta, En. Risen), "Mansura" (It. Vittoriosa, En. Victorious), "Chadra" (It. Verde, En. Green), "Zahara" (It. Fiorita, En. Blossomed), "Gedina" (It. Nuova, En. New), "Mamhura" (It. Fiorente, En. Flourished), "El Beida" (It. La Bianca, En. White). All these new villages had their mosque, school, social centre (with sport grounds and cinema) and small hospital. This was a reward for the military performance of the Libyan colonial troops: in 1936 Savaris and other Libyan units took part in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and received a "Gold Medal of Honour" for their distinguished performance in battle
On January 9 1939, the colony was incorporated into metropolitan Italy and thereafter considered an integral part of the Italian state. By 1939, the Italians had built 400 km of new railroads and 4,000 km of new roads (the most important and largest was the one from Tripoli to Tobruk). Even during WWII a new road was being built, the Via della Vittoria, and a new Tripoli-Benghazi railway.
All the Italian projects disappeared after the Italian defeat: Libya in the late forties experienced the beginning of the worldwide process of decolonization that characterized colonies of Europe in the Fifties and Sixties.
Read more about this topic: History Of Libya As Italian Colony
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“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)