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Libya: From Colony to Revolution
Since Qaddafi's ousting in 2011, Libya has been beset by instability and conflict. To understand the tumultuous state of the country today, one must look to its past. With great clarity and precision, renowned regional expert Ronald Bruce St John examines Libya's long struggle to establish its political and economic identity amidst the interference of external actors keen to exploit the country's strategic importance.
This authoritative history spans the time of the early Greek settlements, colonization by Mussolini's Italy, Qaddafi's four decades of rule and the internal rivalries that have dominated the country in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the colonel's ousting. Essential reading for those seeking a greater understanding of this complex North African state, Libya: From Colony to Revolution is an insightful history, which is rich in detail and analysis.
This authoritative history spans the time of the early Greek settlements, colonization by Mussolini's Italy, Qaddafi's four decades of rule and the internal rivalries that have dominated the country in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the colonel's ousting. Essential reading for those seeking a greater understanding of this complex North African state, Libya: From Colony to Revolution is an insightful history, which is rich in detail and analysis.
- GenresHistory
377 pages, Paperback
Published December 12, 2017
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October 27, 2019
This book is a good introduction to the history of Libya, with a primary focus – almost two-thirds of the book - on the period since Muammar Qaddafi came to power in 1969. It was first published in 2008, and twice since then, in 2012 and again in 2017, adding two new chapters covering the lead up to the overthrow of Qaddafi in 2011 and the post-Qaddafi era.
The land that is now the country of Libya has a long history. The name first appears in the records of ancient Egypt; Libya was conquered by the Egyptians and later a Libyan dynasty of pharaohs ruled Egypt in turn. The land figured prominently in the ancient Mediterranean world, but after the Libyan dynasty, the name of Libya was little used again until the twentieth century. In the intervening millennia it was the cities and regions and peoples that were referred to –Tripoli, Cyrenaica, Leptis Magna, the Roman province of Africa, Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross when Christ stumbled, Tripolitania, the Berbers.
The Libya of the past four decades has been all about Muammar Qaddafi, pan-Arabism, oil, state-sponsored terrorism and chaos, but the history of Libya is long and rich. Colonised by the Phonecians and the Greeks, who built a series of trading cities along the narrow coastal strip, along with Egypt it became the breadbasket of Rome for several centuries. Echoing the pharaohs of the Libyan dynasty, two Roman emperors were born in the province. These were years of prosperity and progress. The scale of the magnificent ruins of Leptis Magna and other cities of the province suggest large populations. All this ended with the fall of Rome and the invasion of the Vandals. The vast engineering works of the classical period weren’t maintained and couldn’t support the population of the past.
The arrival of Islam brought renewed vigour, but the migration of nomadic Arab tribes from the Arabian peninsula in the eleventh century destroyed the remaining agricultural base of the region and permanently changed the character and settlement patterns of the land. Decline followed. Invaders followed – the Normans, the Ottomans, the Spanish, the Ottomans again and eventually, in 1911, the Italians. For centuries Libya was little more than a series of coastal settlements and oases surrounded by desert and barren land with a narrow, often unsustainable economic base. The discovery of oil changed the prospects of Libya and the newly created United Kingdom of Libya in the postwar period, but the social and political pressures unleashed by the early flow of oil wealth outpaced the government’s ability to deliver services for the people so there was little reaction when a group of junior officers staged a coup and declared an end to the monarchy and the establishment of a revolutionary state in 1969.
The book provides a detailed account and analysis of Qaddafi, his policies, his rule of Libya and reactions at home and abroad. The chapters devoted to the Qaddafi period include sections on economic and social development and foreign policy engagement with other Arab states, Africa, the US and Europe. Qaddafi’s Libya was constantly courting one group of states while rejecting and being rejected as a pariah by others. Radical, socialist, Arabist Libya was very much the creation of Qaddafi, driven by his personal views and his family and tribal values. The coverage of events in the post-Qaddafi period is particularly comprehensive and enabled this reader to make sense of several years of occasional media reporting of the state of affairs in Libya.
Unfortunately, only a mere 50 pages of the book are devoted to the pre-twentieth century, and then another 30 pages to the Italian colonial period (1911-1943). There is some very interesting information in these chapters, but on the whole the treatment is somewhat cursory. It might have been better if the book were simply confined to the Qaddafi and post-Qaddafi periods instead of trying to present a history of Libya.
There are a few other things that detract – the index isn’t comprehensive, the narrative and chronology occasionally jump around and the notes aren’t as extensive as might have been expected. On the other hand, the section on sources and further reading is extensive and detailed.
Definitely worth reading to get an understanding of modern Libya, but if you want a scholarly history of Libya, this is only an introduction.
The land that is now the country of Libya has a long history. The name first appears in the records of ancient Egypt; Libya was conquered by the Egyptians and later a Libyan dynasty of pharaohs ruled Egypt in turn. The land figured prominently in the ancient Mediterranean world, but after the Libyan dynasty, the name of Libya was little used again until the twentieth century. In the intervening millennia it was the cities and regions and peoples that were referred to –Tripoli, Cyrenaica, Leptis Magna, the Roman province of Africa, Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross when Christ stumbled, Tripolitania, the Berbers.
The Libya of the past four decades has been all about Muammar Qaddafi, pan-Arabism, oil, state-sponsored terrorism and chaos, but the history of Libya is long and rich. Colonised by the Phonecians and the Greeks, who built a series of trading cities along the narrow coastal strip, along with Egypt it became the breadbasket of Rome for several centuries. Echoing the pharaohs of the Libyan dynasty, two Roman emperors were born in the province. These were years of prosperity and progress. The scale of the magnificent ruins of Leptis Magna and other cities of the province suggest large populations. All this ended with the fall of Rome and the invasion of the Vandals. The vast engineering works of the classical period weren’t maintained and couldn’t support the population of the past.
The arrival of Islam brought renewed vigour, but the migration of nomadic Arab tribes from the Arabian peninsula in the eleventh century destroyed the remaining agricultural base of the region and permanently changed the character and settlement patterns of the land. Decline followed. Invaders followed – the Normans, the Ottomans, the Spanish, the Ottomans again and eventually, in 1911, the Italians. For centuries Libya was little more than a series of coastal settlements and oases surrounded by desert and barren land with a narrow, often unsustainable economic base. The discovery of oil changed the prospects of Libya and the newly created United Kingdom of Libya in the postwar period, but the social and political pressures unleashed by the early flow of oil wealth outpaced the government’s ability to deliver services for the people so there was little reaction when a group of junior officers staged a coup and declared an end to the monarchy and the establishment of a revolutionary state in 1969.
The book provides a detailed account and analysis of Qaddafi, his policies, his rule of Libya and reactions at home and abroad. The chapters devoted to the Qaddafi period include sections on economic and social development and foreign policy engagement with other Arab states, Africa, the US and Europe. Qaddafi’s Libya was constantly courting one group of states while rejecting and being rejected as a pariah by others. Radical, socialist, Arabist Libya was very much the creation of Qaddafi, driven by his personal views and his family and tribal values. The coverage of events in the post-Qaddafi period is particularly comprehensive and enabled this reader to make sense of several years of occasional media reporting of the state of affairs in Libya.
Unfortunately, only a mere 50 pages of the book are devoted to the pre-twentieth century, and then another 30 pages to the Italian colonial period (1911-1943). There is some very interesting information in these chapters, but on the whole the treatment is somewhat cursory. It might have been better if the book were simply confined to the Qaddafi and post-Qaddafi periods instead of trying to present a history of Libya.
There are a few other things that detract – the index isn’t comprehensive, the narrative and chronology occasionally jump around and the notes aren’t as extensive as might have been expected. On the other hand, the section on sources and further reading is extensive and detailed.
Definitely worth reading to get an understanding of modern Libya, but if you want a scholarly history of Libya, this is only an introduction.
August 15, 2020
A good, though too brief, introduction to Libya's history, with an emphasis on the Qaddafi period and updates covering more current events through early 2017. A few of my takeaways:
1. The influence of the Sanusi Order, a more conservative brand of Sufi Islam, on Libyan history (mostly early modern history). Established in the 1830s/40s, this order became very influential in Libya, especially in Cyrenaica (Libya is composed of three historical regions: the eastern costal region Cyrenaica, the western coastal region Tripolitania, and the southern desert region Fezzan). The Sanusi Order was instrumental in resisting Italian colonialism, and upon independence - between 1951 and Qaddafi's coup in 1969 - Libya was ruled by the head of the order, King Sayyid Mohammad Idris. The book doesn't really cover Sanusi influence on Libya since then, but this would be an interesting topic to study further, especially in relationship to rising Islamist influence in Libya and to Salafist attacks on Sanusi shrines and sites.
2. The crazy visionary politics of Mu'ammar Qaddafi. As one of history's longest serving dictators, Qaddafi was a visionary man who sought to reshape Libyan, regional and international politics according to his ideals. Throughout the decades this resulted in widely different policies, as he transitioned from pan-Arabism to pan-Africanism, and from a state-owned socialist system to a more privatized market system. He also constantly reorganized internal political bodies and local governing systems. Qaddafi sought multiple times to politically unify his country with others in the region, including with Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, as well as through military intervention in Chad. He significantly influenced African events through supporting liberation movements (as well as terrorist groups - also outside of Africa), through sometimes supporting peace meditation efforts including ones conducted after the 1990s African continental war, and through successfully countering Israeli influence in Africa in the 1970s. Depending on which side he had taken in various conflicts, coups, and attempted coups, Qaddafi was both revered and suspect among African heads of state. In 2008, he even invited over 200 African chiefs and notables to crown him "King of Kings." He was selected to be chairman of the African Union in 2009 but was disappointed when he wasn't re-elected to the position, rebuking African leaders in his farewell speech for replacing him and for not pushing harder for a United States of Africa.
Qaddafi's influence across Africa, the Middle East - and even elsewhere in the world (supporting the IRA in Ireland, supporting Muslim rebels in the Philippines, etc.) makes this period (and Qaddafi's personality) such an interesting one to cover, but the book describes major conflicts and events all too briefly, making this book an introduction, a peek into a fascinating era of history, that demands more thorough coverage elsewhere.
3. How hindsight influences historical writing. This book was updated twice - once immediately after the Libyan 2011 revolution, and then again in 2017. Given more recent events the book covers the tribal makeup and dynamics of Libya in its last chapters, introducing what would otherwise have seemed relevant at an earlier stage in the book. With hindsight the influence of this tribal makeup has become more important in a now politically and militarily fragmented country. As history changes historians are always influenced by current events, to some extent or another, when looking back at history. History is contingent, not predictive - but it is explanatory. Historical awareness can help one understand potential futures but doesn't help much in predicting them. It does help in explaining events after the fact.
4. The post-2011 fragmentation of Libya. The author makes a convincing case that nobody "lost" Libya except for the Libyans themselves. Though Western and Middle Eastern actors have some influence it is ultimately Libyan power-makers themselves who are responsible for the fragmentation of their country. I noticed that one of the turning points (not the only one) was the passing of the 2013 Political Isolation Law, which barred a broad category of officials who had served under Qaddafi from holding public office until 2023. The author compares this to Iraq's de-Baathification efforts which deepened the Iraqi insurgency by both stripping the country of technical expertise and by people in the former regime turning against the new order.
In 2012, as an undergraduate student, I interviewed dozens of former child soldiers who had been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Uganda at that time had had generous amnesty laws allowing for fighters in the LRA to return home without fear of prosecution. This act of mercy very clearly helped bring peace and reconciliation to northern Uganda - and made sense given that most LRA fighters, in spite of often committing terrible crimes, had themselves been abducted. My teammate and I found statistically significant evidence that child soldiers were more likely to forgive top LRA leadership than were others - in spite of how they had themselves been used/abused by military commanders to commit atrocities (in some cases being forced to kill their own family members, etc.).
The balance between mercy and justice is never an easy one - there must be justice for the victims, but sometimes the better way is to allow for reconciliation through more mercy and forgiveness. Perhaps the potential for a country to fragment is one factor both arguing for more mercy but potentially also making that mercy more difficult to achieve. I don't want to exaggerate the impact of the Political Isolation Law - Libya would probably have fragmented regardless - but given my experience in Uganda this law stuck out to me. In this case it would have seemed wiser to have not passed the law, or to have passed a much more limited version of the law (covering significant figures) instead.
1. The influence of the Sanusi Order, a more conservative brand of Sufi Islam, on Libyan history (mostly early modern history). Established in the 1830s/40s, this order became very influential in Libya, especially in Cyrenaica (Libya is composed of three historical regions: the eastern costal region Cyrenaica, the western coastal region Tripolitania, and the southern desert region Fezzan). The Sanusi Order was instrumental in resisting Italian colonialism, and upon independence - between 1951 and Qaddafi's coup in 1969 - Libya was ruled by the head of the order, King Sayyid Mohammad Idris. The book doesn't really cover Sanusi influence on Libya since then, but this would be an interesting topic to study further, especially in relationship to rising Islamist influence in Libya and to Salafist attacks on Sanusi shrines and sites.
2. The crazy visionary politics of Mu'ammar Qaddafi. As one of history's longest serving dictators, Qaddafi was a visionary man who sought to reshape Libyan, regional and international politics according to his ideals. Throughout the decades this resulted in widely different policies, as he transitioned from pan-Arabism to pan-Africanism, and from a state-owned socialist system to a more privatized market system. He also constantly reorganized internal political bodies and local governing systems. Qaddafi sought multiple times to politically unify his country with others in the region, including with Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, as well as through military intervention in Chad. He significantly influenced African events through supporting liberation movements (as well as terrorist groups - also outside of Africa), through sometimes supporting peace meditation efforts including ones conducted after the 1990s African continental war, and through successfully countering Israeli influence in Africa in the 1970s. Depending on which side he had taken in various conflicts, coups, and attempted coups, Qaddafi was both revered and suspect among African heads of state. In 2008, he even invited over 200 African chiefs and notables to crown him "King of Kings." He was selected to be chairman of the African Union in 2009 but was disappointed when he wasn't re-elected to the position, rebuking African leaders in his farewell speech for replacing him and for not pushing harder for a United States of Africa.
Qaddafi's influence across Africa, the Middle East - and even elsewhere in the world (supporting the IRA in Ireland, supporting Muslim rebels in the Philippines, etc.) makes this period (and Qaddafi's personality) such an interesting one to cover, but the book describes major conflicts and events all too briefly, making this book an introduction, a peek into a fascinating era of history, that demands more thorough coverage elsewhere.
3. How hindsight influences historical writing. This book was updated twice - once immediately after the Libyan 2011 revolution, and then again in 2017. Given more recent events the book covers the tribal makeup and dynamics of Libya in its last chapters, introducing what would otherwise have seemed relevant at an earlier stage in the book. With hindsight the influence of this tribal makeup has become more important in a now politically and militarily fragmented country. As history changes historians are always influenced by current events, to some extent or another, when looking back at history. History is contingent, not predictive - but it is explanatory. Historical awareness can help one understand potential futures but doesn't help much in predicting them. It does help in explaining events after the fact.
4. The post-2011 fragmentation of Libya. The author makes a convincing case that nobody "lost" Libya except for the Libyans themselves. Though Western and Middle Eastern actors have some influence it is ultimately Libyan power-makers themselves who are responsible for the fragmentation of their country. I noticed that one of the turning points (not the only one) was the passing of the 2013 Political Isolation Law, which barred a broad category of officials who had served under Qaddafi from holding public office until 2023. The author compares this to Iraq's de-Baathification efforts which deepened the Iraqi insurgency by both stripping the country of technical expertise and by people in the former regime turning against the new order.
In 2012, as an undergraduate student, I interviewed dozens of former child soldiers who had been abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Uganda at that time had had generous amnesty laws allowing for fighters in the LRA to return home without fear of prosecution. This act of mercy very clearly helped bring peace and reconciliation to northern Uganda - and made sense given that most LRA fighters, in spite of often committing terrible crimes, had themselves been abducted. My teammate and I found statistically significant evidence that child soldiers were more likely to forgive top LRA leadership than were others - in spite of how they had themselves been used/abused by military commanders to commit atrocities (in some cases being forced to kill their own family members, etc.).
The balance between mercy and justice is never an easy one - there must be justice for the victims, but sometimes the better way is to allow for reconciliation through more mercy and forgiveness. Perhaps the potential for a country to fragment is one factor both arguing for more mercy but potentially also making that mercy more difficult to achieve. I don't want to exaggerate the impact of the Political Isolation Law - Libya would probably have fragmented regardless - but given my experience in Uganda this law stuck out to me. In this case it would have seemed wiser to have not passed the law, or to have passed a much more limited version of the law (covering significant figures) instead.
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