The colonial administration of the liberal era went to great lengths to reach out to Libyan notables, an approach known as the ‘politica dei capi’. This approach culminated in 1919 with the passage of the Libyan Statutes that extended Italian citizenship and afforded a measure of political representation to ‘native’ élites, though identifying who was ‘native’ in the Libyan territories was open to the interpretations of those taking census data, often with little knowledge concerning the ethnicities and identities of peoples in the region (Dumasy 2004–2005, 11–34).
Critics condemned this approach as expensive and ineffectual since it placed individuals with questionable influence on the Italian payroll while limiting direct state control to a few urban centres on the coast. Following Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome, the colonial administration rejected conciliatory approaches and denounced previous treaties with regional élites in favour of military action to increase the territory under direct control of the [Fascist] state.
The use of violence escalated after 1926 when the military campaign known euphemistically as the ‘reconquest’ of the Libyan interior began in earnest, during which Italian forces (mostly composed of Eritrean troops) instituted a reign of terror.3 Assuming the direct complicity of the entire population, they rounded up tens of thousands of civilians and placed them in internment camps in an effort to isolate armed rebel groups.
The capture and execution of the Sanusi military commander Omar al‐Mukhtar in 1931 in the remote oasis of al‐Kufra gave proof to the effectiveness of this wave of military actions (Labanca 2002, 2005, 2012).
Despite this broad shift in the style of colonial rule, one can identify a measure of continuity from the liberal to the fascist era, especially in the period before the ‘reconquest’ began in earnest. The conciliatory approach to colonial rule that characterised the liberal administrations and the willingness to employ violence that characterised the fascist era often coexisted; it seems more useful to think of the Italian approach to colonial rule as shifting along a continuum of violence instead of switching from one mode to the other.
Even while the liberal administrations in the first decade of occupation focused their attentions on the establishment of power‐sharing relationships, they remained prepared for direct military action (Labanca 2012, 99). Even the idea of a ‘reconquest’ emerged before the transition to the Fascist administration under Federzoni’s predecessor as Minister of Colonies, Giovanni Amendola. Likewise, the practices that characterised a liberal style of colonial administration did not end abruptly in the early 1920s.
Colonial governors continued to negotiate with notables even as the military destroyed villages in the Libyan interior, and Mussolini engaged in a public relations campaign in an attempt to deflect international condemnation for the treatment of civilian populations.4
(Emphasis added.)
Events that happened today (September 22):
1882: Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel, Axis field marshal, stained the earth with his existence.
1905: Eugen Sänger, Fascist aerospace engineer, was delivered to the world.
1906: Ilse Koch, Axis war criminal, arrived to worsen life.
1939: The Third Reich held a farewell parade in Brest‐Litovsk.
1941: On the Jewish New Year Day, the SS massacred 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. (Those were the survivors of the previous massacred that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.)
1957: Soemu Toyoda, Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, expired.
2000: Saburō Sakai, Axis naval aviator, died.