Italian Libya - The Digital Philatelist

Italian Libya (Libia Italiana) was a colony of the Kingdom of Italy located in North Africa, in what is now modern Libya, between 1934 and 1943. It was formed from the Italian colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania that were taken by Italy from the Ottoman Empire in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 to 1912. They were unified in 1934 by governor Italo Balbo, with Tripoli as the capital.

From 1911 until the establishment of a unified colony in 1934, the territory of the two colonies was sometimes referred to as “Italian Libya” or Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana/ASI). Both names were also used after the unification, with Italian Libya becoming the official name of the newly combined colony. It had a population of around 150,000 Italians.

In 1923, indigenous rebels associated with the Senussi Order organized the Libyan resistance movement against Italian settlement in Libya, mainly in Cyrenaica. The rebellion was put down by Italian forces in 1932, after the so-called “pacification campaign”, which resulted in the deaths of a quarter of Cyrenaica’s population.

During World War II, Italian Libya became the setting for the North African Campaign. Although the Italians were defeated there by the Allies in 1943, many of the Italian settlers still remained in Libya. Libya was administrated by the United Kingdom and France until its independence in 1951, though Italy did not officially relinquish its claim until the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty.