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The Politics of Geography and the Italian Occupation of Libya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2015

David Atkinson
David Atkinson*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Wales, Lampeter, Ceredigion SA48 7ED
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Abstract

This article adopts a broad view of geography to examine some of the roles which geographical knowledges, of various kinds, played in constituting Libya in the Italian geographical imagination. After problematising geography as a situated form of knowledge with a long tradition of pro-imperial activities, it considers some of the ways in which geographical discourses laid the foundations for Italian imperialism in Libya. In particular the article considers how Italian geography played a crucial role in the ‘colonial science’ by which Fascist Italy attempted symbolically and intellectually to capture Libya and recast it as a controlled, knowable colonial domain.

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Articles
Information
Libyan Studies , Volume 27 , 1996 , pp. 71 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Libyan Studies 1976

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References

Notes

1. The name ‘Libia’, the ancient term for the area used by the classical civilisations, was consciously used by the Italians as one more way of appropriating the colony and of stressing a Roman precedent in the region. For the sake of convenience and narrative, throughout this piece, I will use the name Libya to refer to the regions encompassed by Italian Libia and then by modern-day Libya. On the juridicial ‘creation’ of Libya see: Balbo, I. 1938. Coloni in Libia. (Estratto dal) Nuova Antologia, 11 1939: 3–13Google Scholar; Balbo. I. 1939. La colonizzazione in Libia, L'Agricoltura Coloniale, August 1939; D'Agostini-Orsini di Camerota, P. 1941, La colonizzazione Africana nel Sistema Fascista, Milan, Mondadori: 101–107Google Scholar.

2. Mori, A. 1927. L'esplorazione geografica della Libia, Rassegna storica e bibliografica. Florence, Govenor of CyienaicaGoogle Scholar.

3. A vibrant literature has recently developed in Anglophone geography around the crucial and problematic relationships between Imperialism and Geography after a silence (from geographers) that was surely to do with the discipline's ‘dirty’ heritage as an apologist for Empire. First statements were few and far apart: McKay, D. V. 1943. Imperialism in the French Geographical movement, 1871-1881. The Geographical Review 33: 214–232Google Scholar: Hudson, B. 1977. The New Geography and the New Imperialism, 1870-1918. Antipode 9: 12–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peet, R. 1985. The social origins of environmental determinism. Annals, Association of American Geographers 75: 309–333CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recently re-appraisals include: Bell, M., Butlin, R. A. and Heffernan, M. J. (eds.) Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940, Manchester, Manchester University PressGoogle Scholar; Godlewska, A. and Smith, N. (eds.) Geography and Empire. Oxford, BlackwellsGoogle Scholar; Driver, F. 1992. Geography's Empire: histories of Geographical knowledge. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10: 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. I acknowledge the problems inherent in this stance. Yet if we accept that geographical discourses, knowledges and representations are complex, ‘messy’ and contested (to borrow Livingstone's terminology) then attempts to essentialise one type of geography as more valid than another ring slightly hollow. I am currently convinced that geographical knowledge in all of its forms played a very significant role in the Italian occupation of Libya, and therefore, although this definition is somewhat crude, I hope that any readers might indulge it in this first statement of work in progress. See, for a far more fluent ‘defence of situated messiness’: Livingstone, D. 1992. The Geographical Tradition. Oxford, Blackwells: 1–31Google Scholar.

5. Two papers have appeared in the last year or so in English which attempt to trace the politics of geographical knowledge through Italy, c. 1860-1945: Gambi, L. 1994. Geography and Imperialism in Italy: From the Unity of the Nation to the ‘new’ Roman Empire. In Godlewska, A. and Smith, N. (eds.) Geography and Empire. Oxford, Blackwells: 74–91Google Scholar; Atkinson, D. 1995. Geopolitics, cartography and geographical knowledge: envisioning Africa from Fascist Italy. In Bell, M., Butlin, R. A. and Heffernan, M. J. (eds.) Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940, Manchester, Manchester University PressGoogle Scholar.

6. The British Empire too appreciated the need to accumulate and archive facts and figures about their imperial holdings: Richards, T. 1993. The Imperial Archive, London, VersoGoogle Scholar.

7. Lando, F. 1993. Geografie di casa altrui: l'Africa negli studi geografici italiani durante il ventennio fascista. Terra d'Africa: 73–124Google Scholar, quotation on page 84.

8. On the significance of the geographical imagination to empire see: Said, E. 1978. Orientalism, London, Penguin: 201–225Google Scholar; Driver, F. 1992. Geography's Empire: histories of Geographical knowledge. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10: 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and various of the essays in Bell, M., Butlin, R. A. and Heffernan, M. J. (eds.) Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940. Manchester, Manchester University PressGoogle Scholar, and Godlewska, A. and Smith, N. (eds.) Geography and Empire. Oxford, BlackwellsGoogle Scholar.

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10. On the critique of the ‘Heroic explorer’ see: Pratt, M.-L. 1992. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London, Routledge: 201–227Google Scholar; Riffenberg, B. 1994. The Myth of the Explorer. Oxford, Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar; Driver, F. 1992. Henry Morton Stanley and his critics: Geography, Exploration and Empire. Past and Present 133: 134–166CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Driver, F. 1992. Geography's Empire: histories of Geographical knowledge. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10: 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13. Wright, J. 1969. Libya. London, Ernest Benn: 105Google Scholar.

14. Wright, J. 1969. Libya. London, Ernest Benn: 105–106Google Scholar; Although note that in Riechieri, G. 1913. La Libia. Milan, Federazione Italiana delle Biblioteche Popolari: 12–13Google Scholar (which I will discuss for its own politics later), these British expeditions were dismissed as being of little scientific integrity.

15. See Clapperton's entry in: Hanbury-Tenison, R. 1993. The Oxford Book of Exploration. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 140–142Google Scholar, where Clapperton's voyeuristic account of a Haussa Boxing match he had his assistants arrange for his own ‘interest’ is redolent of his assumptions of paternalistic superiority.

16. Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. London, Penguin: 3Google Scholar. The notion of an ‘imaginative geography’, of the type I talk of here, is derived from Said's insight; on the role of geographical knowledge in Orientalism and Empire as ascribed by Said, see: Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. London, Penguin: 201–225Google Scholar; and Said, E. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London, Vintage: 1–15Google Scholar.

17. Brantlinger, P. 1985. Victorians and Africans: the geneology of the myth of the Dark Continent, Critical Inquiry 12:166–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Heffernan, M. J. 1989. The limits of Utopia: Henri Dureyvier and the exploration of the Sahara in the nineteenth century, The Geographical Journal, 155: 342–352CrossRefGoogle Scholar; but note too that Dureyvier's 1864 Exploration du Sahara: les Tuareg du Nord was translated into Italian by the Italian Colonial Ministry in 1918—even if Dureyvier's intentions were laudable, he couldn't necessarily prevent the appropriation of the geographical knowledge he produced by other organisations after his death: Wright, J. 1988. Outside perceptions of the Sanusi. The Maghreb Review 13: 63–69Google Scholar.

19. Bell, M. and Heffernan, M. J.. 1995. Geographical knowledge and imperial power, 1829-1940, In Bell, M., Butlin, R. A. and Heffernan, M. J. (eds.) Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940. Manchester, Manchester University PressGoogle Scholar; on the contingencies of colonial processes, see Thomas, N. 1994. Colonialism's Culture. Anthropology, Travel and Government. London, PolityGoogle Scholar.

20. For an example of this see: Yearwood, P. J. 1993. “In a casual way with a blue pencil”, British policy and the partition of the Kamerun, 1914-1919. Canadian Journal of African Studies 27: 218–244Google Scholar; And from the period, when the efficient ‘western style’ partition of Africa was viewed as a practical task geography had a remit to solve, see these assumptions in: Holdich, T. H. 1901. How are we to get maps of Africa? The Geographical Journal 18: 590–601CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Holdich, T. H. 1916. Political Frontiers and Boundary Making. London, MacmillanGoogle Scholar.

21. Stone, J. C. 1988. Imperialism, colonialism and cartography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13: 57–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Milanini Kemény, A. 1973. La Socieià d'esplorazione commerciale in Africa e la politica coloniale, (1879-1914). Florence, Florence UniversityGoogle Scholar.

23. Wright, J. (1983) The Cyrenaican expedition of Giuseppe Haimann, Libyan Studies 14: 1–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. La redazione. 1899. Ai lettori, La Cultura Geografica 1: 1–2Google Scholar.

25. The Italian Colonial Society was founded in 1906 and counted many politicians, industrialists, financiers, merchants and geographers amongst its influential membership, on this movement in its context see: Bosworth, R. B. 1975. The opening of the Vittorio-Emmanuele monument, Italian Quarterly 18: 78–87Google Scholar.

26. Segré, C. G. 1974, Fourth Shore, The Italian colonisation of Libya. London, University of Chicago Press: 1–34Google Scholar.

27. Gambi, L. 1994. Geography and imperialism in Italy: from the unity of the nation to the ‘new’ Roman Empire. In Godlewska, A. and Smith, N. (eds.) Geography and Empire. Oxford, Blackwells: 81–82Google Scholar.

28. Atkinson, D. 1995. Geopolitics, cartography and geographical knowledge: envisioning Africa from Fascist Italy. In Bell, M., Butlin, R. A. and Heffernan, M. J. (eds.) Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940. Manchester, Manchester University PressGoogle Scholar.

29. Ricchieri, G. 1913. La Libia. Milan, Federazione Italiana delle Biblioteche PopolariGoogle Scholar. Ricchieri begins his book with a justification of the use of the title ‘Libya’ to describe these new Italian colonies (p. 3).

30. Ricchieri, G. 1913. La Libia. Milan, Federazione Italiana delle Biblioteche Popolari: 3–17Google Scholar.

31. Ricchieri, G. 1913. La Libia. Milan, Federazione Italiana delle Biblioteche Popolari: 11Google Scholar.

32. Ricchieri, G. 1913. La Libia. Milan, Federazione Italiana delle Biblioteche Popolari: 7Google Scholar.

33. Ricchieri, G. 1913. La Libia. Milan, Federazione Italiana delle Biblioteche Popolari: 10Google Scholar.

34. Ricchieri, G. 1913. La Libia. Milan, Federazione Italiana delle Biblioteche Popolari: 107–134Google Scholar.

35. Ricchieri, G. 1913. La Libia. Milan, Federazione Italiana delle Biblioteche Popolari: 134Google Scholar.

36. For another example (of many more) see, Giampiccolo, E. 1914. Le Colonie Italiane in Africa, Entrea-Somalia-Libia Storico-geografico. Catania, Crescenzio Galàtola editoreGoogle Scholar; and on the place of geography within the colonial and expansionary lobbies, see: Bosworth, R. B. 1975. The opening of the Vittorio-Emmanuele monument, Italian Quarterly 18: 78–87Google Scholar.

37. Gambi, L. 1994. Geography and Imperialism in Italy: From the Unity of the Nation to the ‘new’ Roman Empire. In Godlewska, A. and Smith, N. (eds.) Geography and Empire. Oxford, Blackwells: 74–91Google Scholar; Atkinson, D. 1995. Geopolitics, cartography and geographical knowledge: envisioning Africa from Fascist Italy. In Bell, M., Butlin, R. A. and Heffernan, M. J. (eds.) Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940. Manchester, Manchester University PressGoogle Scholar.

38. Reale Società Geografica Italiana. 1924. Atti della Società, seduta straordinaria del 27 Maggio, Ricevimento di S. E. il Presidente dei Consiglio dei Ministri, On. Mussolini, Benito, Bollettino della Reale Società Geografica Italiana, Serie 6, I: 221–224Google Scholar.

39. Bottai, G. 1939. Mete ai geografi. Bollettino della Reale Società Geografica Italiana, Serie 7, 4: 1–3Google Scholar; On Bottai see: De Grand, A. J. 1978. Boitai e la cultura fascista. Rome-Bari, LaterzaGoogle Scholar.

40. On the contemporaneous promotion of such ideas in Britain see: Matless, D. 1991. Regional surveys and local knowledges: the geographical imagination in Britain, 1918-1939, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers N.S. 17: 464–480CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. For a very famous example, being the paper which is popularly believed to have established disciplinary geography in Britain, see: Mackinder, H. J. 1887. On the scope and methods of geography, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society 9: 141–160CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Fantoli, A. 1925. Piccolo Guida della Tripoliiania. Tripoli: 5–6Google Scholar.

43. Barthes, R. 1986. The Blue Guide. In Mythologies, trans. Lavers, A., London, Hill and Wang: 74–77Google Scholar; see also, on the ways in which guide books reproduce and reinforce the values of the cultures which produced them, Duncan, J. S. and Duncan, N. G.. 1992. Ideology and Bliss, Roland Barthes and the secret histories of landscape. In Barnes, T. J. and Duncan, J. S. (eds.), Writing Worlds; discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape. London, Routledge: 18–37, esp. 20-22Google Scholar.

44. Touring Club Italiano. 1929. Possedimenti e colonie, Isole Egee, Tripolitania, Cirenaica, Eritrea, Somalia. Milan, Touring Club ItalianoGoogle Scholar; the quotation is taken from Allen, J. A., McLachlan, K. S. and Buru, M. M. (eds.). 1989. Libya: state and region. A study of regional evolution. London, SOAS, Al Fateh University and The Society for Libyan Studies: 47Google Scholar.

45. 400,000 copies of his guide book were distributed free to members of the TCI. In 1937, when perhaps more knowledge of the colony was available, Libya was given an entire guidebook to itself: Consociazione Turistica Italiana. 1937. Libia. Milan, Consociazione Turtstica ItalianaGoogle Scholar.

46. The role of the Touring Club Italiano in widening the geographical imagination of Italians in the period, both at home and abroad, is a topic which deserves much more attention. Although see: Di Mauro, L. 1980. L'Italia e le guide turistiche dall'Unità ad oggi. In De Seta, C. (ed.) Storia d'Italia. Annals V. II Paesaggio. Turin, Einaudi editore: 367–428Google Scholar; and for evidence that Fascism recognised the need to deconstruct provincial parochialism and introduce the population to a ‘greater Italy’ (through, in this case, organised excursions) see de Grazia, V.. 1981. The Culture of Consent: the mass organisation of leisure in Fascist Italy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 180–184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. Furfaro, D. and Bianco, G.. 1979. L'ideologia dell'Imperialismo Fascista nella “Rivista delle Colonie Italiane”, Miscellanea di Storia delle Esplorazioni 4: 221–254Google Scholar.

48. Rusca, L. 1928. Problemi Coloniali al X Congresso Geografico Italiano. Rivista delle Colonie Italiano I: 177–184Google Scholar.

49. Vachelli, N. 1928. Coscienza Geografica. L'Oltremare 2: 129Google Scholar.

50. Fuller, M. 1992. Building Power: Italian Architecture and Urbanism in Libya and Ethiopia. In AlSayyad, N. (ed.) Forms of Dominance, on the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise, Aldershot, Avebury: 211–239Google Scholar.

51. Zoli, C. 1937.Presentazione del opera. In Reale Società Geografica Italiana, Il Sahara Italiano. Parte Prima. Fezzàn e Oasi di Gat. Rome, Reale Società Geografica Italiano: 9Google Scholar.

52. See, for example, the comparable case: Mitchell, T. 1988. Colonising Egypt. Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar.

53. Del Boca, A. 1988. Gli Italiani in Libia, Dal Fascisme a Gheddafi. Roma-Bari, Laterza: 272–275Google Scholar.

54. Del Boca, A. 1988. Gli Italiani in Libia, Dal Fascismo a Gheddafi. Roma-Bari, Laterza: 274–275Google Scholar; Scarin's reports can be found in: Scarin, E. 1934. Le oasi del Fezzàn. Ricerche ed ossevazioni di geografia umana. Bologna, ZanichelliGoogle Scholar; and Scarin, E. 1937. Insediamenti umani e tipi di dimore nel Fezzàne oasi di Gat. In Reale Società Geografica Italiana, Il Sahara Italiano. Parte Prima. Fezzàn e Oasi di Gat. Rome, Reale Società Geografica Italiano: 603–664Google Scholar.

55. On the notion of human degeneration, with examples from shortly before the period I dealt with here, see: Pick, D. 1989. Faces of Degeneration. A European disorder, c. 1848-1918. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: especially 109–152CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Italian fears of a degenerate class within. An Italian Eugenics movement, and a review entitled Genus (edited by Corrado Gini) existed in this period and sometimes included accounts of the ‘racial types’ of Libya. Gini was also asked to contribute to the SGI's 1937 report, writing on ‘Demographic conditions’: Gini, C. 1938. Condizioni Demografiche. In Reale Società Geografica Italiana, Il Sahara Italiano. Parte Prima. Fezzàn e Oasi di Gat. Rome, Reale Società Geografica Italiana: 401–449Google Scholar. On the wider question of such racial determinism within geography see: Livingstone, D. 1992. The Geographical Tradition. Oxford, Blackwells: 216–259Google Scholar.

56. Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. London, Penguin: 216Google Scholar.

57. Del Boca, A. 1988. Gli Italiani in Libia, Dal Fascismo a Gheddafi. Roma-Bari, Laterza: 274–275Google Scholar.

58. Apart from his citing of Scarin's racist findings, Del Boca appears to accept that much of the remainder of the Italian survey of Libya was indeed ‘scientific’ and motivated (primarily, at least) by scientific questions. My contention, however, is that even if this mission was not overtly political al the ground level, by the time it was published, and on the wider international stage, Italy's geographical survey of her Libyan territories was a highly political intervention in colonial politics. Fabio Lando too has no doubts that there existed a strong relationship between Italian Geography and Italian colonial politics: Lando, F. 1993. Geografie di casa altrui: l'Africa negli studi geografica italiani durante il ventennio fascista. Terra d'Afiica: 73–124Google Scholar; Del Boca, A. 1988. Gli Italiani in Libia, Dal Fascismo a Gheddafi. Roma-Bari, Laterza: 272–275Google Scholar.

59. On the Napoleonic survey of Egypt see: Godlewska, A. 1995. Napoleon's Geographers (1797-1815): Imperialists and Soldiers of Modernity, in Godlewska, A. and Smith, N. (eds.) Geography and Empire. Oxford, Blackwells: 31–53Google Scholar; Godlewska, A. 1995. Map, text and image. The mentality of enlightened conquerors: a new look at the Description de l'Egypt, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers N.S. 20: 5–28Google Scholar; and on the French Algerian surveys of the 1830s and early 1840s see: Heffernan, M. J. 1994. An Imperial Utopia: French Surveys of North Africa in the Early Colonial Period. In Stone, J. C. (ed.) Maps and Africa. Aberdeen, Aberdeen University: 81–107Google Scholar.

60. Del Boca, A. 1988, Gli Italiani in Libia. Dal Fascismo a Gheddafi. Roma-Bari, Laterza: 275, n. 144Google Scholar.

61. Zoli, C. 1937. Presentazione del opera. In Reale Società Geografica Italiana, Il Sahara Italiano. Parte Prima. Fezzàn e Oasi di Gat. Rome, Reale Società Geografica Italiana: 13Google Scholar.

62. A quick survey might uncover: Rivista delle Colonie; Bollettino Geografica del Govemo della Tripolitania e Cirenaica; Bollettino Geografica dell'Ufficio studi della Tripolitania e Cirenaica; Libia; Africa Italiana; Rivista delle Tripolitania; Gli Annali dell'Africa Italiane; Bollettino della Società Africana d'Italia, and the list goes on.

63. I don't have space to cover cartography's very important role in the occupation of Libya here; but on the potential political roles of cartography, see: Harley, J. B. 1992. Deconstructing the map. In Barnes, T. and Duncan, J. (eds.) Writing Worlds: discourse, text and metaphor in the representations of landscapes. London, Routledge: 231–247Google Scholar; on Italian Libya: Casti Moreschi, L. 1992. Nomi e segni per l'Africa italiana: la carta geografica nel progetto coloniale. Terra d'Africa: 13–60Google Scholar.

64. On Balbo and his Governorship in Libya see: Segré, C. G. 1987. Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life. London, University of California: esp. 289–333Google Scholar.

65. See the guide to the 1934 Paris Esposition du Sahara, held in the Ethnographical museum in the Trocadero, where, no doubt, Italy's representation of its progressive, scientific, benign colonialism in the Sahara vied with French and British representations of their colonial realms: Ministère des Colonies, 1934. Le Sahara Italien, Guide officiel de la section Italienne. Rome, Ministere des ColoniesGoogle Scholar.

66. Louwers, O. and Gelders, V.. 1949. Le Congrès Volta de 1938 et ses travaux sur L'Afrique. Institut Royal Colonial Belge, Section des sciences Morales et Politiques, Mémoire 17: 3–128Google Scholar.

67. Del Boca, A. 1988. Gli Italiani in Libia, Dal Fascismo a Gheddafi. Roma-Bari, Laterza: 278Google Scholar.

68. Del Boca, A. 1988. Gli Italiani in Libia, Dal Fascismo a Gheddafi. Roma-Bari, Laterza: 278Google Scholar.

69. Segré, C. G. 1987. Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life. London, University of California Press: 289–333Google Scholar.

70. On this see Atkinson, D. 1995. Geopolitics, cartography and geographical knowledge: envisioning Africa from Fascist Italy. In Bell, M., Butlin, R. A. and Heffernan, M. J. (eds.) Geography and Imperialism, 1820-1940. Manchester, Manchester University PressGoogle Scholar.

71. Del Boca, A. 1988. Gli Italiani in Libia, Dal Fascismo a Gheddafi. Roma-Bari, Laterza: 272Google Scholar.

72. Lando, F. 1993. Geografie di casa altrui: l'Africa negli studi geografici italiani durante il ventennio fascista. Terra d'Afiica: 84Google Scholar.