Italian Colonial Internment

Abstract

The sixteen concentration camps that operated in the Cyrenaica region of Libya between 1930 and 1933 constitute one of the grimmest aspects of Italian colonial history.1 About four-fifths of the nomadic and seminomadic populations of the Marmarica and of the Jabal-Akhdar plateau (almost half the population of eastern Libya) were forced to settle in the camps. Only inhabitants of the coast and the foothills of the Jabal plateau were spared this fate, as they were less involved with anticolonial resistance struggles. The camps were mandated by Mussolini, who advocated brutal treatment of the native populations; theorized and ordered by colonial governor Pietro Badoglio; cruelly organized by troop commander Rodolfo Graziani; implemented by nameless Italian soldiers and civilians (and other colonial subjects); seen by the few Italians who were settling in “green and pacified” Cyrenaica; denounced by the antifascist press and democratic public opinion; and criticized by the rising nationalist and pan-Islamist anticolonial movements. While Italian colonialism should not be reduced to its practices of confinement,2 we cannot dismiss these camps in a few sentences, or even ignore them, as certain colonial histories have done.3