Italo Balbo and the Colonization of Libya

Abstract

Balbo led there [to Libya] ?' the nationalist historian, Gioacchino Volpe, asked rhetorically.1 Indeed, the intensive settlement of Libya under the governorship of Italo Balbo ranks as one of the fascist regime's most memorable feats of 'demographic colonization'. In I940, following two grand mass migrations, nearly 40 per cent of the 110,000 Italians in Libya were agricultural colonists, most of them former landless peasants and agricultural day labourers. Libya under Balbo provided a splendid confirmation of the regime's claim that the Italian empire in Africa was not conquered 'for the privileged few' but to give 'proletarian Italy' at last 'an outlet for its exuberant life'.2