On 1 November 1911, Italy earned the grim distinction of being the first nation-state in history to deploy aerial bombs in combat. Italian aviator Giulio Gavotti dropped four bombs onto Turkish troops camped at Tajoura and Ain Zara, two oases outside Tripoli—it was the inaugural instance of what would become common practice of the Italian military throughout its colonial tenure in Libya and eastern Africa (1911-1943). Mustard gas came to supplement these gravity bombs, and in 1930, Italian airplanes showered it upon local rebels in Cyrenaica in the name of “pacification.” With gas, victims were not killed instantly, but suffered the excruciating pains of chemical burns, blistering vesicles, and pulmonary edemas, until they eventually succumbed to a slow, agonizing, weeks-long passage to death. Mustard gas and aerial bombs thus proved two powerful technologies of (im)mobilization—apparatuses that simultaneously mobilized colonizers while immobilizing the colonized. This paper considers the technologies of “war” and “peace”—or militarism and pacification—in Italian colonial Libya. It describes how these mechanisms were actually manifestations of the same imperial formation, and specifically, how they mutually constituted and sensibly actualized the differences between colonized and colonizer, differences that I argue hinged entirely upon varying degrees of mobility. To colonize meant to mobilize, and Italian troops, bureaucrats, and even tourists moved constantly through the territory, their mobilities enabled not only by technologies like mustard gas and aerial bombs but also new roads and vehicular transport. To “settle” the colony was to render its colonized subjects immobile, either imprisoned or dead, often by way of the same technologies. Thus, the hyper-mobility of Italian colonizers depended upon the forced immobility of colonized Libyans and vice versa. I explore how the differential sovereignties of colonial power took shape through such gradated mobilities, and specifically, how a technological instrumentality buttressed these imperial operations by instantiating a subjective dialectic predicated upon the potential for and the practices of (im)mobilization. In such ways, I show how mobility emerges as a key generative force of colonial violence. It is a violence, too, that continues to permeate the textures of the contemporary, for instance, in immigration detention centers throughout Italy, where Libyans, among many others, remain confined, surveilled, and immobilized in a state of “temporary permanence.” Technologies of mobility thus constitutively transmogrify imperial formations; their foundational violence, illusive and chimerical, endlessly shifting and resurfacing among and within the existential archipelagoes of vital life.

This research analyzes the scientific research carried out during Italian colonialism by the fascist regime in Libya between 1922 and 1943 with particular focus on environmental sciences such as agronomy and agriculture. Colonial Libya was a crucial laboratory for projects of colonial exploitation, fascist ideology and the management of nature. Since the conquest of the country in 1911, the Italian government aimed at transforming the environment of the “fourth shore” into a settlement-colony. Under the fascist regime, Libya was meant to become a colonial Lebensraum, a process culminated in 1939 with the transformation of the country into Italian metropolitan territory. Yet the wider ecological significance of colonization is unknown. What role did the fascist regime envision for the production of environmental knowledge, the management and the exploitation of natural resources in its imperialistic plans? What ecological tools did fascist colonizers use in order to transform local society and displace the native population? How was fascist environmental knowledge produced in Libya? My research focuses on the colonial institutes of agricultural research that enabled and implemented fascist Italy’s natural and social engineering projects in Libya. In particular, the Istituto Agronomico d’Oltremare (Agronomic Institute for Oversea), directed by Armando Maugini for forty years, had a key role from the beginning of the colonial period well into the post-colonial era. Historians have consistently overlooked the production of colonial environmental knowledge and its circulation between colony and metropole due to their focus on political and military events. Environmental history dealing with the Maghreb and the Middle East has explored environmental imaginaries rather than practices. Libya in particular has been neglected so far, despite its role as an ecological borderland between the Sahara and the Mediterranean, the Maghreb and Egypt. On the other hand, historiography on Italian fascism has recently shed light on its totalitarian project of mastering not just human beings, but also nature. Nonetheless, the colonial dimension of this process remains unexplored. I aim to connect environmental and political history by analyzing the colonial threat to an ecosystem, its resistance and the production of ecological knowledge to bridge the ecological history of Libya, the making of environmental research, and the role of fascism in this dynamic. Did the ecological interaction between Italy and Libya give rise to a hybrid Mediterranean environment? Is it possible to write an environmental rather than a military history of the colonial impact between fascism and Libyan society?

In the first few years of after the occupation of the Libyan coast in 1911, the liberal politicians of the Italian colonial administration were committed to the idea of establishing a system of indirect rule in the eastern region of Cyrenaica under the leadership of Muslim elites in the Sufi order of the Sanusiyya. The idea stemmed from representations of the Sanusiyya in colonial ethnographic literature as a highly centralized and conservative organization that wielded a type of religio-political power that could be used to control the Libyan interior, and their plan spoke to a liberal ideal of humanistic nationalism among Italian political and intellectual elites. This presentation examines the colonial imagination surrounding the Sanusiyya and the process by which colonial officials circumvented the refusal of the recognized leader of the Sanusiyya to enter into negotiations by creating a power-sharing relationship with his more willing cousin, Idris al-Sanusi. The process of negotiating a system of indirect rule under Sanusi leadership place the Italian colonial administration in an international field of competition as British, French, and Ottoman authorities all vied for the right to call themselves protectors of Islam in North Africa through a strategic relationship with the Sufi order. The story of Idris al-Sanusi's involvement with the Italian colonial administration as a semi-autonomous intermediary is well known, but it has received little attention in recent years as historians have turned to focus on sources of anti-colonial resistance among other regional notables, particularly in the western region of Tripolitania. Given the revolution against the Qaddafi regime, I argue that we face an ideal moment to return to a discussion of the Sanusiyya during the Italian colonial period to examine the ways in which an international coalition of colonial powers shaped the connection between religious and political power in Cyrenaica.

Justice and Reconciliation are among the most challenging issues that the new Libyan government has been grappling with since the collapse of the Qaddafi regime in October 2011. Libyan authorities have repeatedly professed to want to establish the rule of law, promote national reconciliation and guarantee that justice be carried out in a fair and transparent manner. In practical terms, however, they have so far failed and the Libyan transitional government has been under heavy scrutiny for being unable to carry out such aspirations. As for February 2012, Libya has not yet reached an agreement with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the possible prosecution Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, the captured son of the former leader; the country’s detention centers still house thousands of foreign prisoners held with no legal process; furthermore the government has taken no action to prevent extra-judiciary killings against Qaddafi loyalists and, as a result, many members of the former regime remain in exile. This paper, which will be based on extensive research conducted in Libya, shall present the problems the Libyan government faces in carrying out justice and reconciliation in the post-Qaddafi era. We shall assess the difficulties in reconciling efforts to promote truth and justice, while simultaneously endeavoring to ensure reconciliation on an individual and national level. As a number of authors have already highlighted (Teitel, Barkan, Elster), in post-revolutionary situations truth and reconciliation can stand at odds with each other given the former can actually impede the latter. The paper shall also analyze the broader efforts that have been made to set up other transitional justice mechanisms, which include also public ceremonies, the conversion of property belonging to the previous regime into public spaces, the re-writing of educational curricula, the renaming of roads, and reparation programs.