page_title: Italian Cyrenaica
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Italian Cyrenaica / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Distribution of soup at Al-Magroon concentration camp, which had circa 13.050 Libyan prisoners by 1931. compare Enzo Santarelli, et al: Omar al-Mukhtar: The Italian Reconquest of Libya. Darf 1986, p. 100.
context_page_description: Italian Cyrenaica was an Italian colony, located in present-day eastern Libya, that existed from 1911 to 1934. It was part of the territory conquered from the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911, alongside Italian Tripolitania.
  The territory of the two colonies was sometimes referred to as "Italian Libya" or Italian North Africa. Both names were also used after their unification, with Italian Libya becoming the official name of the newly combined colony.
  In 1923, indigenous rebels associated with the Senussi Order organized the Libyan resistance movement against Italian settlement in Libya. 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 local population.
  In 1934, it became part of Italian Libya.
context_section_description: Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania were formed in 1911, during the conquest of Ottoman Tripolitania in the Italo-Turkish War. 
  In the 1920s, Cyrenaica was the scene of fighting between Italian colonial forces and Libyan rebels who were fighting for independence from colonial rule. In 1931, the rebel independence leader Omar Mukhtar was captured and executed.
  Fascist Italy maintained several concentration camps in Eastern Libya during the first phase of its occupation of that country. The colonial administration began in 1929 the nearly wholesale deportation of the people of the Jebel Akhdar to deny the rebels the support of the local population.
  The forced migration of more than 100,000 people ended in concentration camps in Suluq, El Magrun, Abyar and El Agheila where tens of thousands died in squalid conditions, mainly because of epidemics like the Spanish flu. The concentration camps were dismantled after 1934 when the fascist regime obtained full control of the area and started a policy of assimilation of the local Arab community. This policy was so successful that in 1940 there were two colonial military divisions of Arab Libyans.
  In the late 1930s, Cyrenaica was populated by more than 20,000 Italian colonists, mainly around the coast. As a consequence, there was a large economic development effort in the second half of the 1930s.
  Italy carried out massive investment in the infrastructure of Libya (the purpose was to develop the economy for the benefit of Greater Italy). In Benghazi were created -for the first time in Cyrenaica's History- the first manufacturing installations: some industries were created in 'Bengasi italiana' in the early 1930s, that included salt processing, oil refining, food processing, cement manufacturing, tanning, brewing and sponge and tuna fishing. The port of Benghazi was enlarged and nearby was created a modern Hospital. Also a new airport was built.
  In 1934, Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania became part of Italian Libya.
caption: Ten thousand inmates were kept at the concentration camp in El Agheila.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)"}