A History of Libya

John Wright's revised and updated A History of Libya is a worthy and problematic introduction to Libyan history. Any attempt to encompass over 2000 years of history in a short book is doomed, so it mostly covers the 20th century and the Gadafi (Gaddafi) regime. Wright, though revising and updating this general history to include the fall of Gaddafi during the Arab Spring, retained a number of perhaps outdated or incorrect assertions. For example, Wright must have written the initial form of this book in an era when proponents of large-scale trans-Saharan trade in Antiquity were more influential. Wright also misidentifies Dunama of the Sayfawa dynasty as a Borno king even though Kanem was still the core province. Sometimes Wright's characterization of Libya's dependence on oil seems a little unfair, particularly for repeatedly referring to its oil wealth as unearned even though Libya was just exploiting a valuable resource. Of course, historians or scholars today in 2022 would also have more sources to piece together the tumultuous final days of Gaddafi and the continual unrest in Libya today. Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, we know the consequences of NATO intervention in the Libyan civil war eventually contributed to the multifaceted crises in that country and the plight of migrants in the Mediterranean. 

Despite our quibbles with Wright's general history, it perfectly demonstrates a number of interesting points pertinent to our interests in Kanem-Borno and trans-Saharan contacts between Tripoli and the Chad Basin. Wright begins with the prehistoric Sahara, Phoenician settlements, Greeks in Cyrenaica, the Garamantes, and the expanding Roman Empire. While this is not directly relevant to Kanem-Borno, the early appearance of the Garamantes and Tripolitania's position between the Sahara and the Mediterranean illustrates the significance of Libya: a bridge between the Mediterranean and the vast African interior. Obviously the scale and value of trans-Saharan trade and contacts between the Mediterranean coast of Libya and sub-Saharan Africa increased after the Arab conquests. And Tripolitania under Roman rule appears to have been far more self-sufficient agriculturally, exporting to Rome a surplus. So, Tripoli after the Arab conquest, especially after the Banu Hilal migrations, became less successful in terms of its agrarian economy and increasingly reliant on its corsair activity in the Mediterranean as well as trans-Saharan slave trading. Even if this activity was parasitic, as suggested by Wright, it supports an assertion by Dewiere that Tripoli relied more on the trans-Saharan trade than Borno. Consequently, the trans-Saharan factor in Libyan history is a huge one that developed over time since the Garamantes of the Fezzan, a merging of Mediterranean and African networks that benefitted Libya.

However, most of Wright's book is actually on 20th century Libya. The decades-long Italian conquest, not truly accomplished until Fascist Italy completed the process in the 1930s, represents an interesting convergence of fascism and colonialism. Drawing on the past of the Roman Empire in Tripolitania, Mussolini's Italy actually invested far more in Libya than they took out it. Their vision of the "Fourth Shore" as a settler colony for peasant farmers of Italy was disrupted by World War II. Libya in the postwar years became a Sanussi kingdom which, through oil, became less dependent on aid or leasing military bases to Britain and the US. With the arrival of Gaddafi, an extremely long dictatorship would usher in various failed political, social and economic reforms with the use of oil revenue. Sanctions, tensions with the West, and failed pan-Arabism eventually led Gaddafi to a rapprochement with the Western powers before his ignominious fall. Throughout its rocky years as an independent state, Libya remained a nation in spite of the strong regional cleavages and other differences within its population. The Fezzan, Cyrenaica, and Tripolitania might as well have been separate nations. 

Intriguingly, Gaddafi's attempts to turn himself into a pan-Africanist hero and expand Libyan influence in sub-Saharan Africa represented a modern version of Libya's historic role as the crossroads of Africa and Europe. While undoubtedly opportunistic and a failure in the despot's war with Chad, it is remarkable that Gaddafi's African "turn" developed in a context where Libya was far less connected to sub-Saharan Africa than it once was. Over the course of the several millennia of known Libyan history, the link to Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa has always been a factor whose magnitude has varied across time. One region of modern Libya, the Fezzan, may been seen as "Sudanic" during some phases in its history. In that regard, the history of this North African nation is indicative of how closely entwined the worlds of Africa and Europe have been since the Roman Empire, even if its legacy has not always been for the best.