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Last among the European states to aspire to a role of great power, Italy in 1911 launched itself into an colonial adventure that led her to declare war against Turkey, with the aim of annexing the two provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.
After an intense campaign of internal propaganda and the go-ahead from other European countries, Italy invaded Libya. It should have been a simple route march, but the war lasted twenty years and laid the foundations of a colonial rule which only ended at the defeat during the Second World War.
In 1911, Libya was almost entirely a desert country; the population and the main productive activities were concentrated on the coast and in the northern highlands. For supporters of the colonial enterprise, Libya was a "promised land"; for critics it was a "box of sand".
In this conflict of representations and expectations, the Italians clashed with the Turkish army and the fierce Libyan resistance. Despite the violence, however, the population supported the fight against the occupation until 1930-31, when concentration camps prevented any support to the rebels.
Italian society in the time, overwhelmed by nationalist propaganda first and then by fascist censorship, did not have a realistic picture of those Libyans who claimed to want to bring progress and modernity. Depending on the intensity of the resistance encountered, they were portrayed as traitors, rebels and criminals, or depicted as intelligent collaborators. Few were able or wanted to admit that behind those schematic images was the resistance of a people dispossessed of their own land, the result of war being imposed at home.
In the Italy of the Second World War, the defeat and subsequent loss of Libya led to the long withdrawal of the colonial theme from public debate. The 1911-2011 centenary, which inspired this exhibition, provides the opportunity to reread the many faces of a dramatic chapter in our history, in which we face "how we were", a theme which we are not accustomed to considering.
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