British Military Administration of Libya | |||||||||||
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1942–1951 | |||||||||||
Status | British Military Administration (1943–1950) British Civil Administration (1950–1951) | ||||||||||
Capital | Tripoli | ||||||||||
Common languages | English, (Official) Italian, Arabic | ||||||||||
Chief Administrator (Tripolitania) | |||||||||||
• 1943-1951 | Travers Blackley | ||||||||||
Chief Administrator (Cyrenaica) | |||||||||||
• 1942–1945 | Duncan Cumming | ||||||||||
• 1945–1946 | Peter Acland | ||||||||||
• 1946–1948 | James Haugh | ||||||||||
• 1948 (acting) | Arthur Parker | ||||||||||
• 1948–1949 | Eric de Candole | ||||||||||
History | |||||||||||
13 May 1943 | |||||||||||
10 February 1947 | |||||||||||
• Emirate of Cyrenaica created | 1 March 1949 | ||||||||||
• UN administration | 10 December 1949 | ||||||||||
24 December 1951 | |||||||||||
• Autonomy ended | 27 April 1963 | ||||||||||
Currency | Military Authority Lira (Tripolitania) Egyptian pound (Cyrenaica) | ||||||||||
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Today part of | Libya |
History of Libya | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Libyaportal | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The British Military Administration of Libya was the control of the regions of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania of the former Italian Libya by the British from 1943 until Libyan independence in 1951. It was part of the Allied administration of Libya.
In November 1942, the Allied forces retook Cyrenaica. By February 1943, the last German and Italian soldiers were driven from Libya and the Allied occupation of Libya began.
Tripolitania and Cyrenaica remained under British administration, while the French controlled Fezzan. In 1944, Idris as-Senussi returned from exile in Cairo but declined to resume permanent residence in Cyrenaica until the removal in 1947 of some aspects of foreign control. Under the terms of the 1947 peace treaty with the Allies, Italy, which hoped to maintain the colony of Tripolitania and France, which wanted the Fezzan, relinquished all claims to Libya. Libya so remained united.
Following the liberation of North Africa by Allied troops, over 130 Jews were killed in anti-Jewish disturbances across Tripolitania in November 1945. [1] In June 1948, anti-Jewish rioters in Libya killed another 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. [2] The fear and insecurity which arose from these anti-Jewish attacks and the founding of the state of Israel led many Jews to flee Libya. From 1948 to 1951, 30,972 Libyan Jews moved to Israel. [3] By the 1970s, the rest of Libyan Jews (some 7,000) were evacuated to Italy.
Disposition of Italian colonial holdings was a question that had to be considered before the peace treaty officially ending the war with Italy could be completed. Technically, Libya remained an Italian possession administered by Britain and France, but at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 the Allies—Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States—agreed that the Italian colonies seized during the war should not be returned to Italy. Further consideration of the question was delegated to the Allied Council of Foreign Ministers, which included a French representative; although all council members initially favored some form of trusteeship, no formula could be devised for disposing of Libya. The United States suggested a trusteeship for the whole country under control of the United Nations (UN), whose charter had become effective in October 1945, to prepare it for self-government. The Soviet Union proposed separate provincial trusteeships, claiming Tripolitania for itself and assigning Fezzan to France and Cyrenaica to Britain. France, seeing no end to the discussions, advocated the return of the territory to Italy. To break the impasse, Britain finally recommended immediate independence for Libya. [4]
In 1949, the Emirate of Cyrenaica was created and only Tripolitania remained under direct British military administration. A year later, in 1950, it was granted civil instead of military administration. Idris as-Senussi, the Emir of Cyrenaica and the leader of the Senussi Muslim Sufi order, represented Libya in the UN negotiations, and on 24 December 1951, Libya declared its independence.
In 1951, with representatives from Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan declaring a union and with the country being called the United Kingdom of Libya, Idris was offered the crown. In accordance with the constitution the new country had a federal government with the three states of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan having autonomy. The kingdom also had three capital cities: Tripoli, Benghazi and Bayda. Two years after independence, on 28 March 1953, Libya joined the Arab League. When Libya declared its independence it was the first country to achieve independence through the United Nations and one of the first former European possessions in Africa to gain independence.
Libya's history involves its rich mix of ethnic groups, including the indigenous Berbers/Amazigh people. Amazigh have been present throughout the entire history of the country. For most of its history, Libya has been subjected to varying degrees of foreign control, from Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Cyrenaica or Kyrenaika, is the eastern region of Libya. Cyrenaica includes all of the eastern part of Libya between the 16th and 25th meridians east, including the Kufra District. The coastal region, also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, was part of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenaica, later divided into Libya Pentapolis and Libya Sicca. During the Islamic period, the area came to be known as Barqa, after the city of Barca.
Muhammad Idris bin Muhammad al-Mahdi as-Senussi was a Libyan political and religious leader who was King of Libya from 24 December 1951 until his ouster in the 1 September 1969 coup d'état. He ruled over the United Kingdom of Libya from 1951 to 1963, after which the country became known as simply the Kingdom of Libya. Idris had served as Emir of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania from the 1920s until 1951. He was the chief of the Senussi Muslim order.
The national flag of Libya was originally introduced in 1951, following the creation of the Kingdom of Libya. It was designed by Omar Faiek Shennib and approved by King Idris Al Senussi who comprised the UN delegation representing the three regions of Cyrenaica, Fezzan, and Tripolitania at UN unification discussions.
Fezzan is the southwestern region of modern Libya. It is largely desert, but broken by mountains, uplands, and dry river valleys (wadis) in the north, where oases enable ancient towns and villages to survive deep in the otherwise inhospitable Sahara Desert. The term originally applied to the land beyond the coastal strip of Africa proconsularis, including the Nafusa and extending west of modern Libya over Ouargla and Illizi. As these Berber areas came to be associated with the regions of Tripoli, Cirta or Algiers, the name was increasingly applied to the arid areas south of Tripolitania.
Subdivisions of Libya have varied significantly over the last two centuries. Initially Libya under Ottoman and Italian control was organized into three to four provinces, then into three governorates (muhafazah) and after World War II into twenty-five districts (baladiyah). Successively into thirty-two districts (shabiyat) with three administrative regions, and then into twenty-two districts (shabiyat). In 2012 the ruling General National Congress divided the country into governorates (muhafazat) and districts (baladiyat). While the districts have been created, the governorates have not.
The Provinces of Libya were prescribed in 1934, during the last period of colonial Italian Libya, and continued through post-independence Libya until 1963 when the Governorates system was instituted.
The Italian colonizationof Libya began in 1911 and it lasted until 1943. The country, which was previously an Ottoman possession, was occupied by Italy in 1911 after the Italo-Turkish War, which resulted in the establishment of two colonies: Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica. In 1934, the two colonies were merged into one colony which was named the colony of Italian Libya. In 1937, this colony was divided into four provinces, and in 1939, the coastal provinces became a part of metropolitan Italy as the Fourth Shore. The colonization lasted until Libya's occupation by Allied forces in 1943, but it was not until the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty that Italy officially renounced all of its claims to Libya's territory.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Tripolitania, now part of Libya.
The Kingdom of Libya, known as the United Kingdom of Libya from 1951 to 1963, was a constitutional monarchy in North Africa that came into existence upon independence on 24 December 1951 and lasted until a bloodless coup d'état on 1 September 1969. The coup, led by Muammar Gaddafi, overthrew King Idris and established the Libyan Arab Republic.
Libya was a colony of Fascist Italy located in North Africa, in what is now modern Libya, between 1934 and 1943. It was formed from the unification of the colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, which had been Italian possessions since 1911.
Italian Tripolitania was an Italian colony, located in present-day western Libya, that existed from 1911 to 1934. It was part of the territory conquered from the Ottoman Empire after the Italo-Turkish War in 1911. Italian Tripolitania included the western northern half of Libya, with Tripoli as its main city. In 1934, it was unified with Italian Cyrenaica in the colony of Italian Libya. In 1939, Tripolitania was considered a part of the Kingdom of Italy's 4th Shore.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Cyrenaica, now part of Libya.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Libya. Libya is a country located in North Africa. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Libya lies between Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
The 1945 Anti-Jewish riots in Tripolitania was the most violent rioting against Jews in North Africa in modern times. From November 5 to November 7, 1945, more than 140 Jews were killed and many more injured in a pogrom in British-military-controlled Tripolitania. 38 Jews were killed in Tripoli from where the riots spread. 40 were killed in Amrus, 34 in Zanzur, 7 in Tajura, 13 in Zawia and 3 in Qusabat.
The Emirate of Cyrenaica came into existence when Sayyid Idris unilaterally proclaimed Cyrenaica an independent Senussi emirate on 1 March 1949, backed by the United Kingdom. Sayyid Idris proclaimed himself Emir of Cyrenaica at a 'national conference' in Benghazi. The recognition by the UK failed to influence the attitude of the United Nations, and Britain and France were directed to prepare Libya's independence in a resolution passed on 21 November 1949. The independence of the Kingdom of Libya was declared on 24 December 1951, and on 27 December, Emir Idris was enthroned as King Idris I.
The Allied administration of Libya was the control of the ex-colony of Italian Libya by the Allies from 13 May 1943 until Libyan independence was granted in 1951. It was divided into two parts:
The Second Italo-Senussi War, also referred to as the Pacification of Libya, was a conflict that occurred during the Italian colonization of Libya between Italian military forces and indigenous rebels associated with the Senussi Order. The war lasted from 1923 until 1932, when the principal Senussi leader, Omar al-Mukhtar, was captured and executed. The Libyan genocide took place during and after the conflict.
The Fezzan-Ghadames Military Territory was a territory in the southern part of Italian Libya which was occupied and administered by Free France from 1943 until Libya gained independence in 1951. It was part of the allied occupation of Libya.
Libyan nationality law is regulated by the Constitution of Libya, as amended; the Libyan Nationality Law, and its revisions; and various international agreements to which the country is a signatory. These laws determine who is, or is eligible to be, a national of Libya. The legal means to acquire nationality, formal legal membership in a nation, differ from the domestic relationship of rights and obligations between a national and the nation, known as citizenship. Nationality describes the relationship of an individual to the state under international law, whereas citizenship is the domestic relationship of an individual and the nation. Libyan nationality is typically obtained under the principle of jus soli, i.e. by birth in Libya, or jus sanguinis, born to parents with Libyan nationality. It can be granted to persons with an affiliation to the country, or to a permanent resident who has lived in the country for a given period of time through naturalization.