Il crocevia delle grandi potenze : la competizione per la Cirenaica e il suo impatto sui rapporti italo-inglesi (1911-1951)

Traditionally, the Italian conquest of Cyrenaica (19111932) has been described essentially as a colonial war fought by Italy against the local Bedouin tribes supported by the Sanusiyya Order, from which an embryo of Libyan identity emerged. Through a comparative and transregional analysis, the author off ers an altogether more complex reading of the war as a competition between confl icting imperialisms of the main European powers and the Sanusiyya itself, focussing in particular on AngloItalian relations. The author shows also how the underlying AngloItalian rivalry infl uenced the military operations in the colonial theatre during the Great War, and how it stimulated a regional identity in Cyrenaica as opposed to a Libyan national identity the legacy of which can still be seen in today's Libya. [Publisher's text].