Scholarship on the North African Campaign during the Second World War has focused principally on military operations in general or has paid particular attention to the battles of El Alamein (in the Egyptian costal area) or to Operation Torch (the American and British invasion of French North Africa). There is no satisfactory study to explain how the war affected the Italian colony of Libya. Saul Kelly's book fills this void. War and Politics in the Desert: Britain and Libya during the Second World War does not scrutinize the military operations, but rather the British political debates on the future of the Italian colony of Libya.
Framed by a prologue and an epilogue, the seven chapters are grouped into three sections corresponding to the chronological sequence of the war and to the three main political facts which, according to the author, played an important role in shaping the future of Libya thereafter. The prologue (“Italy, Britain and Libya 1911 to 1940”) briefly outlines the main events of the Italian colonial presence in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, the two former Ottoman provinces which, at the beginning of the Italian occupation (1911), were commonly referred to as Libya. The name Libya was officically given to the two provinces only in 1934 when they were unified in a single colony.
In the first section (“The first year: 1940–1941. Prelude to the declaration on the Sanusis”) the author shows how the short period from June 1940 to April 1941 was crucial in determining future British politics. In this period, during which the first British occupation of Cyrenaica (late January–April 1941) took place, Great Britain started to develop an interest in Cyrenaica, if not in Libya as a whole. The British sought the co-operation of the Sanusi leaders. The Sanusiyya, a reformist Sufi movement which emerged in the nineteenth century, acted as a unifying force among the tribes of Cyrenaica. It is worth underlining that the book is based almost exclusively on unpublished archival sources (mainly from the British National Archives). This allows him not only to uncover events hitherto unknown, for example he presents the first in-depth look at Arab initiatives on the future of Libya, but also to provide new interpretations and to add new information to well-known events, such as the story of the Sanusi/Libyan Arab Force, the volunteer battalions who served with the British against the Italians in Libya.
The Declaration on the Sanusis, by British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in January 1942, is the key theme of the second section (“The second year: 1941–42. The declaration on the Sanusis”). It stated that owing to Sanusi engagement on their side during the war, the British had pledged that the Sanusi of Cyrenaica need never return to Italian rule following the war. Historians consider this episode, after the Italo-Sanusi agreement of al-Rajma which granted Idris al-Sanusi the hereditary title of the Amir of the Sanusi in 1920, the second important step towards the acknowledgement of the Sanusis as the main political actors in the area. Kelly analyses this event not only in the light of the military operation, but also places it in the broader context of British political expectations in the Middle East after the war.
The final section (“The third year: 1942–3. The conquest of Libya”) deals with the definitive British occupation of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania and the Free French Force occupation of Fezzan, which until then had been governed as part of Tripolitania. The author convincingly argues that the British authorities probably accepted the French presence “by way for their exclusion from Operation Torch” (p. 203).
The long epilogue (“Britain, Libya and the start of the Cold War, 1943–1954”) deals with post-war plans on the future of Libya, the failure of the Four Power Commission of Investigation, the role of the United Nations in forging the new independent United Kingdom of Libya, and US and British strategic aims in the country. As noted above, the book's great strength is that it is based mainly on primary sources. Nevertheless, I would have appreciated more extensive use of the existing literature in the prologue and epilogue. For instance, it is not clear why in the epilogue the author fails to cite Scott L. Bills, The Libyan Arena. The United States, Britain, and the Council of Foreign Ministers, 1945–48 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1995), the most extensive work on the immediate post-war years.
The book is supplemented with maps and about thirty photographs, taken from public and private collections, which are helpful for non-specialists seeking familiarity with the region and the key protagonists. The editing is very accurate and the typographical design elegant; there are no misprints and the spelling of Arabic personal names and place names is consistent throughout.
In short, this book makes an important contribution not only to military history but also to the history of modern Libya. Kelly's work amounts to a definitive history of Libya during the Second World War. It will surely become a standard reference work for anyone interested in the making of the Libyan nation-state, and will stimulate further research on this period of the British administration in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania.
