Women in the Modern History of Libya by Barbara Spadaro Katrina Yeaw

Author:Barbara Spadaro, Katrina Yeaw [Barbara Spadaro, Katrina Yeaw]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032082257
Google: KSZnzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2021-08-02T03:51:06+00:00

The gendered violence of the colonial encounter

A large number of Libyans were killed, exiled, and imprisoned for opposition to the Italian occupation during the first decade of their rule. The Italians were unsuccessful in gaining control of the majority of the territory and the resistance of the local population had pushed them back to the cities of Tripoli, Homs and the coastal strip between Zanzur and Zuara in Tripolitania and the cities of Benghazi, Shahhat (Cirene), Derna and Tubruq in Cyrenaica by 1915. Local notables formed a semi-autonomous government, the Tripolitanian Republic (al-Jumhūriyya al-Ṭarābulusiyya), in Tripolitania and the Italian government recognised the control of the Sanūsiyya, a revivalist Sufi religious movement, over the hinterland in Cyrenaica and their leader, Idrīs al-Mahdī al-Sanūsī, was granted the largely ceremonial title of Amir of Cyrenaica.7

A shift in policy occurred after the Fascist government came to power in 1922, as Benito Mussolini rejected the Liberal government’s policy, in place since 1911, of collaborating with local Libyan elites. Mussolini’s first Minister of Colonies, Luigi Federzoni, pushed for what the Italians considered the riconquista of the hinterland in early 1923 to transform it into a space open for Italian demographic colonialism (Cresti 2011, 92). This riconquista was undertaken by Rodolfo Graziani, nicknamed the ‘Butcher Graziani’ by the local population, who was in command of all Italian forces in Tripolitania by 1928 (288). In 1930, he was appointed the vice-governor of Cyrenaica and instituted a repressive campaign against the indigenous population, which included the clearing of ground, the razing of enemy villages, the seizure of crops and livestock, and destruction of wells. Although Graziani was not solely responsible for the repression of the anti-colonial resistance, he became a symbol for the local population of the tyranny and barbarism of Italian colonial rule. Viewing Libya as Italy’s rightful possession, he argued that ‘the wheel of fate’ had been ‘planted and stuck … a thousand fiery Italian souls’ in the ‘untouched sands’ of the Libyan desert.8

Franz Fanon has argued that the first colonial encounter ‘was colored by violence and their cohabitation – or rather the exploitation of the colonized by the colonizer – continued at the point of the bayonet and under cannon fire’ (Fanon 2004, 1). This kind of systemic colonial violence was experienced by women as well as men. Violence was indiscriminately inflicted on Libyans as colonial subjects, but it was also gendered. Women’s experiences of violence overlapped men’s but was not identical. There were gendered divides in the way Italians approached men and women involved in the resistance, often using women as ammunition against men. The Italian military consistently inflicted humiliation on Libyan men by attacking women and children in hopes of bringing the resistance to an end by targeting their honour and manhood.

Women were often on foot during engagements and those who rode camels or horses were usually weighed down with luggage and children. Men, on the other hand, rode on horseback unburdened, giving them greater speed and mobility in battle. The Italians did not hesitate to exploit the more vulnerable position of women.

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