Preservation and Self-Absorption

Italian Colonization and the Walled City of Tripoli, Libya

Bibliographic Data

ID20055565
AuthorsMia Fuller (University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author)
Year2005
Pages131-142
Publication date2005-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueItalian Colonialism (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/978-1-4039-8158-5_12
OpenAlexW2074694899
ISBN9781403981585
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited15

Scholars periodically return to the study of how French administrators and architects handled urban settings in North Africa, beginning with the occupation of Algiers in 1830. Italian occupation of Libya began much later, in 1911, but in the thirty-two years of their effective rule, Italians also had sufficient time to be both destructive and constructive in significant ways. In this chapter, I discuss attitudes to the walled city of Tripoli on the part of military personnel, government bureaucrats, and planners—the people who decided how to reshape Tripoli, and whose voices fill the documents in the archives of the colonial administration. In these policies, I read what looks like Italian actions leading to the relative preservation of Tripoli's walled city as a series of planning choices that were, in reality, more passive than active. There was no detailed program to preserve old Tripoli, but decisions were made to shore it up just enough so that the city would require the least attention and investment possible. The Italian treatment of Tripoli's walled city is thus a negative instance of preservation policy, or a case of preservation by default.KeywordsMaster PlanWalled CityFrench ColonialItalian ActionItalian TreatmentThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves

Administration (probate law) · Ancient history · Colonialism · Constructive · Geography · Government (linguistics) · Political science · Shore · Archaeological Research and Protection · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · North African History and Literature

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