This is a weekly thread for people to talk about foreign policy, current international relations events, or chat about IR history. Generally I start with a series of updates on different countries but the format here should be pretty free form / whatever people are interested in. To demonstrate that I want to have a special thread on less-remembered wars. Feel free to share your own (no need for it to be this long), or to talk about something completely else!
The Libyan-Turkic War
It’s pretty easy to understand why the 1911 Libyan invasion isn’t on anyone’s radar, being dwarfed by the size and devastation of World War 1, but I think it gets short shrift. After all, for Turkey and Libya this conflict might as well have been the start of World War 1. From Libya onwards Turkey is in constant war up until the conclusion of the Greco-Turkish war in 1922. For Italy the vast sums they spent on this war had significant repercussions for their performance in the war of 1914 and their political situation afterwards. Beyond putting World War 1 into a broader context, this is also a unique and interesting war in its own right. One historian, Sean McMeekin, described it as the last of the nineteenth century style wars on colonial conquest as well as the first of the twentieth century style anti-colonial guerilla wars. It also featured some of the first instances of modern technology, including the first use of a plane in a battle, and the first instance of a plane getting shot down in a battle.
The Italian Position
So what drove Italy towards this war? Basically a desire to join the ranks of the imperial powers. Italy had only been formed in 1861 and fully consolidated in 1871. Like Germany, they were late to the ranks of European nation states aspiring towards empire, and felt the need to catch up for prestige by snatching Somaliland and Eritrea. When I say the Libyan invasion was mostly about prestige, I feel like it sounds odd because nowadays it’s obvious why Libya is important to control. But oil wasn’t discovered until 1959 – back then it’s basically a patch of desert with a few slums. It mostly remained as part of the Ottoman Empire because the other, more powerful European colonizers didn't think it was worth conquering as they snatched up the other North African provinces.
At the 1878 Congress of Berlin France took Tunisia and Britain took Cyprus; to get Italy to sign off they soft promised them Libya. This was further cemented by a secret deal between France and Italy in 1902 for the French to respect an Italian invasion, and another deal in 1909 for Russian recognition of Italian Libyan in exchange for Italian recognition of Russian Bosporus.
In 1908 this started to build into a huge sort of nationalist movement centered around Libya, with articles in the press, wonderful propaganda posters, politicians drumming up support and so forth. The main opposition to the war effort was the Italian Socialist Party. In fact, socialists had been tenuously supportive of centrist Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti at the time, who had been courting them by expanding the right to vote and cinducting nationalizations, but the Libyan War was a major cleavage that drove them away from the coalition. The divide between the right and the left in Italy would never fully heal and only grow more violent in the buildup towards fascism. Itonically, one of the loudest voices against the invasion at the time was the young Benito Mussolini, back when he was still a leading luminary in the anti-war socialist movement and before he had decided that war and imperialism were actually hella sick. This is just one of the countless fascinating ways this conflict acts as a hinge between completely different eras.
The Ottoman Position
Meanwhile, on the other side, well, people debate on exactly where Turkey’s fall begin, but suffice it to say they had been taking Ls for a very long time. From the Crimean War onwards they had been giving successively more privileges to the European powers, giving up more of their control of their own finances, and watching as their provinces softly secede themselves away, like Egypt, or get gobbled up by Europe, like Tunisia and Morocco.
This instability, coupled with the repressive absolutism of Abdul Hamid II, had led to the famous Young Turks revolution, bringing forth the government that would famously later cause the brutal Armenian genocide. After their revolution in 1908, this conflict three years later will be their first major test – in fact they literally hold their first congress at the exact same time the invasion is launched.
Things Go Down
On September 26 the Italians extend an ultimatum to the Ottoman Empire to hand over Libya in a trustee-style relationship like Britain had for Egypt, where the Ottomans were technically in charge on paper but the Europeans called all the shots. Indignity of indignities, the Ottomans said no. The game is on.
The Italians were less prepared than they had hoped due to socialist opposition, but they still started rallying an army of 34,000 to go against the under 5000 Ottoman regulars in Libya. The Ottoman Empire was in a particularly difficult position for shoring up their own position because they had no direct land access to Libya – British Egypt was in between Turkey and Libya and the Anglos refused to allow the Ottomans to move their troops over land. This meant they had to pass through disguised as Arab civilians or advance over sea, but the Italians had significant sea dominance. Mustafa Kemal, the future future leader of the republic of Turkey, has to sneak in on a Russian ship disguised as a journalist. In time the Turkish forces would also grow to includes thousands of Bedouin guerilla fighters.
In the initial phase of the war the Italians basically just sailed up and 1500 sailors took Tripoli in a handful of days. Another 20,000 troops and a few more days and Italy soon had all the other major cities as well: Benghazi, Derna and Tobruk.
On November 5, only a month later, the Italians declare conquest over Libya. They technically only control the coast but it’s not like there’s much inland anyway.
...One Year Later
But things swiftly moved from a more standard war to one of guerilla resistance. Despite holding the population centers, the Italians couldn’t penetrate even a few kilometers in land. Arab cavalry encircled the cities and attacked any soldier who strayed too far, Libyan civilian volunteers attacked troops digging trenches, Bedouins stage sporadic attacks from the desert. It only took a month for Libya to assert control over the major cities but the guerilla resistance proved fierce, a whole year later Italy was still nowhere near pacifying these sporadic attacks. The Italian troops have increased from 34,000 to 140,000.
The other European Empires had greenlit this specifically because they thought it was gonna take, like, a day, and here we are a year later at stalemate. Feeling a little frantic Italy asks for and receives permission from them to expand the naval fight – in August 1912 they begin attacking the Turkish Dodecanese islands. They begin shelling the forts on the Dardanelles themselves, making to slip on through the straits to the Sea of Marmara and attack Constantinople itself. This leads to the panicked Ottomans to close off the straits entirely, stretch steel chains across the opening, and fill the water with mines.
The Balkan Bananza
Suddenly this pointless colonial war has become an existential threat for the Russian Empire. Half of Russian export trade moved through the Dardanelle Straits and promptly dropped by a third; the straights were also their imports access to the components they needed for their heavy industry, which “nearly ground to a halt.” Their balance of payments felt to zero and they began to convene emergency meetings.
Now, while Russia was the protector and sometimes co-agressor of the Balkan states, it didn’t necessarily want them growing too strong or independently sweeping Tsargard Constantinople Istanbul without Russians there. The current Russian position had been that a weak Ottoman Empire could be preferable to none, but suddenly the dangers of a weak Ottoman empire became extremely real. The Balkan nations had been chomping at the bit to attack the Ottomans while they were distracted in Libya, and Russia would hold them back no longer.
In September Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece declare war on the Ottoman Empire and the first Balkan War has begun. All of the difficulties of the Libyan War, such as carefully and secretly moving their troops though Egypt or the Mediterranean, is now doubly difficult for getting those troops back to the Balkans. Stuck on the other side of Egypt Mustafa Kemal is powerless to help as the Balkans raid his hometown. His rage goes stronger.
Unable to fight both fronts simultaneously, In October, the Ottomans ultimately establish an armistice with the Italians and Libya is signed over.
Italian Aftermath
Italy had established themselves as a serious colonial power and had restored Rome’s rule across the mediterranean, but at what cost? Quite a high one actually, with expenses running in 500% of what was estimated, and lasting way longer than expected. In fact, it didn’t end when the Ottomans signed the Treaty– guerrilla resistance continued and was put down brutally over what we politely call the “punitive pacification campaigns,” which lasted all the way til 1931, a full 20 years after the Italians had declared victory.
The expenses of the Libyan pacification left Italy in a poor financial position when World War 1 actually broke out – not to mention that it still had to commit a significant number of troops to the punitive campaigns. To finance the war effort debt quadrupled to about 180% of GDP by the end of the war. The struggles of managing this debt sent the economy into turmoil, discrediting the ruling liberal government, and helping to pave the way for the fascists, who made renegotiating the debt with the US and UK a priority and established some of their early their credibility by doing just that in 1925.
Libya remained an Italian province until their defeat in World War 2.
The European Aftermath
Italian attempts to foster nationalist movements in the Balkans also caught the ire of the Empire of Austro-hungary, which was especially concerned about nationalism in Greece and Serbia. Relationships between the two nations suffered significantly. Though nominally allies, Italy didn’t inform Austria or Germany of the Libyan invasion before beginning it, and when Austro-Hungary issued its ultimatum to Serbia it did not consult Italy, helping to drive the Italians to the entente.
Furthermore, the balance of power was ultimately massively thrown apart by the dissolution of the Ottomans and the birth of the fractious Balkan nation states, whose conflicts of course eventually set the spark that started the fire of ww1.
To quote the Serbian diplomat Miroslav Spalajković on the events that led to the First World War "all subsequent events are nothing more than the evolution of that first [Italian] aggression."
The Ottoman Aftermath
Throughout all this conflict the Ottoman Empire had been wracked by internal instability. The Libyan war threw gas on the fire of this power struggle which saw a 1912 coup and ended with the Young Turks crushing all of their opposition in 1913. The period following is called the age of the three Pashas, so named after the triumvirate of tyrannical leaders who restored absolutism to the Empire and launched the great genocides.
In fact, from the Libyan War onwards the Ottoman Empire is never not at war – they go straight into the First then Second Balkan Wars, then World War 1, then the Greco-Turkic War which only finally ends in 1922. This eleven year stretch of constant battle has been nicknamed the Ottoman War of Succession, as the Empire splintered apart and spewed forth nation states, until it finally became one itself under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, who first attained his military prestige in where else but the Libyan war.
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Notes -
Around the same time, a brutal naval arms race was occurring, leading to the most powerful dreadnoughts in the world.
I’m talking about the South American arms race between Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Sure, they weren’t ever going to project force like the US or Her Majesty’s Navies. That didn’t matter to each neighbor, and as a result, a peripheral nation ended up with technological advantages over the biggest powers. Something like that is really hard to imagine in the Cold War era.
Thanks, hadn't heard of this. I'm on a bit of a project to try to actually remember all these South American conflicts atm, they feel endless - currently on the War of the Pacific.
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I suppose the Montreux Convention was a rather big deal then.
Also, why were Russia's imports of heavy industry so badly affected, why were they going through the Med as opposed to the Baltic? Was their main industrial region in Donbass even back then, as opposed to St Petersburg or Moscow? I guess so but it seems a bit odd.
Definitely! Treaties around the straits have gone back and forth between allowing or prohibiting the passage of military ships and at the time of the Libyan War they were prohibited. After the Greco-Turkic War the Treaty of Lausanne demilitarized the straits but allowed passage of military vessels. This became a problem again because of tensions between the same two countries, Turkey right after Mustafa Kemal and Italy now under the expansionist Mussolini, who had inherited control of the Dodecanese Islands (which Italy was supposed to return in exchnge for Libya but didn't) and could basically strike at Turkey at any time with the status quo.
The straits controlled access to Russia's only warm water ports that stays ice free year round (Kaliningrad was part of Prussian Germany back then), so they lean on it them hard for shipping trade, and still do today (ie Novorossiysk is the largest port in Russia; Russia is the world's biggest grain exporter and all their grain moves from either Azov or Black Sea ports, etc).
Russian industrialization was very geographically uneven, was a lot focused in central Russia, partially because that's where a lot of minerals/resources were. The Urals in particular where a major industrial area (and there is an ancient and apparently fascinating history of metallurgy).
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