Reimagining Mediterranean Spaces: Libya and the Italo-Turkish War, 1911-1912

Abstract

The Italo-Turkish War, a struggle over the territory that the Italian occupiers later re-christened as Libya, became a heated ideological battleground for the emerging nationalisms of the Mediterranean. This paper delineates the contours of the geographical imaginaries of Italian and Ottoman imperial nationalisms and how participants and pundits of the conflict incorporated Libya into their national spaces. Examining the writings and publications of influential nationalist leaders Enrico Corradini and Enver Pasha, it compares the idealization of territory and the material limits of national imaginaries in response to European colonialism, the hardening of borders, and the emergence of a world system of nation-states.

Keywords

• Italo-Turkish war
• Libya
• Nationalism
• Ottomanism
• settler colonialism
• colonialismo di insediamento
• guerra italo-turca
• Libia
• nazionalismo
• ottomanismo