Italian Cyrenaica in the context of "Italian Tripolitania"

Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. With an area of almost 1.8 million km (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the fourth-largest country in Africa and the Arab world, and the 16th-largest in the world. The country claims 32,000 square kilometres of southeastern Algeria, south of the Libyan town of Ghat. The capital and largest city is Tripoli, located in the northwest and contains over a million of Libya's 7 million people.

Libya has been inhabited by Berbers since the late Bronze Age as descendants from Iberomaurusian and Capsian cultures. In classical antiquity, the Phoenicians established city-states and trading posts in western Libya, while several Greek cities were established in the East. Parts of Libya were variously ruled by Carthaginians, Numidians, Persians, and Greeks before the entire region became a part of the Roman Empire. Libya was an early centre of Christianity. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the area of Libya was mostly occupied by the Vandals until the 7th century when invasions brought Islam to the region. From then on, centuries of Arab migration to the Maghreb shifted the demographic scope of Libya in favour of Arabs. In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire and the Knights Hospitaller occupied Tripoli until Ottoman rule began in 1551. Libya was involved in the Barbary Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. Ottoman rule continued until the Italo-Turkish War in 1911, which resulted in Italy occupying Libya and establishing two colonies: Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica, later unified in the Italian Libya colony from 1934 to 1943.

Cyrenaica (/ˌsaɪrəˈneɪ.ɪkəˌˌsɪr-/ SY-rə-NAY-ik-ə-,-SIRR-ə) or Kyrenaika (Arabic: برقة, romanized: Barqah, Koine Greek: Κυρηναϊκή [ἐπαρχία], romanized: Kūrēnaïkḗ [eparkhíā], after the city of Cyrene), is the eastern region of Libya. Cyrenaica includes all of the eastern part of Libya between the 16th and 25th meridians east, including the Kufra District. The coastal region, also known as Pentapolis ("Five Cities") in antiquity, was part of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenaica, later divided into Libya Pentapolis and Libya Sicca. During the Islamic period, the area came to be known as Barqa, after the city of Barca.

Cyrenaica became an Italian colony in 1911. After the 1934 formation of Italian Libya, the Cyrenaica province was designated as one of the three primary provinces of the country. During World War II, it fell under British military and civil administration from 1943 until 1951, and finally in the Kingdom of Libya from 1951 until 1963. The region that used to be Cyrenaica officially until 1963 has formed several shabiyat, the administrative divisions of Libya, since 1995. The 2011 Libyan Civil War started in Cyrenaica, which came largely under the control of the National Transitional Council (headquartered in Benghazi) for most of the war. In 2012, a body known as the Cyrenaica Transitional Council unilaterally declared Cyrenaica to be an autonomous region of Libya.

The Kingdom of Italy was governed by the National Fascist Party from 1922 to 1943 with Benito Mussolini as prime minister transforming the country into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Fascists crushed political opposition, while promoting economic modernization, traditional social values and a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church. They also promoted imperialism, resulting in the expansion of the Italian Empire.

According to historian Stanley G. Payne, "[the] Fascist government passed through several relatively distinct phases". The first phase (1922–1925) was nominally a continuation of the parliamentary system, albeit with a "legally-organized executive dictatorship". In foreign policy, Mussolini ordered the pacification of Libya against rebels in the Italian colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica (eventually unified in Italian Libya), inflicted the bombing of Corfu, established a protectorate over Albania, and annexed the city of Fiume into Italy after a treaty with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The second phase (1925–1929) was "the construction of the Fascist dictatorship proper". The third phase (1929–1935) saw less interventionism in foreign policy. The fourth phase (1935–1940) was characterized by an aggressive foreign policy: the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, which was launched from Eritrea and Somaliland; confrontations with the League of Nations, leading to sanctions; growing economic autarky; the invasion of Albania; and the signing of the Pact of Steel. The fifth phase (1940–1943) was World War II itself, ending in military defeat, while the sixth and final phase (1943–1945) was the rump Salò Government under German control.

The Italo-Turkish War (Turkish: Trablusgarp Savaşı, "Tripolitanian War", Italian: Guerra di Libia, "War of Libya"), also known as the Turco-Italian War, was fought between the Kingdom of Italy and the Ottoman Empire from 29 September 1911 to 18 October 1912. As a result of this conflict, Italy captured coastal areas of the Ottoman Tripolitania Vilayet, of which the main sub-provinces were Fezzan (Turkish: Fizan), Cyrenaica (Turkish: Sirenayka), and Tripoli (Turkish: Trablusgarp) itself. These territories became the colonies of Italian Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, which would later merge into Italian Libya.

During the conflict, Italian forces also occupied the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea. In the 1912 Treaty of Ouchy, which ended the war and gave Italy the possession of Libya, the Italians agreed to return the Dodecanese to the Ottoman Empire. However, the vagueness of the text, combined with subsequent adverse events unfavourable to the Ottoman Empire (the outbreak of the Balkan Wars and World War I), allowed a provisional Italian administration of the islands, and Turkey eventually renounced all claims on these islands in Article 122 of the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), confirmed by Article 15 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

The Italian colonization of Libya began in 1911 and it lasted until 1943. The country, which was previously an Ottoman possession, was occupied by Italy in 1911 after the Italo-Turkish War, which resulted in the establishment of two colonies: Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica. In 1934, the two colonies were merged into one colony which was named the colony of Italian Libya. In 1937, this colony was divided into four provinces, and in 1939, the coastal provinces became a part of metropolitan Italy as the Fourth Shore. The colonization lasted until Libya's occupation by Allied forces in 1943, but it was not until the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty that Italy officially renounced all of its claims to Libya's territory.

Libya (Italian: Libia; Arabic: ليبيا الايطالية, romanized: Lībyā al-Īṭālīya) was a colony of Italy located in North Africa, in what is now modern Libya, between 1934 and 1943. It was formed from the unification of the colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, which had been Italian possessions since 1911.

From 1911 until the establishment of a unified colony in 1934, the territory of the two colonies was sometimes referred to as "Italian Libya" or Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana, or ASI). Both names were also used after the unification, with Italian Libya becoming the official name of the newly combined colony. Through its history, various infrastructure projects, most notably roads, railways and villages were set up, as well as archeology. It had a population of around 150,000 Italians.

Cyrenaica province is one of the three traditional Provinces of Libya. It was a formal province from 1934 until 1963, when it was subdivided into the Governorates of Libya. Its capital was the city of Benghazi. Between 1911 and 1934 it had been the separately governed colony of Italian Cyrenaica.