Dirk Vandewalle. A History of Modern Libya.

PositionBook review

Dirk Vandewalle. A History of Modern Libya. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press, 2006, 274 pages. Paper $23.99.

Dirk Vandewalle explores what he named statelessness of Lybia and the notion of avoiding the creation of a modern state and not considering its population as citizens. In a cogent comprehensive account of Libya's past, and by correcting few misunderstandings about its present, he explores the complex connections between the following factors; oil, legacy of relationship between rulers and the population, Arab nationalism, and Islam.

The author explores the 1900s and the Italian colonization in the early 20th century then the Sanusi's monarchy thereafter the revolution of 1969, and lastly the economics and politics of Qadhafi's revolution reflected in the Green Book. He argues that Libya is an anomaly in two ways. First, as an oil exporter it is without economic burden in the post-independence era and it chose to follow the path of benign neglect. Secondly, the attempts to extend some primordial structures and relationships that were present during the Italian colonization.

The notion of statelessness, the author argues, was so attractive for Libya's rulers due to the traumatic encounter with the notion of modern...

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