Italian Colonization of Libya.

So here we have the Libyan drachma, nominal - 100. The year of issue of this coin is 1979. Total circulation – 15.000.000.

In the 1920s and ’30s the Italian government expended large sums on developing towns, roads, and agricultural colonies for Italian settlers. The most ambitious effort was the program of Italian immigration called “demographic colonization,” launched by the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1935. As a result of these efforts, by the outbreak of World War II, some 150,000 Italians had settled in Libya and constituted roughly one-fifth of that country’s total population.

These colonizing efforts and the resulting economic development of Libya were largely destroyed during the North Africa campaigns of 1941 - 1943. Cyrenaica changed hands three times, and by the end of 1942 all of the Italian settlers had left. Cyrenaica largely reverted to pastoralism. Economic and administrative development fostered by Italy survived in Tripolitania; however. Libya by 1945 was impoverished, underpopulated, and also divided into regions: Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan of differing political, economic, and religious traditions.