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		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551
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'Out of Libya...'
La Libye des voyageurs 1812 -- 1912 (Travellers' Libya), Moftah Missouri, Lausanne, Switzerland: Favre Publishing, 2000. pp248
Libyan historian Moftah Missouri's research into European travellers in nineteenth-century Libya has been presented by his publishers in the form of a "literary guide," part of a series that also includes Istanbul and the Sahara. However, in fact Travellers' Libya is both far more and rather less than this presentation implies. More, because Missouri has apparently read everything written by nineteenth-century visitors to Libya, in a variety of European languages; less, because there is nothing here of "literary" interest in the sense usually understood by that term.
Instead, the book contains much fascinating information regarding the economy, society, political framework and population of nineteenth- century Libya. Missouri points out that in many cases the European visitors were not disinterested, some of them wanting to assess the country's wealth or trading potential. But he does not see anything particular sinister in these readily understandable commercial motives, noting only that had these travellers not undertaken their expeditions and published the results of these, then today next to nothing would be known of Libya's nineteenth-century history, Arabic written and printed sources being few and Ottoman Turkish records being remarkably incurious.
At the beginning of the period covered by Missouri's survey, Libya was not yet clearly demarcated from its neighbours, and though the area was under nominal Ottoman control, political power belonged to quasi- autonomous dynastic governments in the coastal cities, together with independent tribes in the interior. However, Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition to neighbouring Egypt in 1798 had shown that the European powers were prepared to use military force in order to attain their aims in the southern and southeastern Mediterranean, and Libya with its potential natural resources and its important strategic position became a target of interest to many of them. Ironically, it was the multi-national character of that interest that initially enabled the otherwise moribund Ottoman authorities to regain control of Libya in 1835. The Europeans, unable to agree among themselves on who should control Libya, were happy to see it revert to the Sublime Porte in Istanbul. Things turned out rather differently in 1911 when the Italians, convinced that they had a colonial mission in Libya to match France's in neighbouring Tunisia and Algeria, annexed the country.
In the meantime, one's impression from Missouri's study is that the Ottoman administration did little to develop the country. There was no local banking system, the first modern schools were not set up until 1895, public health was abandoned to the fates in the absence of efforts to establish a medical system or profession, and the heavy taxes levied in the country were mostly repatriated to Istanbul. The country lived by exporting agricultural produce and raw materials. Missouri's study gives the relevant fiscal records culled from Ottoman documents and figures for agricultural exports and the socio-economic condition of the population taken from European consular reports and from those by various commercial residents.
Though strictly speaking outside the scope of his study, Missouri has several pages on Libya's more recent twentieth-century history. Italian control ended with the defeat of fascist Italy in the Second World War, Libya then passing under British and American jurisdiction. Libyan independence was declared in 1951, "but there was a long way to go before real independence, which came with the 1st September 1969 Revolution under Colonel Kaddafi." Missouri draws parallels between "American attempts to eradicate Kaddafi at any price" and an earlier US- Libyan conflict between 1801 and 1805 when US forces had attempted, unsuccessfully, to overthrow the government of Youssef Pasha in Tripoli, accusing it of "piracy."
More a work of reference than a "literary guide," and thus betraying its origins as a PhD thesis submitted to the University of Paris, Missouri's study will be of interest to anyone interested in Libya. Some of the bibliographical references are particularly intriguing, drawing attention to the important work undertaken by nineteenth-century travellers and explorers in, for example, recording the Neolithic rock-engravings to be found in the Libyan desert on the then almost completely inaccessible Messak Plateau. The book also contains a marvellous quotation from Aristotle about Libya: "Out of Libya something new always comes."
Reviewed by David Tresilian

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