John Wright is a British journalist and historian who has published five books on modern Libyan history and the Sahara. The book under review covers Libyan history between 1767 and 2007. It is a collection of chapters and articles previously published over the last thirty years (1978–2007) in various journals such as Africa, The Maghreb Review, Encounter, Slavery and Abolition, and Libyan Studies. Wright has chosen to organize his 21 chapters into six themes: ‘Historical background’, ‘Foreigners in Libya’, ‘The slave trade’, ‘Italy and Libya’, ‘The Second World War and after’, and ‘Revolutionary Libya’. The choice of the six themes appears to be subjective, and the last chapter on revolutionary Libya is out of place and has no linkage to the post-1969 republican system in the country. The book has no central thesis and relies on uncritical readings of European travelers' papers and impressions, and the reports of activist British representatives in Tripoli and Benghazi. More importantly, Wright approaches Libyan and Saharan history not from its own dynamics but from the outside, through colonial and orientalist concepts and categories. His advocacy of a positive and idealistic role of European explorations and colonialism in Libya and the Sahara is unusual if compared with the large critical historical scholarship in African studies.

This reviewer encountered major difficulties in the sources and language used to interpret the historical material in the book. The author claims to know Arabic, but cites only two Arabic sources: a book by Abdulkareem Taweel (p. 92); and a reference to the Arab papers Al-Ahram, Filistine, and Al-Balagh (p. 314). This is not an omission but a choice for a journalist who worked for the BBC Arabic section. Can one study the history of England without researching various sources in English? Perhaps a journalist can get away with this, but not a scholar on African history. The consequences of this uncritical use of only state colonial sources are either dated interpretations of major movements, such as the view of Sanusi order as a ‘strictly orthodox order of Sufis’ (p. 15), or factual mistakes, due to no reading of primary and new scholarly research in Arabic on Libya and the Sahara. For example, Wright makes a mistake in his narrative of the civil war at the end of the Qaramanli state in 1830. The two factions of the war were led by Ali, the son of Yusuf Pasha, and his grandson, and not by a son of another pretender (p. 73). He confuses the Magharba with the Majabra tribe. The Magharba was not a member of the tribal alliance on al-Suff al Fauqi, but rather a different member of the Sa'adi confederation of Cyrenaica (p. 180). ‘Zawiya’, which means ‘lodge’ in English, is not a plural but a singular, and the correct term is ‘Zawaya’ (p. 202). Also, contrary to Wright's claim, Sayyid Ahmad al-Shareef, the third leader of the Sanusiyya, did not retire from the anti-colonial resistance in Libya (p. 282). His letters and papers at the Center of Libyan Studies in Tripoli and the work of historian Muhammad Issa Salihiyya show evidence for this Sanusi leader being present in the resistance up until his death in Hejaz in 1933. Such flaws might be overlooked if the book was about Western perceptions of Libya and the Sahara, but it claims to be about the emergence of modern Libya.

At the same time, the author takes for granted his main Western travelers' and consuls' perceptions, accounts, and use of language without locating them in their historical contexts and politics. Throughout the book he refers to precolonial nineteenth-century Tripoli, the name of Libya before 1911. He also uses erroneous names such as Turks and Turkish instead of Ottomans (pp. 29, 73, 93), and employs patronizing language and quotes without commentary such as ‘Slaving Tripoli’, (p. 51), ‘Slave owning Muslim household’ (pp. 142, 209), ‘North Africa Nomad’ (p. 267), ‘The Arab League was obsessed with the Palestine issue’ (p. 44), and ‘Libyans had a distorted view of Italian colonialism’ (p. 298). By failing to contextualize these comments and locate them against Libyan social, cultural, and regional structures, Wright's journalism has overtaken basic requirements for scholarship.

The book does shed new light and information on various biographies of Western travelers and consuls in Libya during the nineteenth century, especially Colonel Hammer Warrington, British consul-general in Tripoli between 1814 and 1846. However, had Wright read the new Arabic books on the period, such as the works of the Libya historian Muhammad Ahmad al-Tuwair on the revolt of Shaykh Abdaljalil Saif Al-Nasr, he would have located Warrington's career in a different context. Furthermore, the section on slave trade, which is the author's area of expertise and the focus of his PhD dissertation, is problematic. He has compiled a mixture of statistical information based on the British consul reports, and claims that the slaves were the most significant commodity of the trans-Saharan trade through Libya. However, he seems to take these accounts for granted and ignores the fact that these British consuls had limited access to the figures, and their own agenda and politics to exaggerate the number of slaves and the larger context of conflict between European powers and the Ottoman empire. In addition, he presents a positive narrative for the British commitment to abolition. He identifies with his colonial sources. There is no attempt to question them, or how the anti-slavery movement may have been used for other objectives against other powers or local North African states. It is well known that native slavery and the status of women were used by European colonial ideologues to justify the colonization of Egypt and India. The author could have benefited from the recent studies by Terry Walz, Muhammad Marwan, ‘Imad Hilal, Ahmad Sikainga, and Paul Lovejoy on slavery in North and Saharan Africa, who used various sources such as local archives, the records of Islamic courts, and oral history to present a new social history of this terrible trade of humans.

The section on the colonial Italian period between 1911 and 1943 includes two interesting articles on the cultural and ideological policies of Italian colonialism in Libya in the cases of the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio and of Mussolini's visit to Libya in March 1937. D'Annunzio is the Italian Kipling, who advocated a colonial mission and destiny for Italy, while the article on Mussolini analyzes the Italian colonial policy of appeasing Libyans and Muslim public opinion through a well-staged ceremony of fascist propaganda that included some Libyan notables and the grand mufti presenting the ‘Sword of Islam’ to the Duce, as if he was the protector of Muslims. The article on Sayyid Ahmad al-Shareef and the Sanusi–British war of 1915–16 is disappointing. It accepts the official British narrative of this war and of the alliance between the pragmatic fourth leader of the order, Sayyid Idris al-Sanusi, and the British government from 1940 until 1969.

Wright's final section, on revolutionary Libya, has one piece entitled ‘Arab dialogue’. It appears to be out of place, but it may serve a different objective. The article analyzes the controversial exchange between Gadafi and the late Tunisian president Bourguiba during Gadafi's visit to Tunisia in April 1973. When Gadafi gave a talk calling for Arab unity and social change in Tunis, Bourguiba intervened and ridiculed him for his lack of realism and for overlooking not only Arab realities but also the fact that Libya still needs to achieve unity first. The author not only admires Bourguiba's wisdom and moderation but he agrees with his critique of Gadafi and his regime.

Lastly, Wright has adopted a confusing transliteration system from Arabic, such as El-Adem not Al-Adem, Giarbub not Ghabub, and Menscia not Manshiyya. Instead of one systematic style, he has used various ones common in the Italian, English, and French languages. This should be avoided in future editions. The many factual mistakes, patronizing language, colonial assumptions, and lack of Arabic sources do little to ensure confidence. Rather, they do more to undermine Wright's claims to a scholarly book on the making of modern Libya.