The publications of John Wright are likely to be familiar to readers of this journal. His History of Libya (1969; 2010; 2012) has long served as a readable and concise account of the history of a troubled territory whose nature and identity are still very much in question. This Society has also published his anthology Travellers in Libya (2005, reprinted with additional illustrations in 2011 as Travellers in Turkish Libya, 1551–1911) and a collection of his essays entitled The Emergence of Libya (2008). His credentials for writing on the Ottoman and Italian colonial periods are therefore well known and his account of the Gaddafi years in the 2010 update of his history has been recognized as objective and well informed. (See the review by Anthony Layden in Libyan Studies 41, 2010, 166–68.) It is natural, therefore, that, when writing a history of the capital city of Libya, there will be considerable overlap with previously published works; the author pre-empts potential criticism on this score in his preface (vii) and pleads: ‘I trust that I have kneaded, mixed and blended them in such a way that they now seem fresh and essential ingredients of my story’.
Slightly more than half of the book is composed of a historical narrative with chapters on ‘The setting’ (1–13: geographical issues); ‘The “White City”’ (14–34: fifth century BC until AD 1551; the appellation ‘White City’ was used by al-Tigiani in 1307); ‘A nest of corsairs' (35–54: 1551 to 1815, the early Ottoman period and the semi-independent Karamanli dynasty); ‘The Gateway to Africa’ (55–74: 1815 to 1911, the end of the Karamanlis, the later Ottoman period, European explorers); ‘Italian Tripoli’ (75–94: 1911 to 1940); ‘War, Liberation and Independence’ (95–110: 1940 to 1969); and, finally, ‘Gaddafi's Tripoli’ (111–30: 1969 to 2011). The post-Gaddafi period has started very shakily and Wright wisely does not attempt an account of the conflicts which have continued to unfold since then.
The remainder of the book sets out to examine the defining characteristics of Tripoli at different stages of its history. The author groups these under ‘The trading city’ (131–57); ‘The built environment’ (158–91); ‘Infrastructure and expansion’ (193–207); and ‘Arts, customs and society’ (208–16). There is a concluding postscript, ‘Dubai or Mogadishu’ (217–18), which contemplates the alternative possibilities that Tripoli will become either a luxury shopping centre (‘Dubai on the Mediterranean’) or the anarchic wreck exemplified by Mogadishu, conjoined with the hope that it may find some more dignified outcome. A list of ‘Further reading’ (219–21) offers the reader a wide selection of both older and more contemporary sources.
Perhaps inevitably, because of both the weight of documentary evidence and the nature of the surviving built heritage, the emphasis is very heavily on the Ottoman and more recent periods. Apart from the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, very little is visible of anything prior to the arrival of the Turks and literary sources for the medieval period are heavily outweighed by those which reflect European interest in North Africa from the sixteenth century onwards. In many ways, although the Italian period of Tripoli's history was so brief (barely more than 30 years), it constituted such an interesting phenomenon – in bringing about radical modernization and projecting the image of Italy as a great imperial power – that it merits the extended treatment it receives. That the first ever use of aircraft in warfare took place in Italian operations to conquer Libya in 1911 is another interesting historical sidelight, of which more is made in this book (80–86) than in A History of Libya.
The chapter on ‘arts, customs and society’ is a brave, if brief, essay on the cultural aspects of a city that has never in post-Classical times been regarded as a centre of intellectual culture, though Tripolitania does differ in character from both its more obviously Arabised neighbours to the east and its more assertively Berber neighbours to the west. Accounts are given of modes of dress, drinking habits, and music. The Gaddafi years were stultifying with regard to any type of artistic or intellectual expression and even the period of chaos that has followed his fall has witnessed a great outpouring of art, which had clearly been waiting for the moment to express itself. As with the political issues, it will be of great interest to see where this eventually leads.
The author may be forgiven occasional statements which arouse scepticism, such as the loose comment (17) that, when in the Classical period, olive oil was exported in large clay amphorae ‘the “empties” were presumably regularly returned’ (reused, often; but returned, surely never), or his opinion (164) that the exposure and restoration of the Roman arch deprived tourists ‘first of the surprise, and then the pleasure, of suddenly coming upon this unique monument in its previous unprepossessing but more “authentic” and crowded urban setting’. In the reviewer's opinion, tourists are amply rewarded by being able to appreciate the true scale of the monument (previously half-buried) and the well-preserved sculptures on the faces which had hitherto been hidden.
The dependency of Tripoli throughout most of the Ottoman period on corsairing and the slave trade is well known and clearly the significant production of grain and olive oil during the Roman period had long since faded away. But it is interesting to learn (147) that during the Napoleonic wars the British arranged to sustain their garrison in Malta by importing substantial quantities of grain and live cattle from Tripolitania. Even more intriguing is the assertion (138) that in the mid-nineteenth century Tripoli became an important central Mediterranean coaling station for (Turkish?) steamships. The hinterland provides no coal, so where did it come from, and where was it stockpiled?
The text is lightly broken up by 35 (unnumbered) illustrations, many of them culled from the internet; this is an area of disappointment for the reviewer, for the text calls for rather more (or more specific) illustrative support. Before the advent of offset litho printing and the digital technologies which have succeeded it, photographs were expensive to print, requiring special printing techniques and special art paper at the end of the volume, whereas engravings and line drawings could be incorporated into the text more cheaply and easily. This relationship has subsequently been inverted: photographs are ever easier to take, to obtain, and to reproduce (even in colour). The labour involved in making a drawing has also been reduced by digital technology, but it still requires the intervention (with attendant cost) of a skilled artist or draughtsman. Maps and plans have, however, a crucial role to play in explaining anything historical or geographical. In this respect, I fear that this volume is a work for the ‘insider’ who already knows the geography of Libya and the intimacies of Tripoli and does not require the assistance of such maps.
There is a single map on page 2 which shows the position of Libya in relationship to Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. Only five locations within Libya are marked (Tripoli, Misurata, Benghazi, Ghadames, Murzuk) and very few in other countries. This offers, for instance, no help in visualizing the important caravan routes across the Sahara, which are much discussed. For this, reproduction of the map on page 10 of Travellers in Turkish Libya, 1550–1911 would have been very helpful. Likewise, on page 157, there is a contemporary outline map of modern Tripoli, its districts and road system; but this is never referred to directly in the text and offers no help to the reader in visualizing the character of the pre-modern port, the development of the Italian colonial quarter, or the location of the Menscia district outside the medieval walls. (The reviewer's copy of Baedeker's Mediterranean of 1911 includes a plan of Tripoli prior to the Italian conquest, which is very rewarding in this respect.) We are offered (40) an engraving of a French attack on Tripoli in 1685, but where ‘a Venetian engraved print of 1567’ is discussed (31), it would have been helpful if this had been illustrated. We are also told (37–38) that one of the ‘national’ flags flown by Tripoline corsairs in the seventeenth century may have been the origin of the Jolly Roger flown by pirates; it would have been equally nice to see this. (The Wikipedia entry for Jolly Roger is impressively documented, but does not mention any such connection.)
In the chapter on the built environment, some attention is (rightly) given to the elaborately decorated doorways which lead into many houses in the old city (174), but without supporting illustrations; Italian colonial buildings are represented by the cathedral (189) and by the striking INPS building (152) but not, sadly, by the ‘Sicilian Moorish hybrid’ (183) of the Governor's Residence.
In conclusion, the author's long career is evidence enough that he is a good writer and the book is engaging and reasonably priced. It is nonetheless a pity that the choice and extent of illustration was not more carefully matched to the text. This is in part the responsibility of a copyeditor, whose contribution to the quality of a publication should never be dismissed or underrated.
