The Last Frontier: The White Man's War for Civilisation in Africa

by E. Alexander Powell

Those who are in a position to know whereof they speak believe that the Senussiyeh would actively oppose any attempt on the part of the Italians to occupy the hinterland of Tripolitania, for it is obvious that such an occupation would not alone bring the Christian in dangerous proximity to the chief stronghold of the order, but it would effectually cut off the supplies of arms and ammunition which caravans in the pay of the Senussiyeh have regularly been transporting to Jof from obscure ports on the Tripolitanian coast. It has been the policy of the Senussiyeh, supported by the Turkish administration in Tripolitania, to close the regions under its control to Christians, so it is scarcely likely that it would do other than resist an Italian penetration of the country, even in the face of a Turkish evacuation. Though the order encouraged resistance to the French advance in the Sudan, considering that the extension of the French sphere of influence threatened its own prestige in those regions, it has, as a rule, refrained from displaying antagonism toward the rulers of the adjoining regions. Aside from proselytism, the Senussiyeh has performed a great work in the Sahara in the colonisation and cultivation of the oases, the encouragement of trade, the building of rest-houses, the sinking of wells, and the protection of trans-Saharan caravans.

Stripped of the glamour and exaggeration with which sensational writers and superficial travellers have invested the subject, it is apparent that the Senussi controls a very wide-spread and powerful organisation—an organisation probably unique in the world. As a fighting element his followers are undoubtedly far superior to the wild and wretchedly armed tribesmen who charged the British squares so valorously at Abu Klea and Omdurman and who wiped out an Italian army in the Abyssinian hills. Their remarkable mobility, their wonderful powers of endurance, their large supplies of the swift and hardy racing-camel known as hegin, and their marvellous knowledge of this great, inhospitable region, coupled with the fact that they can always retreat to their bases in the desert, where civilised troops cannot follow them, are all advantages of which the Senussi and his followers are thoroughly aware.

Although the Senussi is, as I have shown, amply capable of causing the Italians serious trouble, it is very unlikely that he will prove actively hostile if they refrain from encroaching upon those remote regions which he looks upon as his own. Italy will have her hands full with the development of the coastal regions for many years to come, so, if she is wise, she will leave the interior of the country severely alone, recognise the religious authority of the Senussi, and, if possible, effect some such working agreement with him as England has done with an equally dangerous neighbour, the Amir of Afghanistan.

From the glimpses which I have given you of the inhospitable character of Tripolitania and the still more inhospitable people who inhabit it, it will be seen that Italy's task does not end with the ousting of the Turk. She has set her hand to the plough, however, and started it upon a long and arduous and very costly furrow, the end of which no man can see. For a nation to have a colony, or colonies, wherein she can turn loose the overflow of her population and still keep them under her own flag, is an undeniable asset, particularly when the colony is as accessible from the mother country as Libya [1] (for we must accustom ourselves to the new name sooner or later) is from Italy. But if Italy is to be a success as a colonising nation she must school herself to do things differently in Tripolitania from what she has in her other African dependencies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.

[1] The Italians have given their new possession the historic name of Libya.

First and foremost, she must pick the men who are to settle her new colony as carefully as she picks the men for her carabinieri, choosing them with a view to their intelligence, industry, energy, and sobriety, for to flood Tripolitania with such a class of emigrants as every vessel from Italy dumps on our hospitable shores is but to invite disaster.

Secondly, she must impress on these colonists the imperative necessity of keeping on friendly terms with the natives, who are, after all, the real owners of the soil, and of obtaining their co-operation in the development of the country. The Arab, remember, unlike the negro, cannot be bullied and domineered with impunity, Germany's African colonies providing significant examples of the failures which invariably result from ill-treatment of the native population.

Thirdly, there must be no “absentee landlordism,” the future of the colony largely depending, to my way of thinking, upon frugal, hard-working peasant farmers, owning their own farms, whose prosperity will thus be indissolubly linked with that of the colony.

Lastly, all local questions of administration should be taken entirely out of the hands of Rome and left to “the man on the spot,” for history is filled with the chronicles of promising colonies which have been ship-wrecked on the rocks of a highly centralised form of government.

If the Italians will take these things to heart, I believe that their conquest of Tripolitania will prove, in the end, for the country's own best good, contributing to its peace and to the welfare of its inhabitants, native as well as foreign, and that it will promote the opening up of the dark places to civilisation, if not to Christianity—for the Moslem does not change his faith. When, therefore, all is said and done, I cannot but feel that the cross of the House of Savoy portends more good to Africa in general, and to Tripolitania in particular, than would ever the star and crescent.