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SUMMARY:Book Launch: Operation Idris: Inside the British Administration of
  Cyrenaica and Libya\, 1942-52 by Richard Synge - Richard Synge\, Deputy D
 irector\, Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme
DTSTART:20150624T163000Z
DTEND:20150624T180000Z
UID:TALK59655@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Professor John Naughton
DESCRIPTION:* A foreign military occupation\, although welcomed at first\,
  soon stirs nationalist hostility and protest\;\n* The big powers at the U
 N at loggerheads over the destiny of a Middle Eastern country\;\n* The cre
 ation of an artificial kingdom.\n\nThese issues\, and more\, are touched u
 pon in Richard Synge’s new book which looks beneath the veneer of the Br
 itish administration of eastern Libya (Cyrenaica) from the time that Romme
 l’s Africa Korps was driven out of North Africa by the Allied forces.  D
 rawing initially on the diaries and memoir of his father\, who served in t
 he British administration in Benghazi\, Richard Synge goes on to provide t
 he essential detail of Britain’s overall political strategy for the terr
 itory\, which prioritised promoting the interests of the Sanussi brotherho
 od and its leader\, Sayyid Mohammed Idris. Jason Pack’s Foreword provide
 s useful historical context on the Anglo-Sanussi relationship\, which was 
 central to the British plan for indirect rule in Cyrenaica.\n\nThe evidenc
 e presented in the book shows how pre-war British preconceptions about the
  Arab world were not shared by all of its own administrators. And yet\, th
 e strategic interest was so strong that even when the post-war negotiation
 s over the future of Libya became stalled\, Britain ensured the permanent 
 return of Idris from exile in 1947 and encouraged and underwrote his unila
 teral declaration of Cyrenaican independence in 1949. These were the first
  steps to Idris being accepted as ruler of independent Libya in 1951.\n\nT
 he new Libya was a flimsy structure that\, from the beginning\, risked col
 lapse. This book uncovers the local and international dramas that accompan
 ied its creation.\n\nAll welcome.\n\n
LOCATION:Gatsby Room\, Wolfson College
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