Italian settlers in Libya of the Imperial Italy, desired by the Italian irredentists. By 1939 the Libyan Italians had built 400 km of new railroads and 4,000 km of new roads (the largest and most important was the one from Tripoli to Tobruk, on the coast) in Libya. ..."Once pacification had been accomplished, Fascist Italy endeavored to convert Libya into an Italian province to be referred to popularly as Italy's Fourth Shore. In 1934 Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were divided into four provinces--Tripoli, Misrata, Benghazi, and Darnah--which were formally linked as a single colony known as Italian Libya, thus officially resurrecting the name that Diocletian
History of Africa about one-third of the eligible white men). As early as 1857, the French established volunteer units of black soldiers in sub- Sahara Africa, termed the "tirailleurs senegalais." They served in military operations throughout the Empire, including 171,000 soldiers in World War I and 160,000 in World War II. About 90,000 became POWs in Germany. The veterans played a central role in the postwar independence movement in French Africa. authorities in West Africa declared allegiance to the Vichy regime, as did the colony of French Gabon Vichy forces defeated an Free French Forces invasion of French West Africa in the two