Day of Revenge settlers by the 1960s. The Italian population was concentrated in the coast around the cities of Tripoli (37 percent of its population) and Bengasi (31 percent). With the Italian defeat in World War II, Italian influence waned. After several years under British mandate, on 24 December 1951 Libya declared its independence as the United Kingdom of Libya (a constitutional, hereditary monarchy under King Idris). Although many Italians had already left the former colony, many remained (primarily farmers and craftsmen). King Idris was a tolerant monarch, and generally treated the Italian population well. Libyan Jews (who had lived in Libya since
Italian East Africa a threat to Egypt and those in the Italian East Africa a danger to the British and French territories in the Horn of Africa. Italian belligerence also closed the Mediterranean to Allied merchant ships and endangered British supply routes along the coast of East Africa, the Gulf of Aden, Red Sea and the Suez Canal. (The Kingdom of Egypt remained neutral during World War II, but the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 allowed the British to occupy Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.) Egypt, the Suez Canal, French Somaliland and British Somaliland were also vulnerable to invasion, but the "Comando Supremo" (Italian General