Laying the Groundwork for Democracy: The Sanusi Family in Colonial Italian Africa

This research grant from the Bokhari Fund for research on Islamic societies and culture will allow me to conduct exploratory research for two weeks at the Historical Diplomatic Archive of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, Italy. Visiting this archive will allow me to understand Libya’s transition from imperial and colonial rule to the institutionalization of a representative government modeled after the parliamentary monarchies of Europe under the leadership of the Sanusi family. Concretely, it will serve as exploratory research for my doctoral dissertation, tentatively entitled The Making of a Monarchy: Conflict, Coloniality, Capitalism, and the Sanusis of Libya, 1837-1969. Additionally, I will write a journal article that assesses the Sanusi family's relationship with the Italian Colonial State in the early twentieth century by analyzing a series of peace treaties and diplomatic correspondence to understand the Sanusi family's preparedness for governance and development initatives in the mid-twentieth century.