Benghazi
In 1911, during the Italo-Turkish War, Italy captured Benghazi from the Ottoman Empire. Not everyone accepted the occupation. Nearly half the population of Cyrenaica (Cirenaica in Italian) resisted, led by Omar Mukhtar. By the early 1930s, however, the revolt was over and Italy was in firm control of the city.
In the 1920s, governors Ernesto Mombelli and Attilio Teruzzi oversaw new buildings in an eclectic style that blended Western and Eastern architecture, e.g., the Municipal Palace in 1924 and the cathedral. Under Italo Balbo, the administration built new villages for Cyrenaicans with health services and schools. This came at a heavy cost, though. About 125,000 Libyans in Cyrenaica were forced into concentration camps under Mussolini, and about one-third of them died, mainly from epidemics. In the late 1930s, more than 20,000 Italian colonists settled in Cyrenaica, mainly along the Benghazi coast. As a result, Benghazi grew into a modern city with a new airport, railway station, seaplane station and an enlarged port. A railway to Tripoli was planned for 1940, but the war stopped it.
Italian rule in Benghazi ended in the war. On February 6, 1941, Combe Force captured the city during Operation Compass. Axis forces under Erwin Rommel took it back on April 4, 1941, and it then changed hands several more times. Finally, on November 20, 1942, the British Eighth Army captured Benghazi and held it from then on. The city was heavily bombed during all of this, and the Italian period was effectively over.
Note
There are only two stamps issued specifically for Benghazi. It hardly warrants a separate page. I may merge it with another once I have stamps from the region.
Contains 2 spots: own 0 – 0 unused, 0 used.
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Vittorio Emanuele III - Michetti |
1P (jul 1901) |
|||
2 |
Vittorio Emanuele III - Leoni |
1P (oct 1911) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
