On 24 December 1951, King Idris al-Sanusi announced the creation of the United Kingdom of Libya from al-Manar Palace in Benghazi – where Rodolfo Graziani had once resided. With this proclamation, a protracted process of multilevel negotiations between international, regional, and local actors came to a close. However, the country faced enormous political and economic challenges. King Idris needed to confront a number of interrelated difficulties: to create a sense of political loyalty, to develop a sense of national identity among the three provinces’ citizens, and to build a state out of their multiple and contradictory interests. The title of King – an unknown political concept in Libya – had been conferred upon Idris al-Sanusi and, as heir to the Sanusiyya Order, he certainly provided a focus of identity within Cyrenaica. For Tripolitanians, however, history was seemingly repeating itself. Much like their offer in the 1920s to extend the Sanusi amirate into Tripolitania as a last resort against Italian encroachments, the kingdom represented an uneasy compromise they had accepted overwhelmingly in the negotiations leading up to independence to avoid further colonial oversight.

Libya had passed from colonialism to independence at the behest of the Great Powers, without a unifying ideology or a movement whose goals and aspirations were shared throughout the country. In neighboring countries, independence was the end result of a drawn-out ideological or physical struggle that was instrumental in creating a sense of national identity. In Libya, however, political independence was sudden and unexpected. The manner in which it came about shattered whatever low level of historical or political continuity the new Libyan citizens possessed. As with economic independence a decade later, it arrived without efforts by the country’s citizens, and yet profoundly and irrevocably changed their lives forever.