ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 traces the politics of independence and the origins of the modern state from the monarchy in 1951 to the republic in 1969 and the dictatorship from 1977 to 2011, as well as the uprising that followed and the eventual collapse of the state. It advocates a new reading of the postcolonial Libyan state and its history after 1951, as well as the current crisis in Libya after the end of the Qadhdhafi Jamahiriyya in 2011.
