To the Shores of Tripoli
A few images from Libya before the Great War
“More” picture postcards are a good idea, don’t you think? Today, I’ve got a treat for you as this posting will take the Erich Sonntag Postcard Collection to…Africa, a continent we’ve yet to discover (figuratively speaking).
Below, you’ll find a few picture postcards—“souvenirs from Tripoli on the Barbary Coast”—that were never mailed. I found them in my collection right next to a few postcards from Kenya, which I’ll post in due time.
For now, let’s check out Tripoli, Libya.
“The main road in Tripoli”
For a variety of reasons, I cannot offer you a contemporary “Street View”, mainly because, apparently, Google’s cars have not made it to Libya (yet?).
I suspect you’re fine without me offering a translation of the caption. Instead, I shall reproduce, below, the backside of these picture postcards, which was “exclusively reserved for the address”.
Finally, another “street view” of Tripoli, Libya (below):
“A road in Tripoli.” How poetic, isn’t it?
There will be a second posting with a few more picture postcards from Tripoli in due time.
Traders arrived in Africa and set up trading posts all along the land mass of the great continent. They arrived because of sailing ships and because it's what men do. The setting up of the cruel forces of empire followed, because it's what men do. But imagine the thrill of the traders and explorers. Timeless literature and poetry came from those adventures
Nostalgia for life before the Great War, felt for places most affected, places one has never seen is like a delirium telling us the world must have been so much more beautiful and so much better then.
I never thought about google cars before, always assuming satellites took street images. Another aspect of the world of toys having replaced the world of wars with heroes for school kids and patriotic citizens. Google searches show it's just another ugly city that arose with funny money exchanged by thugs and political powers as colonial powers left It has an ancient Roman arch of Marcus Aurelius - not exactly a reason to visit.
The 2023 movie IO CAPITANO shows quite a view of what became of French Northwest Africa, a coming of age story with a thrilling boat ride that launches from Libya, a port near or at Tripoli - dramatic realism of northern Africa to contrast with our nostalgia for softened views of colonialism.
Thank goodness for photographers and filmmakers tweaking our sense of history and of the present.