Derna province was located in northern
Italian Libya, next to
Egypt. It was a semi-arid area near the Mediterranean coast, with a fertile plateau around ancient
Cyrene, but in the interior was the
Sahara desert. Its administrative center was the small city of
Derna on the Mediterranean coast. It was divided in 3 "circondari" (sections): • Derna •
Apollonia •
Tobruk The province from 1939 was considered officially part of the
Kingdom of Italy, with the same laws. It was one of the four new Italian provinces of the so-called
Quarta Sponda (
Fourth Shore). Indeed, on 9 January 1939, the colony of
Italian Libya was incorporated into "metropolitan Italy" and thereafter considered an integral part of the
Italian state itself (the
French, in 1848, had incorporated
French Algeria in the same manner). In the coast of the province was built in 1937-1938 the eastern section of the
Litoranea Balbia, that went from
Tripoli to the border of
Egypt. Some Italian colonists moved to live in a group of new villages after 1938: they increased local agricultural production, but British invasion during World War II destroyed all improvements. The car tag for the Italian province of Derna was
DE. ==Population in Province of Derna==