Libya became an independent nation after
a. a war of independence
b. the arab conquest
c. the discovery of oil
d. a united nations declaration

The correct answer is D. Libya became an independent nation after a United Nations declaration.

Explanation:

At the end of World War II, the allies could not agree on the future of the former Italian colony of Libya. At that time it was a territory more than five times larger than Italy itself. However, the population did not exceed one million inhabitants, so it represented an appropriate destination for the remnant population of Italy who began to look for places to emigrate after the war. The misgivings between the West and the Soviet Union finally made the UN decide to give independence to the country by leaving it in the hands of King Idris.

In this way, Libya was the first African colony to achieve independence (Egypt had obtained it before, but from the legal point of view it was a British protectorate, with a monarch that already reigned before decolonization, unlike Libya). Later the European powers would regret this fact, because it helped to unleash the different struggles for African independence. They also lost the last opportunity to build a European-style state on the southern coast of the Mediterranean.