Abstract
The field of Maghrib studies has always been marginal to the American academy—not quite African, not quite Arab, not quite European, the Maghrib inhabits a space between the essentialisms evoked by each. For Africans (and Africanists), North Africans were slavers and proto-imperialists whose historical experiences diverged from those of sub-Saharan Africa. As constituted in the United States, African studies has tended to see its terrain as Africa south of the Sahara, “black Africa” as opposed to “white Africa” (thereby mindlessly replicating colonial racisms). While Africa specialists are fully aware of the historical links between the two, such as the trans-Saharan gold trade, Islam, and Arabic culture, the field often proceeds as if the North were another world.
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Notes
See especially David Prochaska, “History as Literature, Literature as History: Cayagous of Algeria,” American Historical Review (Dec. 1996).
Also Herbert Lebovics, True France: The Wars Over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992);
Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995);
Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda (eds.), Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Char-lottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998).
James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988);
Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner (eds.), Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994);
Ann L. Stoler and Frederick Cooper (eds.), Tensions of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997);
Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988);
and Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 11 volumes to date.
For other surveys, see (among others) L. Carl Brown and Matthew S. Gordon (eds.), Franco-Arab Encounters (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1996);
Michel Le Gall and Kenneth Perkins (eds.), The Maghrib in Question: Essays in History and Historiography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997),
Jean-Claude Vatin (ed.), Connaissances du Maghrib: sciences sociales et colonisation (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1984),
and G. Wesley Johnson (ed.), Double Impact: France and Africa in the Age of Imperialism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985).
For a remarkable critique, see Yvonne Turin, Affrontements culturels dans Algérie colonial: écoles, medecine, religion (Paris: Maspero, 1971).
The chief exception known to me is Joseph Robin, L’insurrection de la Grande Kabylie en 1871 (Lavauzelle, 1901).
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), who however makes no reference in this book to Algerian decolonization, arguably the most bitterly contested and radical anticolonial struggle in the Middle Eastern region as a whole in the 1950s and 1960s (or indeed to Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre, two of its leading opponents).
Nicholas Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor: Michigan, 1994)
and Gyan Prakash (ed.), After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World—A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed Books, 1986).
Alal al-Fasi, Harakat al-Istiqlaliyah fi al-maghrib al-Arabi, English trans. H. Z. Nuseibeh, Independence Movements in Arab North Africa (Washington, D.C.: American Council for Learned Societies, 1954),
Mohamed Lacharef, Algérie: nation et histoire (Paris: Maspero, 1965),
and Habib Bourguiba, La Tunisie et la France (Paris: Julliard, 1954).
See Mostefa Lacheraf, Algérie: nation et société (Paris: Maspero, 1968).
Enrico de Leone’s La Colonizzatione del Africa del Nord (Padua: Cedam, 1960).
Ruth First’s Libya (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) is an early nationalist history in English.
See also Umar Ali ibn Ismail, Inhiyar Hukim al-Usra al-qaramanliyya fi libia, 1790–1835 (Tripoli: Maktabat al-Firjani, 1966)
and the critique of Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonization and Resistance, 1830–1932 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). For a discussion of modern Libyan historiography, see Michel Le Gall, “Forging the Nation-State: Some Issues in the Historiography of Modern Libya,” in Le Gall and Perkins (eds.), The Maghrib in Question, 95–108.
On the struggle for Algerian history, in addition to Lacharef, Algérie: nation et société, see Yves Lacoste, André Noushi, and Jean Prenant’s L’Algérie Passé et Present (Paris: Editions sociales, 1960),
and Mohamed C. Sahli’s Décoloniser l’histoire: introduction a l’histoire du maghreb (Paris: Maspero, 1965). For a brilliant examination of Algerian nationalist historiography, see Omar Carlier, “Scholars and Politicians: An Examination of the Algerian View of Algerian Nationalism,” in Le Gall and Perkins (eds.), The Maghrib in Question, 136–169.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Evergreen Books, 1968). The chapter on “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” stands as a sharp critique of nationalism.
For a preliminary verdict, see David C. Gordon, North Africa’s French Legacy, 1954–1962 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1964),
and David C. Gordon, Self-Determination and History in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971).
Marcel Gauchet, Le Désenchantement du monde: Une historie politique de la religion (Paris: Gallimard, 1985).
See Shlomo Avineri (ed.), Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968).
For representative examples, see André Gunder Frank, Latin America: Un-derdevelopment or Revolution (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970),
and Samir Amin, Imperialism and Unequal Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977).
Abdullah Laroui, Les origines sociales et culturelles du nationalisme Marocain (Paris: Maspero, 1977).
Ross E. Dunn, Resistance in the Desert: Moroccan Responses to French Imperialism, 1881–1912 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978),
Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya
and Hachemi Karoui and Ali Mahjoubi, Quand Le vent s’est levé à l’ouest: Tunisie 1881—Impérialisme et Résistance (Tunis: CERES, 1983).
See the recent critical discussion by John King, “Abd al-Qadir: Nationalist or Theocrat?” The Journal of Algerian Studies 2 (1977): 62–80.
The subaltern studies critique of Congress Party nationalism in India is especially suggestive. See Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994)
and Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
On these three examples see Raphael Danziger, Abd al-Qadir and the Algerians (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1977), chap. 7; my Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco, chap. 6,
and Emmanuel Sivan, Communisme et Nationalisme en Algérie 1920–1962 (Paris: Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques, 1976), 236–237.
See among other works John Waterbury, Commander of the Faithful (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970),
Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969);
Elaine Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989),
and John P. Entelis, Culture and Counterculture in Moroccan Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989).
For some representative examples, see Abdallah Laroui, Les origines culturelles du nationalisme marocain and Abdallah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
Charles Robert Ageron, Les Algériens Musulmans et la France, 1871–1919 (Paris: Presses Universitaire de France, 1968).
See also among others André Nouschi, Naissance du Nationalisme Algérien (Paris: Editions Minuit, 1971)
and Annie-Rey Goldzeiguer, Le royaume arabe (Algiers: SNED, 1977). An important exception is Jean-Claude Vatin’s L’Algérie: Histoire et Politique, which, while still under the influence of the nationalist moment, makes a brave attempt to critique (and to a degree rethink) the colonial historical literature. See also Carlier, op. cit.
Compare Charles-André Julien, “Colons Francais et Jeunes Tunisiens,” Cahiers de Tunisie (1971),
and Béchir Tlili, Les Rapports Culturels et Ideologiques entre l’Orient et l’Occident, en Tunisie au XIXeme siecle (1830–1880) (Tunis: Universite de Tunis, 1974).
In addition to Ahmida and First, cited above, see Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). See the recent forum on “Subaltern Studies As Postcolonial Criticism” in the American Historical Review (December 1994).
Joelle Bahloul, The Architecture of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
See also Avram Udovitch and Lucette Valensi, Juifs en Terre d’Islam: les Communautés de Djerba (Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines, 1984).
Julia Clancy-Smith, “The Shaykh and His Daughter: Coping in Colonial Algeria,” in E. Burke III, Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 145–163.
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Burke, E. (2009). Theorizing the Histories of Colonialism and Nationalism in the Arab Maghrib. In: Ahmida, A.A. (eds) Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghrib. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623019_2
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