Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture Culture by Eric Calderwood (review)

Colonial al-Andalus offers a well-documented and fascinating account of the interaction between Spanish colonialism and Moroccan nationalism. Calder-wood traces some of the key tropes of Moroccan nationalism to the Spanish Africanista discourse developed during the second half of the nineteenth century. The book focuses on the different political iterations of Al-Andalus and andalusí cultural identity by the Moroccan nationalists and the Spanish colonial authorities before, during, and after the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco. Calderwood's central thesis in this book, that Moroccan nationalism appropriated the central tenets of Spanish colonial discourse to articulate its own narrative of the cultural origins of the Moroccan nation, is both provocative and insightful. As he explains, Francoism emphasized the importance of the Andalusi past shared by both nations to justify Spain's suitability as the colonizer of Morocco. Moroccan nationalists, on the other hand, embraced the myth of the Andalusi origins of the Moroccan nation and proceeded to present themselves as the true representatives of this cultural tradition.

The origin of Moroccan nationalism has been a point of contention for quite some time. Early post-independence historical accounts like Alal AlFassi's The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa (1970) and Abdullah Laroui's Origines culturelles et politiques du nationalism marocain (1977) privileged an idealized pre-colonial past as the origin of Moroccan nationalism and emphasized the contribution of the urban Arab elites to the movement. Edmund Burke highlighted the importance of the political role played by rural Berber populations in his Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial Protest and Resistance, 1860–1912 (1976). Other accounts like John P. Halstead's Rebirth of a Nation (1967) and more recently Jonathan Wyrtzen's Making of Morocco (2015) have emphasized that Moroccan nationalism originated as a backlash against the Berber Dahir instituted in 1930 by the French colonial administration. According to this account, the effort to drive a wedge between the Arab and Berber populations that characterized this legislation backfired uniting all Moroccans in a shared nationalist movement. Finally, new accounts like Daniel Zisenwine's The Emergence of Nationalist Politics in Morocco (2010) argues that Moroccan nationalism is really a much later development that appears after World War II.

As Edmund Burke acknowledges, "colonial and nationalist histories are deeply imbricated in one another" in that "both derive from post-Enlightenment thought" (11). I would hasten to add that postcolonial histories have equally been indebted to Post-Enlightenment thought in that they have, for the most part, ignored any elements that contributed to the articulation of Moroccan nationalist discourse other than definitions of the modern nation/state informed by the French Revolution. This teleological account of Moroccan nationalism has been criticized by, among others by Moroccan historian Muhammad El Mansour in his article "Moroccan Historiography since Independence" (1997) for its deliberate attempt to ignore the role played by nationalist leaders of the Spanish zone like Abdessalam Bennuna, Abd al-Khaliq al-Turris, or Muhammad Dawud. Calderwood's contribution provides a much-needed account of the extent to which Spanish narratives of shared cultural affinity with the Andalusi civilization, particularly as developed during the Francoist regime, influenced and became a corner stone of Moroccan nationalist discourse.

As Calderwood explains, the crosspollination between Spanish colonialist ideologues and Moroccan nationalist was, of course, deeply informed by strategic calculations on both sides. Many of the early leaders of the nationalist movement initially presented themselves as reformers rather than advocates for independence trusting that with the arrival of the Spanish II Republic they would be able to increase their role the government of the Protectorate. The Spanish Civil War and the consolidation in power of General Francisco Franco marked the beginning of the radicalization of Moroccan nationalist discourse. The Francoist regime had chosen to undertake pro-Arab policies in order to counter French colonial policy of divide and conquer based on emphasizing ethnic differences between the Berber and the Arab population. Franco sought to...