An incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as primitive, in order to destroy those same oppressors. Fanon uses the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution as a point of departure for an explication of the inevitable dynamics of colonial oppression.
Libya is coming in from the cold, but for most of the three decades following Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi's self-styled revolution in 1969, the country was politically isolated and labelled a pariah state. Dirk Vandewalle, one of only a handful of Western scholars to visit the country during this time, is intimately acquainted with Libya. He offers a lucid and comprehensive account of Libya's past, and corrects some of the misunderstandings about its present. The story begins in the 1900s with a portrait of Libya's desert terrain and the personalities that shaped its development. Professor Vandewalle then covers Libya's history during the Italian colonial period (1911-1943) and the monarchy that ruled between 1951 and 1969. He goes on to discuss the subsequent regime of Colonel Qadhafi and the economic, political, and ideological developments that he engendered. Finally, he describes the most recent events that brought Libya back into the international fold. As the first comprehensive history of Libya over the last two decades, this book will be welcomed by scholars and students of North Africa, the Middle East, and by those who are visiting and doing business in the region. Diederik (Dirk) Vandewalle is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and former chair of its Asian and Middle Eastern Studies program. His academic specialty focuses on the political economy of North Africa, and on strategies of political and economic liberalization in the region. Vandewalle is the author of Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-building ( 1998), editor of two volumes on Libya and North Africa, and author of numerous journal articles. He has received, among a number of awards, a Fulbrightand Social Science Research Council grant for his research, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Institute of International Development and at Harvard's Center of Middle Eastern Studies.
Kenneth Perkins' book traces the history of Tunisia from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. After initially examining the years of French colonial rule from 1881 to 1956, when the Tunisians achieved independence, he describes the subsequent process of state-building, including the design of political and economic structures and the promotion of a social and cultural agenda. In conclusion, Perkins reviews the years since 1987, when a new regime came to power. Perkins' informed introduction is a necessity for those who study the region, and also for travellers who want more comprehensive information than most guidebooks offer. Kenneth Perkins is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. He has worked extensively on North Africa and his research has taken him across the region. His publications include two editions of the Historical Dictionary of Tunisia (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, 1989), Port Sudan: The Evolution of a Colonial City (Westview Press, 1993), Tunisia: Crossroads of the Islamic and European Worlds (Westview Press, 1986), and Qaids, Captains & Colons: French Military Administration in the Colonial Maghrib, 1844-1934 (Africana Pub, 1981).
The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and repressive torture. Nearly a half century has passed since this savagely fought war ended in Algeria's independence, and yet--as Alistair Horne argues in his new preface to his now-classic work of history--its repercussions continue to be felt not only in Algeria and France, but throughout the world. Indeed from today's vantage point the Algerian War looks like a full-dress rehearsal for the sort of amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, from Beirut to Baghdad--struggles in which questions of religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism take on a new and increasingly lethal intensity. "A Savage War of Peace" is the defi nitive history of the Algerian War, a book that brings that terrible and complicated struggle to life with intelligence, assurance, and unflagging momentum. It is essential reading for our own violent times as well as a lasting monument to the historian's art.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Illustrations Map of Algeria Map of ALgiers Preface PART ONE: Prelude 1830-1954 "A Town of Great Interest" ""Ici, c'est la France"" In the Middle of the Ford PART TWO: The War 1954-1958 All Saint's Day, 1954 The Sorcerer's Cauldron The FLN: From Bandung to Soummam The Second Frontsof Guy Mollett "Why We Must Win" The Battle of Algiers Lost Round for the FLN The World Takes Notice "Le Dernier Quart d'Heure" PART THREE: The Hardest of ALl Victories 1958-1962 A Kind Resurrection ""Je Vous Ai Compris"" The FLN Holds Its Breath Neither the Djebel nor the Night ""Aux Barricades!"" "This Prince of Ambiguity" Revolution in the Revolution De Gaulle Caught in the Draught The Generals' Putsch Pvertures for Peace The Suitcase or the Coffin Exodus The Page is Turned "Afterword" "Colonel Godard's Organogram" "Political and Military Abbreviations" "Chronology" "Bibliography" "Reference Notes" "Clossary" "Index"
The 2005 winner of the Arabic Literature in Translation Prize, sponsored by the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas Press (see page 17), though written in the nineteenth century, is a richly contextualized precursor of modern Muslim wrestlings with notions of democracy and constitutionalism. Translated by the distinguished Middle East historian L. Carl Brown, this important historical work is now available to English language readers for the first time. Toward the end of his long career as an official in the Tunisian government, Ahmad ibn Abi Diyaf (Bin Diyaf) took on the task of writing a history of his country. The result was a multivolume history, concentrating on the period that Bin Diyaf experienced first-hand from within the small circle of Tunisia's government. where he had served from the 1820s to the 1860s. It was as if a Harry Hopkins, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., or Henry Kissinger had served not just a Roosevelt, Kennedy, or Nixon, but all three presidents for an unbroken forty-year period. Not only the most penetrating and most perceptive study of nineteenth-century Tunisian political life, Bin Diyaf's history was illustrative of the activities and ideas in play throughout the larger Ottoman world. His work was a history with a thesis. Bin Diyaf sought to show the need for his country, and for that matter the larger Ottoman world, to adopt representative and responsive forms of government as existed in Europe. His purpose was most clearly set out in the Muqaddima or Introduction to his monumental work, which Brown has translated. The ideas produced in this text roughly a century and a half ago were notinstitutionalized, but they did catch hold as ideas and goals influencing later developments.
Darfur is a region set apart, huge, remote and poverty stricken. Its people are today locked in conflict, terrorised by the lawless Arab militia known as janjawid. As M.W. Daly explains, the roots of the crisis lie deep in Darfur's past. Tracing the story from the origins of the Fur state in the seventeenth century to Darfur's annexation by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, he shows how years of neglect left the region unprepared for independence. This complex story is told with compassion, insight and a strong sense of place.
In "Forgotten Voices," Ali Abdullatif Ahmida employs archival research, oral interviews and comparative analysis to rethink the history of colonial and nationalist categories and analyses of modern Libya. He explores the ambiguities, failures, and silences manufactured by current colonial and nationalist scholarships, and he presents the voices of the Libyan people as they have confronted contradictions of modernity, the nation-state, and alienation in the contemporary nation. "Forgotten Voices" analyzes the context of power and human agency to capture the complex social history of Libyan peasants, tribesmen, women, slaves, and victims of fascist concentration camps in their diverse strategies for survival.
"Investigating Genocide: An Analysis of the Dafur Atrocities Documentation Project" will be comprised of over 1,000 annotations on a wide array of issues/ topics germane to the subject of the intervention and prevention of genocide. Among the topics under which annotations will be included are: key conventions, international treaties, and covenants; early warning signals and forecasting; key "risk data bases"; sanctions; peace-keeping forces armed intervention; humanitarian intervention; conflict resolution; genocide early-warning systems/monitoring; ad hoc tribunals; the International Criminal Court; realpolitik vis-a-vis the issue of genocide prevention and intervention; key non-governmental agencies working on the issue of intervention and prevention of genocide; and key governmental and U.N. bodies working on the issue of genocide intervention and prevention. In addition to the annotations, the book will include a major essay that introduces the reader to the subject of intervention and prevention of genocide. It will raise a host of critical issues regarding the strengths, weakness, and limitations of various approaches germane to issues of intervention and prevention. In a companion volume, "The UN and the Intervention and Prevention of Genocide: A critical Bibliography," will provide a comprehensive annotation of the voluminous writings relating to the role of the UN in the prevention of genocide. This volume is especially pertinent has the UN has come under increasing fire in both the media as well as the scholarly literature for its inaction in the face of genocide.
This book provides a comprehensive introduction, which focuses on Morocco's history, provides a helpful synopsis of the kingdom, and is supplemented with a useful chronology of major events. Hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on former rulers, current leaders, ancient capitals, significant locations, influential institutions, and crucial aspects of the economy, society, culture and religion form the core of the book. A bibliography of sources is included to promote further more specialized study.
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