Abstract
Jonathan Wyrtzen’s Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity captures an essentially historical, sociological approach to the making of the modern Moroccan state, but stands out through the depth of its research and broad variety of its sources. His analysis builds on a wide array of primary sources in local languages such as Arabic and Berber as well as the languages of the previous colonial powers, France and Spain. The resources range from newly accessible archival sources, archived periodicals and traditional archival data, to more unorthodox sources such as Berber poetry, nationalist songs, or graffiti. The book is enriched by fieldwork in the country and illustrated with personal photos by the author as well as historical photographs. The research question around which the book revolves is how four and a half decades of European colonial intervention in the 20th century transformed and still influences Moroccan identity; while analyzing this, Wyrtzen assesses not only the expected actors, like the Arab-Islamic national movement, but also includes two chapters on commonly neglected aspects in the study of Moroccan state, such as gender and the Jewish minority. Underlining his key argument that the process of Moroccan identity formation is intrinsically interdependent, these two chapters are smoothly woven into the book.
Preceding the introduction and formal opening of the book are five quotes: one from the Qur’an, one from the French philosopher Ernst Renan, a headline of the Istiqlal paper Al-‘Alam in 1957 in honor of the anniversary of the king’s return from exile, and finally the preamble to the 2011 Moroccan constitution. These quotes capture the mix of voices central to Wyrtzen’s conceptualization of the Moroccan state. In the preface, Wyrtzen aims to fathom the central aspects of identity politics in Morocco and foreshadows his argument that the postcolonial identity is not a direct continuation of precolonial identity configurations, but instead European colonial intervention needs to be factored into an understanding of Morocco’s 20th- and 21st-century history. In sum, Morocco’s postcolonial identity proves to be the result of spatial, classificatory and symbolic struggles in what he calls the ‘colonial political field’.
In the first chapter, Wyrtzen develops the concept of the colonial political field, which underpins the book’s theoretical approach of sociological history. In more practical terms, the chapter offers a framework that complements the historical sociology of empire and colonialism, offering a means through which the complex and dynamic interactions among various actors can be studied. This allows the macro analysis of military conquests and anti-colonial mobilization to be seen in a corresponding context of developments at the micro-level in society. Actors stand in the centre of the analysis; however, the focus is not on any one of them but rather on how assorted groups operated in relation to one another within the colonial political field. Wyrtzen draws from and extends Pierre Bourdieu’s well-known concept of ‘field’ (champ) to capture a larger space of competitive interaction, therefore theorizing his unique version of this field, the colonial political field being a threefold concept comprising the field dimensions of (a) the position of actors in an analytical space, (b) organizing forces, and (c) contestation or a battlefield. His political field is characterized by dynamism rather than continuity and prominently features a wide range of non-state actors in colonized society, including voices from non-elite groups (rural Berber speakers, women and Jews) that have been marginalized in existing historiography. Having established this sophisticated framework, the monograph then examines how these three field characteristics played out over time by focusing on Morocco’s protectorate period (1912–1956).
The book then starts working episodically towards its goal, namely, explaining that the processes within which identity was politicized in Morocco through colonial intervention were generated, not by the colonial powers or local parties, but through interactions among them both. In its nine chapters, the book corresponds to the three dimensions of the political field, with the first two chapters analysing the field’s configuration and organizing forces, and the following chapters concentrating on the struggles that consumed Morocco with actors vying for control of the expanding colonial political field, and thereby invoking and, most importantly, politicizing group identities. In accordance with its historical approach, the book follows a roughly chronological order, starting with the signing of the treaty of Fes in 1912, a couple of years before the creation of the protectorate system, and culminating with its dissolution and the treaty’s annulment in 1956.
Chapter 1 elaborates the crucial colonial developments regarding state making in Morocco in the early 20th century when, after the completion of total pacification by the central government in the early 1930s, an unprecedented monopoly of power was established. This shift in paradigm, with a state aspiring to a monopoly through the use of force in a demarcated territory, carried far-reaching implications for local actors, with rural populations being mandated to forcefully resist or surrender to a new form of hybrid makhzan (deep state network surrounding the king).
In Chapter 2, Wyrtzen shows through his analysis how the logics of ‘legitimation and legibility’ played out after the expansion of territoriality, which dismisses the notion prevalent among many scholars that colonial states disregarded the aspect of legitimacy, instead arguing that Moroccan history displays quite the opposite. Central to this argument is a detailed examination of the portrayal of the protectorate in the International Colonial Exposition in Paris in 1931, which rationalized the protectorate system and argued for the preservation of the Alawid dynasty and the institutions of the makhzan that legitimized colonial rule. Still, the newly emerged system was not simply conserving precolonial structures, but added new traditions to legitimate the protectorate, constructing what Wyrtzen dubs the ‘neo-Makhzan’ (pp. 80–81).
The book then concentrates on two rural Berber-populated sites at different points in time, the Atlas and Rif Mountains (corresponding to French and Spanish corridors), to analyse in which ways the colonial subjugation induced conversions of identity concepts in rural Morocco that, as a result, were politicized. Throughout the book, the analysis encompasses a wide range of actors, from colonial officials to tribal groups and national urban elites.
Starting at Chapter 5, Wyrtzen adopts a slightly different style, with each chapter now focusing on one dimension of the multilayered Moroccan identity. Up next is the exploration of how notions of collective identity were transformed when diverse elite and non-elite Moroccan groups bargained over the arrangement of the colonial political field. Chapter 5 outlines the crucial 1930 ‘Berber crisis’ and the emergence of the anti-colonialist national movement, which was defined by its Arab-Islamic national identity. Wyrtzen uncovers the movement’s formation in light of non-Arab and non-Muslim parts of the population as well as the legacies of French-educated community leaders. The chapter concludes with the movement’s push for independence after World War II.
Chapters 6 and 7 examine two intriguing groups in Moroccan society that were at the nexus of contentious identity formation. First, the Jewish religious minority is brought into the picture and meaningfully placed in the colonial political field as caught between competing pressures of colonial French forces and local contingencies. This ambiguous position and their potential attachment to various subcategories of Moroccan identity are discussed not in terms of the idiosyncrasy of the Moroccan political field, but by referring to outside resources like the French Alliance Israélite Universelle and Zionist involvements in Morocco.
Chapter 7 continues to incorporate non-traditional aspects and groups into the analysis by emphasizing the centrality of women, or more precisely, gender in several political struggles (p. 219), among them the protectorate’s attempts to uphold social cleavages, the nationalists’ struggles to (re)define Moroccan identity, and the king’s proactiveness regarding the ‘women question’ in the 1940s.
Chapters 8 and 9 are the last two chapters and are the empirical chapters of the book. Wyrtzen turns to the Alawid monarch Mohamed V as his last influential actor in the contestation of Moroccan identity in the colonial political field. In Chapter 8, Wyrtzen examines the path the king developed from his accession to his return from exile. The king manoeuvred adeptly between the protectorate power and the national Arab counterpart, both of which claimed monarchical elements to legitimate their stances in the political field. Chapter 9 examines how the king was able to survive and, even more surprisingly, reinstate his control in the postcolonial Moroccan political field, which he did as a result of historical contingencies in relation to the legitimizing logics of the protectorate system.
Overall, Wyrtzen enlightens his readers about the makings of the Moroccan state and its political identity in general and the salience of the Arab–Berber distinction, in particular the position of the Jews, the discussion of gender and the survival of the monarchy. By incorporating all these actors, he offers a more nuanced Moroccan historiography that pluralizes the mainstream exploration of nationalism and state building in Morocco. In addition, Wyrtzen offers a new model into the still undertheorized area of colonial Morocco and outlines the broader historiographical and theoretical implications of his case study. In sum, this monograph can be added to the bookshelf of scholarship that re-examines North Africa’s colonial encounters focusing on ‘understanding’ this period and hinting that the political field is heavily connected to the legacy of colonialism. The premise of the book, thoughtfully embedded in its nine chapters, as well as the introduction and conclusion, is the belief that colonial inheritance is reflected in Morocco’s current and ongoing debates of Moroccan identity along the lines of the arenas of identity formation: religion, ethnicity, territory and the role of the Alawid monarchy as colonial intervention activated the political salience of these pillars. All of them are still at the centre of struggles to defend, contest and negotiate the legitimacy of Morocco’s political order.