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Samuel Kigar
To cite this article: Samuel Kigar (2016) Making Morocco: colonial intervention and
the politics of identity, The Journal of North African Studies, 21:3, 521-524, DOI:
10.1080/13629387.2016.1161699
Download by: [Duke University Medical Center] Date: 02 February 2017, At: 08:27
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exposition and the Moroccan colonial eld, he examines how the colonial state
introduced and attempted to manage various social categories.
Where the second chapter extends and deepens a line of analysis of colonial
ethnography-cum-governance begun some time ago by Edmund Burke, the
next several chapters move to the Moroccan side of this story (93); and they
do so with freshness and verve. Chapters 3 and 4 cover resistance movements
in the Atlas and Rif mountains. For too long, the responses of rural Moroccans
to colonisation have been the subject of speculation, seen mostly through colonial
accounts. Ingeniously, Wyrtzen relies on Tamazight oral poetry, recorded by a
French soldier, to assess the internal dynamics of the Atlas tribes responses to
pacication. The poems bespeak an internal debate about whether the resistance
should be continued or abandoned (105). After the Tamazight-speaking region
had been incorporated into the Protectorate, the poetry expresses overlapping
allegiances to Morocco, to tribal identity, and to intertribal solidarity (115).
Chapter 4 applies a similar sharpness of insight to the creation of an anti-colonial
political eld, led by Abd al-Krim al-Khattabi in the Rif Mountains.
Chapter 5 turns to urban settings to examine the roots of nationalist anti-colo-
nialism. Wyrtzen frames the movement as one that challenged the classicatory
and symbolic logics of the colonial state by stressing unity over division within
the Moroccan eld. The chapter is a detailed account of the different roads
taken by the nationalist movement after its furious response to the famous
Berber Decree of 1930 through the post-World War II period.
Chapters 6 and 7 consider the importance of internal others to the debate
over the elds logics of legibility and legitimacy (178). Chapter 6, on Moroccos
Jewish question, moves through the different ways in which the French Protecto-
rate classied Jews to the relationship between Jews and the nationalist move-
ment and the role of Zionism. Chapter 7, Gender and the Politics of Identity, is
likewise strong for its inclusion of diverse voices, including those of men and
women, French and Moroccan, and country and city dwellers. Both of these chap-
ters put Wyrtzens analytical prowess on display when they consider how women
and Jews (and Jewish women) interacted with the Protectorates striated legal
systems. Despite its purported focus on gender, however, Chapter 7 contains
only one reference to masculinity (242). Thereby, it incidentally lets womanhood
stand as the gendered category.
The nal two chapters are centred on the gure of Sultan/King Mohamed V. They
ask how the monarchy managed to survive into the postcolonial period. Wyrtzen
convincingly argues that the Kings remarkable feat of survival was the result of a
conuence of exogenous and endogenous factors, including his role in the Protec-
torates logics of legitimacy, the way the nationalist movement subverted this legiti-
macy framework from within (271), his role in decolonization, and his skill in putting
down insurgencies. The conclusion offers a concise summary; and it looks ahead to
developments in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Most observant travellers in Morocco will notice the words Allah, al-Watan,
al-Malik (God, Country, King) written in large, white letters on hillsides around
the countrys cities and towns. Fortunately for us, Wyrtzen was among those
observant wayfarers (ix). Making Morocco goes very far in explaining why those