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Spanish Colonialism España y el Norte de Africa: El


protectorado en Marruecos, 1912–1956. By Victor
Morales Lezcano. Madrid: Universidad Nacional de
Educación a Distancia, 1984. Pp. 249. 600 ptas (soft
covers). Canarias y Africa. Altibajos de una
gravitatión. By Victor Morales Lezcano, Vicente
Garcia Franco, and Teresa Pereira Rodriguez. Las
Palmas de Gran Canaria: Mancomunidad de
Cabildos y Plan Cultural, 1985. Pp. 77. No price
indicated.

Gervase Clarence-Smith

The Journal of African History / Volume 27 / Issue 03 / November 1986, pp 581 - 582
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700023483, Published online: 22 January 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0021853700023483

How to cite this article:


Gervase Clarence-Smith (1986). The Journal of African History, 27, pp 581-582
doi:10.1017/S0021853700023483

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REVIEWS 581

SPANISH COLONIALISM

Espana y el Norte de Africa: El protector ado en Marruecos, igi2-ig^6. By VICTOR


MORALES LEZCANO. Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia,
1984. Pp. 249. 600 ptas (soft covers).
Canarias y Africa. Altibajos de una gravitacion. By VICTOR MORALES LEZCANO,
VICENTE GARCIA FRANCO, and TERESA PEREIRA RODRIGUEZ. Las Palmas de Gran
Canaria: Mancomunidad de Cabildos y Plan Cultural, 1985. Pp. 77. No price
indicated.
Spanish writing on Africa almost ceased after decolonization, the death of
Franco, and the abolition of the Instituto de Estudios Africanos. Victor Morales
has been one of the very few to keep the torch of ' Africanismo' alight, and these
two books are the fruits of his work and that of his small team in Madrid's Open
University. The focus is on Spanish colonialism rather than on African initiatives,
but Victor Morales is keenly aware of the need to right the balance. Both books
note the problems involved in working in the administrative archives of Alcala de
Henares, which house most of the records of Spain's African possessions in the
last two centuries. Victor Morales was denied access to much of the Moroccan
material, while Teresa Pereira found large and inexplicable gaps in the Guinean
documents.
Victor Morales' survey of Spanish colonialism in Morocco takes the form of four
rather loosely integrated essays, on geopolitical factors, 'Africanismo' ideology in
Spain, the role of the army, and the economics of colonialism. All four essays are
suffused by a sympathy for the Second Republic and a critical attitude to the
Franco years, an approach in marked contrast to the writings of his predecessors.
The geopolitical argument is not new. Spain did not want to have France on two
frontiers, and thus tried to shore up the independence of Morocco. When the end
of independence became inevitable, the British desire to keep France away from
Gibraltar guaranteed Spain a share in the spoils. Under Franco, concessions in
Morocco were intended to gain Arab support to break out of post-war diplomatic
isolation. The second essay on 'Africanismo' covers a topic which has also been
well explored before, and while the author refers to Lecuyer and Serrano, he does
not appear to have consulted the American theses by Bogard and Hahs. However,
there are interesting references to the way in which certain Spanish intellectuals
turned to their Arab and Jewish roots after the shock of defeat in the Spanish-
American war of 1898. The role of the army in the Rif war and the Spanish civil
war is another topic which has been much written about. However, Victor Morales
breaks new ground in stressing the attempts of the Second Republic to reduce the
bloated 'Army of Africa', measures which did not go far enough, but which
accentuated the hostility of the generals to the regime. The last essay is potentially
the most novel, in that authors of the Franco period steered well clear of charting
the involvement of companies in colonialism, and the annex on colonial firms,
drawn from financial yearbooks, is especially useful. However, the text is still
rather thin on the subject, and it covers much ground already treated in the
author's earlier work on colonialism in both Spanish and French Morocco.
Overall, this book is a synthesis for teaching purposes, rather than a presentation
of original research.
The booklet on the Canaries in Africa opens with an overview by Victor Morales,
stressing how the discovery and colonization of America drew the Canaries away
from their natural orientation towards Africa until the late nineteenth century.
Vicente Garcia looks more narrowly at the pressure groups which then impelled
Spain to intervene in the Sahara, Ifni and Southern Morocco. Fishing entre-
582 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORY
preneurs in the Canaries wanted to ensure their access to the rich banks between
the islands and Africa, at a time when competition from European fishermen was
growing. Commercial circles in the Canaries dreamed of diverting the trans-Saharan
trade to an entrepot in the islands. The stress on Canaries economic sub-imperialism
helps to shift the emphasis away from the usual approach that Spain had nothing
to gain in the sandy wastes of the Sahara. In the last section, Teresa Pereira brings
out another form of Canaries sub-imperialism, this time directed towards Spanish
Guinea, which received supplies and personnel from the islands, and used them
as a sanatorium. These are a few stray gleanings from a major study on Spanish
Guinea in the early twentieth century, which promises to be of great interest.

School of Oriental and African Studies, GERVASE CLARENCE-SMITH


London

NOGUES IN MOROCCO
The Casablanca Connection. French Colonial Policy igj6—ig43. By WILLIAM
A. HOISINGTON. JR. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina
Press, 1984. Pp. xiv + 320. £30.40.
The central figure of this fascinating study of French colonial policy in Morocco
from 1936 until the end of the Vichy regime in North Africa is General Charles
Nogues, resident-general of Morocco during the period in question. Indeed, in
many respects, Professor Hoisington has interwoven a biography of the general
into the detailed background of different attitudes of the Popular Front and the
Vichy regime towards France's North American empire. General Nogues's firm
convictions about colonial policy, which derived directly from his professional
mentor, Marshal Lyautey, provided the link that ensured administrative con-
tinuity despite the political, diplomatic and military vicissitudes of the later 1930s
and the Second World War.
Hoisington approaches his subject by identifying the major issues that faced
France's North African protectorate in Morocco and then examining the way in
which General Nogues resolved them in the face of the conflicting interests of
metropolitan government, colon populations, and indigeneous society. The book
opens with a discussion of the principles on which Lyautey based the ' pacification'
of Morocco and of Charles Nogues's development as a member of Lyautey's staff,
indeed, as a trusted confidant of the marshal. He then turns to the first crucial
problem that faced Nogues on his return to Morocco in 1929, now without
Lyautey's guiding presence - the development of nationalism. General Nogues's
appointment as Resident-General Lucien Saint's expert for native affairs virtually
coincided with the first outburst of nationalist agitation in Morocco, over the Dahir
Berbere - the formalization of customary law within the Moroccan legal system
that nationalists correctly saw as an attempt to separate and isolate rural com-
munities from the increasingly aware urban world. It was Nogues who organized
the French response and he, in turn, came to realize that nationalism would
henceforth play a crucial role in the future of French policy in Morocco. The
experience was to be a forerunner for his later repression of nationalism after he
became resident-general in 1936. His policy here was based on the need to pacify
Popular Front anxieties in Paris, while at the same time ensuring that the
Moroccan sultan should continue to support a French presence in Morocco and
that the nationalists should not acquire a firm hold on public opinion in the
protectorate. In this he was only partially successful, for he was unable to accept
that the paternalist Lyautey vision had outlived its time.

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