L'action politico-militaire de l'Espagne et de la France dans le Rif, racontée par le correspondant du Times au Maroc.

L'action politico-militaire de l'Espagne et de la France dans le Rif, racontée par le correspondant du Times au Maroc.

This is a rare English account of an important but largely forgotten 20th century colonial conflict: the Rif War in which Spain, and to a lesser extent France, battled a persistent rebellion in their Moroccan colonies in the 1920s by Berber tribesmen under their charismatic leader Abdel Krim. Centred on the Rif mountains of northern Morocco, the rebellion featured ground breaking guerilla warfare in which the Rif rebels turned captured weapons on their colonial masters. As author Walter Harris observes, the war was a cruel conflict, featuring atrocities on both sides, and it prefigured many anti-colonial conflicts of the post World War Two period. The war also brought to prominence Francisco Franco, the future dictator of Spain, who became Spain's youngest General during the fighting. Krim himself after surrendering, was forcibly exiled by France and never returned to his homeland before his death in 1963. However, his rebellion influenced other 20th century guerilla leaders including Giap, Guevara and Castro.

By considering the distinctiveness of the inter-war years as a discrete period of colonial change, this book addresses several larger issues, such as tracing the origins of decolonization in the rise of colonial nationalism, and a re-assessment of the impact of inter-war colonial rebellions in Africa, Syria and Indochina. The book also connects French theories of colonial governance to the lived experience of colonial rule in a period scarred by war and economic dislocation.

"The African cities of Bata and Al-Hoceima were created during the Spanish colonial rule of Equatorial Guinea and Morocco. This book constructs their local history to analyse how Spanish colonialism worked, what its legacies were and the imprints it left on their national histories. The work explains the revision of collective memories of the past in the present as a form of decolonisation that seeks to build different foundations for the future in a transnational and glocal framework. The result is an exciting puzzle of individual and collective memories in which Africans contest their colonial cultural heritage and shape their identities at a global level"--

Índice: [I Introduction ; II La chute de l'Etat marocain ; III Maroc septentrional: le protectorat espagnol, IV L'imposition du protectorat espagnol ; V La base de la résistance ; VI Victoire ; VII Consolidation ; VIII Un gouvernement dans le Rif ; IX La transformation du Rif ; X La prise de Jbala ; XI Les Rifains en pleine possession de leurs moyens ; XII Défaite ; XII Conclusion].