[BRIEF NOTE] Nevill Barbour's Morocco
Sep. 26th, 2005 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldNevill Barbour's book Morocco (London: Thames and Hudson, 1965) is the first history that I ever read about that Maghrebin monarchy, as yellowed with age this title's pages are and as occasionally overoptimistic about Morocco's prospects as we now know thanks to four decades of hindsight. It's still a good introductory history if read critically, but most interesting are his conclusions about Morocco's future.
Last February I took note of Morocco's interest in Europeanizing itself, perhaps ultimately through membership in the European Union. This is almost certainly a plan for the long term, if this desire unreciprocated by Brussels is a plan at all. In an era marked by a seemingly inevitable slide towards a clash of civilizations, Morocco's relegation to Europe's periphery is certain. And yet, in these times it's especially important to take note of people like Barbour, to know that there are other sorts of civilizational classifications apart from Huntington's and that there is so much overlap about us. Things don't have to fall apart.
In a certain sense [Morocco and Spain] are twins. Each lies at the far end of the cultural unit to which it belongs, Morocco at the extremity of the Arab world, Spain at the extremity of western Europe. Together they form an intermediate area between the European and the Semitic homelands, having some of the geographical characteristics of both. The French witticism that Africa begins at the Pyrenees yields is full meaning only when we add that Europe begins at the Atlas. [. . .] From the dawn of history reciprocal influences have been common, and from the moment when the Arabs invaded Spain from Morocco until the seventeeth century a constant current of Andalusian Arab influence flowed south across the Straits. These links were strengthened by the two hundred years of Moroccan rule in Spain, and the word 'Moorish' came to be used to describe a civilization common to both areas (210-212).
Last February I took note of Morocco's interest in Europeanizing itself, perhaps ultimately through membership in the European Union. This is almost certainly a plan for the long term, if this desire unreciprocated by Brussels is a plan at all. In an era marked by a seemingly inevitable slide towards a clash of civilizations, Morocco's relegation to Europe's periphery is certain. And yet, in these times it's especially important to take note of people like Barbour, to know that there are other sorts of civilizational classifications apart from Huntington's and that there is so much overlap about us. Things don't have to fall apart.
