Internationalism in the Mediterranean 1918-1942

Internationalism in the Mediterranean 1918-1942

Internationalism is a concept which emerged in nineteenth-

century Europe to describe the increasing social, political

and economic integration of the continent.1 It was adopted by

the budding social and political movements of the time

(socialist, liberal, feminist and even nationalist) as a means

of emphasising the universality of their aspirations and as an

expression of their capacity to keep abreast with the

phenomenal transformations of the period. By the turn of the

century, it had become an essential component of the political

vocabulary of many European social movements, and most notably

the working-class organisations which sought to overcome the

boundaries of nationality, ethnicity or creed in the struggle

for socialism .

This paper seeks to explore the way in which internationalism

1 ? See F.S.L Lyons, Internationalism in Europe 1815-1914 (Leiden: A.WSynthoff, 1963).

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Second EuropeamAssociation for the Study of teh Middle East (EURAMES) Conference held inAix-en-Provence, France, 4-6 July 1996. Many thanks to the conferenceorganisers for providing a travel grant and to Barbara Allen Roberson forchairing the panel on International Relations.

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operated as a political principle across the Mediterranean

shores during the inter-war period. Although the focus will be

primarily on the ideological and organisational expressions of

internationalism, the term will also be employed as an

analytical category which enables us to understand better the

international dimensions of the political developments in this

region during the late 20s and 30s. Internationalism then, can

be defined with reference to three of its basic components.

First, it can be seen as a process whereby the different parts

of the world become more closely interconnected in terms of

polity, economy, culture and communication. Second,

internationalism describes the particular practice of social and

political organisation of people across national, ethnic or

religious boundaries. Last, the normative element of the

concept presents internationalism as a principle which celebrates

the internationalisation of the world as a positive process

which facilitates the pursuit of universal political goals

such as peace, democracy, equality or freedom.2

2 ? This summary is drawn from Fred Halliday's pioneering essay oninternationalism, "Three concepts of Internationalism", International Affairs


2

In each of these three dimensions, internationalism played a

central role in the unfolding of Maghrebi history during the

inter-war period. To be sure, it did so by grafting its

influence upon existing forms of trans-boundary communication

and activity. The peoples of the Maghreb had obviously

established complex social and political interconnections

among themselves and with the outside world long before

European conquest. Trade, pilgrimages (most notably the hajj),

the high geographical mobility of religious scholars and the

extensive sufi networks all contributed to the forging of

strong social, cultural and political bonds within the region

and beyond.3 Julia Clancy-Smith has recently evoked this

intricate web of social relations in her study of pre-Saharan

(Vol. 64, No.2, 1988), pp. 187-197.

3 ? The contribution of religious notables (sufi or otherwise) towardthe contruction of trans-local connections in the Maghreb and beyond iswell captured in R.S O'Fahey, Enigmatic Saint: Ahmad Ibn Idris and the Idrisi Tradition(London: Hurst and Company, 1990) and D.K Eickelman, Knowledge and Power inMorocco: The Education of a 20th Century Notable (Princeton, N.J: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1985).


3

oasis towns during the nineteenth century.4 Through an

examination of communication and exchange at markets and

fairs, the movement and migration of religious notables and

the expansion of turuq such as the Rahmaniyya or the Qadiriyya

across the region, she demonstrates the importance of these

connections when exploring the Maghreb's encounter with

European imperialism. More importantly, it was precisely these

pre-colonial solidarities which informed much of the social

and political activity in the Maghreb during later decades.

Hence, any consideration of inter-war internationalism should

be sensitive to the influence of previously existing forms of

social, cultural and political affiliation.

Bearing this in mind, my intention in what follows is to

identify the modes of ideological and organisational exchange

between various Maghrebi social movements and their European

and Mashreqi counterparts. I shall explore the way in which

4 ? J. Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, ColonialEncounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904) (Berkeley. Los Angeles, London:University of California Press, 1994), p. 2.


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the Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian movements absorbed and

reshaped foreign political ideas; how they interacted

internationally with other political movements in order to

further their particular cause; and finally, how wider

international events impacted upon their activity. Out of this

necessarily broad and panoramic survey of the different

international dimensions to social and political action in the

Maghreb there will hopefully emerge a stronger sense for the

importance of internationalism in the interpretation of the

interwar period in the Mediterranean. The intention therefore

is not to ignore the important domestic sources of change but

rather to redress the balance of a nationalist historiography

which all too often obscures exogenous influences upon the

Maghreb. As Mohiedinne Hadhri has suggested:

... nous estimons qu'il est nécessaire de jeter des

passarelles entre les systèmes politiques nationaux et le

système ou les sous-systèmes internationaux. Il y a donc

un rapport dialectique entre l'externe et l'interne,


5

bref, un double dynamique caractérise et conditionne en

permanence tout mouvement politique ou historique.5

Before delving into the actual narrative of this process it

may useful to pause briefly on the historical setting of the

inter-war period, and to clarify the nature of North African

social movements involved in the analysis.

The Inter-War Conjuncture and the Rise of Modern Social

Movements in the Maghreb

The interwar period marked the realisation of the colonial

project as the Maghreb became fully integrated into the

European political system. With the notable exception of Abdel

Karim's short-lived Rifian Republic, indigenous resistance to

imperialist penetration had practically been wiped out after

5 ? Mohieddine Hadhri, "Le mouvement national Tunisien dansl' histoiredes relations internationales 1920-1954", in Actes du IIème Séminaire sur l'Histoiredu Mouvement National: Sources et Méthodes de l'Histoire du Mouvement National Tunisien (1920-1954) (Tunis: Imprimerie Officielle de la République Tunisienne), p. 296.


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the end of World War I, while most of the conquered

territories had come under the full control of the colonial

administration. Algeria went furthest in this direction,

having become a French département after 1848 and receiving the

largest number of European settlers. By the late 1920s,

however, the colonisation of Morocco and Tunisia had also been

completed: their political institutions adjusted to imperial

domination, their economy geared toward metropolitan interests

and their social and cultural structures transformed by the

forces of modernity. In short, the political, social and

economic life of the Maghreb became inextricably linked to

that of the European continent.

The relevance of these developments for the present study are

twofold. First, the political and socio-economic

transformations introduced by colonialism brought about the

rise and consolidation of modern social movements which were

to be the protagonists of internationalism in the Maghreb.

Modern social movements are defined here as collective


7

organisations with an open membership (initially restricted to

adult men), whose political goals are broadly secular and

universal, and whose modes of political engagement are

characterised by the extensive use of printed media and novel

forms of protest such as strikes, demonstrations or petitions.6

The socialist and nationalist parties and trade-unions which

emerged in the region during the 1920s and 30s exemplified

this form of modern political agency, and therefore marked a

break with pre-modern forms of political resistance. To be

sure, some of these political organisations had deep roots in

a number of movements of the pre-1914 period. The Tunisian

Destour Party and its successor, the Neo-Destour, both drew on

the turn-of-the-century constitutional reformism. Similarly,

as we shall see below, the Comité d'Action Marocain (C.A.M) and the

nationalist parties which emerged out of this group borrowed

6 ? This is a self-styled definition, based primarily on the followingtexts: S. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); E.P Thompson The Making of theEnglish Working-Class (London: Victor Gollancz. 1963); L.A Tilly and C. Tilly(eds.) Class Conflict and Collective Action (London and Beverly Hills, CA: SagePublications, 1981; M.C. Jacob and J.R. Jacob (eds.) The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984); L. Hunt, Politics,Culture and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London:University of California Press, 1984).


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heavily from the salafiyya network which had spread across

Morocco earlier in the century. Last, and most obviously,

the working-class organisations had a long history of activism

in North Africa as the first branches were established almost

in tandem with colonisation. Moreover, all of these movements

were built, to different degrees, on the pre-colonial networks

of solidarity mentioned above -be these ethnic (as in the case

of Kabylian workers in Paris) or religious (witness the role

of sufi brotherhoods in the construction of Moroccan

nationalism). Despite these important continuities, all these

types of organisation suffered a radical transformation during

then inter-war period: at one stage or other they evolved from

relatively small cultural associations with little popular

support and limited political clout into fully fledged

political parties capable of mustering a mass following

through the deployment of the political vocabulary and tools

common to all modern social movements. The basic aim of this

paper is to suggest how internationalism in its various guises

reinforced the legitimacy of these modern political movements,


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and how they in turn strengthened the international links

among political and social movements across the Mediterranean.

The spectacular expansion of modern political organisations in

the Maghreb had a second important implication for the

understanding of internationalism in the Mediterranean during

inter-war period. As the international links of North African

social movements grew in strength and extension so did their

participation in the major inter-war convulsions: the economic

crisis, the rise of fascism, the sharpening class antagonism,

the emergence of Arab nationalism, the triumph Popular Front

governments, and of course, the outbreak of World War II. All

of these events would have certainly impacted upon the Maghreb

regardless of the internationalism of Maghrebi social

movements; the regions's colonial status was sufficient to

bring it under the direct influence of events in Europe. Yet

as I hope to indicate below, the manner and extent of this

international impact was heavily conditioned by the existence

in the Maghreb of social movements with strong international


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liaisons. The effects of inter-war crisis in the Maghreb can

therefore be better understood by taking into account the

specific role of internationalism in the actions of North

African social movements.

The following sections will try to elucidate the complex

inter-relationship between the different aspects of

internationalism as principle, practice and process. I shall

take each of these headings in turn, exploring specific

moments in the history of Maghrebi social movements to

illustrate the ways in which internationalism played itself

out during this period.

Internationalism as a Political Principle

The idea that human beings share similar needs and values

across national, ethnic and religious boundaries has been a

claim of various systems of thought throughout history. Key


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elements of the cosmopolitanism which informs internationalism

can be traced back to the thinkers of Antiquity. World

religions, for their part emphasise the universality of their

message and, in most cases, actively seek new converts

regardless of their social or cultural origins. Similarly, the

modern ideologies which sprung from the Enlightenment are

clearly premised on a set of ethical and anthropological

assumptions which point to the universality of the human

experience. Well before the term was coined at the end of the

nineteenth century, therefore, the broad principles of

internationalism had been developed in different contexts.

While acknowledging these transhistorical continuities, it is

important nonetheless to underline that internationalism

acquired a very specific meaning during the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries. For as was briefly pointed out above, the

term accompanied a particular epoch in world history marked by

the spectacular political and socio-economic integration of

the globe. It was European liberals and socialists who first


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embraced internationalism as a tool of political action. For

liberals, internationalism bore the promise of a more peaceful

and egalitarian world order; free trade, improved

communications and the spread of enlightened ideas were likely

to reduce hostility among nations and raise levels of

prosperity internationally.7 Fostering this process of

internationalisation therefore, was the best way of extending

liberal ideals across the globe. Admittedly, this faith in the

progressive nature of internationalism was shattered by the

experience of the World War I. As a result, liberal

internationalism veered away from the strictly economic

aspects of its programme (eg. free trade) and began to

emphasise role of national self-determination, international

law and international organisations in the construction of a

liberal world order.

Socialists shared much of the liberal optimism toward the

7 ? For good discussions on liberal internationalism see D. Long,Toward a New Liberal Internationalism: the International Theory of J.A. Hobson (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1996) and D. Long and P. Wilson (eds.) Thinkers ofthe Twenty Years' Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1995).


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benefits of global integration. In Marx and Engels' famous

words: "The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all

instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means

of communication draws all, even the most barbarian, nations

into civilization... In one word, it creates a world after its

own image".8 As with other aspects of their critique of

liberalism, however, socialists emphasised the contradictions

inherent in the capitalist nature of world integration, and

distinguished their own brand of internationalism from the

liberal variant by grounding it on the universality of class

relations. In the socialist usage of the term,

internationalism thus became identified with working-class

solidarity.

A third expression of internationalism relevant to our

argument is Islamic internationalism.9 There are of course a

8 ? K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Norton,1988), p.59.

9 ? See R. Schulze, Islamischer Internationalismus im 20. Jahrhundert:Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Islamishen Weltliga (Leiden, New York, Copenhagen,Köln: E,J. Brill, 1990) for an in-depth discussion of this concept.


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number of problems associated to the juxtaposition of these

two terms. For a start, Islamic thought has always shown

difficulties in recognising the legitimacy of nations and

states within the Islamic umma. Furthermore, in so far as

Islamic internationalism has existed as an political doctrine

at all, it has been confined to the Muslim world and has

rarely adopted a global agenda. These qualifications aside,

there remain numerous instances of Islamic thinkers

elaborating ideas about Muslim solidarity across national and

ethnic boundaries. One such example was the salafiyya trend,

whose main exponents -al-Afghani, Abduh, Rida- had

considerable influence on the Maghreb. Essentially, the salafis

reinterpreted some of the core concepts of Islamic thought to

fashion what al-Afghani himself labelled "A Muslim Response to

Imperialism".10 Their objective was to combine elements of

European industrial society -positivistic science, technology,

rationalised organisation- with the heritage of Islam -moral

10 ? N. Keddie An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings ofSayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Berkely and Los Angeles:University of CaliforniaPress, 1968).


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order, spirituality and just government. According to Aziz Al-

Azmeh

[The] work of Muhammad Abduh and others, was part of a

modernist reinterpretation of Muslim texts of sacred or

semi-sacred character, in which these texts were regarded

as a code open to the modernist interpreter which yielded

ideas in keeping with science, with evolutionism, and

other ideas in currency ... 11

Although it never attained the status of a coherent doctrine,

the salafi invocation of the Islamic umma as the appropriate

locus for the development of international Muslim solidarity

bore the main imprints of internationalism.

All three modes of internationalism therefore operated on the

principle that political action should not be limited to a

particular state or nation, but should build on certain

11 ? A. Al-Azmeh, Islam and Modernities (London: Verso: 1993), p. 34.


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transnational solidarities -class in the case of socialism,

free-thinking individuals in the liberal formulation, and the

community of believers in the Islamic understanding. In each

case, internationalism was adopted as an ideological axiom in

response to the North African inter-war conjuncture. It was

the socialists perhaps who first developed a clear formulation

of what internationalism might mean for the colonised peoples

of the Maghreb. Until the late nineteenth century, French

working-class parties had seen internationalism primarily as a

mechanism of practical cooperation with their European

counterparts in matters relating to strike-breaking,

immigration or the homogenisation of working conditions across

the continent. By the time European imperialism reached its

zenith at the turn of the century however, socialist

internationalism became inextricably associated with the

"colonial question". Colonialism was first officially

addressed by the French Left in 1895, when a resolution

denouncing the "colonial filibusteries" as "the worst forms of

capitalist exploitation" was passed at the Romilly congress of


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the Parti ouvrier français .12 The subsequent history of the French

Left's attitude toward colonialism , however, was to prove

much more ambiguous. Following Manuela Semidei's useful

classification, we can identify three broad positions on the

French left regarding imperialism.13 In line with the

resolution adopted at Romilly, a considerable number of French

socialists remained staunchly anti-colonialist, condemning

European imperialism both in France and at the various

congresses of the Second International. This "orthodox" line

was gradually contested by a growing number of socialists who,

imbued with notions of racial supremacy, celebrated

imperialism as a means of extending the more "advanced"

European civilisation among "primitive peoples" outside the

old continent. A third tendency within the French Left offered

qualified support to colonialist policies. They argued that a

"humane" or "socialist" colonialism which respected the

12 ? As cited in Madeleine Rebérioux and Georges Haupt, "Le socialismeet la question coloniale avant 1914: L'attitude de L'Internationale", LeMouvement Social (Nº 45, 1963), pp.7-37, p. 9.

13 ? Manuela Semidei,"Les socialistes français et le problème colonialentre les deux guerres (1919-1939)", Revue Français de Science Politique (Vol. 18,No. 6, décembre 1968), pp. 1115-1153.


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political rights of the indigenous population and raised their

living standard to European levels could benefit both the

metropolitan and the colonial working class. Sensitive to

their growing electoral success and aware of the increasing

role of nationalism in French domestic politics, many

socialists saw this option as the most realistic and

politically responsible approach to the colonial question.

In this continuing battle among the three tendencies, the

brunt of the French Left took a "centre" position between the

anti-colonial left and the imperialist right. The disaster of

the First World War and the triumph of the Bolshevik

revolution, however, were to bring a realignment in the French

Left regarding the question of imperialism. At the Tours

Congress of 1920 most of the anti-colonialists within the SFIO

decided to join what was soon to become the Parti Communiste

Français (PCF). As Charles-André Julien suggested, only the

adherence to the Communist International could honour "[the]

Socialist Party's formal promise to grant the colonial


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questions the importance which they deserved" .14 After all,

the central impetus behind the founding of the Third

International was the recovery of the internationalist spirit

which the "national chauvinists" of the Second International

had betrayed. As the eighth of Lenin's twenty-one conditions

for membership of the new organisation put it:

Every party which wishes to join the Communist

International is obliged to expose the tricks and dodges

of "its" imperialists in the colonies, to support every

colonial liberation movement not merely in words but in

deeds ... 15

The PCF initially took heed of these requirements. In July

1921 it helped to create the Intercolonial Union (Union

Intercoloniale), a movement made up of communists from the French

colonies which eventually incorporated a number of North

14 ? Ibid., p. 1126.

15 ? Cited in D. Joly, The French Communist Party and the Algerian War (London:Macmillan Press, 1991), p.25.


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African activists. A month later a Committee for Colonial

Studies (Comité d'Études Coloniales) was set up by Charles-André

Julien, in an attempt to report and discuss colonial issues in

the communist press.16 The outbreak of the Rif revolt during

1924-25 prompted a sustained campaign within France in favour

of Abd al-Karim al-Khatabbi (Abd el-Krim), which Georges Oved

has thoroughly documented.17 A year later, the first North

African immigrant party and precursor to the Algerian

nationalist movement, the Etoile Nord-Africaine, was established

under the auspices of the PCF.

All these examples reflect an unseasy mix of genuine and

tactical concern on the part of the French communists for the

plight of colonial peoples during the 1920s. As we shall see

below, this generally positive attitude was tainted on

numerous occasions by the thoroughly chauvinistic, when not

16 ? See M'barka Hamed, "L'Union Intercoloniale: première écoled'activité politique des immigrés coloniaux en France au lendemain de lapremière grande guerre" in Les Cahiers de Tunisie (Nos. 162-163, 4eme semestre1992/ 1e 1993).

17 ? G. Oved, La Gauche Français face au Nationalisme Marocain (Paris:L'Harmattan, 1983) Vol.1.


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overtly racist positions adopted by French communists.18

Furthermore, the internationalism of French communists, like

that of communists elsewhere in the world, became

increasingly subjected to the foreign policy interests of the

Soviet Union. The anti-colonial tendency within French

working-class internationalism, however, had been strengthened

by the rise of the PCF, and through the efforts of

revolutionary leftists within the SFIO like Robert Longuet or

Daniel Guérin. By the 1930s, therefore, the predominant theme

in the debate on the colonial question among the French left

had moved away from the Second International's defence of a

"socialist colonialism" toward the language of "assimilation"

and the Leninist endorsement of the right to self-

determination.

18 ? The most infamous example of this was that of the Sidi-bel-Abbèssection of the Communist International reporting back to Moscow in that" ... les indigènes de l'Afrique du Nord sont présentement composés enmajeure partie d'Arabes réfractaires a l'évolution sociale, intellectuelleet morale...". Trotsky subsequently accused the supporters of this motionof having a "slave-dealer mentality". See François Alexandre, "Le PCA de1919 à 1939-données en vue d'eclaircir son action et son role" RevueAlgérienne des sciences juridiques, economiques et politiques, (Vol. XI, No 4, décembre,1974), pp. 175-214, p. 179. For a detailed examination of the Sidi-bel-Abbès affair see E. Sivan, Communisme et nationalisme en Algérie 1920-1962 (Paris:Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1976) Chapter 8.


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While the French Left struggled to reconcile its

internationalist aspirations with the increasingly complex

developments in North Africa, the representatives of Islamic

internationalism found it no easier to project their own views

onto the Maghreb and the role of the Islamic umma in the

politics of the region. As was noted above, the Islamic

internationalism of the salafiyya trend never developed a

consistent programme comparable to socialist or liberal

internationalism. Its key exponents often equivocated over the

function of nationalism or patriotism in combatting the

imperialist encroachment of the Muslim world. Jamal al-Din al-

Afghani wrote at the turn of the century that

[Muslims] reject all clan loyalty with the exception of

Islamic sentiment and religious solidarity. The believers

in Islam are preoccupied neither with their ethnic

origins nor with the people of which they are part

because they are loyal to their faith; they have given up

the narrow bond in favour of a universal bond; the bond


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of faith.19

A decade later, Rachid Rida, one of al-Afghani's major

followers replied to a query on nationalism in the following

manner:

The type of patriotism that should adorn Muslim youth is

that he be a good example for the people of the homeland,

no matter what their religious affiliation ... In his

service for his homeland and his people he must not

however, neglect Islam which has honoured him and raised

him up by making him a brother to hundreds of millions of

Muslims in the world. He is a member of a body greater

than his people, and his personal homeland is part of the

homeland of the religious community. He must be intent on

making the progress of the part a means for the progress

of the whole.20

19 ? J. al-Afghani, "Islamic Solidarity" in J.J. Donohue and J.L.Esposito, Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (New York and Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1982), p. 21.

20 ? Ibid., p. 58.


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This gradual incorporation of nationalism within the project

of Islamic internationalism was perfectly mirrored in the

career of Shakib Arslan, a Druze publicist and journalist

whose powerful influence on North African nationalism we shall

explore further below. From his original commitment to the

Ottoman Pan-Islamism of Abdulhamid II, Arslan shifted toward

an anti-imperialist position built on an Arab-Muslim identity

during the aftermath of World War I, and finally came to

espouse an Islamist brand of Arab nationalism by the 1930s.

However incoherent the formulation of salafiyya-based Islamic

internationalism, the spirit of Muslim solidarity certainly

pervaded much of anti-imperialist thought in North Africa. Key

figures of Maghrebi nationalism and Islamism like Allal Al-

Fasi, Adeblaziz Thaalbi or Abdelhamid Ben Badis looked toward

the experience of the Arab East and drew inspiration from the

teachings of the major Mashreqi salafis. For their part, the

reformist thinkers of the Arab East often intervened in the


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doctrinal and political debates taking place in North Africa,

generally invoking the Islamic umma in support of their

usurpation of existing national boundaries. It is in this

respect that one can speak of Islamic internationalism having

developed as a body of thought applicable across the

Mediterranean and beyond during the interwar years. Let us now

explore how the aspirations contained in both socialist and

Islamic internationalism were realised during this period and

how they affected the politics of the Maghreb.

Putting Internationalism into Practice

Of the various types of interwar internationalism mentioned

above, the socialist version undoubtedly became the most

significant in the Maghreb. Its record was certainly a mixed

one, including as it did numerous instances of virulent

chauvinism and a general mistrust toward the political

aspirations of the North African population, exacerbated


26

during the 1930s with the rise of mass nationalist movements

in the region. Yet the period also witnessed an increasing

political collaboration among North Africans and Europeans,

informed to a great degree by the principles of socialist

internationalism. These forms of political cooperation found

expression in different arenas: in the French Assembly, among

European and Maghrebi parties and trade unions and often

within the North African organisations themselves.

Furthermore, while at times European and Maghrebi

organisations might have been at odds politically, individual

members and specific factions often engaged in significant

internationalist activity. For the sake of clarity therefore,

it may be worth exploring this internationalist action as it

developed in three different, but plainly related spheres:

inside the French political institutions, among the

metropolitan and colonial organisations and within the North

African parties and trade unions.

As the French Left made electoral inroads during the 1920s and

30s, the "colonial question" found greater prominence in the


27

debates at the National Assembly. The divisions among the

different factions of the Left on this matter were replicated

in parliament, and a broad range of arguments -from the

majority "assimilationism" to the radical call for national

liberation- could be heard from different deputies. The rich

history of these debates cannot be addressed here but a brief

glance at the two occasions during the inter-war period when

the French Left rose to power might illustrate some of the

contradictions of applying internationalism at an

institutional level.

The first of these instances came with the victory of the

"Cartel des gauches" in the general elections of May 1924.

Although the colonial question had not figured prominently in

their electoral campaign, the left-wing character of the

coalition had warranted some speculation about changes in

French colonial policy. The new government initially displayed

little interest in the North African colonies, as did their

main left-wing supporters in the Assembly, the SFIO. The


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outbreak of war with the Rifian Republic of Abd el-Karim in

April 1925 however brought the events in Morocco to the fore

of parliamentary business. As Painlevé's cabinet

systematically dismissed the possibility of negotiations with

the Rifian leader, the PCF declared its full support for Abd

el-Krim and his struggle "contre tous les impérialismes

jusqu'à la libération complète du sol marocain"21. The

socialist deputies joined the right in denouncing the

communist irresponsibility and anti-patriotism in attemtping

to "soulever les nationalismes naissants ou exaspérés dans les

colonies".22 At the same time however, the SFIO opposed the

government's handling of the Rif crisis, arguing in favour of

peace negotiations with the rebel leader and the possibility

of granting the Rif some degree of political autonomy. The

socialists eventually opted to vote against further war

credits for the Rif campaign thus withdrawing their

parliamentary support for the Cartel des gauches government.21 ? These are the words of the socialist deputy Renaudel cited byAhmed Koulakssis in his Le parti socialiste et L'Afrique du Nord: de Jaurès à Blum (Paris:Armand Colin, 1992), p. 193.

22 ? Ibid., p.193


29

The Rif war therefore provides one clear example of the

nuances of internationalist politics in the French Assembly.

While the PCF deputies openly defended the right of self-

determination, their socialists counterparts sought to

reconcile their hostility to Abd el-Krim with a professed

concern for the interests of the North African population.

A decade later a similar dilemma posed itself for the French

Left, this time involving a Popular Front government dominated

by socialists and supported by the PCF. Again, there was

precious little in the Rassemblement Populaire's election

manifesto to suggest that radical changes in colonial policy

would ensue a left-wing victory. The only reference to the

colonies in the Front's programme appeared in the section on

"Défence de la Liberté" in which it pledged "[la] constitution

d'une commission d'enquête parlamentaire sur la situation

politique, économique et morale des territoires français

d'oute-mer ...".23 Yet the new Blum government launched a

23 ? Cited in André Nouschi, "La politique coloniale du FrontPopulaire", Cahiers de Tunisie (Vol. 27, Nos. 109-110, 3e et 4e trimestre),


30

number of initiatives which were to have a substantial impact

on the Maghreb. The social legislation resulting from the

Matignon Agreements of July 1936 was introduced in varying

degrees in all three Maghrebi colonies while the repressive

laws against political organisation were lifted, thus

facilitating the regroupment of nationalist and working-class

organisations. The same month, a North African sub-committee

of the commission d'enquête was established, comprising thirteen

members from different professional backgrounds (bureaucrats,

politicians and "specialists") set out to evaluate the state

of the colonies under thirteen headings, including

demography, education, employment, administration and

nutrition. The activities of the committee, spread

approximately over a twelve-month period, displayed a rather

adhoc methodolgy -including reports, interviews and

questionnaires- and produced very disparate recommendations.24

pp. 143-159, p. 144.

24 ? For details on the Commission see Charles-Robert Ageron, " LaCommission d'enquête du Front Populaire sur les colonies et la questionTunisienne" pp. 103-125 in Actes du 3e Séminaire sur l'histoire du Mouvement National: Lesmouvements politiques et sociaux dans la Tunisie des années 1930 (Tunis: Ministère del'Education, de l'Enseignement et de la Recherche Scientifique, 1985).


31

Perhaps the most fruitful outcome of the exercise was the

establishment of direct links between the respective

authorities in Paris and the various Maghrebi social

movements; a dialogue which was often mediated through a

Secretary of State for the Colonies (Pierre Viénot)

sympathetic to many of these movement's demands.

The most ambitious project of the short Popular Front

government however was the so-called Blum-Viollette Bill aimed

at granting up to 25,000 Algerians full French citizenship

rights. The Bill was eventually blocked by a sustained

campaign from the Algerian colons, but the fact that it came

as a response to the "Charter of Demands" presented by the

Algerian Muslim Congress in the summer of 1936 demonstrated a

heightened sensitivity on the part of the Blum government

toward the political aspirations of the Algerian people. None

of these initiatives represented a radical break with

previous colonial policy as they sat squarely within the

"assimilationist" tendency of the French Left. Yet Blum's


32

brief mandate had managed to transform the nature of

relations between the French administration and the various

political movements representing the colonial population. It

had opened channels of communication and influence previously

closed to most of these organisations. As Charles-André

Julien, one of the notable participants of this process has

testified, "Le Quai d'Orsay et l'Hôtel de Matignon cessèrent

d'être des hautes lieux où seuls les officiels, les colons et

les hommes d'affaires pouvaient accéder. Pour la première

fois, Algériens, Marocians et Tunisiens eurent la possibilité

de s'expliquer librement devant les pouvoirs publiques."25 In

this respect, elements of an internationalist tradition,

however paternalistic, became discernible in the colonial

policy adopted by the Popular Front government.

While the reality of power constricted and conditioned the

French Left's colonial policy in parliament and in government,

the interaction between the grassroots in the metropole and

25 ? Ch.-A Julien, L'Afrique du Nord en marche: nationalismes musulmans etsouverainité française (Paris: René Julliard 1952), p. 84.


33

the colonies was often more fluid. In fact, there seems to

have been an inverse relationship between the parliamentary

influence of a given party and its commitment to

internationalism on the ground. This tension between an

internationalist consciousness and the requirements of

domestic politics was strongest within the PCF. From the

outset, the French communists had made the right to self-

determination the centre of their colonial policy. They

dedicated numerous resources to this end, seeking to direct

the incipient nationalist movements toward a revolutionary

strategy. An obvious case in point was the emergence under the

aegis of the PCF of North Africa's first mass nationalist

movement, the Etoile Nord-africaine (ENA). For two years, this

movement managed to build up a considerable following among

North African workers in Paris, using the technical support

provided by the PCF. As a counterpart, however, the French

communists sought to bring into the Comintern's fold what was

essentially a revolutionary nationalist organisation of

Algerian immigrant workers. As Messali Hadj recalled in his


34

Memoirs, "the members of the colonial commission [of the PCF]

intervened too often in the affairs of the black and North

African organisations".26 These tensions were finally played

out in the aftermath of Messali's speech at the Brussels

congress of the Anti-colonial League calling for independence

of the Maghrebi colonies, and by 1928, the PCF withdrew its

support for the North African nationalists. Almost a decade

later, Messali's movement was to resurface from its

clandestine existence in the form of la glorieuse Etoile Nord-

africaine. Although formally a participant in the Rassemblement

Populaire, the ENA 's uncompromising opposition to Blum's

assimilationst tactics and its continued insistence on

independence for North Africa led to its disbandment in

January 1937.27

The French Left's engagement with the Tunisian nationalist

movement was also ambivalent. The socialists in the Regency26 ? Cited in B. Stora, Messali Hadj (1898-1974): Pionnier du nationalisme algérien(Paris: L'Harmattan, 1986), p.61.

27 ? Ibid., chapter 3.


35

generally regarded the nationalists organised around the

Destour Party with disdain, branding them everything from

"elitist" to "fanatical". In France, however, the nationalist

leadership often received moral and material support from

working-class circles. In 1934, the local sections of the SFIO

and what existed of the Parti Communiste Tunisien (PCT)

received the founding of the Néo-Destour under the charismatic

leadership of Habib Bourguiba with unease. The common

repression suffered by nationalists and working-class

movements under the Peyrouton regime however, prompted some

strategic alliances. The communists in particular were

interested in a rapprochement with the Néo-Destour which might

radicalise the nationalist position. In the wake of the

outburst of popular discontent in 1934, André Ferrat, head of

the PCF's colonial section wrote from Tunisia :

L'organisation communiste fit des tentatives pour que le

mot d'ordre de la grève générale soit lancé à la fois par

le parti socialiste, le néo-Destour, le parti communiste


36

et les organisations syndicales. Mais les dirigeants

socialistes estimèrent que cette initiative devait

revenir au néo-Destour.28

It is symptomatic of the Left's contradictory attitude toward

the colonial question that Ferrat was expelled from the PCF in

June 1936 accused of "preventing the necessary unity in the

colonies between indigenous and French workers".29 Despite

paying lip-service to the idea of "the liberation of colonial

peoples", the PCF began to qualify this position by referring

to the need for unity among France and the colonial peoples in

the struggle against fascism. As the PCF Secretary-General

Thorez emphasised in December 1937:

Since the decisive issue of the moment is the victory

over the struggle against fascism, the interests of the

colonial peoples lies in their union with the people of

28 ? Cited in J. Moneta, La politique du Parti communiste français dans la questioncoloniale, 1920-1963 (Paris, François maspero, 1971), p. 97.

29 ? Irwin M. Wall, "Front Populaire, Front National: the ColonialExample", International Labour and Working-Class History (No. 30, Fall 1986), pp. 32-43, p. 37.


37

France, and not in an attitude which might further the

aims of fascism and place in Algeria, Tunisia or

Morocco ... under Hitler or Mussolini's yoke.30

While the communists managed to exert some degree of influence

in Tunisia and Algeria, it was individual members of the SFIO

who extended their solidarity to Morocco's nationalists. The

most notorious example of this kind of collaboration was the

journal Maghreb, set up in 1932 by the French socialist

Robert-Jean Longuet together with some of the most prominent

Moroccan nationalists of the time (Ahmed Belafrej, Omar

Abdeljalil, Hassan el-Ouazzani). Although the revue only

managed to come out regularly until 1934, it played a crucial

role in both educating the French public about the political

situation in Morocco and providing a focus for the budding

Moroccan nationalist movement. Its pages were the first to

introduce the basic ideas of what was soon to become the

founding text of Moroccan nationalism, the Plan de Réformes of

30 ? Cited in M. Rodinson, Marxism and the Muslim World (London: Macmillanpress, 1978), p. 98.


38

1934. The fact that the publication was banned further

indicates the threat it posed to the colonial status quo. Thus

in many respects, Maghreb turned into something more than just

a journal; it became the major vehicle for an international

campaign in favour of Moroccan independence and a significant

catalyst for the political development of Moroccan nationalism

itself.

The interaction between metropolitan and colonial social

movements was, as the few examples cited above indicate, full

of contradictions. Such a tension between the aspiration to

universality and the reality of parochial allegiances was

relatively manageable at a distance, but it proved to be much

more of a burden for those internationalists who sought to

organise workers within the colonies into unitary movements. The

colonial branches of the different French working-class

organisations had from the outset been overwhelmingly European

in membership. Part of this was due to the constraints faced

by indigenous workers who tried to join such organisations -


39

either because it was entirely illegal to so (as in Morocco)

or because of the political and administrative perils this

might entail; the main obstacle however remained the

supremacist colon mentality which pervaded most of these

movements.

The political divorce between European and North African

workers came to a head for the first time in 1924 with the

formation of an independent Confédération générale des travailleurs

tunisiens (CGTT). Although the Tunisian founders of the new Union

recognised an ideological and organisational debt to their

European comrades, they felt under-represented in the existing

union structures and furthermore, deemed it necessary to

support the struggle for national independence alongside the

Destour. As the leader of the CGTT Mohammed Ali explained

The creation of a Tunisian federation does not mean that

we shall not be united with the workers of the world as a

whole. France, Germany and England have national


40

federations. Why are we denied similar rights?.31

The CGTT was a short-lived experience and retrospectively, it

can be said to have been exceptional in the Maghreb of the

1920s. During this period, most North African militants chose

to operate within the existing worker's organisations; it was

not until the post-war years that lasting indigenous workers

movements were created. Thus, despite problems of internal

discrimination and under-representation, the interwar period

witnessed the integration of the indigenous proletariat into

the European working-class movement. Two factors should be

considered when explaining this seeming contradiction. The

first is that, as the world-wide economic crisis hit the

Maghreb in the early 1930s, the economism of the trade unions

became more attractive to North African workers than the

cultural and elitist politics of the nationalists. The

political and socio-economic reforms introduced by the Popular

31 ? Quoted in Ahmad, E. and Schaar, S. (1978), "M'hammed Ali and theTunisian Labour Movement", Race and Class (Vol.XIX, No. 3, 1978), pp. 253-276,p. 266.


41

Front accentuated this tendency and led a veritable explosion

of social and political activity across the Maghreb during

1936-37.32 A second reason for this development was the

"arabisation" of North African communist cadres initiated

under Comintern instructions toward the end of the 1920s.

While many of the emerging nationalist movements looked

towards the metropole for international support, the

influence of Arab and Islamic solidarity should not be

underplayed. The great handicap faced by proponents of Arab-

Muslim solidarity was the lack of an established

internationalist structure in the form of the Comintern or

other working-class groups. This did not, however, present an

insurmountable obstacle to those efforts geared toward the

political realisation of Arab or Islamic internationalism.

During the early decades of this century for example, the

32 ? For an overview of this period see R. Gallissot, Le Patronat Européenau Maroc (1931-1942) (Casablanca: Editions Eddif, 1990) M. Kraiem, Le mouvementsocial en Tunisie dans les années treinte, (Tunis: Cahiers du CERES, 1984); R. LiauzuSalariat et mouvement ouvrier en Tunisie: crises et mutations (1931-1939) (Paris: Editions duCNRS) and B. López García Política y Movimientos Sociales en el Magreb (Madrid:Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 1991).


42

salafiyya trend managed to make considerable inroads into the

Maghreb through establishment of so-called "free schools"

(maktab al-hurriyya) or "Kuttab réformés", which took this name by

virtue of being independent from colonial regulation and thus

able to teach Islamic studies in Arabic. By 1925, Morocco

boasted a dozen such institutions (distributed between Fez,

Rabat, Casablanca, Tetouan and Marrakesh) while in Algeria,

the movement pioneered by Ibn Ben Badis in 1917 accounted for

the country's 100 "free schools" by the mid-1930s.33 If we add

to this the extensive readership of salafi publications like

al-Urwa al-Wuthqa (The Strongest Link) or Al-Manar (The

Lighthouse), and the actual visits to Tunisia and Algeria by

Mohammed Abduh, it becomes clear that by the mid-1920s

salafiyya ideas had found considerable resonance in the

region. The consequences of this were to be strongly felt in

subsequent years as leading North African politicians such as

Abd al-Aziz Thaalbi, Shaykh Abd al-Hamid Ben Badis or Allal

33 ? For a description of the "free-school" movement in the Maghreb seeJohn P. Halstead, "The Changing Character of Moroccan Reformism", Journal ofAfrican History (Vol.5, No.3, 1964) pp.435-447 and John Damis, "The Free-SchoolPhenomenon: the Case of Tunisia and Algeria", pp. 434-449.


43

al-Fasi incorporated the tenets of salafi doctrine into their

own versions of nationalism, thus imbuing it with elements of

Islamic internationalism.34 Again, it is important to underline

that the success of the salafiyya trend in the Maghreb during

this period owed a great deal to the indigenous traditions of

Islamic reformism. Taking the case of the Rifian revolt of

Abdelkrim, George Joffé has argued that, "The Rif example

inspired others with the desire to resist European rule

elswhere in Morocco ... If no more, the Rif war was one of

those 'historic connections' that link primary [i.e

millenarian, kin-based] and secondary [modern, mass-based

nationalist] resistance in Africa ..."35 This kind of example,

however, complements rather than cancels out the relevance of

international factors in the emergence of 'secondary'

34 ? See J. Abun-Nasr, "The Salafiyya Movement in Morocco" St. Antony'sPapers, Nº16 (Middle Eastern Affairs, Nº 3, 1963.; A. Laroui, Les Origines Culturelleset Sociales du Nationalisme Marocain (Paris: Francois Maspero,1977) and A. Merad,Le réformisme musulman en Algérie de 1925 à 1940 (Paris and The Hague: Mouton,1967).

35 ? E.G.H Joffé, "The Moroccan Nationalist Movement: Istiqlal, theSultan and the Country" Journal of African History (No. 26, 1985), pp. 289-307, p.291. See also P. Shinar, "Abd-al Qadr and Abd-Alkrim: Religious Influenceson their Thought and Action" Asian and African Studies, (Vol.1 1965), p.175 .


44

resistance movements in the Maghreb. In fact, it reinforces

the need for an analysis which focuses on the interplay

between the domestic and the international in the genesis of

such movements.

As in the case of its socialist counterpart, the practice of

Islamic internationalism often originated with individual

contacts which later proved to have a much greater impact than

would be expected form mere personal correspondence. A case in

point is propagandist work of Shakib Arslan. As was noted

earlier, Arslan had a long career as a proponent of various

forms of Islamic internationalism. In the summer of 1921,

however he made a decisive move toward Arab nationalism by

becoming secretary of the Syro-Palestinian Congress and

subsequently representing this cause before the League of

Nations. Arslan's office in Geneva gradually became the focal

point of an informal but extensive network of Arab

nationalists, linking activists of the Maghreb with those of

the Arab East. It was in Geneva that Ahmed Balafrej and


45

Muhammad al-Fasi, then members of the Paris-based Association des

Etudiants du Maghreb Nord-Africain (AEMNA) and later to become

prominent nationalist leaders first established links with

Arslan.36 These contacts were to prove instrumental in the

internationalisation of the campaign against the so-called

"Dahir Berber" of May 1930 which later proved to be the

founding moment of the Moroccan nationalist movement. After a

brief but intense tour of the Northern Zone of the

Protectorate, Arslan returned to Geneva only to intensify the

campaign against the dahir through his own newspaper, La Nation

Arabe and other salafiyya organs such as the Egyptian al-Manar

and al-Fath. The campaign against the "Dahir Berber" therefore

remains one of the best examples of how Islamic

internationalism succeeded in animating solidarity among

activists from different shores of the Mediterranean.

Shakib Arslan continued to be at the centre of various

36 ? J.P. Halstead, The Rebirth of a Nation: The Origins and Rise of MoroccanNationalism, 1912-1944 (Harvard, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p.171.


46

initiatives during the 1930s which sought to increase

collaboration among Arab nationalists. He organised the Pan-

Islamic Congress in Jerusalem during December 1931 together

with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hadj Amin el Husseini. Like

the previous such exercise, the so-called Caliphate Congress

held in Cairo in 1926, the Jerusalem congress was attended by

a disparate group of representatives from twenty-two Muslim

nations. The agenda was ostensibly non-political and its

objectives were advertised in La Nation Arabe as "[r]echercher

les moyens de protégéger la terre sainte musulmane,

l'éducation religieuse de la jeunesse, son unification et la

colaboration entre Musulmans".37 Yet the proceedings of the

congress reflected the ongoing anti-colonial struggles across

the Muslim world and in particular the first stirrings of Arab

nationalism. The Maghrebi representation at the congress was

limited to the Moroccans Mekki Naciri and Hadj Mohammed

Bennouna, but the congress was reported and commented on

37 ?Cited in T. Khatib, Culture et politique dans le mouvement nationaliste marocainau Machreq (Tétouan : Punlications de l'Association Tétouan Asmir, 1996),p. 51.


47

widely in the salafi press of the region. The immediate

consequences of his type of meeting are, to be sure, hard to

measure. There can be little doubt, however, that they

cemented the organisational and personal links between

activists from different parts of the Muslim and Arab world,

and that they strengthened the resolve of those Muslims who

envisaged the umma as the real source of Islamic solidarity.

Conclusions: Internationalism as a Process

The foregoing discussion will have hopefully indicated the

degree to which international networks, both personal and

organisational, shaped the political landscape of the Maghreb

during the interwar period. These manifestations of

internationalism however, did not emerge spontaneously but

were rather a product of a wider process of

internationalisation. As was noted at the outset, the Maghreb

was fully immersed in the European crisis of the 1930s and the


48

convulsions of economic depression, the rise of Fascism and

Stalinism and the looming war were felt just as strongly in

North Africa as they were in the old continent. This

incorporation of the Maghreb into the historical conjuncture

of the interwar years is part of what I have termed

internationalism as a process. Internationalism understood in

this sense initially appears to be coterminous with

imperialism: it was the imperialist penetration of the Maghreb

which allowed the emergence of the modern social movements we

have been looking at, and which forced their participation in

the political developments of the period. Most obviously, as

part of the French Empire North Africans had little choice but

to concern themselves with the affairs of the metropole. Yet

inherent in the idea of internationalism as a process is the

assumption that there was a broader international context

affecting the assimilation of the Maghreb into the European

political system which cannot be explained within the

framework of imperialism alone. In short, internationalism can

also be employed as an analytical category which describes the


49

international dimensions of the political developments in the

Mediterranean during the inter-war years. Imperialism in this

context appears as an agent and not necessarily a constituent of

internationalism .

During the aftermath of the World War I for example, various

Maghrebi movements sought to exploit the Wilsonian call for

the right to self-determination. In 1919, a group of prominent

Young Algerians led by the Emir Khaled addressed a letter to

the American President, demanding self-determination for

Algerians under the auspices of the League of Nations: "Vos 14

conditions ... doivent servir de base à l'affranchisement de

tous les petits peuples opprimés, sans distinction de race ni

de religion".38 A few years later, the Destour called for "the

emancipation of the Tunisian country from the bonds of slavery

so that the Tunisian people become a free people enjoying all

the rights that free nations have"39 Others looked toward

38 ? Charles-Robert Ageron, "La petition de l'Emir Khaled au PrésidentWilson (mai 1919)" Revue d'Histoire Maghrébine, (No. 19-20, 1980) pp.199-209,p.206.

39 ? Cited in L. Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya,


50

Kemalist Turkey and Bolshevik Russia in order to lend

international legitimacy to their political demands. In other

words, there was a deliberate attempt on the part of North

African activists to draw the region into the wider

international processes.

Perhaps the clearest example of this phenomenon occurred

during the years immediately prior to the outbreak of World

War II when North Africa found itself sucked into the European

civil war. As we saw above, North Africa had been the target

of fascist propaganda throughout the 1930s. Mussolini in

particular directed considerable resources toward the co-

option of Tunisian nationalists to his cause, attempting to

instrumentalise the large Italian population in the Regency in

this endeavour.40 The greatest fascist threat to the region,

however, came as Franco initiated his uprising against

Republican Spain from the Moroccan town of Melilla in July

1830-1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986) p. 163.

40 ? See the work of Juliette Bessis La Mediterrannée Fasciste (Paris:L'Harmattan, 1984).


51

1936. Overnight, the Northern Zone of the Protectorate became

a Francoist stronghold. The nationalists of the Northern Zone

under the leadership of Adelkhalek Torrès welcomed the new

regime and were rewarded accordingly: Torrès set up his own

party (Parti des réfomes nationales) and its attendant mouthpieces

(the weekly Er Rif and the daily El Houriyya) with the support of

the Spanish High Commission.41 As a consequence, the Spanish

zone of the protectorate became the most important centre in

North Africa for the extension of Axis propaganda.

The nationalist response in the southern Zone., on the other

hand was exactly the opposite. The leader of the Comité d'action

marocain (the southern nationalist organisation) Omar

Abdeljalil denied categorically in the summer of 1936 that his

organisation held "aucune relation directe ou indirecte avec

Franco, ni avec le mouvement qu'il suscité dans la zone d'

41 ? Patrick Berges, "D'une guerre à l'autre: le 'maroc espagnol' dansla tourmente", Revue Maroc-Europe (No.1, 1991), pp.107-133, p. 115 . See alsoClaire Spencer, "The Spanish Protectorate and the occupation of Tangier" inG. Joffé (ed.), North Africa: Nation, State and Religion,( London and New York:Routledge, 1993), pp. 91-107 and A. Achouar La presse marociane dans la lutte pourl'independance (1933-1956) (Casablanca: Wallada, 1990).


52

influence espagnole du Maroc".42 In fact, historians of the

period have shown that in the summer of 1936 a series of

meetings took place between French and Spanish socialists and

Moroccan nationalists with the object of organising an anti-

Francoist uprising in the Protectorate.43 Tunisian and Algerian

nationalists were similarly accused at the time of favouring

the Axis powers by demanding independence and fuelling the

social and political unrest which had swept across the

colonies during the mid-thirties. This largely unfounded

argument was then used to justify the banning of all the North

African nationalist organisations by the end of 1937. In this

way, again, political decisions affecting the Maghreb

responded to the logic of the wider international

conjuncture.

The years prior to the outbreak of World War II therefore

reveal the process of internationalism in the starkest light.42 ? Cited in G.Oved La Gauche Français face au Nationalisme Marocain (Paris:L'Harmattan, 1983), p. 174.

43 ? Oved Ibid. and A. Benjelloun Le patriotisme marocain face au protectorratespagnol (Rabat: No Press, 1993)


53

The North African social movements which were themselves a

product of internationalism became further enmeshed in the

international politics of the time. Each political choice

made under these circumstances was to have implications not

only for the domestic politcal situation but indeed for the

unfolding of events in the rest of the world. As I have tried

to describe above, part of this linkage between the domestic

and the international was mediated through the application of

internationalism both an ideological principle and as a mode

of organisational practice. But the context within which these

forms of internationalism operated were in turn subsumed into

the wider process of internationalisation through which the

world was fast becoming a single political and socio-economic

entity. Grasping the complex dyanmics of this process and

investigating its contradictions would allow us to make better

sense of the key moments of this century. The interwar period

was certainly an important moment in the history of the

contemporary Maghreb and, as I hope to have shown in this

paper, our understanding of it can be greatly enhanced if we


54

keep a close eye on the international factors which

conditioned its development.

Looking beyond this period, the study of interwar

internationalism can be useful in at least three respects.

First, an most obviously, it helps to explain some aspects of

the political evolution of the post-war Maghreb. The divergent

paths to independence can, for example, be attributed in large

measure to the differentiated impact of internationalism in

each of its three manifestations. Thus, the revolutionary

nature of Algeria's nationalist movement contrasted with the

conservatism of the Moroccan Istiqlal, partly because of

Algeria's greater exposure to the forces of internationalism.

The internal dynamics of each independence struggle certainly

bore great responsibility for the different outcomes, as did

the crucial generational rupture experienced within Maghrebi

nationalism after 1945. Yet overlooking the ideological,

organisational and structural influences of internationalism

upon North African social movements during the inter-war


55

period would severely impoverish our understanding of the

post-war nationalism which emerged form this experience.

A second, more polemical reason for considering inter-war

internationalism within the contemporary context relates to

the political uses to which the social movements of the period

have been subjected. Underlining the international setting of

the rise of movements such as the Etoile Nord-africane or the Néo-

Destour can help to dispel some of the nationalist and Islamist

myths which surround the history of these organisations. On

some nationalist accounts, North African mass nationalism

emerged and evolved as a natural, unbroken and purely

autochtonous outgrowth of the earliest expressions of anti-

imperialist resistance. Epitomised in the work of the Moroccan

nationalist leader Allal al-Fasi44, this rendition of Maghrebi

nationalism underplays the complexities and contraditcions of

North African nationalism, and obscures its diversity and

ideological richness -much of it the result of contacts with

44 ? See his The Independence Movements in Arab North Africa (Washington D.C:University of America Press, 1958).


56

"the outside world". Moreover, it has often sustained a

conservative vision of the region which over the years has

resisted the possibilty of radical changes in the status quo by

invoking a supposedly uninterrupted tradition of national

unity.45 The North African Islamist for their part, generally

situate the social movements of the inter-war period in one of

two extremes: the latter are either seen as entirely foreign

constructs, imposed by the West through colonialism, or they

are treated as direct precursors to the existing Islamist

movements, thus forming part of an uninterrupted tradition of

Islamic resistance against the West.46 This article has aimed

to show that both these versions of inter-war Maghrebi history

are flawed. The evidence provided above indicates that the

different social movements which emerged in the Maghreb during

45 ? As early as 1961, Ernest Gellner recognised, in reviewing twoaccounts of pre-colonial Moroccan history (one prefaced by Allal al-Fasiand the other by Mehdi Ben Barka), how different histories were producingdivergent political projects within Moroccan nationalism. Ernest Gellner,"The Struggle for Morocco's Past" in Middle East Journal , (Vol 15, 1961), pp.79-90.

46 ? For a more nuanced discussion of the continuities in theorganisational form and ideological content between Messali Had's Parti duPeuple Algérien and the Front Islamique du Salut see L. Addi, L'Algérie et la démocratie(Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1994) and O.Carlier, Entre Nation et Jihad(Paris: Presses SciencePo, 1995).


57

this period were in fact the product of a complex interaction

between international and local political traditions. Thus, it

is equally incorrect to maintain -as many contemporary

Islamists do47- that the inter-war organisations were somehow

alien to the local history and culture, as it is to assert -

following some nationalist historiography- that these

movements were simply the expression of "[a] sense of

communion with the spirit that permeated our forefathers from

time immemorial".48

These consdierations lead to the third, and somewhat

optimistic reason for looking at inter-war internationalism in

the present context. Simply put, the most pressing political

issues facing the Mediterranean region today -racism,

xenophobia, curtailment of civil liberties, socio-economic

47 ? The Tunisian Islamist leader Rachid al-Ghannouchi, for exampleargues that,"Bourguiba's victory [in gaining Tunisian independence]... didnot constitute a victory over the French occupiers but rather a victoryover Arabic and Islamic civilization in Tunisia." Cited in F. Burgat and W.Dowell, The Islamic Movement in North Africa (Center for Middle Eastern Studies atthe University of Texas at Austin, 1993), p.55.

48 ? A. al-Fasi, The Independence Movements..., p.2


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inequalities both within and among nations- all require

international solutions. While much progress has been made at

the inter-state level, most notably through the recent Euro-

Mediterranean Partnership initiative, the ultimate resolution

of these international problems lies in the construction of

social and political links amongst the different peoples of

the region. While inter-war experience is currently irrelevant

in many respects, some of the values and practices associated

to the internationalism of this period seem as pertinent today

as they were then. More importantly, the contemporary

experiments in transnational coalitions aross the

Mediterranean are encountering the same difficulties as their

counterparts fifty years ago. Bearing in mind the different

historical conjunctures, those seeking to construct a

"Mediterranean civil society" or the like could do worse than

learn from the triumphs and pitfalls of past experiences.

Alejandro Colás is a research student at the Department of International Relations in

the London School of Economics and Political Science.


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Internationalism in the Mediterranean 1918-1942

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