ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
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The north African struggle
JOE GILL welcomes a helpful, if incomplete, guide to the the native and Islamic struggles against imperial and colonial powers in north Africa
UNDESERVEDLY OVERLOOKED: Abd el-Krim, Moroccan political and military leader and the president of the Republic of the Rif (1921-1926) during an interview with Luis de Oteyza for the "La Libertad" journal, January 1925
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
The Maghreb Since 1800: A Short History
Knut S Vikor, Hurst, £19.99
AS AUTHOR Knut S Vikor says in his introduction, the term “Middle East” was a British colonial invention, covering the region controlled by the British empire from Egypt to Iraq and the Arab Gulf.
The Arabic names for the region that became united under the Islamic Caliphate are much older: it was divided into the Maghreb (where the sun sets) to the west, and the Mashriq (where the sun rises) to the east. The Maghreb extends from the Western Sahara and Morocco in the west to Libya’s eastern border with Egypt in the east.
The present-day division between the southern Mediterranean and its northern shores — the fortress Europe where thousands die each year trying to reach Spain or Italy — came about half a millennium ago when the Spanish crown expelled Muslims and Jews in 1492, and the Ottomans gradually extended their hold on north Africa westward to Tunis and Algiers.
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