Theorizing the Histories of Colonialism and Nationalism in the Arab Maghrib
Author(s)
Burke, Edmund
Abstract
Although two-thirds of all Arabs live in northern Africa (Egypt and the Arab Maghrib are each one third), Maghribis have long been regarded by U.S. Arabists as “not quite real Arabs,” spoiled by colonization and the mission civilisatrice. Mashriqi Arabs, confident of their historic primacy and cultural superiority, regard Maghribi Arabic as incomprehensible, Maghribi intellectuals par trop francaise, and Maghribi history as inalterably other (forgetting a common Ottoman and Islamic past). Those who study the Mashriq in the U.S. have tended to absorb these prejudices, often without thinking. As a result, “the Arab World” studied in the U.S. remains a field seriously out of kilter, shorn of one third of its inhabitants, an essentialized rump of a much larger and more diverse reality. As a result a comparative historical approach to the Arab World has been slow to emerge.
