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MOROCCO Morocco: From Empire to Independence, by C.R. Pennell. Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2003. xviii + 188 pages. Further reading to p. 203. Notes to p. 207. $19.95 paper.
When does a country begin to exist as a uniquely distinguished entity? Should a country be regarded as an organic unit whose existence is self-evident, or as an artificial, man -made creation reached at a certain point in time when borders are drawn and people living inside them begin to develop a notion of belonging to a collective? Does such collective memory require a defining formative event, such as the conversion of Clovis, King of the Franks, to Catholicism or the defeat of the Spanish Armada in the cases of France and England respectively? If so, what would be the historical "moment" in which Morocco was born?
C.R. Pennell is a seasoned reader of modern Moroccan history and the author of several monographs, including a seminal work on the Rif War.1 In the volume under review he sets out "to explain in the most general terms the way in which Arab and Islam, Berber and European cultures are mixed, and how a dynastic system has survived in a post -colonial state"(p....