This book is a compelling account of struggles over identity during French colonization in Morocco. It is a must-read for anyone in search of a greater understanding of interactions between those in power in the colonial state and marginalized subaltern local groups. Jonathan Wyrtzen combines a rich, well-crafted, finely grained narrative with a rigorous sociological analysis. The Berber oral poetry ... Read moreskillfully discussed by the author speaks volumes on anticolonial sentiments in rural areas and resistance to colonial encroachment. Making Morocco is a major contribution to the study of French colonialism in North Africa.
Mounira M. Charrad, University of Texas at Austin, author of the award-winning States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco In Making Morocco, Jonathan Wyrtzen takes a refreshing approach within the realm of sociological histories. The sociological concepts and categories he uses are well chosen and deployed with sophistication and a good underpinning theoretical understanding. His use of a variety of archives and archival material is also to be commended, particularly the way in which he draws on oral histories and poetry to build specific understandings of the politics of identity among people less likely to leave behind written records. This book's organization around issues of identity provides a distinctive entry point into the wider debates on state formation.
Gurminder K. Bhambra, University of Warwick, author of Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination Making Morocco paints a compelling picture of this country's extraordinarily complex twentieth-century history. Jonathan Wyrtzen explores interactions between Moroccan leaders and their colonizers and the responses of subaltern groups, which ranged from anticolonial jihad to individual efforts to exploit contradictions within colonial policy. The book pays special attention to practices shaping the identities of Arab and Berber, male and female, and Muslim and Jew. A work of stunning erudition, drawing on a vast range of archival and original sources, including Berber oral poetry and Arab-language newspapers.
George Steinmetz, Charles Tilly Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan Contributes to an emergent body of English-language scholarship that is adding nuance, clarity, and intrigue to our understanding of Morocco's colonial period. Framed by the weighty problem of how colonisation transformed Morocco identity, Wyrtzen interlaces a wide array of narratives to tell a convincing story about the politicisation of religion, ethnicity, territory, and monarchy in the protectorate period.... The reason for Wyrtzen's success in crossing so much terrain in a relatively short period is his strategic deployment of theory and method and their transposition onto the structure of the book.
The Journal of North African Studies
Bringing to bear both conventional archival and written sources, but also Berber poetry and the writings of others, Wyrtzen provides historically grounded accounts of how each became dynamized in the course of the liberation struggle.... This is where Making Morocco marks a significant methodological change from previous, largely ahistorical accounts of how the discursive frame was established.
International Journal of Middle East Studies
There is no question that the value of a detailed account of Moroccan colonial history in English is an important addition to the field, and Wyrtzen's book will undoubtedly become a reference for Moroccan, North African, and Middle Eastern historians alike.
American Historical Review
Wyrtzen's book is a refreshing reading of Morocco's contemporary history that draws on a wide body of historical literature and colonial writings to build an original perspective on the factors that shaped the history of contemporary Morocco and the identification processes of ordinary Moroccans.
Contemporary Sociology
Wyrtzen has produced a nuanced account of Morocco's twentieth-century process of political identity formation. It is a welcome addition to recent English-language works extending across modern Moroccan history.... With its multi-vocal approach, this book contributes significantly to several fields at once, representing and respecting the polyphony of sources (and voices) both new and old in a timely, careful, and sophisticated work.
French Studies
An erudite and eloquent contribution to both the historiography of colonial Morocco and to scholarship that examines and theorizes, from a relational perspective, processes of statemaking and collective identification.... This carefully researched and deftly written book should be obligatory reading for scholars interested in North Africa, colonialism, and postcolonialism, and processes of identity and state formation.
Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism
Given newfound interest by economists and political scientists in the legacies of colonialism for contemporary politics and the unwieldy claims often found in postcolonial studies, Making Morocco injects a needed sociological precision into the comparative study of empires and nationalism.
American Journal of Sociology
Wyrtzen has written a book that examines colonialism through a slightly modified prism, but one that will appeal widely to scholars of colonialism and former colonial states.... [T]he book overall constitutes a useful intervention in interdisciplinary conversations about the ways in which the colonizers and the colonized together constructed a political field and a political project that was productive of collective identities, as well as fatally flawed.
Journal of Modern History
Wyrtzen contributes to the existing literature in two important ways. First, he connects the colonial period to its influences in ongoing debates over Moroccan identity with relevant examples.... Second, he ambitiously attempts to bring together several topics of interest that are often addressed separately, such as the legacy of colonialism on Berber communities, conflict in the Rif Mountains, struggles in defining an Arab-Islamic identity and what that means for Moroccan Jews, and the role of women and monarchy in post-protectorate statehood.
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