(Page 29 of 33) - Making Differences Matter: Liberal Reform Movements and Nationalist Mobilization in Colonial Morocco and Algeria authored by Lawrence, Adria.

identifications or Berber/Arab cleavages could also have served as the basis for political
mobilization. The failure of these alternatives was in no way pre-determined or inevitable,
despite nationalist claims to the contrary. Nationalists seek to highlight the identity of the
movement as the only authentic identity. As Gelvin (2005, p. 198) has pointed out, historians
believe that nationalist movements succeed or fail not because they represent true or false
identities or aspirations, but because of the unpredictable circumstances in which the movements
find themselves. The choices of powerful actors in the colonies and the conditions they faced
contributed toward the failure of some alternatives, and the success of others.

Conclusion

"The creation of a nation forms a consensus without concerning

itself with the ambiguities of real history" (Stora 2001, p. xii).

This paper has focused on a small segment of the elite population in Morocco and Algeria.

part, this is because these elites underwent a remarkable political transformation. As Betts
(1991, p. 134) noticed, leaders in the colonies moved from support of French rule, to requests for
reform, to demands for independence, and finally to leadership of new nations, often in one
generation. In discussing these elites, I have relied upon prominent and well-known sources on
the nationalist movements in Algeria and Morocco, but from these sources, I build a different
interpretation of politics among the Moroccan and Algerian elite. Specifically, I sought to
contribute to understandings of nationalism in four ways.

First, I have argued that the liberal reform movement ought not to be understood as an early
stage of the nationalist movement, but as a movement whose goals were distinct from, and in
many ways opposed to, the goals of the nationalist movement in favor of separation. The
literature on the period reflects an inattention to what it means to call a movement nationalist. I
stress the distinctiveness of these mobilization platforms and seek to unravel assumptions that
that requests for reform constitute a historical stage that precedes nationalist mobilization.

so doing, I take the advice of Gelvin (1998, p. 12), who said that to understand nationalist
movements, “it is necessary to step outside the nationalist narrative and to focus on those factors
that prompted the transition from a social system that was not conducive to nationalism to one
that was apposite to the ideology.”

Second, I favor an account that sees politics as consequential for actors; their preferences are not
set fixed and stable over time, but change as they engage in political activity and interact with
opponents and supporters. Studies often assume the existence of nationalist consciousness
among people under foreign rule without demonstrating it, or interrogating alternatives to

Gelvin (1998) has criticized works that “attempt to locate nationalism in the region solely within the domain of

nationalist elites” and I take that criticism to heart. In no way do I mean to suggest that the elites I discuss here were
responsible for the rise and spread of nationalism in Algeria and Morocco. First, there were others who assumed
leadership in the nationalist movements later on during the nationalist movement (i.e., the F.L.N. in Algeria).
Second, a study of nationalist mobilization is incomplete if it focuses entirely on elites, and not on the actions of the
larger population. I look at popular participation in the nationalist movement in Morocco over time and location in
another chapter of my dissertation.

To further establish the notion that these movements were different, in my subnational study of Morocco, I test to

see whether the conditions that facilitated mobilization for reform were different from the determinants of nationalist
mobilization.