(Page 9 of 33) - Making Differences Matter: Liberal Reform Movements and Nationalist Mobilization in Colonial Morocco and Algeria authored by Lawrence, Adria.

homogenize political mobilization in Morocco and obscure differences in the movement’s goals
and activities over time.

Moreover, historians seeking to identify the origins of nationalism in Morocco may be biased by
their knowledge of the outcome. They know that nationalist movements eventually became
dominant, not only in Morocco, but elsewhere in the colonized world, and that is why they are
particularly interested in identifying the beginning of the nationalist movement. But by reading
back into history with this nationalist “lens,” they may fail to take seriously other political
currents because they know already that other mobilizing strategies were ultimately
unsuccessful. There is thus a problem of selection bias, as historians search primarily for
evidence of early nationalism, and see the reform movement as simply a period of apprenticeship
for the more important movement that was to follow.

Another reason for labeling the liberal reform movement as “nationalist” or “proto-nationalist” is
that many believe that the quest for liberal reforms was simply a mask for the true desires of
these leaders for independence. There are a number of pieces of evidence that support the view
that leaders in Morocco hid their true preferences during the liberal reform movement. This
argument is a serious alternative to my suggestion that the liberal reform movement was
ideologically different from the movement for separation. I therefore evaluate each piece of
evidence, and explain why I remain unconvinced that leaders were masking their preferences.

First, many of the leaders of the nationalist movement in favor of independence were the same
leaders who sought liberal reform. Since these leaders eventually expressed a desire for
separation, it is plausible that they would never really have been satisfied with reform, and
always intended to ask for independence. In their memoirs, nationalist leaders themselves claim
that they wanted independence all along. They explain the reform movement by saying that the
quest for independence was not feasible at the time, so they asked only for change within the
system. In his memoir, al-Fasi (1970, p. 169) described the reforms as “minimal” and said that
asking for reforms was part of a policy of gradualism, implying that reforms were intended to be
only a first step. There are two problems with this kind of evidence. The first concerns the
reliability of the sources. Relying on nationalist memoirs is problematic because they were
written after the movement for independence began, and at that time, elites were engaged in the
project of constructing nationalist history. al-Fasi’s introduction (p.7), exemplifies this project;
he begins by asserting that “[n]ationalist consciousness existed in al-Maghrib before and after the
advent of Islam.” His memoirs are not a simple description of the past, but part of writing a
history in which nationalist mobilization appears to be an obvious and inevitable stage for
Morocco. His description of his preferences at the time of the reform movement cannot be
separated from the political project of nation-building that he is engaged in at the time he
describes those preferences.

Since he did not publicly state a desire for independence during

the reform movement, there is no way to reliably know whether he earnestly believed in liberal

Gelvin (1998, p. 5) suggests that historians are affected by nationalist history, and notes the tendency of historians

to take the claims of proponents of nationalism at face value. However, in the past 20 years, scholars of nationalism
have approached it with heightened skepticism and seek to “deflate the teleological pretensions of state-supported
nationalisms that represent themselves as the inevitable and singular historically inscribed expressions of national
destiny” (p. 10-11).

His book was initially published in Arabic in 1948, five years after the drafting of the Manifest of Independence,

and during the process of mobilizing the population in favor of independence.