History of North Africa--Tunisia Algeria, Morocco: From the Arab Conquest to 1830 byCharles-André JulienReview by: Andrew C. HessThe American Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 4 (Oct., 1971), p. 1200Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1849334 .

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1200 Reviews of Books

revenues the highest or expenditures lowest? Is there any way we can estimate how that year's balance sent to Istanbul compared with other resources available to the sultan? What is missing from this otherwise excellent work is a sense of context, whether in terms of Otto- man Egypt or on a broader scale.

JERE L. BACHARACH

University of Washington

AFRICA

CHARLES-ANDRE JULIEN. History of North Africa- Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco: From the Arab Conquest to 1830. Edited and revised by R. LE

TOURNEAU. Translated by JOHN PETRIE. Edited by c. C. STEWART. New York: Praeger Publishers. 1970. Pp. xvi, 446. $13.50.

Responding to widespread interest in the his- tory of Africa, Praeger has released an English translation of Charles-Andre Julien's classic study of North African history from the Arab conquests to 1830. Embellished with excellent maps, reference notes, and a detailed bibliog- raphy, this reasonably priced volume is both a corrective to the view that Africa had no meaningful history before the arrival of Euro- peans and an invaluable guide to the study of precolonial North Africa.

Influenced by the geographical uniqueness of North Africa, the author organizes his his- tory of the Maghrib around the stand taken by this region against the outside. Julien adopts the viewpoint of his Islamic sources and de- scribes how North Africans resisted Islam from the time of the Arab conquests through the fifteenth century. Heterodox Islamic move- ments, therefore, appear as opposition to the Eastern invaders and not as frontier manifesta- tions of a spreading Islamic culture. For Moroc- can history between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, this same perspective leads the writer to stress the Berber influences in Almora- vid and Almohad expansions, although the animating force for both of these imperial movements was a reinactment of the Islamic drama. Even the final conversion of North Africa to Islam came not from the power of Islam's appeal but from the North Afr ican reaction to the fifteenth-century Iberian in- vasions.

Additional evidence of the Moroccan and Ber- ber character of Julien's work is the importance assigned to the history of Moroccan dynasties as contrasted with the developments in the eastern Maghrib. Well over half the book deals with the western portion of North Africa, where the influence of the East shaded off and the society remained predominantly Berber rather than Arab. Tilting the history of the Maghrib in favor of Morocco results, then, in an ex- tensive treatment of the Almohad dynasty, whereas only a few pages are devoted to the important tenth-century Fatimid Empire. Sim- ilarly, the Saadi dynasty of Morocco carries on the uniqueness of Maghribian history in the modern period, while the expansion of the far more powerful Ottoman Empire into North Africa is dismissed as having added nothing new to the area.

Although Julien underlines the autonomy of North Africa more than the Islamic history of this region justifies, his work does not sup- port efforts to deny the Maghribians their past. Writing in the heyday of imperial enthusiasm over the conquest of North Africa, the author drew. attention to the rich cultural heritage of precolonial North Africa and not to the con- struction of the French colonial empire. The subsequent rise of modern North African politi- cal movements underscored how much closer Julien was to the wellsprings of Maghribian history than were those who celebrated the colonial adventure. In the postcolonial age his book remains without comparison as an intro- ductioii to the Islamic history of North Africa.

ANDREW C. HESS

Temple University

PIERRE GRILLON. Un charge d'affaires au Maroc: La correspondance du consul Louis Che'nier, 1767-1782. In two volumes. (Bibliotheque generale de l'lcole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, VI' Section.) Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N. 1970. Pp. 603; 606-1072. 145 fr. the set.

These volumes contain over five hundred documents reflecting details of Chenier's activ- ities and observatioins. An introduction de- scribes the consul's background and gives some understanding of the important personalities and conditions in Morocco. The diplomatic notes are a source of information for particular

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