New Books In French Studies

The story of Morocco’s independence struggle against France and Spain is a complicated one. Because it occurred around the same time of the long-running war for independence in Algeria, it has received greater scholarly attention. Moreover, Morocco’s continuing alignment with both the United States and France after 1956 has deemphasized Morocco’s importance, compared to more radical anti-colonial states such as Ghana, Guinea, or Tanzania. Lastly, the sultan’s own popularity within his country and the survival of the monarchy today meant that the independence struggle has often been understood through his personality specifically.David Stenner’s Globalizing Morocco: Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State (Stanford University Press, 2019) enriches our understanding of Morocco’s nationalist movement. Stenner examines a collection of previously poorly-studied activists whose work began in the international zone in Morocco and then filtered out into the Arab world, France, and to the United States. Sten