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Lecture de l'Espace Oasien by Nadir MaroufReview by: Peter Von SiversThe International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1982), pp. 315-317Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/218566 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 315 BOOK REVIEWS 315

The best parts of the book concern missions and churches, reflecting the author's long personal experience in Angola. Lawrence Henderson shows how the Protestant missionaries helped to form strong ethnolinguistic communities, tied to the old African political structures, but transcending them to create new communi- ties at a regional level. He further delineates the various forms of Portuguese harassment, which tended to turn the vital regional Protestant subcultures in on themselves, thus contributing in com- plex ways to the civil war of 1975-1976. Given the author's unique position as official representative of Angola's Protestants in the 1960s, it is a pity that he did not rather write a book on this subject. There is great need for a good monograph on missions and churches in Angola from the 1870s, and perhaps we can hope for such a work from Lawrence Henderson in the near future.

W.G. CLARENCE-SMITH University of London

LECTURE DE L'ESPACE OASIEN. By Nadir Marouf. La Bibliothaque arabe, Collection Hommes et Societes. Paris: Sindbad, 1980. Pp. 281. FF 72.89.

In the Algerian southwest less than 0.1 percent of the land is cul- tivable. Unpredictably shifting sand dunes are a constant threat to the cultivated land. Underground water on which cultivation depends dries up from time to time and new aquifers have to be discovered and dug up. According to all the standard rules on the subject, agriculture in the Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt triangle of oases should never have existed at all. Yet until recently both the Maghreb gov- ernments and the local nomadic populations have not only managed to keep the oases functioning, with the aid of imported unfree black labor, but even profitable enough so as to satisfy a portion of their tax and food demands. The historical efforts at maintaining these oases and the present-day search for a justification of a continued existence without the services of forced labor are the central topic of the book under review.

This excellent book is not only a representative example of the high level of sociological research being done in present-day Algeria but also a timely update on Saharan studies to which little has been contributed since the beginning of the century when the French extended colonialism into the Sahara. Above all, the book is an admirably comprehensive analytical effort which goes far beyond the mostly descriptive studies prevalent in the field. The author has to be congratulated for a challenging, thought-provoking inter- pretation of social organization in the southwestern Saharan oases.

In the first of the three parts of his book, which is devoted to a social history of the oases, Professor Marouf takes the hypo- thesis of the so-called "lacustrine" origin as his point of depar- ture. According to this hypothesis, today's salt marshes and aqui- fers descending from the surrounding plateaus and mountain ranges are remnants of large prehistorical lakes. The oases in the dunes around the marshes can be seen as fossils of neolithic lakeside

The best parts of the book concern missions and churches, reflecting the author's long personal experience in Angola. Lawrence Henderson shows how the Protestant missionaries helped to form strong ethnolinguistic communities, tied to the old African political structures, but transcending them to create new communi- ties at a regional level. He further delineates the various forms of Portuguese harassment, which tended to turn the vital regional Protestant subcultures in on themselves, thus contributing in com- plex ways to the civil war of 1975-1976. Given the author's unique position as official representative of Angola's Protestants in the 1960s, it is a pity that he did not rather write a book on this subject. There is great need for a good monograph on missions and churches in Angola from the 1870s, and perhaps we can hope for such a work from Lawrence Henderson in the near future.

W.G. CLARENCE-SMITH University of London

LECTURE DE L'ESPACE OASIEN. By Nadir Marouf. La Bibliothaque arabe, Collection Hommes et Societes. Paris: Sindbad, 1980. Pp. 281. FF 72.89.

In the Algerian southwest less than 0.1 percent of the land is cul- tivable. Unpredictably shifting sand dunes are a constant threat to the cultivated land. Underground water on which cultivation depends dries up from time to time and new aquifers have to be discovered and dug up. According to all the standard rules on the subject, agriculture in the Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt triangle of oases should never have existed at all. Yet until recently both the Maghreb gov- ernments and the local nomadic populations have not only managed to keep the oases functioning, with the aid of imported unfree black labor, but even profitable enough so as to satisfy a portion of their tax and food demands. The historical efforts at maintaining these oases and the present-day search for a justification of a continued existence without the services of forced labor are the central topic of the book under review.

This excellent book is not only a representative example of the high level of sociological research being done in present-day Algeria but also a timely update on Saharan studies to which little has been contributed since the beginning of the century when the French extended colonialism into the Sahara. Above all, the book is an admirably comprehensive analytical effort which goes far beyond the mostly descriptive studies prevalent in the field. The author has to be congratulated for a challenging, thought-provoking inter- pretation of social organization in the southwestern Saharan oases.

In the first of the three parts of his book, which is devoted to a social history of the oases, Professor Marouf takes the hypo- thesis of the so-called "lacustrine" origin as his point of depar- ture. According to this hypothesis, today's salt marshes and aqui- fers descending from the surrounding plateaus and mountain ranges are remnants of large prehistorical lakes. The oases in the dunes around the marshes can be seen as fossils of neolithic lakeside

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.30 on Fri, 9 May 2014 16:23:39 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

316 IJAHS 15, 2 (1982)

communities, to the erstwhile existence of which a number of Greek, Roman, and Arabic sources allude. Once he departs from his hypo- thesis, however, the author shifts somewhat disconcertingly from social to cultural history, discussing possible Phoenician and Jewish cultural diffusions from the shores of the Mediterranean to the banks of the Niger. This discussion is rich in enticing hints but short in concrete affirmations and the reader has to take recourse to his own intuition and imagination.

Surprisingly, the author makes no mention of the sociohistori-

cally crucial introduction of the camel into the Sahara which prob- ably occurred sometime after the middle of the first millennium BC. Without the settlement of the desert by camel-breeding Bedouins, the emergence of black servile labor in the southwest Algerian oases is difficult to understand (and indeed remains insufficiently explained in the book): since nomads depend on agriculture, the settlement of the desert required more labor in the oases and the

importation of slaves was one way of increasing agricultural pro- duction. (Sedentarization of Bedouins or simple demographic growth were other ways and were tried in other Algerian oases outside the Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt.) As Marouf himself admits, the social his-

tory of the Algerian oases does not fit well into any neat "eco-

developmentist" schemes, be they by Friedrich Engels or Karl

Wittfogel. But his own analysis does not illuminate the question of the sequence of "modes of production" much better, and on the

whole, social history can perhaps not be judged the author's

strongest suit. The true qualities of the book appear in the second and third

parts, entitled "Colonial Rupture" and "Asking the Present." French colonial administration arrived in the Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt area in the early years of the twentieth century. The direct impact of colonialism was negligeable; no expropriation or colonization took

place. But the indirect results were considerable. Trans-Saharan trade petered out and forced those Bedouins who did not also have sufficient pastures to compensate for the loss of trade to sedent- arize themselves. Slavery was ended in practice and the about 5,000 servile farmers (the so-called harratin ) formerly recruited from the slaves were made legally free. Since each of these farmers on the average had to provide food for eight non-agricultural inhabi-

tants, they left in droves to enroll in the French military or to work under better conditions in northern Algeria or France. In

spite of displaced nomads settling down in the oases, the agricul- tural population declined consistently and so did the difficult-to- maintain network of underground canals ( foggara). More than perhaps any other area of Algeria, the oasis region of Touat-Gourara- Tidikelt illustrates the contemptuous neglect theory of French colonialism: oasis society changed not because of colonial

exploitation but because of colonial neglect. Landlordship of the parcels of land in the oases was tradition-

ally, and is still largely today, vested in families of prominent Arab and Berber lineage (prophet and saint descendants) or of ordi-

nary Arab and Berber extraction, while blacks did the actual farm-

ing. The former shared water rights according to complicated arrangements, were responsible for the maintenance of the fragile canal system, and determined the plants to be cultivated by the

formerly unfree labor. Until the beginning of the century dates

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.30 on Fri, 9 May 2014 16:23:39 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS 317 BOOK REVIEWS 317

were the predominant crop, but since then wheat has risen consider- ably in importance: the reduction of agricultural labor has neces- sitated greater attention to self-sufficiency, as the author per- spicaciously observes. The result of French neglect was that the oases withdrew more and more into splendid isolation.

When one reads the fascinating third part of Marouf's book one gains the impression that neglect, although perhaps not quite so contemptuous as that of the French, is also the hallmark of the government of independent Algeria. Needless to say, officially the government displays a burning interest in the countryside, but only insofar as the latter can be integrated into the national market in which industrial production predominates. The government has no interest in supporting self-sufficient agriculture outside the mar- ket which, as observed above, is still a necessity for most people in the southwestern oases.

The lengthy dissertation with which Marouf seeks to analyze the ineffectual government efforts to turn the oasis dwellers into market consumers is perhaps too confusingly abstract to be fully clear. How the various modes of production and economic activities, such as state capitalism, tributary and archaic production, mercan- tile relations, and "monetarized tributary relationship," precisely intersect in the oases is not lightly yielded up by the author's analysis. Only when he presents a number of concrete cases does one begin to perceive the profound gap between self-sufficiency and market economy. A telling example is related of the government's attempt in 1970 to wean the farmers away from growing wheat for auto-consumption by making them specialists in the production of early tomatoes for the European market. Unfortunately the bureau- crats in Algiers neglected to tell the farmers that tomatoes rot when grown on the ground like melons. Since this debacle the farmers have learned to grow tomatoes on stakes, but interminable distribution and marketing difficulties have still prevented the oases from becoming a consumer paradise for the state and self- sufficiency farming seems to remain the best bet in the southwest.

So far no long-range plan directed towards the rehabilitation of the oases has come out of the shifting dunes of government "paperasserie" in Algiers. This rehabilitation, as the author pleads, would have to include a reconstruction of the canals, an effective protection against the desert sands and an elimination of labor emigration. One hopes that this plea, packaged in such a fine book, will have its effect.

PETER VON SIVERS University of Utah

HARMONIZATION OF AFRICAN FOREIGN POLICIES, 1955-1975: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AFRICAN DIPLOMACY. By G. Aforka Nweke. Boston: African Studies Center, Boston University, 1980. Pp. x, 285. $10.00 paper.

This rather wordy but well researched book should really have been published as two monographs. The first should appropriately have

were the predominant crop, but since then wheat has risen consider- ably in importance: the reduction of agricultural labor has neces- sitated greater attention to self-sufficiency, as the author per- spicaciously observes. The result of French neglect was that the oases withdrew more and more into splendid isolation.

When one reads the fascinating third part of Marouf's book one gains the impression that neglect, although perhaps not quite so contemptuous as that of the French, is also the hallmark of the government of independent Algeria. Needless to say, officially the government displays a burning interest in the countryside, but only insofar as the latter can be integrated into the national market in which industrial production predominates. The government has no interest in supporting self-sufficient agriculture outside the mar- ket which, as observed above, is still a necessity for most people in the southwestern oases.

The lengthy dissertation with which Marouf seeks to analyze the ineffectual government efforts to turn the oasis dwellers into market consumers is perhaps too confusingly abstract to be fully clear. How the various modes of production and economic activities, such as state capitalism, tributary and archaic production, mercan- tile relations, and "monetarized tributary relationship," precisely intersect in the oases is not lightly yielded up by the author's analysis. Only when he presents a number of concrete cases does one begin to perceive the profound gap between self-sufficiency and market economy. A telling example is related of the government's attempt in 1970 to wean the farmers away from growing wheat for auto-consumption by making them specialists in the production of early tomatoes for the European market. Unfortunately the bureau- crats in Algiers neglected to tell the farmers that tomatoes rot when grown on the ground like melons. Since this debacle the farmers have learned to grow tomatoes on stakes, but interminable distribution and marketing difficulties have still prevented the oases from becoming a consumer paradise for the state and self- sufficiency farming seems to remain the best bet in the southwest.

So far no long-range plan directed towards the rehabilitation of the oases has come out of the shifting dunes of government "paperasserie" in Algiers. This rehabilitation, as the author pleads, would have to include a reconstruction of the canals, an effective protection against the desert sands and an elimination of labor emigration. One hopes that this plea, packaged in such a fine book, will have its effect.

PETER VON SIVERS University of Utah

HARMONIZATION OF AFRICAN FOREIGN POLICIES, 1955-1975: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AFRICAN DIPLOMACY. By G. Aforka Nweke. Boston: African Studies Center, Boston University, 1980. Pp. x, 285. $10.00 paper.

This rather wordy but well researched book should really have been published as two monographs. The first should appropriately have

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.30 on Fri, 9 May 2014 16:23:39 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions