Board of Trustees, Boston University

Les Arabes by Maxime RodinsonReview by: Peter von SiversThe International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1981), pp. 583-585Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/217736 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 583 BOOK REVIEWS 583

Differences among authors' methods and opinions can, of course, provide a basis for stimulating comparative analysis. In this respect, Welch's introductory and concluding essays are disappointing. In them he makes brief reference to only two of the other papers in the volume, and does not take up the possibilities for comparing, say Hill's and McHenry's differing assessments of ujamaa, or Knauss's and Ottaway's essays on peasant struggles in Algeria and Ethiopia, respectively. In the latter case, for example, it would be interesting to ask why a long period of exploitation by a landed ruling class was followed by an apparently successful peasant revolution in Ethiopia, whereas in Algeria the peasant-backed war of national liberation has not apparently resulted in long-term gains for the agrarian masses. Or one might consider what these experiences imply about the feasibility of the populist strategy of rural development espoused by Kofi. Instead, Welch contents himself with a rather mechanical review of literature on the applicability of the term "peasant" to African farmers, and the likelihood that perceptions of "relative deprivation" will outweigh "primordial sentiments" in driving African peasants to armed rebellion against existing regimes (he thinks not, outside of Guinea Bissau.) The sense of datedness conveyed by Welch's terminology does not diminish when one looks at his references. These do not include anything written by his co- editor, Alan K. Smith, whose contribution to the present volume is nowhere indicated.

SARA S. BERRY Boston University

LES ARABES. By Maxime Rodinson. Paris: Presses Universi- taires de France, 1979. Pp. 174. Paper.

One of the best universalists in the field took up the challenge of publishing a short, general introduction to the Arabs which can be mastered in the time needed to read three newspapers. Maxime Rodinson has provided the French-speaking public with a jewel of accurate information leaving any of the prevalent journalistic efforts for the subject at hand far behind. A translation would also be eminently useful to the English-speaking general public.

In the book the Arabs are defined as the ensemble of people who either speak Arabic or consider Arabic their "natural" language and who regard the history and cultural traits of the Arabs, including the adherence of the majority to Islam, as their patrimony (p. 51). In spite of its appearance, this definition is meant to reflect "a concrete situation created by social factors inscribed in a millennial history" (p. 51), and thus rejects purely psychological determinations of

Differences among authors' methods and opinions can, of course, provide a basis for stimulating comparative analysis. In this respect, Welch's introductory and concluding essays are disappointing. In them he makes brief reference to only two of the other papers in the volume, and does not take up the possibilities for comparing, say Hill's and McHenry's differing assessments of ujamaa, or Knauss's and Ottaway's essays on peasant struggles in Algeria and Ethiopia, respectively. In the latter case, for example, it would be interesting to ask why a long period of exploitation by a landed ruling class was followed by an apparently successful peasant revolution in Ethiopia, whereas in Algeria the peasant-backed war of national liberation has not apparently resulted in long-term gains for the agrarian masses. Or one might consider what these experiences imply about the feasibility of the populist strategy of rural development espoused by Kofi. Instead, Welch contents himself with a rather mechanical review of literature on the applicability of the term "peasant" to African farmers, and the likelihood that perceptions of "relative deprivation" will outweigh "primordial sentiments" in driving African peasants to armed rebellion against existing regimes (he thinks not, outside of Guinea Bissau.) The sense of datedness conveyed by Welch's terminology does not diminish when one looks at his references. These do not include anything written by his co- editor, Alan K. Smith, whose contribution to the present volume is nowhere indicated.

SARA S. BERRY Boston University

LES ARABES. By Maxime Rodinson. Paris: Presses Universi- taires de France, 1979. Pp. 174. Paper.

One of the best universalists in the field took up the challenge of publishing a short, general introduction to the Arabs which can be mastered in the time needed to read three newspapers. Maxime Rodinson has provided the French-speaking public with a jewel of accurate information leaving any of the prevalent journalistic efforts for the subject at hand far behind. A translation would also be eminently useful to the English-speaking general public.

In the book the Arabs are defined as the ensemble of people who either speak Arabic or consider Arabic their "natural" language and who regard the history and cultural traits of the Arabs, including the adherence of the majority to Islam, as their patrimony (p. 51). In spite of its appearance, this definition is meant to reflect "a concrete situation created by social factors inscribed in a millennial history" (p. 51), and thus rejects purely psychological determinations of

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 18:22:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

584 BOOK REVIEWS

arabism. Similarly rejected are such "false criteria" as Islam, race, and Ishmaelite origin. As applied to Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, the Nile Valley, North Africa, and Mauretania, the definition covers some 118 out of 150 million total inhabitants. If the fringes (Turco- Iranian Asia, Africa, and Malta) and the diaspora in Europe and America are taken into account, the total of the Arab ethnic community can be estimated to have numbered some 124 million persons in 1976. (A small quibble: Arabs in Detroit are about half of the 80,000 given on p. 86.)

From the background of Arab ethnicity, a nationalism emerged towards the beginning of the twentieth century, whose antecedents reached back into the second half of the nineteenth century. With refreshing clarity Rodinson characterizes Arab nationalism as patterned after that typical of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages, when the growth of national markets favored the evolution of "ethnico-national groups" (p. 81). This characterization is a more factually accurate alternative to the stale controversy of the last years between Westerners insisting on the unpreparedness of the Arab world for European-style nationalism and Arab apologists viewing nationalism as an entirely indigenous product. Rodinson gives a succinct sketch of the growth of Arab nationalism from the Allied betrayal after World War I to the national liberation struggles after World War II to Nasserism, Baathism and the current re- surgence of conservative arabism striving for financial, technical and military autonomy but also for firm links to the capitalist world. In a few places the terminology could have been tighter. Was the Egyptian "revolution" of 1952 not rather a coup d'etat (p. 102)? What is meant by "despotic states" in the current Arab Middle East (p. 118)? Where are the masses which allegedly seek refuge in "mysticism" (p. 119)? Also, on p. 97 the period of 1920-1945 is described as both lacking in nationalist revolts and being full of feverish demands (fievre revendicatrice). But on the whole the historical-ideological sketch is attractively straightforward and clear.

At the present time the most pressing problem of the Arab world is economic development which the governments tackle with strong assets as well as certain weaknesses. Among the assets are above all mineral resources (oil, gas, phosphates, and so on) but also natural fibers (cotton, flax, wool). The insufficiencies are typified by weak agricultural and manufacturing sectors as well as unemployment and the brain drain. One learns to one's astonishment of a UNESCO estimate, according to which one-quarter of all displaced intel- lectuals and professionals in the world are Arabs. Rodinson sees no alternative to these insufficiencies but industrialization according to "the European-American-Soviet model" in spite of its "distortions, alienations, nefarious and destructive consequences" (p. 135). But

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BOOK REVIEWS 585

what does this model mean? Is it the pursuit of agricultural in- dustrialization, robotization of heavy industries and electronization of the service sector in the Middle East, as is done in Europe, America and, to a certain degree, Russia? Or is it the establishment of more labor-intensive, intermediate technology and a less in- dividualistic service sector which will have to be adopted also in Europe, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, particularly as nonrenew- able energy becomes ever more expensive? The energy crisis has made it quite patent that there is no longer only one model of industrialization as Rodinson seems to imply.

The search for a new form of economic organization which will reduce the pressures of "hunger, misery, catastrophies and infinite sufferance" (p. 135) takes place amidst inherited "structures of production, acquisition and repartition" (p. 139). Rodinson pre- sents us with a splendid, titillating but understandably terse outline of these inherited structures, be they concerned with the fiscal and mercantile state structures from the Arab caliphates to the Ottoman empire; family, tribal and village structures; sexual divisions and social stratification; the sociology of honor and aesthetical values; or finally the unavoidable "national character" of the Arabs. Rodinson shows great caution, very laudably so, vis-a-vis this slippery subject of the "Arab personality" and shifts responsibility for such alleged Arab traits as a "vigorous affectiveness," "pro- found narcissism," an "anxious desire for approbation" and "ag- gressiveness" (p. 164) to Hishem Djait, whose concept of the "Arab basic personality" is a recent attempt at theoretization.1 I do not know whether there is any nation which could possibly escape Djait's conceptualizations and therefore am inclined to take them either as breast-beating bathos or a description of mankind in general towards the end of the twentieth century. A few years ago Raphael Patai published a similarly facile study on Arab national traits and one wonders why national psychologizing never dies out, no matter how subjective it is.2 Fortunately, Rodinson's sober, dispassionate essay on the Arabs could not contrast more strongly with this kind of literature by Patai or Djait, but he would have fared even better without allowing the latter into the book through the back door. Nevertheless, this half-hearted gesture to national psycho- logizing through the back door notwithstanding, in the front win- dows Rodinson displays his unrivaled universalist mastery of condensing complex historical and ideological problems into a superb introductory text.

PETER VON SIVERS

University of Utah

'Hishem Djait, La personnalite et le devenir arabo-islamiques (Paris, 1974). 2Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind (New York, 1973).

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