North Africa and the Making of Europe: Governance, Institutions and Culture

Description

This innovative edited collection brings together leading scholars from the USA, the UK and mainland Europe to examine how European identity and institutions have been fashioned though interactions with the southern periphery since 1945. It highlights the role played by North African actors in shaping European conceptions of governance, culture and development, considering the construction of Europe as an ideological and politico-economic entity in the process. Split up into three sections that investigate the influence of colonialism on the shaping of post-WWII Europe, the nature of co-operation, dependence and interdependence in the region, and the impact of the Arab Spring, North Africa and the Making of Europe investigates the Mediterranean space using a transnational, interdisciplinary approach. This, in turn, allows for historical analysis to be fruitfully put into conversation with contemporary politics. The book also discusses such timely issues such as the development of European institutions, the evolution of legal frameworks in the name of antiterrorism, the rise of Islamophobia, immigration, and political co-operation. Students and scholars focusing on the development of postwar Europe or the EU's current relationship with North Africa will benefit immensely from this invaluable new study.

Muriam Haleh Davis is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. Thomas Serres is Lecturer in Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA.

Because North Africa and the Making of Europe is so interdisciplinary, even the most seasoned Maghrebi or European specialists will find themselves pleasantly surprised by the wide range of synergies and syncretisms explored in this text, all of which have become inherently accepted as part of European identity. Most importantly, the text's continuous efforts to reflect a Europe that is not other from North Africa, but is by necessity defined by its proximity and history with the region, is a needed voice in today's environment of growing authoritarianism and nationalism on both sides of the Mediterranean. * EuropeNow * Drawing on exciting new scholarship that helpfully broadens the customary focus on the Franco-Algerian dynamic, by including Libya, Morocco, Spain, and Tunisia, this inter-disciplinary volume makes a highly significant contribution to the much-debated questions of how, why and to what extent the colonial past remains present, and how North African and European histories and experiences remain closely intertwined. In so doing, it underlines the central, rather than marginal place that North Africa has occupied in recent history. * James House, Senior Lecturer in French, University of Leeds, UK * The EU's relations with its southern Mediterranean neighbours were troubled long before 2011. Now the European project itself is faltering and under attack from right-wing populism, anti-immigrant nationalism, and nostalgia for a fictitious history of empire. Meanwhile, authoritarianism, economic crisis, civil war and counter-revolution run from Morocco to Libya and Egypt. While a tide of racism sees the EU's crisis in a failure to "defend" Europe from "invasion" across the Mediterranean, this book reminds us that North Africa was always deeply bound up with the making of postwar Europe. And while there are many reasons to criticize Europe's Mediterranean policies, these varied, deeply researched and incisive essays compellingly show, from the late colonial period to the present, that North Africa has always played a role in imagining and reimagining what it might mean to be European.' * James McDougall, Associate Professor of Modern History, Oxford University, UK *