Traditional structures and nation-state building

The first characteristic by which medieval Maghrebi society was distinguished from European society lay in its close kinship relations. In the European world, by contrast, these relations were much looser, which made it necessary to establish a system under which to afford the kind of protection they could otherwise ensure, and this was the feudal system. A second characteristic, also marking a profound difference from Europe, is that there was no distinction in medieval Maghrebi society between peasants and warriors: unlike in the Western world, the Arab peasant could have arms and horses at his disposal. In virtue of this different social reality, local communities in the Maghreb could retain a great degree of autonomy, their economic life never being subject to the control exercised by a central power. And it was this instability of central power that characterized the Maghrebi social system from the Middle Ages down to the dawn of colonization (Zghal 1971, 472).

In an accurate reconstruction of this social system, Zghal notes that the geography of precolonial Maghreb was divided into two broad areas: the Bled Siba (bildd al-siba) and the Bled Makhzen (bilad al-makhzan). The latter was inhabited by communities that accepted to pay taxes to a central authority, the Makhzan. The Bled Siba, by contrast, was the area of dissidence, mainly inhabited by Berber tribes that could not easily be brought under the control of centralized power. In fact, their heartland consisted of mountainous terrain (including the Rif and the Anti-, High, and Middle Atlas in Morocco, and the mountain region of the Kabylie and the Aures Mountains in Algeria) and the predesert regions inhabited by nomadic tribes. Zghal observes that the Bled Siba is “the ideal terrain for ethnological research” (ibid., 473; my translation), from which there emerges “a fact of central importance for understanding the state-making process in the Maghreb” (ibid.). Which is that, “apart from the particularisms that distinguish Berbers and Arabs, and apart from the differences between the nomadic tribes’ ways of life and those of sedentary peasant communities, we can observe, in the final analysis, the same structural forms in familial and political organization across the different Maghrébin peasant communities” (ibid.).

In the social structure there could be found “two types of identification: with the extended family and with the Muslim community at large (the umma)” (ibid., 474). Between these two reference points there existed a plurality of intermediate groupings.

Zghal recognizes the importance of the research conducted by Ernest Gellner, who introduced “the notion of a segmentary society” (Gellner 1969, 41ff.), describing the Berber tribal structure in such a way as to explain the plurality of conflicts that “can break out at all levels and mobilize groupings of all sizes” (Zghal 1971, 475). Thus, in a segmentary society, it may happen that groups of common lineage may be fighting one another at one level, all the while forming an alliance under a higher unit in conflict with a homologous group (ibid., 475-76, quoting Balandier 1967).

This social organization excluded the possibility of an absolute authority, in that power was distributed across the tribal structure (Zghal 1971,476, quoting Evans-Pritchard 1949). So the lords who wielded power were subject to the control of their own tribal assemblies, made up of all adult males.

On top of this social structure came the politico-military organization of French colonization, which managed to also subdue the areas of traditional dissidence (the Bled Siba) (ibid., 477-78). However, by the time the three Maghrébin countries gained their independence, they had undergone internal changes that set them apart in consequential ways: in Tunisia and Morocco, which had been protectorates and not colonies, the city elites were in a position to spearhead the movement for national liberation; in Algeria, which by contrast had existed as a French department, the internal conditions worked against the emergence of a modern nation (ibid., 478).

As Zghal observes, however, “the three countries’ gaining of independence [...] provided the occasion to reactivate segmentary structures, and was accompanied by a reappearance of the ancient siba in the areas of traditional dissidence (the predesert mountains and regions)” (ibid., 479). While “in Tunisia this reactivation of segmentary structures was tempered by the existence of a very old political party whose roots in the country ran deep, in Algeria the absence of a political party like the Tunisian Néo-Destour explains the internal clashes without ideological foundation which the clans fell into at the moment of independence, with the seizing of political power by the army, the only organization with a relatively stable structure” (ibid., 480). Likewise, “in Morocco, the traditional legitimacy of the Alawite dynasty, coupled with the reactivation of segmentary structures at the level of the political elites (Waterbury 1970), seemed to hamper the functioning of institutions and set the stage for an explosive situation further down the line” (ibid.).

Hence, the building of a nation-state—a process that had been set in train in the colonial age—was conditioned by elements belonging to the legacy of traditional structures.

It is on top of this structure—shaped by colonization but influenced by tradition— that a constitutional organization was formed. But how was this organization configured? In order to answer this question, we need to reconstruct the forms of colonial organization and their effect on the construction of state structures.

Works Cited

Balandier, Georges. 1967. Anthropologic politique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1949. The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gautier, Émile-Félix. 1952. Le passé de l’Afrique du Nord: Les siècles obscurs. Paris: Payot.

(Isted. 1937.)

Gellner, Ernest. 1969. Saints of the Atlas. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Lacoste, Yves. 1966. Ibn Khaldoun: Naissance de l’histoire, passé du Tiers Monde. Paris: Maspero.

Tibi, Bassani. 1996. Das arabische Staatensystem: Ein regionales Subsystem der Weltpolitik. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut Taschenbuchverlag.

Waterbury, John. 1970. The Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite; a Study in Segmented Politics. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Zghal, Abdelkader. 1971. “L’édification nationale au Maghreb.” Revue Internationale des Sciences Sociales XXIII, no. 3: 465-81.