ALGERIA IN TURMOIL

by Michael K. Clark ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 1959

For more than four years Michael Clark served as a correspondent in North and West Africa for the N.Y. Times. This History of the Rebellion is an extensive and penetrating analysis of the disturbances which have always beset the French administration of Algeria and a highly detailed account of the explosive rebellions and counter-measures since May of 1945. First of all Clark's point of view is directly opposed to those liberals in France, especially the progressive Catholics headed by Mauriac, who advocate the independence of Algeria and who are tentatively supported by a hesitant U.S. policy anxious to disavow colonialism and propitiate Arab nationalism while maintaining Western solidarity. He demonstrates that Algeria, as it is today -- ""a highly developed plural state administered as an extension of Metropolitan France but drawing its personality in part from the desert, in part from the four corners of the Mediterranean""- could not possibly survive independence and that the rebellions there have been falsely represented as the expression of a popular aspiration. He has nothing but disrespect for those publicists who, he says, have labored to depict the repression in Algeria as more heinous than the rebellion and who have attempted to internationalize the problem through the U.N. He points out that ""the experience of the first two years of Moroccan and Tunisian independence has not been kind to those who held that essential French positions in North Africa could be safeguarded only if the terms of the nationalists were accepted without reservation."" His conclusion: ""the conversion of Algeria's archaic society are the great challenge facing France."" Not a book for a large general audience, this is similar in outlook but further reaching than Germaine Tillion's Algeria published by Knopf last year.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 1959

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Praeger

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1959

Categories: NONFICTION