What Is a Country? History and the Creation of the Maghreb

Abstract

While most West European nations were formed around pre-existing entities that could be called “countries” before the modern age, this was not the case in the Middle East. Some entities, like Egypt, did have a clear political and cultural identity before colonialism, others, like Algeria, did not. This chapter discusses the four states of the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, through the perspective of “country creation” going into and coming out of colonial rule. We can see here two “models” of fairly similar types of historical development, one showing a gradual process through a protectorate period to relatively stable modern nations, another through violent conquest and direct colonization ending in violent liberation and military and wealthy but fragile states. The article asks whether these models for the history of country creation and the presence or absence of pre-colonial identities can help explain the modern history and nature of these states in the Arab Spring and the years thereafter. Then, a more tentative attempt is made to apply these models to two countries of the Arab east, Syria and Iraq. While local variations ensure that no model can be transferred directly, it can show the importance of studying the historical factors that go into the transition from geographical region to a country with people that can form the basis of a nation.

Citation

Vikør, K.S. (2024), "What Is a Country? History and the Creation of the Maghreb", Mjøset, L., Butenschøn, N. and Harpviken, K.B. (Ed.) A Comparative Historical and Typological Approach to the Middle Eastern State System (Comparative Social Research, Vol. 36), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-70. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-631020240000036003