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Books : History : Africa : Western Sahara
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The long-running conflict over the sovereignty of Western Sahara has involved all the states of northwest Africa and many beyond since Spain ceded the territory to Morocco and Mauritania in 1976. Erik Jensen traces the evolution of the conflict - from its colonial roots to its present manifestation as a political stalemate. Jensen reviews the history of the dispute, describes the quest by the UN and interested states to facilitate a process of self-determination through a referendum on independence vs. integration with Morocco, and explores the impasse over how to determine who should be allowed to vote in such a referendum. He then turns to the more recent efforts of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's personal envoy for Western Sahara, James Baker, to resolve the conflict. Despite Baker's 2003 peace plan, the government of Moroco and the Polisario Front remain at odds, and the stalemate continues.
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Foreword Magazine" ‘Orientalism,’ the brilliantly colorful art of the 1800s that captured the exotic Orient in striking and fascinating detail, "is ripe for redefinition," states Kristian Davies, adding that the initiative requires "a delirious energy, a tangible, uncomplicated enthusiasm." Possessing those qualities, he founded a press and has published a sumptuous book ablaze with reproductions of often spectacular Orientalist paintings. He is sparing with strictly academic analyses, but generous with engaging personal commentary and straightforward contextual pointers – and fully rewards his readers.
Some 300 images by seventy-five or so painters drawn from forty five institutions in seven nations do not simply mean one more over-lavish omnium-gatherum coffee-table book. Davies’ subtitle defines his area; he states his preference for realism over heady imagination, emphasizes the later painters (post-1850 or so), and readily includes Americans (Bridgman, Mackenzie and Vedder among them) and also interesting lesser-knowns such as Furlong, Hamdy-Bey, and Monsted. He offers readers thirteen essays. Of these, seven focus on specific artists. The mighty Jean-Léon Gérôme we can expect, but Ilya Repin and Vasily V. Vereshchagin are unexpected plusses. Six essays focus on themes. We can expect "Desert" and "Caravan" and, of course, "Women"; but "The Armed Guard" and "Faith" are less expected and indeed welcome.
The remaining essay is the bonus: Davies examines four "Orientalist" traveler-writers: Jean-Louis Burckhardt, Captain Richard F. Burton, Lady Jane Digby el-Mezrab, and Arthur Rimbaud. Because of their immense contributions to the West’s knowledge of the Islamic world, the lives of first two are well known, but the exotic (and erotic) journeyings of Lady Jane and the short, fraught, and absurdly tragic life of Rimbaud less so. In all cases, Davies’ well-illustrated vignettes (some featuring artwork by the subjects) fascinate; they will prompt many readers to explore available full-length biographies.
It is a tribute to Davies’ organizing skill that what may appear as arbitrary essay topics reinforce each other, providing cohesion for this far-ranging work. His essay on Leopold Belly and his dynamic masterpiece, "Pilgrims Going to Mecca" and the now lost "Fellaheen Hauling a Dahbieh" demonstrate Davies’ solid grasp of composition, depicting musculature, backlighting techniques and related matters. Similarly, he is no stranger to the broader reaches of art history, moving easily from Belly and Bridgman’s boat haulers on the Nile to those of Repin and Vereshchagin on the distant Volga.
"Uncomplicated enthusiasm" does not mean that Davies steers entirely clear of academic discourse. He takes up the cudgels against Edward Said’s strained polemic on the western invention of an "imagined Orient" – a polemic which fails to recognize that in the West curiosity was a driving a force that impelled legions of painters to record every visible aspect of the Oriental world – which exhibited pitifully little reciprocal curiosity. Davies also addresses tendentious writings of Linda Nochlin et al. against the depiction of near-naked women in harems and slave markets: to depict them was to record a reality, not to endorse a set of practices. (Interestingly, the magnificent bare male torsos and splendid limbs found in Orientalist painting do not appear to have aroused feminist ire.)
In giving theme precedence over chronology and in discussing the realities that the painters sought to capture, Davies effortlessly helps the reader see and experience the paintings more responsively. His commentary on Ernst Deutsch’s Palace Guard opens our eyes to the richness and variety of 19th-century arms and accoutrements and thus ties in these superbly crafted items’ distant sources of manufacture. In lifting the reader’s eye from the callipygian lad in Gérôme’s The Snake Charmer to the intricately patterned tiled wall behind his audience, Davies quietly alerts us to calligraphic panels as an element of Islamic architecture.
The selection of paintings bedevils every art historian. Davies thankfully spares us Ingres’ cascading breasts and mighty haunches. Inclusion of Corrodi, Forcella, Peluso, and Von Meckel, to name only a few often neglected artists, is a plus, though some readers will regret omission of iconic works by Bonington, Chassériau, Delacroix, Vernet and other revered masters.
All in all, Davies’ book ("an introduction," as he modestly states) is a remarkable achievement for an author of only thirty or so. Less consciously academic than Philippe Jullian’s "The Orientalists" (1977), it is pictorially more appealing; less extensive than the seasoned Gérard-Georges Lemaire’s "The Orient in Western Art" (2000), which includes 20th-century work, Davies’ book is nonetheless rich in historical and social commentary. Davies’ vitality and always arresting images will exhilarate the reader. The Orientalists is a book to buy – and a copy lent will be a copy lost."
- Peter Skinner, Foreword Magazine
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The western Sahara is a baking hot and desolate place, home only to nomads and their camels, and to locusts, snails and thorny scrub. On 28 August 1815, the US brig Commerce was dashed against Mauritania's Cape Bojador and lost, although through bravery and quick thinking the ship's captain, James Riley, managed to lead all of his crew to safety. What followed was an extraordinary and desperate battle for survival in the face of human hostility, hunger, dehydration and despair, as the crew were captured, robbed and enslaved. They were reduced to drinking urine (their own and the camels'), flayed by the sun, crippled by walking miles across burning stones and sand. And, over time, James Riley and Sidi Hamet, slave and captor, came to recognize in each other men worthy of respect and the ransom not only of Riley himself but also of a handful of his crew suddenly seemed possible. But, Sidi Hamet had enemies of his own, and to reach safety the sailors had to overcome not only the desert but also the greed and anger of those who would keep them in captivity.
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For a remote strip of Saharan desert along the Atlantic seaboard, the Western Sahara has begun to attract a lot of attention. The European Union, the USA, the UN and Morocco have all declared an interest in this former Spanish colony, not to mention the indigenous Sahraoui people, who have fought for self-determination for over quarter of a century. Toby Shelley has talked to Moroccan, Western Saharan Polisario and other diplomats, as well as contacts in the oil industry. He has visited the territory and had access to both the Moroccan administration and the underground opposition. What emerges is that there is now a real prospect of a definitive resolution to this long-running, often bloody, conflict between Morocco and the Sahraoui people.
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Although the war in the Western Sahara recently entered its 16th year, until now very few scholarly works have dealt with the regional and international dimensions of the conflict. In particular, no significant works have been published over the past three years, even though there have been a number of key developments during this period, especially the increasingly important involvement of the UN. This book constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of the role of outside powers in the war, of the efforts of the Maghrebi states to overcome regional conflicts, and of the role of the UN in attempts to resolve the conflict.
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Africa South of the Sahara: The Challenge to Western Security (Hoover Institution Press Publication)
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Becoming Walata is a pre-colonial history of social identity in Walata, an oasis in the southwestern Sahara.
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OSerious students of the Western Sahara issue will appreciate PazzanitaOs successful efforts to update and make more readable the impressive and original research by Hodges.O Middle East Studies Association Bulletin
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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Sahara is a 1943 war film directed by Zoltán Korda. Humphrey Bogart stars as a U.S. tank commander in Egypt during the Western Desert Campaign of World War II. The movie earned three Academy Award nominations: Best Sound, Best Cinematography (Black-and-White) and Best Supporting Actor by J. Carrol Naish for his role as an Italian prisoner. The movie was filmed on location in the Imperial County portion of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, near the Salton Sea, using soldiers and equipment of the U.S. 4th Armored Division, then in training, as extras.
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“Islam and the Muslim World” will help people understand the fastest growing religion in the United States and the dominant religion in a wide area of the rest of the world. This informative and interesting new encyclopedia explores an increasingly important force in the modern world, looking at Islam's role in the modern world, in the context of the religion's history and development over the last 13 centuries, and contains thematic articles, biographies of key figures, definitions, and more, filling a need in this key area of religious studies and serving as a resource for those eager to become better informed.
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This book is the first comprehensive study on the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO). Its aim is to not only fill a gap in the literature on peacekeeping, but to explore the implications and links between the mechanisms put in place by this peacekeeping mission in relation to conflict resolution. MINURSO has halted violent interactions between warring parties, but it has failed to implement the other aspects of its mandate.
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