On ne découpe
pas un royaume
Morocco's borderstreaties, decrees, archives, 1415 to 1975
Nadia Alaoui
Thirty chapters that place the documents on the table, in order, from the first Portuguese landing to the Green March, and let the reader look at them.
- 30chapters
- 14maps
- 174referenced notes
- 1415the starting year
How each chapter is built
Every chapter takes ten minutes and follows the same frame. Chapters follow one another, but none depends on the previous one.
- What you are toldthe opposing argument, put at its strongest
- What it answersin one sentence
- Whywith the documents
- What it changesand from when
- A sceneshort, one man on one day in one place
On every map, a solid line marks a limit that a text established, a dotted line a limit that nobody ever demarcated. That difference in style is the subject of the whole book.
The thirty chapters
- 01La ligne qui n'existait pas
- 02Le nom prononcé le vendredi
- 03Ce qu'on donne en donnant sa main
- 04Le sel valait l'or
- 05Les cartes des autres
- 06Ceuta
- 07Le testament d'une reine
- 08Trois rois pour une seule bataille
- 09Tondibi
- 10Ce que Tombouctou prouve, et ce qu'elle ne prouve pas
- 11Isly
- 12La clause du désert
- 13Le prix de Tétouan
- 14La protection qui ronge
- 15Ce qui se signe en secret
- 16Six ans entre deux signatures
- 17Deux zones et une ville internationale
- 18Une ligne à l'intérieur d'un empire
- 19Tindouf, 31 mai 1934
- 20Anoual, juillet 1921
- 21Ce que l'Espagne a répandu sur le Rif
- 22Le sud qui ne cède pas
- 231956, le drapeau et les manques
- 24Écouvillon
- 25Ce qui se rend peut se rendre
- 26Une promesse écrite, une promesse rompue
- 27Octobre 1963, la guerre des Sables
- 28Le fer et la signature
- 29Ce que la Cour a dit, mot pour mot
- 306 novembre 1975
What this book is
A case, argued through the documents. It defends the Moroccan reading of this territory and does not claim the neutrality of a referee.
Each date and each figure carries its note. When historians disagree on a number, the text gives the range and the names of those who put it forward, rather than a single figure that would look surer and be less so.
What it is not
Not a pamphlet. No document is invented, no date arranged, no quotation cut. Treaty and court quotations are copied whole.
When a document could not be found, it is not quoted. The account stops on 14 November 1975. What follows belongs to another book.