Book Review: Africa, the Somali Dispute, Somali Nationalism
| Date | 01 June 1965 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206502000232 |
| Published date | 01 June 1965 |
| Author | Ali A. Mazrui |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
278
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Nevertheless
the
rather
rigid
plan
of
the
volume
and
the
allotment
of
relatively
equal
space
to
each
country
leaves
room
for
some
criticism.
It is
hard
to
justify
some
of
the
attention
given
to Libya
and
the
Sudan
at
the
expense
of
Egypt.
On
the
whole
the
treatment
of
ex-French
North
Africa
is
good,
but
that
of
Egypt
is
weak.
In
the
latter
case
the
reader,
as
elsewhere
but
especially
here,
is
jarred
by
the
plunge
into
modern politics
without
an
adequate
historico-cultural
background.
The
short summary
of
post-Napoleonic
Egyptian
political
life
in
little
more
than
two
pages
scarcely
conveys
the
complex
and
rich
intellectual
texture
which
was built
up
for
a
century and
served as
the
background
to
the
1952
Revolution.
And
understanding
that
revolution,
by
all
odds
the most
important
event
in
Arab
political
life.
in
this
century,
is a
precondition
to
understanding
the
countries
around
Egypt
on
which
it
has
had
so
much
influence.
Perhaps
the
greatest
omission,
however,
is
that
of
looking
into
the
awesome
problems
posed
by
social
and
political modernization
to
the
traditional
Islamic
concepts
of
the
state
and
the
community
(umma).
These
are
discussed
in
the
Tunisian
case,
but
no
mention
is
made
of
the
great
polemic
in
Egypt
on
this
score
between
Khalid
Muhammad
Khalid
and
the
Muslim
Brotherhood,
with
their
subsequently
continuing
critical
influence
on
the
framework
within
which
politico-religious
questions
can
be
formulated
in
that
country.
Nor
is
there
any
mention
of
the
serious
divergence-which
began
almost
immediately
after
in-
dependence-in
Algeria
between
the
Marxists
and
the Islamists,
a
dispute
of
grave
proportions
with respect
to
the
future
orientation
of
the
nation.
To
this
reviewer
at
least,
these
questions
are,
today more
than
yesterday
and
tomorrow
even
more
so,
the
vital
ones
which
face
all
Muslim
and
Arab
states
engaged
in
the
effort
to
transform
them-
selves
into fully functioning,
modern,
nation-states.
In
this
respect,
the
book
might
have presented
a
more
unified
picture
if
Ethiopia
and
Somalia,
the
inclusion
of which
with
the
other
six
Arab
countries
of
northern
Africa
is
somewhat
dubious,
had
been
eliminated, and
the
space
used
both
for
more
preparatory material
and
for
a
fuller
discus-
sion
of
basic
problems
on
a
comparative
basis.
American
Universities
Field
Staff
C.
F.
GALLAGHER
THE
SOMALI
DISPUTE.
By
John Drysdale.
1964.
(New York:
Pall
Mall.
Toronto:
Burns
&
MacEachern.
183pp.
$4.75)
SOMALI
NATIONALISM.
International
Politics
and
the
Drive
for
Unity
in
the
Horn
of
Africa.
By
Saadia
Touval.
1963.
(Cambridge:
Harvard
University
Press.
Toronto:
S.
J.
Reginald
Saunders.
x,
214pp.
$4.95)
What happens
when
a
mobile
people
find
themselves
frustrated
by
immobile
frontiers?
The Somali
are
a
nomadic
people-and
their
story
is
perhaps
all
about
what
happens
when
the
politics
of
sovereign
frontiers
catch up
with
ancestral
nomadic
ways.
Both
Mr.
Drysdale
and
Mr.
Touval
are
effective
in
their
presentation
of
the
historical
back-
ground to
the
division
of
the
Somali
people-the
division
into
an
Italian
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