Thesis Title:
Dialectics of Resistance between Anti-Colonialism and European Anti- Fascism: The
Case of the Riffian Anti-Colonial Struggle
Thesis Abstract:
The Spanish Civil War and Revolution is a well-studied topic across the social sciences, with the revolutionary process and its aftermath proving momentous far beyond Spanish territory. Despite the ubiquity of this topic in the study of revolutionary movements, the subjects of the Spanish Civil War and the colonization of the Rif region in Northern Morocco have rarely been examined in relation to each other. Much less the extent to which the defeat of the indigenous, anti-colonial resistance in the Rif by the military generals Miguel Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco, who would come to rule a fascist Spain soon after, may have anticipated the success of their authoritarian project and the defeat of Spanish popular resistance. In a time of abundant academic interest in the topic of colonialism and resistance to it, the Riffian case is all but entirely missing from contemporary literature on the subject.
This thesis proposes it as valuable case study, in that it finds the very same actors and movements operating along a continuous historical trajectory that traversed geographic boundaries and socio-political contexts, defying the methodological trope of nationally bounded transformation, and underscoring the inextricability of fascism and imperialism in the capitalist world system.
Primary Supervisor:
Dr Clive Gabay