A Forgotten Mobilization: The Tunisian Volunteer Movement for Palestine in 1948
In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientSearch for other papers by Shoko Watanabe in
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This paper goes beyond the ideological views of nationalist leaders who positioned the departure of Tunisian volunteer soldiers for Palestine in 1948 in the framework of national-liberation history, and it analyzes the volunteer movement to provide a picture of the internal mechanisms of popular mobilization. This was a dual movement, of spontaneous participation and organized recruitment by local committees. The volunteers were ideologically heterogeneous, some having had no previous political career. The decentralized nature of the mobilization and the regionally differing socioeconomic compositions of the volunteers suggest that regionally diverse trajectories of nationalism movements coexisted in Tunisia. Understanding this volunteer movement from the bottom up, focusing particularly on the socioeconomic conditions that made the mobilization possible, can help us understand the dynamism of nationalism as a social movement.
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2
Gabriel Baer, Fellah and Townsman in the Middle East (London: Frank Cass, 1982): 225-323; Joel Beinin and Zackary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Ted Swedenburg, “The Role of the Palestinian Peasantry in the Great Revolt (1936-1939).” In Islam, Politics, and Social Movements, ed. Edmund Burke iii and Ira M. Lapidus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988): 169-203; Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
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5
Elizabeth Schmidt, “Top Down or Bottom Up? Nationalist Mobilization Reconsidered, with Special Reference to Guinea (French West Africa).” American Historical Review 110/4 (2005): 984. See also Beinin, Workers and Peasants: 71-98.
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7
Michel Camau and Vincent Geisser, Le syndrome autoritaire: Politique en Tunisie de Bourguiba à Ben Ali (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2003): 114. For the exclusion of some groups of Tunisians from historiography during the postcolonial era, see Thomas DeGeorges’s insightful article on veterans of the world wars, “Still behind Enemy Lines? Algerian and Tunisian Veterans after the World Wars.” In The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia, ed. Heike Liebau, Katrin Bromber, Katharina Lange, Dyala Hamzah, and Ravi Ahuja (Leiden: Brill, 2010): 536-9.
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9
Elbaki Hermassi, État et société au Maghreb: Étude comparative (Paris: Éditions Anthropos, 1975): 137.
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13
Samya el-Mechat, Tunisie, les chemins vers l’indépendance, 1945-1956(Paris: Harmattan, 1992): chap. 11.
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16
Al-Rashīd Idrīs, “al-Mujāhid al-akbar yazūru al-mutaṭawwiʿīn al-Maghāriba.” al-Ḥurriyya, 27 June 1948.
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21
Al-Rashīd Idrīs, Fī ṭarīq al-jumhūriyya: Mudhakkirāt (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2001): 181-2.
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23
Mohammed Bahri, “Le conflit israélo-arabe vu du Maghreb,” Revue française de science politique (1966): 778. Despite Bahri’s assumption about the continuous struggle between Ben Yousef and Bourguiba, Ben Youssef’s hostility toward Bourguiba and his inclination toward Arab and Islamic identities should not be regarded a priori as a fact. At least during the period of the volunteer movement in the 1940s, such hostility did not manifest itself explicitly in the Néo-Destour, and the conflict was rather between Western-educated Néo-Destour leaders (including Ben Youssef) and al-Zaytouna’s leading young professors.
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27
Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 207.
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28
Mohamed Sayah, ed., Pour préparer la troisième épreuve: 1. Le Néo Destour brise le silence, 1944/49 (Tunis: Centre de Documentation National, 1972): 255-322; Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, Maghreb et Palestine (Paris: Sindbad, 1977): 90-3; el-Mechat, Tunisie: 32-3.
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37
Al-Fadil ben ʿAshur had, since 1945, been the president of al-Khalduniyya circle, a place of study and cultural exchange founded by elements in al-Zaytouna and al-Sadiqi. For al-Khalduniyya, see Mahmoud Abdel Moula, L’universié zaytounienne et la société tunisienne (Tunis: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1971): 103-6, 134-5. The lectures provided an account of the historical background of the Palestinian issue, without specifically commenting on the role of Tunisia or the Tunisian people. See Muḥammad al-Fāḍil b. ʿĀshūr, Filasṭīn al-waṭan al-qawmī li-l-ʿArab (Tunis: Nashr ʿAlī al-Jundūbī, 1948).
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52
Azzeddine Azouz, L’histoire ne pardonne pas: Tunisie, 1938-1969 (Paris and Tunis: Harmattan and Dar Ashraf Éditons, 1988): 122.
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61
Abd al-Fattah Muhammad el-Awaisi, The Muslim Brothers and the Palestine Question, 1928-1947 (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1997): 196-9.
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62
Israel Gershoni, “The Muslim Brothers and the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-39.” Middle Eastern Studies 22/3 (1986): 369-97; el-Awaisi, The Muslim Brothers: 97-101. Lia, by contrast, sees no causality between involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian issue in the 1930s and the domestic expansion of the organization, but he conceded that the pro-Palestinian campaign attracted new adherents, especially among the youth. See Brynjar Lia, The Society of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt: The Rise of an Islamic Mass Movement, 1928-1942 (Reading uk: Ithaca Press, 1998): 241-2.
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68
Idem, Sfax, 29 May 1948, adn, 1TU/1S/15.
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78
Ahmad Kassab, L’histoire de la Tunisie: L’époque contemporaine (Tunis: Société Tunisienne de Diffusion, 1976): 197-205; Ali Mahjoubi, Les origines du mouvement national en Tunisie, 1904-1934 (Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1982): 601-8.
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91
Kassab, L’évolution de la vie rurale dans les régions de la moyenne Medjerda et de Béja-Mateur (Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1979): 98-109; Mahjoubi, Les origines du mouvement national: 30-3, 166-8, 579-83; Abdelmahid Hénia, Propriété et stratégies sociales à Tunis, XVIe-XIXe siècles (Tunis: Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales de Tunis, 1999): 371-2.
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92
Jean Poncet, Paysages et problèmes ruraux en Tunisie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963): 159-60, 204, 247, 258-70; Kassab, L’évolution: 26-64; idem, Études rurales en Tunisie(Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1980): 417-8.
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107
Idem, Béja, 12 June 1948, adn, 1TU/1S/15.
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A Forgotten Mobilization: The Tunisian Volunteer Movement for Palestine in 1948
In: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the OrientSearch for other papers by Shoko Watanabe in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This paper goes beyond the ideological views of nationalist leaders who positioned the departure of Tunisian volunteer soldiers for Palestine in 1948 in the framework of national-liberation history, and it analyzes the volunteer movement to provide a picture of the internal mechanisms of popular mobilization. This was a dual movement, of spontaneous participation and organized recruitment by local committees. The volunteers were ideologically heterogeneous, some having had no previous political career. The decentralized nature of the mobilization and the regionally differing socioeconomic compositions of the volunteers suggest that regionally diverse trajectories of nationalism movements coexisted in Tunisia. Understanding this volunteer movement from the bottom up, focusing particularly on the socioeconomic conditions that made the mobilization possible, can help us understand the dynamism of nationalism as a social movement.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 740 | 106 | 20 |
| Full Text Views | 274 | 3 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 75 | 5 | 0 |
