Fries Center for Global Studies

Decolonizing History: The Fallaga and the Path Erased from Tunisian History

12:00 pm

Speaker : Max Ajl - Cornell University During the mid-1950s, an almostunknown and erased-from-history armed anti-colonial revolt theFellaga/Youssefite rebellion rippled across the Tunisian countryside,sweeping across thewidth and depth of the country, even penetrating urbancores. Max Ajl recovers the historical memory of that revolt, writing the armedstruggle and its repression into the history of theTunisian nationalliberation struggle and its effects on subsequent state-building efforts. In sodoing I locate the place of the rural smallholder and newly landless, whoalthough central tonational liberation would be marginal to post-colonialdevelopment. This story cuts against the grain of dominant post-colonialhistoriography, which depicts a unitary and largely non-violentWestern-oriented national struggle as the agent of independence. Such anarrative is the cement which the party has used to justify both its rule,post-colonial developmentalism, andsubsequent social inclusions andexclusions. My dissertation shows how moments of collective violence, fueled byregional pan-Arab solidarities and materiel, propelled the political partywhich led the liberation movement, the Neo-Destour, to victory and secured thecountrys sovereignty from France. Simultaneously, the repression of thatstruggle led to the exclusion of themarginalized countryside from subsequentstate-formation and economic development plans. Co-sponsors : History Department Sociology Department Moderated Erik Grimmer-Sollem

Sponsor: Hammami, Mohamed-Dhia