Chapter 1: Considering Kabylia Chapter 2: Economy and Forms of Settlement Chapter 3: Kabyle Law Chapter 4: The Kabyle Polity Chapter 5: Pre-colonial Kabylia and the Regency: Religion and Political Development, 1509-1639 Chapter 6: The Rise and Fall of the Lords of Koukou Chapter 7: The Reconstitution of Greater Kabylia after 1640 Chapter 8: Transcending Kabylia: the Constitutional Tradition and the Exceptional Tradition
A radically new way of understanding North African political history from a world-renowned expert on the area.
Hugh Roberts is the Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History, Emeritus, at Tufts University and a Visiting Professor in the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also the author of The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002 (2017).
'In Berber Government: the Kabyle polity in pre-colonial Algeria
Hugh Roberts brings to bear his unbeatable knowledge of Ottoman
Algerian history and politics as well as his equally impressive
gift for social theory. He provides a convincing map of the
structures, legal system, and complex social networks that had
generated a self-governing Kabyle Berber polity by the advent of
French colonial rule.'--- Edmund Burke III, Research Professor of
Modern Middle Eastern and World History, University of California,
Santa Cruz
'Shattering the views of Orientalists and nativists alike, this
massively erudite and ruthlessly precise book takes the reader on
an exhilarating detective hunt through barely-known sources,
exposing a rich political history of Berber self-government that
generations of researchers have missed. This is a landmark study
that decisively changes the received wisdom on Berbers, Algeria,
and the political history of the region. It is one of the best
books I have read in Middle East Studies in recent years.'--- John
Chalcraft, Associate Professor, Department of Government, LSE
"Hugh Roberts's book is sharp, exhaustive, detailed and poignant.
It fills an important gap and its general point about the
institutional richness of Kabyle politics (and the primacy of
politics more generally) is made with devastating effect. The book
does not just track and explain five hundred years of 'the Kabyle
polity' (though it does that) but also explores the logic of how
and why the polity transformed as it did when it did. There is no
arguing from first causes or flaccidly conceived 'cultural
tendencies'. Roberts alerts us to multiple possible readings of
every turn of events, and marshals evidence for his way of
understanding each one of them. What makes this intellectually
satisfying is the way these are brought together, the way empirical
rigor and sometimes bewildering specificity is rendered sensible
via a broader logic of institutional forms understood and acted
upon in particular cultural ways. Neither the culture nor material
conditions explain political life. Political life is undertaken by
political actors, whom we get to know through Roberts's
description, and these actors employ the institutional resources
available to them in culturally sensible ways in their historically
specific moments. Eric Wolf long ago complained that European
scholars conceive of Others as 'people without history'. Roberts's
book is a potent antidote to that. I have not read anything like
it."--- David Crawford, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology,
Fairfield University
Ask a Question About this Product More... |