***** Book Review Book Title: _Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War_ Author: Sebastian Balfour Reviewer: Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, London Metropolitan University Publisher: Oxford University Press; Oxford 2002 ISBN 0-19-925296-3 pp. xviii + 349. £25.00
_Deadly Embrace_ is not only a well-written and thoroughly documented book but also a necessary and vital contribution to the study of the turbulent and often violent first four decades of twentieth century Spain. Not surprisingly, in a country whose political destiny has unfortunately been determined far too often by praetorian intervention, there is a rich scholarly literature on the Spanish armed forces. There also exists a vast number of studies on the colonial wars of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in particular the origins and aftermath of the disaster of 1898. By contrast, the subsequent brutal and last imperialist adventure in Morocco, and more specifically the Army of Africa, has traditionally been overlooked. Furthermore, the objectives of the previous vital works on the question of the military and Morocco have been radically different to those of the present book under review.
Joan Connelly Ullman's _The Tragic Week_ (Harvard University Press; Cambridge, MA, 1968) remains the ultimate study of popular insurrection, that of 1909, against involvement in a new colonial enterprise. Yet its object was not so much Morocco itself but the linkage between anti-clericalism and anti-militarism as early forms of protests against the ruling oligarchic regime. Equally, Caroline P. Boyd's _Praetorian Politics in Liberal Spain_ (University of North Carolina Press; Chapel Hill, 1979) was above all a lucid analysis of the division within the armed forces, caused to a large extent by the war in Morocco from the outbreak of the Great War to the coup of Primo de Rivera in 1923. Again, the focus was on mainland Spain, examining the parallel process between the crisis of the ruling system and the increasing intervention of the military in politics. Recent works by Spanish historians such as Pablo La Porte's _La Atracción del Imán_ (Editorial Biblioteca Nueva, SL; Madrid, 2001) and Juan Pando's _La Secreta Historia de Annua_ (Temas de Hoy; Madrid, 1999) are welcome analyses of the major defeat of the Spanish army in Morocco in 1921. However, _Deadly Embrace_ represents an altogether new fascinating endeavour: the study of an interventionist military elite through the experience of war in Morocco. The outcome is an illuminating analysis of the creation of a new caste of army officers who came to embody a growing colonial identity at odds with the metropolis that finally led to the rebellion of 1936. This book provides a valid model with which to understand the mentality and ideology of the colonial corps and its potentially destabilising role when confronted by metropolitan administrations....
August 2002
[The full text of the review is available at <http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/salvadoFJ.html>.]
Author's Response: <http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/balfourS.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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