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BOOK REVIEWS
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Richard Spall
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EGIONAL SUB-EDITORS
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(Modern Western Europe)
Western Kentucky University
Richard B. Allen
(Africa, Middle East, and South Asia)
Framingham State College
Douglas R. Bisson
(Early Modern Europe)
Belmont University
Betty Dessants
(United States Since 1865)
Shippensburg University
Helen S. Hundley
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Wichita State University
Nigel Kennell & Stefanie Kennell
(Ancient World)
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Jose C. Moya
(Latin America)
University of California at
Los Angeles
Paulette L. Pepin
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University of New Haven
Susan Mitchell Sommers
(Britain and the Empire)
Saint Vincent College
Richard Spall
(Historiography)
Ohio Wesleyan University
Susan Westbury
(United States)
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Peter Worthing
(East Asia and the Pacific)
Texas Chr istian University
STUDENT EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS
SENIOR ASSISTANTS
Jennifer Kirsop Ryan Jarvis
Scarlett Rebman Matthew McGuire
Kaleigh Felisberto Ben Malecki Zak Gomes
Ryan Colopy Colin Magruder Troy Jeffrey
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Matt Lovering Alex Branstool Jesse Hysell
WORD PROCESSING:LAURIE GEORGE &VALERIE HAMILL
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AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787–2005. By James T.
Campbell. (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2006. Pp. xxvi, 513. $29.95.)
The author of this study has written a fascinating book that examines two
centuries of African American journeys to Africa. Using representative individu-
als for successive generations, James T. Campbell explains Africa’s persistent
hold on African Americans. The cast of characters includes the famous Langston
Hughes and W. E. B. DuBois and the less known Ayuba Suleiman Diallo and
William Henry Sheppard. Suspended between two continents and cultures, such
men harbored ambivalence toward America, where they faced slavery, racism,
discrimination, and lack of economic opportunity. At the same time, cultural
echoes of Africa reverberated through their subconscious and the continent of
their forefathers exerted a powerful and mysterious pull. The result was an
amalgam of unrealistic expectations and journeys to Africa that rarely exceeded
expectations.
The long shadow of colonization and its tragic consequences stalk the book’s
pages. Liberia and, to some extent, Sierra Leone show there was a uniquely
American quality about returning to Africa. Emigrants did not want to become
Africans but wanted to create a society where they were free to enjoy the privileges
denied them in North America. As Campbell archly observes, “early proponents
of African emigration revealed just how profoundly American they were” (30).
Even though Liberia was an obvious failure, colonization was fairly popular in the
1850s and it experienced resurgence thirty years later. That repatriation to a fetid
and dangerous nation could hold such sway is testimony to the bleak prospects
that African Americans faced in the United States.
African American missionaries regarded Africa as particularly fertile ground
for the spread of the Gospel. They were, perhaps, too successful, and pressure
from European colonial officials forced American churches to limit the number of
black missionaries. Campbell ironically notes that during the nadir of race rela-
tions in the United States, a movement emerged where African Americans tried to
spread the blessings of Christianity and American civilization. Intellectuals and
journalists went to Africa with high hopes of finding paradise or being automati-
cally accepted in society. Langston Hughes, for instance, famously threw his
books overboard as a symbolic jettisoning of European culture. Ironically, Afri-
cans assumed the light-skinned Hughes was a white man. The indifference of
Africans was a startling eye-opener.
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Campbell’s elegant writing and breadth of knowledge makes this book a
delight. The reader is treated to delightful diversions on a range of topics. At times
the author is just as informative about African history as he is about American
society. The shortcomings of this book are few. It is somewhat curious that neither
Martin Luther King Jr. nor Alex Haley hold a position of prominence in the book.
Also, the interaction with Africa is mainly confined to the western coast, and so
much of the continent remains outside the book’s purview. In the final analysis,
Africa was a point of refuge for African Americans who saw what they wanted to
see when they looked at Africa and revealed who they really were.
University of Memphis Robert Gudmestad
The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa. By Getzel
M. Cohen. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2006. Pp. xiv, 477.
$85.00.)
Anyone who has puzzled through Hellenistic site names in ancient and modern
texts will immediately recognize the importance of this book. There are often
multiple sites with the same name, multiple names for the same site, and common
site names with unknown locations, so that getting the story straight seems
impossible. In fact, it is maddeningly impossible, but the author of this work has
made it significantly less frustrating. A companion volume to his Hellenistic
Settlements in Europe, the Islands, and Asia Minor [1995], the present book
integrates and interprets copious literary, archaeological, epigraphic, and numis-
matic material on other Hellenistic sites. The result is a detailed study that is both
an enjoyable read and an essential reference work on the Hellenistic and Roman
worlds.
The most impressive aspect is Getzel M. Cohen’s facility with sources from well
over ten centuries and across multiple cultures (Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Byzan-
tine, Arab, etc.). He rarely, if ever, fails to analyze the sources in relevant context.
In several cases, Cohen corrects the ancient sources themselves. His descriptions of
“Palestine” and “Coele Syria” clear up some long-standing misconceptions by
showing the various and changing geographical entities referred to by these terms.
Although the work is aimed specifically at Hellenistic and Roman specialists,
Cohen provides clear explanations of technical terms that might otherwise
confuse newcomers. His occasional delightful asides, such as that on the modern
debates over the size of African versus Indian elephants in the ancient world, will
interest nonspecialist and specialist alike (45–48). His discussion of archaeological
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work at Doura Europos should serve as a solid model for presenting any archaeo-
logical dispute in a balanced way (156–169).
One of the perennial discussions of Hellenistic and Roman scholarship, the
extent to which Alexandria is distinct from Egypt, gets extended and clear treat-
ment here (356–381 and appendix iv, 409–423). Any future discussion of Alex-
andria ad Aegyptum will necessarily begin with Cohen’s mass of evidence and
convincing conclusions. His explanation of multiple names for single Egyptian
sites will clarify much about Egyptian history of several periods (52–58).
The book does not entirely stand by itself, and having the companion volume
at hand will be of much help, as the current volume refers often to discussions in
the former, especially early on. The change of style between footnotes and end-
notes might frustrate or turn away some potential readers. Having endnotes after
each individual site description makes a certain amount of sense, but it ends up
giving the book a hypertechnical look, which might just conceal the truly engaging
descriptions and narrative passages sprinkled amidst the straightforward docu-
mentation and reference material.
After encountering this work, the reader, no doubt, will be amazed by the
ambiguity—or lacunae—in other authors’ listings and descriptions of sites in the
Hellenistic and Roman worlds.
Grove City College Mark W. Graham
Morocco under King Hassan. By Stephen O. Hughes. (Reading, England: Ithaca Press,
2005. Pp. vii, 385. $34.50.)
British journalist Stephen O. Hughes first arrived in Morocco in 1952 and spent
the better part of five decades there. In this fact-filled history, Hughes weighs in on
a variety of subjects, peppering his discussions of the economy, political corrup-
tion, the status of minorities, and women’s rights with knowing, first-person “I
was there” anecdotes. Although the thirty-eight-year reign of King Hassan II is
Hughes’s principal focus, the book’s best pages may well be the first hundred,
which are devoted to the French protectorate, the independence movement, and
Mohammed V’s postindependence rule. Although the violence of that struggle,
both against the French and between internal factions, pales in comparison to
events in Algeria, what Hughes describes is nonetheless harrowing. The turmoil of
independence explains, in part, Hassan’s subsequent recourse to autocratic and
often repressive rule during his long reign.
As “Commander of the Faithful,” King Hassan was revered by Morocco’s
masses as quasi-sacred, while Morocco’s radicals and leftist intellectuals reviled
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him as a ruthless anachronism. Hughes does not shy from criticizing the monarch,
but he offers a generally positive account. Hassan is for him an exponent of
religious moderation and tolerance and a ruler genuinely interested in the welfare
of his subjects. He credits Hassan for not allowing the never-ending Western
Sahara dispute to boil over into outright war with neighboring Algeria. Not least,
Hughes portrays Hassan as an audacious politician with a talent for neutralizing
his opposition.
Hughes devotes several chapters to the murky Ben Barka affair (the socialist
leader who disappeared in Jimmy Hoffa-like fashion in Paris in 1965), and he
gives detailed accounts of the two spectacular coup attempts of the early 1970s
that nearly killed Hassan. In the aftermath, the military was purged and hundreds
incarcerated, including the family of General Oufkir. The former Defense Minister
and royal hatchet man (thought to be personally responsible for Ben Barka’s
death) was “suicided” after the first abortive coup.
The horrific ordeal of the Oufkir family and those others left to rot in the desert
prison of Tazmamart later came to symbolize the so-called “years of lead,” the
name generally given by Moroccans to the oppressive 1970s and 1980s—a name
Hughes curiously neglects to use. Considering Hassan’s autocratic rule, it is ironic
that Hughes devotes the bulk of his narrative to Morocco’s parliamentary politics
with its alphabet soup of ineffective parties and paralyzed coalitions. He praises
Hassan for liberalization and the “incremental democratization” of the last
decade of his reign.
First published in 2001, Hughes’s account ends with the accession of the young
Mohammed VI to the throne. Although events may have validated Hughes’s
dismissive account of Hassan’s leftist opposition, it is too early to say whether his
equally dismissive attitude toward the monarchy’s Islamist opponents is war-
ranted. This threat is given greater weight by Marvine Howe, another veteran
observer of the Moroccan scene, whose 2005 book, Morocco: The Islamist
Awakening and Other Challenges, takes up where Hughes leaves off.
Oregon State University Jonathan G. Katz
Turkey’s Modernization: Refugees from Nazism and Ataturk’s Vision. By Arnold
Reisman. (Washington, D.C.: New Academia Publishing, 2006. Pp. 511. $28.00.)
This massive book (sixteen chapters and 145 illustrations) is the most compre-
hensive and probably the definitive study of a little-known event, namely the
refuge and employment in the early 1930s of a group of Jewish scholars in Turkish
universities. According to the author, neither professionals teaching Holocaust
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