The Maghreb: Link between Two WorldsA Survey of North West Africa (The Maghreb) by Nevill BarbourReview by: Douglas E. AshfordAfrica Today, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Apr., 1960), p. 13Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4184077 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

UNDER the FAME TREES THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA. Elspeth

Huxley. New York: William Mor- row, 1959. 288 pp. $4.00.

Elspeth Huxley is a Kenya white settler whose writings on contempo- rary affairs have consistently reflect- ed her belief that Africans belong to a lower order and are still unfit for political autonomy.

In The Flame Trees of Thika, she is off, however, on a new tack in which the rough reality of the past takes on a roseate hue in the present as she reminisces about her childhood in the early years of the second dec- ade of this century. Then her British parents-who appear here as a sen- sible, humane, and understanding couple-were pioneering in that part of Kenya soon to be off limits to Africans.

Here are vignettes of a family literally breaking ground in a strange land. With a feeling pen the author portrays vividly what to Europeans appear as the weird ways and cus- toms of a black people seen as sav- ages. Life under the flame trees was hard but it was rewarding. Amidst the depictions of hardship are splotch- es of humor, bits of pathos, chronicles of courage and strength, as well as tales of romance and ribaldry. In re- vealing character sketches one meets Nimmo, the nurse; Lettice, the cute coquette; sly Sammy, the headman; Hereward, the bumptious Britisher; stolid Mary Walsh, the wanderer; Afrikaner Roos, the racist; and others who give fullness to the com- munity of Thika.

All through this well written book -for Mrs. Huxley has a fine touch with words-flows a subtle strain of racial prejudice. By innuendo, and sometimes by outright claim, Afri- cans are pictured as dishonest, given to thievery, unreliable, not to be

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trusted, and downright cheats. The author has foregone the usual port- rait of them as savages in customary tribal trappings, half-naked people leaping skyward and chanting in un- intelligible mumbo-jumbo to tom- toms. Her portraits of Africans on a canvas of witchcraft painted with filth are so foul that the final picture is more odious than ignorant white

detractors and outright Africano- phobes are likely to depict.

Yet those who want to feel what life was like in Kenya as Europeans opened up a fruitful part of the ter- ritory, to smell the fresh, untram- meled countryside, and to see the pure bloom of primeval nature, will find The Flame Trees of Thikca a rich source. Hugh H. Smythe

The Maghreb

Link Between Two Worlds

A SURVEY OF NORTH WEST AFRICA (THE MAGHREB). Nevill Barbour, Ed. London: Royal Institute of In- ternational Affairs, 1959. 406 pp. 35s.

The Royal Institute and Mr. Bar- bour are to be congratulated for pro- ducing a much-needed and useful volume on North Africa. With the rapid progress being made in the formation of independent countries, the region's importance to sub-Sa- hara Africa is becoming increasingly evident.

Unfortunately, scholarship has sometimes tended to follow the pat- terns made by colonial expansion so that the relevance, both concrete and analytic, of the emerging states of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria to po- litical and social developments below the Sahara has frequently been missed. This survey should do much to enable sub-Sahara scholars to re- late North African affairs to their endeavors, and to remind students in this country that there is a long his- tory of interaction among the civiliza- tions of the Western Mediterranean, which has not always found the European side of the sea more power- ful or more creative.

In progress for several years the study represents the collective efforts of several British scholars. A large contribution, as editor and author, has been made by Nevill Barbour whose long intimacy with the region goes back to the years of World War II.

The book follows the structure of previous Royal Institute surveys which means that treatment of any particular aspect of the countries in-

volved is necessarily brief. But the material is balanced and inclusive. Divided in three major parts, the survey deals with the basic demo- graphic, historic, political, economic, and social background of each of the three North African countries. The book accurately presents the best of all available systematic study on the region-a remarkable and valuable task-and also honestly notes where reliable estimates or figures are not possible.

In addition, there are sections on the more neglected parts of the Maghreb: Spanish West Africa, Mauritania, and the Sahara. As the internal and international politics of the Maghreb and the sub-Saharan states bordering on the Sahara be- come more active, the issues and the resources contained in the bypassed parts of the region will become more important.

The careful summary of the dip- lomatic and historic relations of Eu- ropean countries other than France with the Maghreb will help undo many habits of thinking solely in terms of French North Africa. The area will neither succeed in severing totally its present ties with France nor will it probably ever choose to do so. But the cultural and political re- lationships between Europe and the Maghreb clearly emerge as much more complex than they are usually as- sumed to be.

An indispensable aid to African and Middle Eastern scholars, this study will also be of great interest to those concerned with more general patterns of rapid political and social change. Doualas E. Ashford

APRIL 1960 13

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