Overview

Empire and Catastrophe examines natural and anthropogenic disasters during the years of decolonization in Algeria, Morocco, and France and explores how environmental catastrophes both shaped and were shaped by struggles over the dissolution of France's empire in North Africa. Four disasters make up the core of the book: the 1954 earthquake in Algeria's Chelif Valley, just weeks before the onset of the Algerian Revolution; a mass poisoning in Morocco in 1959 caused by toxic substances from an American military base; the 1959 Malpasset Dam collapse in Frejus, France, which devastated the town's Algerian immigrant community but which was blamed on Algerian sabotage; and the 1960 earthquake in Agadir, Morocco, which set off a public relations war between the United States, France, and the Soviet Union and which ignited a Moroccan national debate over modernity, identity, architecture, and urban planning. Interrogating distinctions between agent and environment and between political and environmental violence through the lenses of state archives and through the remembered experiences and literary representations of disaster survivors, Spencer D. Segalla argues for the integration of environmental events into narratives of political and cultural decolonization.

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9781496219633

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Reviews

Richly sourced and persuasively argued, Empire and Catastrophe weaves together metropolitan and imperial narratives. . . . The book's intellectual rigor is matched only by the clarity of its prose. -Christopher M. Church, author of Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citizenship in the French Caribbean Similar to Edward Simpson's Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India, Spencer Segalla's brilliant book offers an innovative fusion of political, cultural, and environmental history to examine decolonization and the creation of postcolonial Algeria, Morocco, and France. -Michael G. Vann, author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam Engagingly written and richly sourced, Empire and Catastrophe is an important contribution to our understanding of the broader ecosystem of empire. Looking at a series of local disasters across the space of French imperialism, Segalla evokes the ways catastrophe and decolonization shaped, and continue to shape, each other. -Brock Cutler, associate professor of history at Radford University

Similar to Edward Simpson's Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India, Spencer Segalla's brilliant book offers an innovative fusion of political, cultural, and environmental history to examine decolonization and the creation of postcolonial Algeria, Morocco, and France. --Michael G. Vann, author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam --Michael G. Vann Richly sourced and persuasively argued, Empire and Catastrophe weaves together metropolitan and imperial narratives. . . . The book's intellectual rigor is matched only by the clarity of its prose. --Christopher M. Church, author of Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citizenship in the French Caribbean --Christopher M. Church Engagingly written and richly sourced, Empire and Catastrophe is an important contribution to our understanding of the broader ecosystem of empire. Looking at a series of local disasters across the space of French imperialism, Segalla evokes the ways catastrophe and decolonization shaped, and continue to shape, each other. --Brock Cutler, associate professor of history at Radford University --Brock Cutler

Engagingly written and richly sourced, Empire and Catastrophe is an important contribution to our understanding of the broader ecosystem of empire. Looking at a series of local disasters across the space of French imperialism, Segalla evokes the ways catastrophe and decolonization shaped, and continue to shape, each other. --Brock Cutler, associate professor of history at Radford University Richly sourced and persuasively argued, Empire and Catastrophe weaves together metropolitan and imperial narratives. . . . The book's intellectual rigor is matched only by the clarity of its prose. --Christopher M. Church, author of Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citizenship in the French Caribbean Similar to Edward Simpson's Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India, Spencer Segalla's brilliant book offers an innovative fusion of political, cultural, and environmental history to examine decolonization and the creation of postcolonial Algeria, Morocco, and France. --Michael G. Vann, author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam

Author Information

Spencer D. Segalla is a professor of history at the University of Tampa. He is the author of The Moroccan Soul: French Education, Colonial Ethnology, and Muslim Resistance, 1912–1956 (Nebraska, 2009).

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