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[PAST EVENT] Eric Calderwood, Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan culture

February 8, 2019
12pm - 1pm
Location
Washington Hall, Room 201
241 Jamestown Rd
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location
Access & Features
  • Open to the public
Prof. Eric Calderwood, University of Illinois
Prof. Eric Calderwood, University of Illinois

Through state-backed Catholicism, monolingualism, militarism, and dictatorship, Spain?s fascists earned their reputation for intolerance. It may therefore come as a surprise that 80,000 Moroccans fought at General Franco?s side in the 1930s. What brought these strange bedfellows together, Eric Calderwood argues, was a highly effective propaganda weapon: the legacy of medieval Muslim Iberia, known as al-Andalus. This legacy served to justify Spain?s colonization of Morocco and also to define the Moroccan national culture that supplanted colonial rule.