Avuncular American

Etched in Memory: Historic Glass Negatives

Scanned glass negative from the Tangier American Legation Donald Angus collection

Resolve to keep those shoeboxes full of negatives from your grandmother's attic.  Even if they're not worth a few hundred million dollars, they just might contain some historic treasures, like the glass negative collection at the Tangier American Legation.  The gift of philanthropist Donald Angus, who lived in Tangier for many years, and whose generosity provided our museum of many of its historic maps and prints.

Who today can tell us about the "Club Elixir" of Tangier's old days, pictured above?  "Elixir" - الإكسير - or Al-kisir, the alchemist's stone, perhaps an appropriate name for a late 19th century emporium where you could mix your absinthe with whatever you fancied.  If only they had identified those negatives...

The 2,000 glass negatives tell many stories, and we hope to tell some of them through scans done by Dr. Beatrice St. Laurent of Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts.  Dr. St. Laurent, in 2004, continued under an AIMS grant

a project of the conservation and identification and analysis of the collection of glass negatives dating from the late 19^th century to the 1930’s housed in the Tangier American Legation Museum. This collection documents an important period in the region’s history from pre-colonization through to the 1930’s domination by the French and Spanish.

Dr. St. Laurent reported on her work at the 2005 World History Association conference at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, and presented a display of prints from the Legation glass negatives in 2006 in Massachusetts.

Glass negatives document some of photography's earliest work; the Library of Congress collection, available online, has more than 100,000 images, many of which are painstakingly identified.  George Eastman House - the International Museum of Photography and Film - also has collections that can be accessed online.

Someday, we too would like to make the TALIM glass negative collection available online in a similarly systematic fashion.  In the meantime, we'll post some of these photos randomly, in this blog, and perhaps set up a page on the Legation website.  Some 200 negatives were scanned, meaning more funding will be needed to clean, preserve, catalog and scan the remaining 1,800.  Maybe we can interest Lebanon's Arab Image Foundation, dedicated to preserving the photographic heritage of the entire region.

Finally, thanks to Beatrice St. Laurent, Simona Schneider, and Michael Toler for helping to "repatriate" these valuable scans back home to Tangier.

Gerald Loftus

Resolution 2013: Lobby for the Legation

Disclaimer: This is not just another call for money (though that's always appreciated!).  Rather it is a plea for you to invest an even more precious commodity - your time.

In 2012 many people helped the Legation further its programs, and contributed time, effort, and funds to keep this unique historic institution alive.  Thank you for your support.

Now let's consider a New Year's resolution that is like a buffet table - you pick from a selection of actions and donations-in-kind for 2013 which would help us beyond writing that much-appreciated annual donation check.  And here's our smorgasbord of projects for you to choose from:

• Letter to the editor. Got a connection with the Washington-based organization, the National Trust for Historic Preservation?  Maybe you subscribe to their Preservation Magazine.  These are the people who care about saving America's National Treasures.  What we need from them is a little love.  Though the Tangier American Legation, more than many lesser sites, meets their definition of "irreplaceable, threatened, endangered," we can't even get past Square One with the NTHP because the Legation, though considered American soil, is physically outside the US.  As readers know, it is in fact the only US National Historic Landmark abroad.  All we'd like is to educate National Trust members by writing an article on the Legation.

• Cultural tourism map.  We're on it for the Road Scholar (formerly Elderhostel) program, whose members have truly enjoyed their Legation visits.  Unfortunately, thousands of tourists pass right by us every year and never get a chance to see this unique slice of American history.  Maybe you pay dues to the AARP?  Consider the lost opportunity for hundreds of their members, whose tour groups literally pass us by during their Tangier visits.  AARP needs to know what they're missing. 
  

• Legation day the Archives.  Have a free morning to spend at the US National Archives?  Imagine the impact on visitors to our museum - especially Moroccans - if we were to display a scanned facsimile of the 17 January 1829 "passport" (actually a letter signed by Secretary of State Henry Clay) issued to the "Prince Among Slaves," whose "emancipation from slavery would be very agreeable to the Emperor of Morocco."  A few hours in College Park Maryland at "RG 84" (Legation records) should unearth it.

• Mail-a-Mac.  Giving someone a new iPod for Christmas?  What will they do with their old one?  Replacing a perfectly serviceable MacBook with a shiny new iPad?  Or swapping an older iMac for the latest version?  We're trying to migrate to Mac, so your niece's old Mac would help us in our quest.  Write us and we'll give you our US mailing address.

• Find-a-Foundation.  Imagine - you know of this well-kept secret, the American Legation in Tangier, oldest and first US diplomatic property, an institution that practices citizen cultural diplomacy in the heart of a Moroccan medina, one that helps women become literate in Arabic, where scholars can come and research historic ties with the first country to recognize the United States.  Don't you think a foundation or philanthropist or preservationist in your state would jump to help such a place?  Contact them, and give them our address on America Street (since 1821).

• Send-us-a-semester (abroad program).  Maybe you're a faculty member of a college or university, or the parent of a student, or an alum.  Wouldn't it be nice if your university sent its students to TALIM, either as part of a semester abroad program or during a Morocco (or even Spain) student trip?  Dartmouth does it, and the University of New England (UNE) is setting up a campus in Tangier.  And consider how all these students who learn about the Legation will become advocates for its preservation and for its educational activities.  Some of them might graduate from interns to board members.
  

• Furnish-us-some-furniture.  Period furniture, that is.  We have US Government surplus furniture that is serviceable, to be sure.  But as we re-cast the public areas of the Legation - illustrating the heyday of 19th and early 20th century Legation diplomacy in the museum - it would be great to have a few authentic pieces (chairs, bookcases, etc.) to recreate the atmosphere. Wouldn't it be a nice project - giving America's first property a refound elegance - for a generous interior designer among our readership?

• Buy-us-a-boat: Not just any boat.  The USS Olympia, which came to Tangier at the order of Teddy Roosevelt, part of the gunboat diplomacy invoked in the 1904 Perdicaris Affair.  A generous donor among you might have the $1,550 (plus $130 S&H) for an amazing scale model of this other US National Historic Landmark, which today floats in Philadelphia harbor.
  

• Broker-a-benefit (concert). The High Atlas Foundation does it.  How about us?  Imagine the research books a few $30 concert tickets could buy.  "Music for a Museum."  "Tango for Tangier."  "A Legation Legacy."  You make up the event, and our programs reap the benefit.
  

Anyone out there with some clout (financial perhaps, but also using your name)?  Two private-public partnerships born in the US State Department are of direct relevance to the Legation.

The Foreign Affairs Museum Council is dedicated to raising money to establish a museum of American diplomacy at the State Department.  FAMC Chairman Ambassador William Harrop has referred to our work in Tangier, tracing the long history of American diplomacy in Morocco, as "symbiotic" with FAMC's goals.  Now all we need is for Legation supporters to encourage FAMC to make that symbiosis concrete.

Similarly, the new Fund to Conserve America's Treasures Abroad is raising private funds to augment State Department efforts to preserve America's historic diplomatic buildings.  None of which are more historic - and endangered - than the Legation.  Again, the people behind the Fund to Conserve need to hear from influential supporters of the Legation, to make sure it is at the top of their preservation funding to-do list.

I'm sure you can think of even more ways to get us the support this institution deserves.  That's the hidden power of networking, of "bundling" - as political candidates do - the organizational and fund-raising efforts of many into something that makes an impact.  You don't have to have an office on Washington's K Street to lobby for the Legation - you have a phone, a keyboard, and your commitment to this institution.  That's all you need.

Two centuries is a long time in the history of American diplomacy, and the Legation as The Only, the First, and The Oldest needs major shoring up.  You don't want to see nasty pictures of structural cracks and mold in this festive season, so let's accentuate the positive.  I leave you with a vision of the Legation as it once was, and how it might be again.  Happy 2013!

 

Legation drawing room 1940s, from the UVA Rives Childs papers

Gerald Loftus

Echos of the Irish Battery: David Asbury's Guitar

O'Carolan for the guitar

Around the time that Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738) was growing up in Ireland, his countrymen were mounting the guard at the Irish Battery, now on some maps as le tour des irlandais, just around the corner from what would later become the American Legation.  This was the British occupation of Tangier, 1661 - 1684.

O'Carolan, considered by many to be Ireland's pre-eminent composer of what might be called "classical traditional" music, was made known to many modern audiences through the folk music group The Chieftans, especially their late harpist Derek Bell.

Now, through the generosity of Dr. David Asbury, Southwestern University professor of music, Irish music returned Friday night to the medina of Tangier.

This is how Asbury pitched his O'Carolan event:  I am currently performing a program of the music of Turlough O'Carolan that I have arranged for solo guitar. The music has strong Baroque and Celtic stylistic elements and translates beautifully to the guitar. It is very beautiful music that is widely accessible.

How could we refuse such an offer?  The show was on, and our audience was delighted.

We made the most of Dr. Asbury's visit to Tangier, and introduced him to the good people of Confluences Musicales, who organize the annual world traditional music festival Tarab Tanger.  Confluence president and vice-president Omar Metioui and Mounira Zouak, educators whose work carries on the tradition of Arab-Andalusian music, showed us around their beautiful space at Bab Marsa/Borj Hajoui, a restored Portuguese fortress.  Metioui explained how this Andalus/Maghreb tradition was saved during years of puritannical Almohad repression in the Middle Ages by finding refuge among the sufi orders and disguising itself as religious music.

 

 

Omar Metioui shows David Asbury Moroccan oud

Metioui and Zouak took us through the wonderful Confluences lute workshop (housed in the former morgue at Bab Marsa!), and its display of ouds and other instruments used in Andalusian music. 

But back to O'Carolan.  Dr. Asbury took the audience through the process of arranging the Irishman's work for guitar, O'Carolan having composed upwards of 200 works, largely for the harp.  Though much of the repertoire owes its origins to Irish dances and melodies, Asbury explained that the Italian Baroque influenced O'Carolan.

As did whiskey, with tunes dedicated to (and likely inspired by) "Jameson" and other imbibables.  O'Carolan's countryman, a Captain McKenney, who "fell drunk asleep" at a late 17th century entertainment near the Irish Battery in Tangier, would have enjoyed the show.  Samuel Pepys himself was entertained by "harp, guitar, and dance," according to his Tangier Journal.  Nice distractions, no doubt, from the "flux and scurvy."

David Asbury's Tangier visit has inspired him to return and research the rich musical traditions in this city of many cultures, and we have an inkling that his students will get enthusiastic encouragement to seek internships at TALIM.  As O'Carolan might have said, cead mile failte or 100,000 welcomes!

Gerald Loftus   

The Class of '62 Learns Arabic

 

Plaque at the Tangier American Legation

We can't leave 2012 without remembering the Class of 1962.  Fifty years ago, the Tangier American Legation's first role in its post-Legation, post-Consulate General period, was as the Foreign Service Institute's school for Maghrebi Arabic.  And the class that year numbered six young Foreign Service Officers. 

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  The historic Legation building had just ceased its diplomatic activities, and the space was available.  A chance to learn Arabic in the field (or in the winding medina streets, as it happens).  Lannon Walker, one of the student diplomats, recalled being given free reign to choose classrooms in the sprawling and empty edifice.  He found the 1930s-era Pavilion a congenial place for a classroom.

Robert Duncan, in a 1995 interview with Charles Stuart Kennedy in the Library of Congress Frontline Diplomacy oral history series, had doubts about the kind of Arabic on offer in Tangier:

[T]he Maghrebi dialect is basically something that I never used after I left Morocco. Once, when I was visiting in Egypt, I started speaking to Egyptians in my Maghrebi dialect, which was sort of part humorous and part quizzical. But then I would sort of shift from using the Maghrebi dialect into what I called the "bastardized Arabic," where I'd sort of speak to them in both. That was what we communicated in.

In his Frontline Diplomacy interview, Ambassador Ed Peck spoke of his high expectations on coming away with a very respectable "3+/3+" score (respectively Speaking and Reading, in a scale where 5/5 is native fluency) after his time in Tangier:

We were the six who opened the school, and I was there for twenty two months learning Arabic--I thought. In fact, we were all taught to speak a dialect which is fully usable within perhaps one hundred kilometers of Tangier, and since Tangier is on the northwestern coast of the continent, it doesn't really take in an awful lot.

You see, Tangerine Arabic is the Arabic that's spoken in Tangier, which is heavily interlarded with Spanish and also has a lot of Berber. The dialects in Arabic are grossly different from country to country and within countries, and we learned a way-out dialect, which even in the south of Morocco was not well understood.

When I finished the program--and I got a 3+/3+, which was considered quite good--I was sent to Tunisia. When I arrived there, getting off the ferry boat from Italy, I said to the dockworkers who were unloading my stuff, "Oh, my brothers, in Allah's name, handle these boxes with careful attention. They contain many things of importance to me and my family. May God reward you."

And they all said, "Huh?" They said, "What?" They said, "Do you speak French?"

And that's what I spoke for the two years I was there. [My Tangier Arabic] was almost totally useless in Tunisia. I could read the papers but I could not speak with anybody.

Despite the temporary handicap, it did not hinder Peck in his career, which included a number of Arabic-speaking assignments, and an ambassadorship in Mauritania.

Likewise, his classmates made the most of their Tanjawi Arabic: Frank Wisner (read about his exploits surviving louche Tangier bars in Peck's interview) became a four-time ambassador, including to such important countries as India and Egypt; Lannon Walker devoted his career to Africa, serving as ambassador to several countries; Robert Pelletreau served as ambassador to several Arab countries; Amb. John W. MacDonald, after his Foreign Service career, founded the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy.

Not bad for the Class of '62 - five out of six eventually become US Ambassadors.  Happy 50th anniversary!

Gerald Loftus

Tangier, Northern Morocco, and the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War erupts, July 1936. From the Tangier Gazette archives at the TALIM research library.

Ali Al Tuma of the Institute for History at Leiden University, the Netherlands, has published "Tangier, Spanish Morocco and Spain's Civil War in Dutch Diplomatic Documents" in the June 2012 issue of JNAS, The Journal of North African Studies (Vol.17:3 (2012) pp.433-453) of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS).  Al Tuma has found a valuable resource in the rarely consulted archives of the former Dutch Legation in Tangier, which in its reports did not hide its distaste for Spanish "reds," as it termed the Republicans.

The following excerpts illustrate the confused and "precarious" situation in Tangier at the outset of the Civil War, which ended with Franco's victory and his later takeover of the Tangier International Zone after the fall of France in June 1940.  The entire article can be obtained through the JNAS website of publisher Taylor & Francis.  The excerpts (in plain text below) are presented with the permission of the author, the publisher, and the JNAS editor.

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Tangier: Spain to the north & Spanish Protectorate to the south; Spanish in the International Zone

An international territory since 1923, Tangier's neutrality was supposed to be guaranteed by "The Powers" - represented in the International Zone by the Committee of Control - in time of war, tested for the first time by the Spanish Civil War.

This was not easy, especially during the first stage of the conflict. Tangier was surrounded by the Spanish Protectorate where the military rebellion against the Republic first started and prevailed. Spanish political and diplomatic representation in Tangier was Republican, but the Spanish colony, the largest European one, was divided between Republicans (the majority) and those pro-Franco.

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Firefights over the bay of Tangier

In July 1936, seven Republican warships came to Tangier, precluded from using the Nationalist-held ports of southern Spain for refuelling.

Republican sailors had formed ‘committees’, imprisoned the officers, and asked Madrid to send leftist officers to take command. Franco requested the Mendoub (Sultan’s representative in Tangier) to prevent the ships from leaving the harbor or he would reserve the right to undertake ‘violent measures’. British and Portuguese envoys requested more ships to safeguard the city. Franco’s planes flew over Tangier from Cadiz, [and Republican] ships opened fire. ‘This happened in the immediate neighborhood of the bay in front of thousands of onlookers’. The situation was so tense that the Comité de Contrôle requested French and Italian marines to guard legations.

[Note: Shortly thereafter a British cargo ship was attacked, and the British destroyer Whitehall engaged Nationalist planes.  The Republican ships left Tangier, but later submarines came into Tangier.]

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American Studies in Arab Universities

A.S.  American Studies, Arab Spring

The Department of English and the Moroccan American Studies Lab of Casablanca's Hassan II University, with perfect timing designed to coincide with the anniversary of the birth of the Arab Spring two years ago in Tunisia, organized what may be the first region-wide conference on American Studies as a discipline in Arab universities in the wake of this region-reshaping Spring.

With the snow-covered Atlas Mountains as a dramatic backdrop, Marrakesh was host to a gathering of experts from across the region, but also from the United States, Canada, and Europe, to gauge the state of American Studies at this crucial juncture.  At the same time, Marrakesh was hosting quite another sort of crowd at the annual Marrakesh Film Festival.

Ironic, perhaps, since an important theme in our academic conference is one of image and perception, especially in the world of TV and cinema, of both Arab and American worlds.  Dr. Karim Bejjit, one of the conference organizers, has done considerable research on the Christian captive narratives of the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as on the Barbary Wars of the early days of the American republic.  Comparing these with the kind of "with us or against us" rhetoric born of September 11, 2001, Bejjit says that the 300 year old narratives often gave a more nuanced picture of the Moorish captors than images on American TV.

The historiography of American Studies is fascinating, whose rise Dr. Alexander Lubin of AUB's Center for American Studies and Research sees stemming from the notion of American exceptionalism.  Later, "exceptions to exceptionalism" (racism, treatment of Native Americans, etc.) became a focus of scholars.

American Studies have long since evolved from a celebration of America to the point where in some corners its practitioners might be termed professors of "anti-American Studies."  Dr. Brian Edwards of Northwestern University, author of "Globalizing American Studies," tells of how in Iran some see American Studies as simply a way to better understand the enemy, the "Great Satan."

In many Arab universities, American Studies were born in departments of English.  While departments of English may still be a focal point, American Studies are a subject of interdisciplinary interest.  Take the gathering in Marrakesh, where demographers, security analysts, and linguists dissected the topic.

Are American Studies simply public relations?  If so, the PR message may have been misunderstood by its intended audience.  The Arab Spring used the products of American culture - social networking, crowd sourcing, etc. - but the end result was not necessarily "pro-American."

Is America in decline, and if so, why study it?  If decline there is, better to understand the society that is still capable of influencing the world in economic, military, cultural and innumerable other ways.

Whatever is happening in American Studies within the United States - and indications are that the field is in decline, in part due to the funding crisis in higher education - it was alive and well at this conference.  The greater MENA - Middle East North Africa - region counts at least 9 American Studies programs, perhaps 4 of which have PhD programs.

This was a perfect opportunity to talk up the virtues of TALIM as a venue for the study of American diplomatic engagement with the Arab, Muslim, and Mediterranean worlds, and we were pleased that a number of the participants already knew of the Legation and its importance in this story.  We look forward to strengthening ties with the American Studies Association and making TALIM - in addition to a research center for study of the Maghreb - a center for Arabs studying America.

Gerald Loftus

Saharan Crossroads: Views From the Desert-Edge

Herein we broadcast the Call for Papers (CFP) from the joint AIMS (American Institute for Maghrib Studies, of which TALIM is the research center in Morocco) WARA (West African Research Association) conference for June 2013.  Please note that the deadline for submission of applications and abstracts is December 30, 2012.

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Saharan Crossroads: Views from the Desert-Edge

An AIMS-WARA-CRASC Conference

22-24 June 2013 - Ghardaïa, Algeria

This conference is part of a series of activities organized by the West African Research Association (WARA) and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS) aimed at strengthening the cultural, artistic and historical links among the peoples living within and across the Sahara Desert.

The 3rd international conference « Saharan Crossroads: Views from the Desert-Edge » is planned to be held in Ghardaïa, Algeria June 22-24, 2013.  The Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA) is partnering with the Centre National de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle (CRASC) in planning this conference to be held at the University of Ghardaïa.

This conference’s theme is “Mapping information flows within and across the Sahara.” Throughout the ages, Africans circulating in Saharan regions engaged in cultural, intellectual, religious and political exchanges. Through oral and scriptural media, and by way of foot, caravan, truck and other traffic, people conveyed information and ideas that transformed and connected societies across distances. The committee is interested in studies focused on Saharan and trans-Saharan exchanges of information and ideas, past and present. Ghardaïa, in the heart of the Mzab region, is a propitious locale to hold this conference. This ethnically and religiously diverse oasis town was once a major center of exchange, and a northern terminus of caravans originating from markets such as Timbuktu, Agadez and Kano.

Proposals for papers and panels are invited for the following suggested themes:

1.       Circulation routes and information nodes

2.       Art, music and stylistic trends

3.       Cultures and ritual traditions

4.       Centers of learning and scholarly circuits

5.       Religious and Sufi networks

6.       Legal opinions and jurisprudence

7.       Political movements and ideological waves

8.       Evolution of communication technologies

9.       Migration and information flows

10.    Water management technologies and oasis agriculture

11.    Urban and architectural design

12.    Comparative Saharan archaeology

Applications and Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be submitted by December 30^th, 2012 at the following website: http://fs9.formsite.com/westafricanresearchassociation/form10/index.html.

For further enquiries, you may contact the conference organizers at [email protected].

Conference Organizers:

Ghislaine Lydon (University of California, Los Angeles)

Robert Parks (Director, CEMA-Oran)

Jennifer Yanco (Director, WARA)

Aomar Boum (Vice-President AIMS, University of Arizona)

Sidi Mohamed Trache (Université d’Oran et associé CRASC)

This conference is partially funded by a grant through the US Dept of State Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs.

Tahar Ben Jelloun at the Legation

Tahar Ben Jelloun (official website) came to live in Tangier as a boy in 1955, but last night was his first time visiting TALIM's museum and research library. Gallimard has just published his latest novel, Le Bonheur Conjugal (listen to an excerpt), and Ben Jelloun discussed his work with our audience - we were packed to overflowing, and had to turn people away, much against our instincts.

Probably Morocco's best known writer in French (alternately, France's best known Maghrebi-born novelist), Tahar Ben Jelloun divides his time between Paris and Tangier.  This 2006 Guardian interview provides a nice biographical sketch, and this Paris Review conversation reveals his literary and cinematic inspirations:

What is important is to invent a story and to make the spectators believe it—what is important is that sitting in a dark movie theater one is transported to another universe in imagination. This is what I try to do in my books.

Steinbeck, Dos Passos, Faulkner, but especially Joyce, are among the anglophone writers Ben Jelloun cites as literary references, and he knew Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs as well, recalling the latter as he strolled through our Paul Bowles exhibit.  No fan of Bowles, he did admit that "he wrote a few good books," and was particularly interested in our museum's focus on Bowles as a composer and musicologist.

 

Tahar Ben Jelloun by Eric Martinez, Librairie des Colonnes

Ben Jelloun read us a few excerpts from the ironically-titled Le Bonheur Conjugal, but he was mostly extemporaneous, and the audience remained riveted for a good hour.  At one point referring to his latest novel as "a science friction," he said that he certainly doesn't have the magic formula for Marital Bliss.  Questions of love and loss have long preoccupied Ben Jelloun, from his time as a psychotherapist among North African immigrant workers in France in the Seventies. 

Ever the astute observer of the Moroccan scene, Ben Jelloun weaves social criticism into his fictional situations.  Typical Moroccan boys spoiled as "princes" by doting mothers and female relatives, having to then live with another woman who may not quite appreciate their exalted status.  In Morocco, you not only marry a spouse, but you get the extended family too, for better or for worse.  And Ben Jelloun recalled the unease with which extending marriage rights to women was greeted, even in the left-leaning circles of liberal, educated males.

Le Bonheur Conjugal is his first Moroccan-themed novel which takes place somewhere other than Tangier - in this case, Casablanca.

There are plenty of venues in Tangier where the Librairie des Colonnes could have held this event, so we were honored that this tower of French literature presented his work at TALIM.

Gerald Loftus