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The making of the Tunisian revolution: contexts, architects, prospects

such as the current wars in Iraq-Syria, Libya, and Yemen, or the regression to military fascism in Egypt. For a book of this ambition and scope, one in which the ‘singular legacies’ of the French empire are front and centre, French imperialism in the Levant is indeed never subjected to sustained analysis. The initial entreat to reconsider the Arab Spring as equally rooted in French imperialism does not take the next step in reincorporating this revised understanding back into a more holistic framework of analysis. Part of the issue here is Vermeren’s target readership, which is primarily the broader public. To revisit French imperialism in light of the Arab Spring is not unlike the ways in which American scholarly commentators such as Chalmers Johnson and Andrew Bacevich have reinterpreted US history, particularly its brand of imperialism, to make sense of the crises of the contemporary Middle East vis-à-vis Washington’s sustained ‘engagement’ with the region. In so doing, one could wonder if such public intellectuals are overly affected by a kind of methodological nationalism. While it is crucial to recognise the relationalities that underpin the contemporary world, the laudable effort to inform and affect public opinion can place unfortunate limits on the scope of inquiry. Historiographically, Le choc des décolonisations is as much reflective of a particular French intellectual obsession with the end of its empire – especially Algeria and Vietnam – as of the neopatrimonial relations, for example, ‘la Françafrique’, that have underwritten French power in the postcolonial era. As a specialist of Franco-Moroccan affairs, Vermeren is well placed to appreciate the latter, though the general concern remains as to the limited portability of this book’s insights. The same, of course, could be said of most Anglo-American attempts to understand the Arab Spring. It is always less about ‘them’ and much more about ‘us’. Are we responsible for their fate or did we try too hard to save them from themselves? Such are the intellectual preoccupations of imperial powers grappling with the loss of their supremacy.