Review

Author(s): P. Cachia
Review by: P. Cachia
Source: International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), Vol. 44, No.
4 (Oct., 1968), pp. 808-809
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Royal Institute of International Affairs
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2614986
Accessed: 27-06-2016 02:58 UTC

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808 INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Yemen and the Western World. By Eric Macro. Lontdon: Hurst. 1968.
150 pp. Bibliog. Index. 35s.

Yemen: The Unknown War. By Dana Adams Schmidt. London, Sydney,

Toronto: Bodley Head. 1968. 316 pp. Index. 45s.

South Arabia: Arena of Conflict. By Tom Little. London: Pall Mall. 1968.
196 pp. Bibliog. Index. 35s.

ERIC MACRO'S slim volume is truer to its title than to its professed aim of
providing 'those interested in the affairs of South-west Arabia with some
historical background to the present situation in the Yemen' (p. vii). The
standpoint is very much a Western one: no Oriental sources are used, and
the text begins with the rivalries of the maritime nations in the 16th century
-the earlier indigenous history being surveyed only very briefly in the
Introduction. The initial chapters on the activities of these maritime nations
are indeed the most useful in the book, for they bring together scanty and
hitherto scattered information out of which emerges a clear pattern of
trading enterprise leading to rivalry and then to political intervention. By
contrast, the local protagonists, Turk or Arab, remain shadowy characters
who further or frustrate the interests of the encroaching Powers in strangely
arbitrary fashion. Even when dealing with recent events, it is official actions
and pronouncements that engage Mr. Macro's attention rather than the
groundswell of local forces. Thus, in describing the launching of the Aden
Protectorate Federation plan, he quotes in full two official statements which
protest as vehemently as Hamlet's Player Queen that the Rulers are com-
pletely free to negotiate among themselves, but the contemporary labour
unrest is dismissed in less than three lines as 'engineered and encouraged
by Egyptian propaganda' (pp. 101-103).
Dana Schmidt's long reportage on Yemen's unknown and unfinished war
starts dramatically with 'The Night of the Coup' and then proceeds racily,
though swollen with descriptions of ancient sites and with accounts of
personal mishaps and of encounters with colourful characters. There are
also two chapters (6 and 7) on past history which are not without some
sense of perspective, despite references to Omayyid rule extending into the
10th century (p. 102) or to the Abbasid caliph as ' leader of the faith of
Constantinople' (p. 111)-howlers matched elsewhere when Jamal ad-Din
al Afghani is dubbed 'the first Arab nationalist philosopher' (p. 69). When
one has made abstraction of irrelevancies, and perhaps spared a smile for
such 'authenticating' detail as the scurrying of two white rabbits out of
Imam Muhammad al-Badr's way as he escapes from the ruins of his palace
(p. 30), what remains is a useful and credible account of the military and
political struggle, and of the personalities involved in it. Mr. Schmidt has
acquainted himself with both sides, and out of the information he has culled
from interested parties he has built a coherent picture. He finds himself
more often than not in the royalist camp, but he is not uncritical of the
Imam or of the royalist viewpoint (pp. 120-121), and he admits that many
of the changes introduced under the republicans-even if due mainly to
foreign aid and enterprise-are irreversible (pp. 287-288). But with regard
to the wider rivalries involved, his sympathies are made clear when he
contrasts 'Nasser's neo-imperialism' with 'King Faisal's evolutionary
reformism' (p. 184), and almost his last word (p. 300) is an appeal for
vigilance against Soviet Russia's continuing interest in the area.
In both these books Arabic names are often distorted, sometimes almost

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 MIDDLE EAST 809

beyond recognition. This is perhaps to be expected in a journalist's hasty

production (where, e.g., al Moghny becomes al Murny-pp. 22, 35). It is
harder to excuse in Macro's work, where even a name so long in the public
eye as al-Asnag's is rendered al-Ansag both in the text (p. 132) and in the
Index, and where there is also more than a fair sprinkling of misprints
(e.g., 'Lajeh' for 'Lahej '-p. 37), and not in Arabic words alone.
With little more than a nod of recognition towards ancient history,
Mr. Tom Little focuses a sharp eye on how Britain's coaxing of Aden and
its hinterland towards unification was doomed by the tergiversations of
successive governments-especially on defence policy-and by mounting
nationalist fever. The complex pattern is skilfully kept in view as patch is
sewn on patch and tension is added to tension, until the entire fabric
disintegrates. The survey is an interpretative one, and Mr. Little castigates
alike the errors of the British and the intransigence of the militants (p. 154).
He is an astute and well-informed commentator. Yet it is possible to be
at once less censorious and more cynical than he, for his judgments seem
to imply that until a fairly late date welfarism might have prevented
rancour (p. 116) and sweet reasonableness might have been made to prevail
(p. 88). Alas, blood-letting seems well-nigh unavoidable whenever it becomes
clear that the inhibiting hand of an Imperial Power is about to be lifted-
and one is left musing that the book's sub-title, though apposite, is far from
distinctive.
P. CACHIA.

AFRICA

Africa in Transition: Geographical Essays. Ed. by B. W. Hodder and D. R.

Harris. London: Methuen; New York: Barnes & Noble. 1967. 378 pp.
Bibliog. Index. SOs.
The City in Modern Africa. Ed. by Horace Miner. London: Pall Mall.
1967. 364 pp. Bibliog. Index. (The Pall Mall Library of African
A/lairs.) 60s.
ANOTHER two edited volumes about the 'new' Africa, but these are
substantially different in aims and contents.
Drs. Hodder and Harris have edited a volume of geographical essays
written in collaboration with three of their colleague geographers of London
University. Introduced by a very summary statement on 'The African
Scene', the volume contains six densely packed regional essays on North,
North-East, East, West, Equatorial and Southern Africa in which special
problems and issues are examined in their geographical context. Unlike
their publishers, the editors do not regard the book as a comprehensive
geography of Africa or its regions, although the six essays provide a rich
store of geographical material on mainland Africa-Madagascar and other
islands are barely mentioned. The regional division is based on the first-
hand experience of the contributors, and the only real difficulty arises in
the case of North-East Africa, where an overall view has had to be rejected
in favour of separate considerations of the lands of the Nile (Egypt and
Sudan) and those of the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, French Somaliland and
Somalia). The authors have had a free hand to range widely over political,
economic and social issues, and the essays vary in length and treatment;
whereas East Africa is given generous page allocation, the much larger and
more populous region of West Africa is less privileged. All the essays are

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