Jacques Berque
Jacques Augustin Berque (4 June 1910, Molière, Algeria – 27 June 1995) was a French scholar of Islam and sociologist of the Collège de France. His expertise was the decolonisation of Algeria and Morocco. Berque wrote several histories on the classical and medieval periods in the Arab world, as well as highly influential works on modern era colonisation and decolonisation. He had a countervailing influence on French historiography of the first half of the twentieth century, which tended to see Arabs and in particular the inhabitants of North Africa as a less advanced people or pawns of a victorious France; Berque emphasized instead the rich Arab cultural heritage at a time when historical opinion was sharply divided. As such he was viewed as a sympathetic observer of Muslim society, arguing that the role of Islam was key to any work on the Middle East and North Africa. Biography Born of French parents in Frenda (now in Tiaret Province) in French Algeria, he was a pied-noir. His father, Augustin Berque, was a scholar and Arabist of distinction, one of the few to take an interest in the Muslim culture of the Maghreb. Berque graduated from University of Algiers in 1929, and obtained a M.A. degree a year later. He joined the French army, and from 1934 to 1944 worked as a civil servant in Morocco. As such, he worked as an agronomist in attempts to improve Moroccan agriculture and the life of the peasants. Later he became administrator of the Seksawa tribe, at Imi n'Tanout, High Atlas. Five years of residence among them led to the book which established his scholarly reputation, Les Structures Sociales du Haut Atlas (1955). It remains one of the most thorough ethnographies of the Berbers. He lived his last years and died in a village in the Landes, the region in south-west France from which the Berque family originates. He died in Saint-Julien-en-Born. Career In 1947 he became a Middle East expert for Unesco. He was sent to Egypt in 1953, returning to Paris two years later. He was made director of Muslim Sociological Studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, and a year later, in 1956, was appointed Professor of the Social History of Contemporary Islam at the Collège de France, a post he occupied until his retirement in 1981. Later he presided over two government missions, one at the Ministry of Research (1981–1982) and the other at the Ministry of Education (1984–1985). Among some of Berque's most important works are his books Les Arabes d'hier a demain (1960) and L'Egypte: imperialisme et revolution (1967), translated into English by Jean Stewart as The Arabs: their history and future (1964) and Egypt: imperialism and revolution (1972). The latter, which is divided into five parts, deals with the history and social structure of Egypt from the 18th century up to 1952 when the monarchy was toppled. In an earlier work, Le Maghreb entre deux guerres ("The Maghreb between two world wars", 1962), Berque criticizes the colonial