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MOROCCO Murder in Marrakesh: Émile Mauchamp and the French Colonial Adventure, by Jonathan G. Katz. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007. xv + 278 pages. Notes to p. 347. Index to p. 358. $29.95.
Reviewed by Moshe Gershovich
Most historical figures gain notoriety thanks to their actions and deeds. Some, however, become famous mainly, sometimes exclusively as a result of their untimely death. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is perhaps the best representative of the latter category. Far less renowned, yet the victim of an equally tragic fate was the hero of the book under review, Dr. Émile Mauchamp, whose violent death in March 1907 sparked an international incident resulting in the enhancement of French domination over Morocco.
The murder of Mauchamp is "the kind of forgotten event often relegated to footnotes," (p. 1) and yet Katz retrieves it from the dustbin of history to which it has been relegated for a century, in order to reexamine the circumstances that led to the French intervention in, and eventual takeover of Morocco. In doing so, he presents the unfortunate doctor as more than "a poster child for the French civilizing mission" (p. 5) that Third Republic France claimed to be carrying out on behalf of thankless colonized peoples throughout the world. Mauchamp was also a self-appointed agent of French political interests in Morocco, an advocate of "peaceful penetration" whose enthusiasm for the cause and lack of good judgment may well have...