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Date: 2020-01-01

Creator: Joseph Campbell Hilleary

Access: Open access

This thesis explores changes in and challenges to Moroccan political authority in the region of the Sous during the late nineteenth century. It attempts to show how the phenomenon of British informal empire created a crisis over Moroccan sovereignty that caused the sultan to both materially and discursively change the way he wielded power in southern Morocco. It further connects these changes and the narrative contestation that accompanied them to the construction of the Bilad al-Siba/Bilad al-Makhzan dichotomy found in Western academic literature on Morocco starting in the colonial period. It begins with an examination of letters between Sultan Hassan I and local leaders in the Sous that show a shift toward a more bureaucratic form of governance in response to repeated openings of black-market ports by British trading companies. It then investigates the textual debate over the framing of Hassan I’s military expeditions to southern Morocco in the 1880s and 90s by drawing on a collection of European travel accounts, American consular reports, and a royal Moroccan history. Finally, it ties the illegal trade in the Sous to the broader theory of informal empire through a close examination of the Tourmaline Incident of 1897, using documents from the British Foreign Office as well as published accounts by crew members aboard the Tourmaline, itself.

Date: 2020-01-01

Creator: Artur Kalandarov

Access: Open access

This paper evaluates the validity of three concepts from Carl von Clausewitz’s On War as they relate to contemporary military conflict. Utilizing the Soviet and American Wars in Afghanistan as case studies, the paper also offers a model for comparative conflict analysis by expanding upon Clausewitz’s culminating point concept. It argues that – despite limitations to Clausewitz’s theory of war – his concepts of culminating points in military operations, mass and concentration, and changing war aims provide useful insights into counterinsurgency military failures. Chapter One identifies the Soviet and American culminating points. Concluding that the concept of a culminating point is not applicable to the means and objectives of insurgents, it expands upon Clausewitzian theory by presenting an effectual substitute: the Counterinsurgent Acceptance Point. This is the author’s idea, and it is defined as the moment at which the counterinsurgents first publicly call for negotiations with the enemy. As the first public acknowledgment that the insurgents have denied the counterinsurgents a strictly military resolution to the conflict, it marks a crucial shift in the political framework of the war and is a fitting antithesis to the culminating point. Chapters Two and Three show how an inadequate troop presence and unclear war aims harmed Soviet and American efforts in Afghanistan. The development of insurgencies in both wars are studied to pinpoint when both country’s leaderships failed to adopt a Clausewitzian view of war, despite calls to do so by General Colin Powell in 2001 and Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov in 1979.