Through state-backed Catholicism, monolingualism, militarism, and dictatorship, Spain’s fascists earned their reputation for intolerance. It may therefore come as a surprise that 80,000 Moroccans fought at General Franco’s side in the 1930s. What brought these strange bedfellows together, Eric Calderwood argues, was a highly effective propaganda weapon: the legacy of medieval Muslim Iberia, known as al-Andalus. This legacy served to justify Spain’s colonization of Morocco and also to define the Moroccan national culture that supplanted colonial rule.

Writers of many political stripes have celebrated convivencia, the fabled “coexistence” of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in medieval Iberia. According to this widely-held view, modern Spain and Morocco are joined through their shared Andalusi past. Colonial al-Andalus traces this supposedly timeless narrative to the mid-1800s, when Spanish politicians and intellectuals first used it to press for Morocco’s colonization. Franco later harnessed convivencia to the benefit of Spain’s colonial program in Morocco. This shift precipitated an eloquent historical irony. As Moroccans embraced the Spanish insistence on Morocco’s Andalusi heritage, a Spanish idea about Morocco gradually became a Moroccan idea about Morocco.

Drawing on a rich archive of Spanish, Arabic, French, and Catalan sources—including literature, historiography, journalism, political speeches, schoolbooks, tourist brochures, and visual arts—Calderwood reconstructs the varied political career of convivencia and al-Andalus, showing how shared pasts become raw material for divergent contemporary ideologies, including Spanish fascism and Moroccan nationalism. Colonial al-Andalus exposes the limits of simplistic oppositions between European and Arab, Christian and Muslim, that shape current debates about European colonialism.

"The particular value of a book like Colonial al-Andalus is the way it illuminates and historicizes these mythologies, tracing a story that itself extends far beyond Iberia and Morocco. The book brings our attention to some of the less-acknowledged uses of convivencia and also excises the debate over intercultural and interreligious relations in medieval Iberia from its academic confines. With this book in our hands, we have new tools with which to understand Mediterranean crossings and the rhetoric that surrounds them today." - Marginalia

"Colonial al-Andalus is brilliantly contextualized, moving from close reading of texts and documents to wider reflections on their significance in the study of nationalisms in the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean identity, and colonialism in North Africa… A beautifully written and engaging book that will be of interest to scholars in a range of fields and accessible to specialists and non-specialists alike." - History

"Calderwood has pioneered an innovative way of thinking about North African history, and this book will be foundational to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of Spanish–Moroccan studies." - H-Net Reviews

"A magisterial account of the trajectory of the myth of al-Andalus, its meanings, and the ideological uses to which it has been put. It is exemplary in its comparative approach, skillful analysis, and clarity of exposition. A landmark book, it is de rigueur for students and scholars interested in Spanish–Moroccan relations but also relevant to broader studies concerned with European relations with North Africa." - Revista de Estudios Hispánicos

"An innovative, rigorous, clearly argued, and fascinating study of how Morocco’s colonial entanglement with Spain shaped its modern cultural identity…While it is clearly an essential read for anyone interested in Spanish colonialism in North Africa, Colonial al-Andalus will also be of interest to a variety of scholars working in fields such as comparative literature, cultural studies, Spanish, Arabic, history, and art history." - Comparative Literature

"Offers a corrective to the imbalance of attention paid to the French Protectorate, while elucidating the depth of cultural cross-over that made possible the differing uses of al-Andalus…Calderwood’s thesis is so original, his proof so wide-ranging." - Bulletin of Spanish Studies