Between colony and nation: Coopération and the long decolonisation of universities in the Maghreb, 1955–1970

As Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria won independence from France in the 1950s and 1960s, new leaders turned to universities to prepare their nations for the future. Universities, officials and politicians agreed, would train the experts, engineers, and functionaries needed to build the countries’ infrastructure and bureaucracy, as well as researchers and instructors to articulate and propagate the very idea of the nation. However, officials confronted colonial legacies within their inherited higher education systems and navigated ongoing French influence in the form of ‘cooperation’: a French programme to maintain close ties with former colonies by sending French personnel to serve as teachers, administrators, and other experts. This article examines cooperation in North African universities’ faculties of letters and human sciences, which were central to the development and implementation of national education curricula. In doing so, it makes two arguments. First, that French cooperation in national letters faculties was characterised by both previously unacknowledged tensions and unexpected alliances, blurring the lines between ‘colonial’, ‘national’, and ‘neocolonial’ projects during the early independence period. Second, by comparing Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, this article highlights the significant constraints Maghrebi leaders faced as they sought to build national universities, and the nation itself.