On the Spanish-Moroccan Frontier

Book excerpt: The encounter of Europe, Asia and Africa in the Mediterranean basin has given rise to a culturally rich world - a world created by two millennia of warfare and conquest, trading and cultural diffusion, confrontation and accommodation. Combining a historical with a social-anthropological approach, this study of Melilla, a Spanish enclave in Eastern Morocco, offers a remarkable insight into these processes on the local, microscopic level, and shows Melilla's transformation into a trading post and base for colonial penetration and, finally, into a multi-ethnic enclave.