North African Propaganda and the United states, 1946-1956

Extract

The political climate of the post-war world did not permit the United States to embark on a new era of isolationism in 1945, but few Americans demonstrated much awareness of Asian or African developments. French North Africa was more familiar than many colonial areas because American military operations during the war had acquainted the public with Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. When demonstrations against French control erupted throughout the Maghrib after VE Day, a minority of Americans recognized that this region of French rule, but of intensely nationalist feelings, could become a serious trouble spot. With the subsiding of the riots, however, even the largest newspapers in the United States offered only limited information on North African events.

During the next decade, leaders of the independence movements waged a campaign to familiarize Americans with the situation in their countries and gain support for their views on how Franco-Maghribi problems could best be resolved. In outlining that campaign and discussing its strategy, this essay attempts to asses the importance which North Africans attached to American sympathy, the methods which they utilized to attain it, and the results which they achieved.

Late in 1946, a spokesman for the Committee for the Liberation of North Africa called the public's attention to the inadequacy of the coverage of the American press. In a lengthy letter to the New York Times, M. Aboul Ahrass accused France of denying foreign newsmen access to North Africa because of the fear that their reports would discredit the French administrations (December 30, 1946: 18).