Les voyageuses occidentales au Maroc, 1860-1956

Western women travelers to Morocco between 1860 and 1956.

"There are many books on Morocco seen by foreign travelers. Few women are mentioned, with the exception of those who have distinguished themselves as Edith Wharton, Colette and Simone de Beauvoir. I discovered during my research, that there were as many women as men, if not more, who traveled to Morocco before and after the establishment of the Protectorate, and have left important evidence of their stay in the Sherifian empire. Who were they? What was their social status? What were they seeking when they entered a country that, at the time, was presented as extremely dangerous? What opinion did they have on Morocco and Moroccans then? Was this opinion different from that of men? As women, did they see something their male counterparts could not see? Can we talk in these terms of a specifically feminine travel literature on Morocco? It is these questions that I try to answer in this book that I wanted to be deliberately didactic, useful for researchers and enjoyable for all readers."

Ms. Latifa Benjelloun-Laroui is Doctor of Letters, bibliologue. She is the first Moroccan director of the Shawqi school in Casablanca. Having worked at the General Library and Archives in Rabat, she also taught at the School of Information Sciences (ESI). She is an active member of the Middle East International Librarian Committee (Melcom International). She has published the book Les Bibliothèques au Maroc (Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris, 1990).