Ethan Mefford

Biography

My dissertation is a social history of the olive tree in northern Morocco, spanning from the early 19th century through the period of French and Spanish colonial rule (1912-1956). Broadly, my research interests focus on the agri-cultural aspects of trees, water, and soil, and their discursive interpretations. I draw upon never-before-used hubus (pious endowments) documents from hill country villages to explore local oléiculture in its social, ecological, and religious aspects. The oil from bequeathed olive trees illuminated village mosques and served as a resource buffer, extended in loans and charity, for the community. Benefactors, in turn, sought their salvation by their enduring pious gifts. The resilience of this socio-oleicultural system was tested by a grain blockade imposed by French forces (1915-26), and though the blockade failed to starve the tribes into submission, French environmental discourse of the hill country as poor, marginal space, was reified in decades of colonial agricultural and economic policy. Meanwhile, locals undertook a massive expansion in olive cultivation to claim land and to try to maintain standards of living. My study considers the interplay of colonial environmental discourse, agricultural policy, and local socio-agricultural agency.