Marrakech (1939)

Background information

George Orwell 1903-1950

A compassionate social critic?

Orwell started his career as a compassionate, yet objective, observer of the working-class poor:

• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)• Burmese Days (1934)• The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

Why?

Because of his background:• Born Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in eastern India, the son of

a British colonial civil servant. • Educated in England and, after he left Eton, joined the Indian

Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony.

• He resigned in 1927 and decided to become a writer.

• In 1928, he moved to Paris where lack of success as a writer forced him into a series of menial jobs.

• He described his experiences in his first book, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', published in 1933. He took the name George Orwell, shortly before its publication. This was followed by his first novel, 'Burmese Days', in 1934.

An anarchist in the late 1920s, by the 1930s he had begun to consider himself a socialist.

In 1936, he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among unemployed miners in northern England, which resulted in 'The Road to Wigan Pier' (1937).

Late in 1936, Orwell travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalists. He was forced to flee in fear of his life from Soviet-backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The experience turned him into a lifelong anti-Stalinist.

1938 • Suffered from tuberculosis • Doctor recommended he go to a warmer climate

for the winter• September 1938 he and his wife travelled to

Morocco• Letters home talked of the plight of the working

classes that he was observing • Repeatedly he stressed that he wished to make

contact with the local people, but that his situation as a tourist kept him from working alongside them and identifying with them.

Empathy with the oppressed? Morocco was his transitional period. He

developed maturing political views:• Homage to Catalonia (1938)• Coming up for Air (1939)

Orwell emerged a powerful and astute political writer, producing his most famous novels:

• Animal Farm (1945)• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948)

Marrakech - Morocco

Political Background• By the late 1800s, the sultan of Morocco was trapped between

the European demands for free trade and an unruly tribal population that resisted the imposition of a central government.

• Although defeated by France at the Battle of Isly in 1844 and by Spain at Tetuan in 1860, Morocco was nevertheless able to rely on the support of Great Britain in its dealings with Europe.

• As a result the sultans who ruled Morocco from 1859 to 1894, maintained the country's independence and gradually extended a network of district governors into the far south of the country. At the beginning of the 20th century—after the fall of Tunisia to French control in 1881—Morocco was the sole exception to colonial rule in North Africa.

The Moroccan protectorate was established only in 1912, after the Entente Cordiale—a treaty concluded between France and Britain in 1904, which settled a number of hostilities between the two countries.

• This left France free to divide the country with Spain, which took over the Rif Mountains (led by Franco, who would later start the Spanish Civil War) in the north and the border region with the Spanish Sahara in the south.

• The Rif War waged by Moroccan nationalists between 1921 and 1926 delayed total pacification of the country until 1934.

In the 19th century, France established a new empire in Africa and South East Asia. Some of these colonies lasted beyond the invasion and occupation of France by Nazi Germany during World War 11.

Hope?