The Berber identity movement in North Africa was pioneered by the Kabyles of Algeria. But a preoccupation with identity and language has obscured the fact that Kabyle dissidence has been rooted in democratic aspirations inspired by the political traditions of Kabylia itself, a Berber-speaking region in the north of Algeria. The political organisation of pre-colonial Kabylia, from which these traditions originate, was well described by nineteenth-century French authors. But their inability to explain it encouraged later theorists of Berber society, such as Ernest Gellner and Pierre Bourdieu, to dismiss Kabylia's political institutions, notably the jema'a (assembly or council), and to reduce Berber politics to a function of social structure and shared religion. In Berber Government, Hugh Roberts, a renowned expert on North Africa, explores the remarkable logics of Kabyle political organisation and the unusual degree of autonomy it possessed in relation to both kinship divisions and the religious field. This book further offers a pioneering account of the social and political history of Kabylia during the Ottoman period and establishes a radically new way to understand the complex place of the Kabyles in Algerian politics.

Hugh Roberts is the Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History, Emeritus, at Tufts University and a Visiting Professor in the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also the author of The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002 (2003, paperback 2015).

Chapter 1: Introduction: Considering Kabylia
Chapter 2: Perspectives on Berber politics
Chapter 3: The Kabyle Economy: Leqbaiel and Igawawen
Chapter 4: Pre-Colonial Kabylia: Forms of Settlement
Chapter 5: Kabyle Law
Chapter 6: The Kabyle Polity
Chapter 7: Pre-Colonial Kabylia and the Regency: Religion and Political Development, 1510-1624
Chapter 8: The Rise and Fall of the Lords of Koukou
Chapter 9: The Reconstitution of Greater Kabylia after 1630