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INTRODUCTION 21independence led to competition over power between old and new politicalelites, which could be expressed in competing expressions of nationalism.While the first part of this contention is widely known and accepted, the secondis less well known. In Northern Mali, this competition found many forms ofexpression during the precarious shift in powers between old and new politicalelites. The lack of actual control of the new political elite in Mali was hidden tothemselves and to the outside world under a discourse of high modernism,which James Scott roughly defined as a firm belief in the malleability of societyunder the right rule. 23 Yet, their anxieties about their real lack of power in theNorth came quickly to the fore in their dealings with local political elites, andthe contestations these made to their power. The main rival elites were the tribalchiefs, who successfully managed to retain the position as mediator betweenstate and society they had occupied in the colonial period, and the Westerneducated évolués of Tamasheq origins, who were excluded from administrativeoffice precisely because of the racialised stereotypical views discussed inChapter 2. These issues will be the focus of Chapter 3. Sometimes the conflictbetween rival political elites expressed in rival forms of nationalism escalatedinto violent conflict. Such was the case in late colonial Ghana/Ashanti andMorocco/Rif, in post-colonial southeast Nigeria/Biafra, in south Congo/Katanga,in post-colonial Zanzibar, and in post-colonial Northern Mali. Chapter 4will provide a simple comprehensive narrative of Alfellaga: the first armed rebellionof the Kel Tamasheq against their inclusion within Mali between May1963 and August 1964. Apart from a narrative on the rebellion and its effects,we will look at the present-day politics of historical memory and narration ofthese events among the Kel Adagh in particular, but also by other inhabitants ofNorthern Mali.Chapter 5 will deal first of all with the rapid and tremendous transformationsin the Tamasheq economy, society and culture in the 1970s and 1980s. I willpresent a comprehensive narrative of the formation of a cultural movementgiving shape to a new Tamasheq way of life in an altered world: Teshumara.This will form the background to a discussion of the transformation of Tamasheqpolitics from within, leading to the creation of a formal nationalistmovement, the Tanekra, which gave shape to continued Tamasheq aspirationsof independence. I will especially focus on the role of historical narrative and itspoliticization in the formation of this nationalist movement, arguing that inducednarratives of revolt, injustice, oppression, and suffering, as well as Tamasheqconcepts of honour and shame, hatred and revenge, were instrumentalisedin the construction of nationalist sentiments that found their expression in therebellion of the 1990s. However, although the movement could shape a com-23Scott, J. 1998. See also Bähre, E. & B. Lecocq 2007.