The omission of earlier nationalist history was due to Polisario’s perceived insecurity about the success of its social revolution and its position within popular Sahrawi politics. By foregoing a gloried ancient history, Polisario avoided promoting a nationalist narrative that stirred irredentist claims contrary to international law. After elucidating these themes, this thesis argues that these omissions played certain functions in Polisario’s political and social struggles. It is shown that the Polisario did not incorporate either pre-colonial history or the history of previous Western Saharan nationalists into its historical narrative. The sources are analyzed specifically for how they presented the Sahrawi past. The primary sources for this study are a collection of Polisario newspapers and other Polisario documents, most of which are being used for the first time. Its vision of the new Western Saharan nation, and particularly the way it wrote the history of that nation, was a product of inherited colonial epistemology as well as particular historical and political circumstances. Polisario promoted radical social restructuring, commitment to armed violence, and complete political independence. During this period the Polisario Front simultaneously fought a guerilla war, evacuated half of the Western Saharan population to Algeria amid foreign military invasions, established and organized refugee camps, and engaged in a project of nation building. This thesis analyzes the writing of history in the nationalist discourse of the Polisario Front in its first three years, from 1973 to 1976.
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