Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey

Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey , 1854-1934, colonial administrator and marshal of France. A career soldier, he served in Indochina, Madagascar, and Algeria before being sent (1912) to Morocco as French resident general after the establishment of a French protectorate. With a brief interruption in 1916-17, when he was French war minister, Lyautey devoted the next 13 years to administering the protectorate, developing the economy, extending the borders, and pacifying native resistance. His tactics of pacification involved much mediation and intrigue to divide tribal opposition, using traditional institutions to further colonial aims. He thus protected the traditional elites, who became agents of France's rule. During World War I, he maintained French rule over Morocco despite a depleted force. After the war he saw the campaign against the Berber mountain tribes under Abd el-Krim brought to a successful conclusion. Lyautey supported traditional forces in Morocco and focused his policy on the sultanate rather than on the French settlers.

Bibliography: See A. Maurois, Lyautey (tr. 1931); A. Scham, Lyautey in Morocco (1970).

Lyautey, Louis Hubert-Gonzalve (b.17 Nov.1854, d. 21 Mar. 1934). French marshal Born in Nancy, he graduated from the French Military Academy of Saint-Cyr in 1873 and spent most of his professional life in the French colonial service. In 1912 he became resident-general of Morocco. He was recalled to Paris as Minister of War in 1916 but, put off by the turbulence of parliamentary politics, returned to Morocco in 1917 and served there until retirement in 1925. A paternalistic, but extremely successful, governor, he carried out major infrastructural improvements, irrigation and engineering projects, and the introduction of modern farming methods. He respected inherent traditions and Islamic culture, as well as the role of the Sultan. Lyautey was widely respected in France, but his enlightened views were not shared by his successors in the colonial administration.

French Empire