Morocco

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MOROCCO.

COLONIAL CONQUEST AND EUROPEAN RIVALRIES
THE FRENCH AND SPANISH PROTECTORATES
THE EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR II
THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT AND THE LEGACY OF EUROPEAN RULE
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Morocco has been in contact with its European neighbors (France, Spain, Portugal) since the sixteenth century. The Moroccan sultans captured European doctors, soldiers, and engineers in Mediterranean naval battles (maritime jihads) and brought them to the palace. These captives served the sultan as slaves or converted to Islam, married Moroccan women, took Muslim names, and assumed ranks in the sultan's administration. Such "renegades" included the Englishman Ismail Ingliz (English Ismael), who was tutor to the young sultan Mawlay Hasan (r. 1873–1894) and helped develop the Moroccan infantry. Morocco was also tied to Europe through trade, and the sultan's commercial dealings with Europeans were conducted mostly through Moroccan Jews. Jewish families maintained trade networks that linked London, Amsterdam, Livorno, and Morocco.

COLONIAL CONQUEST AND EUROPEAN RIVALRIES

The power balance between Morocco and Europe shifted dramatically after Morocco was defeated by France (1844) and Spain (1860) and with the colonial conquests of neighboring Algeria (1830) and Tunisia (1881). Sultan Mawlay Hasan was forced to institute large-scale, Ottoman-style state reforms and borrow money from European banks. In an effort to defend fragile Moroccan sovereignty, the sultan played French, Spanish, English, and German ambitions against one another. His young successor, Sultan Abd al-Aziz (r. 1894–1908), was no match for the Europeans, and Morocco fell deeply into debt between 1900 and 1904.

The European rivalry that erupted in 1914 was first expressed in a contest over Morocco. France consolidated its control over the Moroccan debt with a loan in June 1904 from the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas; in exchange for 62.5 million francs, France acquired the right to the majority of Moroccan customs revenue. In the secret Franco-British Entente Cordiale (April 1904), Britain agreed to recognize French dominance in Morocco in exchange for a free hand in Egypt. Kaiser William II (r. 1888–1918) demanded an international conference to decide the Moroccan question in 1905. The Act of Algeciras (1906), signed by thirteen European countries, further opened Moroccan markets to foreign companies and sealed the fate of the Moroccan economy.

Popular Moroccan outrage at the sultan's concessions plunged Morocco into civil war in 1907. Tribal confederations waged jihad against the foreigners and proclaimed the sultan's brother, Mawlay Abd al-Hafid, the new sultan in 1907. In the southern Sus region, the religious reformer Ahmad Haybat Allah (Al-Hiba) led a jihad and proclaimed himself sultan in 1911. The French used this political chaos to justify occupying Oujda and the Chaouia region in 1907 and to force Sultan Mawlay Abd al-Hafid to accept French "protection" in the Treaty of Fès on 24 March 1912. The French had to share Morocco with the Spanish government, who negotiated the Treaty of Madrid on 27 November 1912. This created a Spanish Protectorate in Northern Morocco (capital Tétouan) and a 23,000 square kilometer territory in the Western Sahara. The city of Tangier became an "international zone," later home to American and British expatriates (Barbara Hutton), writers and artists (William S. Burroughs, Walter Harris, Henri Matisse) and an underworld of drugs and prostitution.

THE FRENCH AND SPANISH PROTECTORATES

Resident General Louis-Hubert Lyautey (1854–1934) conquered Morocco for France and became the architect of the French Protectorate (1912–1956). Troubled by the destructiveness of French colonialism in Algeria, Lyautey vowed to preserve the integrity of Moroccan society. The new regime would introduce "administrative, judicial, educational, economic, financial and military reforms," yet protect "the respect and traditional prestige of the Sultan, the practice of the Muslim religion and the religious institution" (Alaoui, pp. 247–248). This respect for Islam did not preclude replacing Sultan Mawlay Abd al-Hafid with his more pliable relative Mawlay Yussuf (r. 1912–1927) or moving the Moroccan capital from Fès to Rabat. In practice, Lyautey left the sultan and his officials in place (they constituted what was known as the Gouvernement Chérifien) but created a French shadow government of "technical experts" who exercised the real authority over natural resources, cities, law, and commerce. The French Senate was skeptical about this new conquest, but Morocco proved immediately useful to France by providing 34,000 native troops in World War I and 114 million francs of agricultural exports in 1918.

French rule profoundly affected Moroccan society. First, as Lyautey intended, European colonists were never as powerful in Morocco as they were in Algeria. The French Protectorate remained military, and colonial agricultural development was conducted in part through industrial "agribusiness." Lyautey's policy protected Islamic life: medinas (traditional cities) were preserved, Moroccans controlled Islamic education and law, and there was minimal effort to Christianize Berbers. However, "protection" was also at times a policy of neglect. The traditional Islamic Qarawiyyin University fell into disrepair and Moroccans did not benefit from universal public education or modern urban planning. In 1931 there were only 1,618 Moroccan students in French secondary schools. To rule the countryside, the French encouraged local landlord intermediaries such as the rapacious Glaoua brothers, who grew immensely rich on the peasants of Marrakech. French rule also paradoxically laid the foundations for a postindependence Moroccan state by bringing remote tribal Berber regions (the Sus, the Sahara, High Atlas) under a new level of state surveillance and control.

Moroccan Jews were the population most transformed by the French presence. Under Muslim rule, Jews had inferior legal status and no access to political power. Forbidden by law to travel on horseback or carry weapons, Jews lived in self-governed, urban ghettos (mellah) near the palace. Some Jewish families who served the sultan became wealthy, but most were poor and their desperate state inspired European philanthropy and intervention. In Britain, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885) lobbied the sultan to protect native Jews, and the French Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU, founded 1860) created an extensive network of schools and medical clinics for Jews. The AIU schools provided French instruction in literature, science, hygiene, sewing, and administrative skills. Moroccan Jews assimilated quickly to French culture, found employment in European companies, and adopted French names and clothing. Jews did not leave Morocco in large numbers until after World War II, because the AIU was hostile to Zionism and the French Protectorate opposed Jewish emigration.

Spanish rule in Morocco had as much impact on Spain as on Morocco itself. The Spanish zone was disorganized and unproductive; it provided only 7 percent of total Moroccan exports in 1929. The Spanish army was also ill prepared to battle the fierce Rif Berbers, the wily bandit El Raisuni, and the nationalist Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, who led a massive 1925 uprising and declared a republic in the Rif. Many Berbers joined the Spanish army as regulares and served under right-wing Africanista officers such as General Francisco Franco. The Spanish Left denounced these Moroccan troops as "storm-troopers of the Reaction," particularly after Franco imported Moroccan troops to crush a socialist uprising in Asturias in 1934. Franco launched his fascist revolution from Morocco in 1936 with his personal Moorish Guard and sixty to seventy thousand Moroccans fought for Franco in the Spanish civil war (1936–1939).

THE EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR II

World War II marked a transition between old and new Morocco. French prestige suffered a terrible blow with the 1940 defeat and the armistice. America appeared as Morocco's liberator and friend with the Allied landings in 1942, and the Morocco-American friendship continued after independence. Resident-General Charles Noguès implemented anti-Jewish legislation in Morocco but was prevented by Sultan Muhammad V (r. 1927–1961) from deporting Moroccan Jews. Still, Moroccan Jews left for Israel after 1946, first clandestinely with the help of the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization in Palestine, then legally after 1949 through an Israeli organization, Cadima.

World War II created unprecedented economic integration between France and Morocco; seventy thousand Moroccans served in the French army and more than one hundred thousand worked in the mines, factories, and fields of France during the war. Also, by 1946 the economy of Morocco had modernized. The use of motor power doubled between 1938 and 1949. New industries appeared (phosphate mining, citrus, viticulture, chemicals); older industries had been transformed (fishing, cereals, textiles, construction); and the French built transportation, communication, and irrigation infrastructure. A new Moroccan middle class invested in modern capital and a new Moroccan working class organized into (illegal) labor unions. In 1920 one tenth of the Moroccan population was urban, but by 1950 one quarter of the population lived in cities, giving rise to such social problems as shanty-towns and tuberculosis.

THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT AND THE LEGACY OF EUROPEAN RULE

The Moroccan nationalist movement was the intellectual product of Islamic modernism but developed in reaction to French rule. In 1921 Islamic scholars such as Allal al-Fassi and Muhammad al-Arabi al-Alawi opened "Free Schools" offering a modern Islamic Salafi-style curriculum. The Salafiyya, a branch of Islamic modernism, argued that the unified, pure Islam predating the "historical" divisions of Sufism and Shiism (Al-Salaf = the companions of the prophet Muhammad) was reconcilable with modernity. The future nationalists Muhammad Hassan al-Wazzani, Omar Abd al-Jalil, Muhammad Ahmad Belafrej, and Muhammad Lyazidi studied in France and became politicized. The traditional and modernist groups came together to oppose a French colonial law, the Dahir Berbère of 6 April 1930, which proposed to govern Berbers under customary law (orf) and Arabs under Islamic law (sharia). Nationalists across the country accused the French of trying to divide Arabs from Berbers and organized popular protests. The nationalists struggled first for a plan of reforms and later demanded formal independence (Istiqlal) in 1944. Sultan Muhammad V embraced the nationalists and became a symbol of the unified, independent Morocco that emerged in 1956.

European rule has a legacy in independent Morocco. The Susi Berbers have transformed their class status through migrant labor to France, saving their wages and investing in Moroccan land and industry. This new Berber bourgeoisie has come to rival the traditional Arab (Fassi) bourgeoisie. Moroccan Jews live mostly in Israel, France, and French-speaking Canada. A colonial contest between France and Spain over the Sahara has resulted in a military conflict between Morocco and Western Sahara. Yet France and Morocco have a unique relationship; the late King Hassan II (r. 1961–1999) stood beside President Jacques Chirac on Bastille Day, 14 July 1999, in honor of their fraternity and shared national histories.

See alsoAlgeria; Decolonization; French Empire.