Morocco

Since the origins of Islam in North Africa, the power of the state has greatly depended on its ability to control both trans-Saharan and maritime trade. Until the twentieth century the vitality of Morocco's inland capital cities of Marrakesh and Fez depended on exchanging gold, slaves, salt, and other products across the Sahara. This trade was simultaneously linked to Mediterranean commerce. As the Portuguese began to seize enclaves along Morocco's Atlantic coast in the 1400s, they brought Moroccan trade more into the European orbit. Through the early 1500s the declining Marinid and Wattasid dynasties, centered in Fez, still depended on the Eastern Saharan routes; but the SaEdian dynasty, originating in southwestern Morocco and centered in Marrakesh, relied more on western trans-Saharan routes and Atlantic seaports. Deriving political legitimacy in part from their struggle (jihad) with the Portuguese, the dynasty sought new European trading partners; thus the English largely supplanted the Genoese and Spanish, trading in firearms and cloth for Moroccan refined sugar. A late-sixteenth-century expedition across the Sahara into West Africa brought down the Songhay dynasty, secured SaEdian control of the trans-Saharan trade, and increased Morocco's supply of gold and slaves. In the seventeenth century the EAlawid dynasty, originating in the southeastern Tafilalt region, gained control of Morocco, moving its capital among Fez, Marrakesh, and Meknes.

As a counterweight to both Iberian expansion along the Moroccan littoral and Ottoman power overland from Algeria, Morocco sought trade with England, the Netherlands, France, and Italian cities such as the emerging port of Livorno. But once Britain took Gibraltar in 1704, it was also a potential threat. Morocco sometimes granted monopolies to smaller European powers for exclusive trade in some of the ports. In addition to conducting regular commercial relations with European powers, Morocco also sponsored and invested in corsairs, while collecting tribute from some Europeans (e.g., Danes, Swedes, and Ventians) to protect them from Moroccan pirates. State-supported piracy died out in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Without a merchant marine of its own, Morocco relied on European ships for maritime trade. Moroccan Jewish merchants, with their network of coreligionists in the interior of Morocco and Europe, were frequently the chief intermediaries in Morocco's international trade and were among the main royal merchants.

Despite the far-flung recognition of the EAlawids' symbolic power, the central government was rarely strong. Thus the dynasty often could not control the flow of trade through dissident regions in Morocco. Berber chiefs often negotiated directly with the Europeans, dealing through ports such as Agadir on Morocco's southern Atlantic coast. In the north, the state had a difficult time controlling contraband, as it still does today. The establishment of the royal port of Essaouira in 1764, which soon became Morocco's principal seaport, was a state effort to monopolize European trade through concentrating foreign and native Jewish merchants in one port. The sultan concluded commercial treaties with most European nations and was the first country to recognize the independent United States (in 1786). During the Napoleonic Wars Morocco limited its foreign trade, fearful of being drawn into the conflict. But by the time the French conquered Algiers in 1830, Morocco was being pulled into the expanding world of European commerce. The Anglo-Moroccan commercial treaty of 1856 made earlier protectionist policies harder to maintain. Similar treaties with other countries followed, and trade with Europe grew. European—especially British and French—manufactured goods (primarily textiles), sugar (no longer produced in Morocco), and tea were exchanged for Morocco's export staples: olive oil, goatskins, wool, almonds, Saharan ostrich feathers, and gum transported across the Sahara from West Africa. Foreign abolitionists failed to stop the trans-Saharan slave trade; slaves remained symbols of prestige and economic power for Morocco's elite throughout the nineteenth century.

Unequal trade relations and growing government indebtedness contributed to Morocco's loss of independence in 1912, when France established a protectorate (Spain ruled in the northwestern corner of the country). Morocco became a large market for cheap manufactured goods, which undermined native industries and crafts. Under French rule Casablanca became Morocco's largest city and commercial port, whereas large French-settler farms concentrated on crops for export, such as cereals and citrus. After independence in 1956 Morocco embarked on massive irrigation projects, but agricultural productivity has not met expectations, hindering hoped-for exports. During the colonial period investments were also made in Morocco's rich mineral resources, especially in phosphates. After independence, Morocco became the world's largest phosphate exporter, but market fluctuations since the late 1970s, together with uncertainties in Morocco's relationship with the European Economic Community, have hindered Morocco's trade in the last decades of the twentieth century.

SEE ALSO Caravan Trade; Empire, French; Empire, Ottoman; Empire, Spanish; Ethnic Groups, Africans; Ethnic Groups, Jews; Imperialism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brignon, Jean. Histoire du Maroc (History of Morocco). Paris: Hatier; Casablanca: Librairie Nationale, 1967.

Cornell, Vincent. "Socioeconomic Dimensions of Reconquista and Jihad in Morocco: Portuguese Dukkala and the SaEdid Sus, 1450–1557." International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (1983): 67–93.

El Mansour, Mohamed. Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman. Cambridgeshire, U.K.: Middle East and North African Studies Press, 1990.

Lourido Díaz, Ramón. Marruecos y el mundo exterior en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII (Morocco and the Outside World in the Second Half of the 18th Century). Madrid: Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional. 1989.

Miège, Jean Louis. Le Maroc et l'Europe, 1830–1894 (Morocco and Europe, 1830–1894). 4 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961–1963.

Park, Thomas K. Historical Dictionary of Morocco. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996.

Pennell, C. R. Morocco Since 1830: A History. New York: New York University Press, 2000.

Schroeter, Daniel J. Merchants of Essaouira: Urban Society and Imperialism in Southwestern Morocco, 1844–1886. Cambridge, U.K. and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Swearingen, Will D. Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions, 1912–1986. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Yahya, Dahiru. Morocco in the Sixteenth Century: Problems and Patterns in African Foreign Policy. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981.

Daniel Schroeter