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During the French invasion of Algeria in 1830, the sultan of Morocco, Mawlāy ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (1822–59), briefly sent troops to occupy Tlemcen but withdrew them after French protests. The Algerian leader Abdelkader in 1844 took refuge from the French in Morocco. A Moroccan army was sent to the Algerian frontier; the French bombarded Tangier on August 4, 1844, and Essaouira (Mogador) on August 15. Meanwhile, on August 14, the Moroccan army had been totally defeated at Isly, near the frontier town of Oujda. The sultan then promised to intern or expel Abdelkader if he should again enter Moroccan territory. Two years later, when he was again driven into Morocco, the Algerian leader was attacked by Moroccan troops and was forced to surrender to the French.
Immediately after ʿAbd al-Raḥmān’s death in 1859, a dispute with Spain over the boundaries of the Spanish enclave at Ceuta led Madrid to declare war. Spain captured Tétouan in the following year. Peace had to be bought with an indemnity of $20 million, the enlargement of Ceuta’s frontiers, and the promise to cede to Spain another enclave—Ifni.
The new sultan, Sīdī Muḥammad, attempted with little success to modernize the Moroccan army. Upon his death in 1873, his son Mawlāy Hassan I struggled to preserve independence. Hassan I died in 1894, and his chamberlain, Bā Aḥmad (Aḥmad ibn Mūsā), ruled in the name of the young sultan ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz until 1901, when the latter began his direct rule.
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz surrounded himself with European companions and adopted their customs, while scandalizing his own subjects, particularly the religious leaders. His attempt to introduce a modern system of land taxation resulted in complete confusion because of a lack of qualified officials. Popular discontent and tribal rebellion became even more common, while a pretender, Bū Ḥmāra (Abū Ḥamārah), established a rival court near Melilla. European powers seized the occasion to extend their own influence. In 1904 Britain gave France a free hand in Morocco in exchange for French noninterference with British plans in Egypt. Spanish agreement was secured by a French promise that northern Morocco should be treated as a sphere of Spanish influence. Italian interests were satisfied by France’s decision not to hinder Italian designs on Libya. Once these various interests were settled, the Western powers met with Moroccan representatives at Algeciras, Spain, in 1906, to discuss the country’s future.
The Algeciras Conference confirmed the integrity of the sultan’s domains but sanctioned French and Spanish policing Moroccan ports and collecting the customs dues. In 1907–08 the sultan’s brother, Mawlāy ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ, led a rebellion against him from Marrakech, denouncing ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz for his collaboration with the Europeans. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz subsequently fled to distant Tangier. ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ then made an abortive attack on French troops, which had occupied Casablanca in 1907, before proceeding to Fès, where he was duly proclaimed sultan and recognized by the European powers (1909).
The new sultan proved unable to control the country. Disorder increased until, besieged by tribesmen in Fès, he was forced to ask the French to rescue him. When they had done so, he had no choice but to sign the Treaty of Fez (March 30, 1912), by which Morocco became a French protectorate. In return, the French guaranteed that the status of the sultan and his successors would be maintained. Provision was also made to meet the Spanish claim for a special position in the north of the country; Tangier, long the seat of the diplomatic missions, retained a separate administration.
The French protectorate (1912–56)
In establishing their protectorate over much of Morocco, the French had behind them the experience of the conquest of Algeria and of their protectorate over Tunisia; they took the latter as the model for their Moroccan policy. There were, however, important differences. First, the protectorate was established only two years before the outbreak of World War I, which brought with it a new attitude toward colonial rule. Second, Morocco had a thousand-year tradition of independence; though it had been strongly influenced by the civilization of Muslim Spain, it had never been subject to Ottoman rule. These circumstances and the proximity of Morocco to Spain created a special relationship between the two countries.
Morocco was also unique among the North African countries in possessing a coast on the Atlantic, in the rights that various nations derived from the Act of Algeciras, and in the privileges that their diplomatic missions had acquired in Tangier. Thus, the northern tenth of the country, with both Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, together with the desert province of Tarfaya in the southwest adjoining the Spanish Sahara, were excluded from the French-controlled area and treated as a Spanish protectorate. In the French zone, the fiction of the sultan’s sovereignty was maintained, but the French-appointed resident general held the real authority and was subject only to the approval of the government in Paris. The sultan worked through newly created departments staffed by French officials. The negligible role that the Moroccan government (makhzan) actually played can be seen by the fact that Muḥammad al-Muqrī, the grand vizier when the protectorate was installed, held the same post when Morocco recovered its independence 44 years later; he was by then more than 100 years old. As in Tunisia, country districts were administered by contrôleurs civils, except in certain areas such as Fès, where it was felt that officers of the rank of general should supervise the administration. In the south certain Amazigh chiefs (qāʾids), of whom the best known was Thami al-Glaoui, were given a great deal of independence.
The pre-World War II period
The first resident general, Gen. (later Marshal) Louis-Hubert-Gonzalve Lyautey, was a soldier of wide experience in Indochina, Madagascar, and Algeria. He was of aristocratic outlook and possessed a deep appreciation of Moroccan civilization. The character he gave to the administration exerted an influence throughout the period of the protectorate.
His idea was to leave the Moroccan elite intact and rule through a policy of cooptation. He placed ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ’s more amenable brother, Mawlāy Yūsuf, on the throne. This sultan succeeded in cooperating with the French without losing the respect of the Moroccan people. A new administrative capital was created on the Atlantic coast at Rabat, and a commercial port subsequently was developed at Casablanca. By the end of the protectorate in 1956, Casablanca was a flourishing city, with nearly a million inhabitants and a substantial industrial establishment. Lyautey’s plan to build new European cities separate from the old Moroccan towns left the traditional medinas intact. Remarkably, World War I did little to interrupt this rhythm of innovation. Though the French government had proposed retiring to the coast, Lyautey managed to retain control of all the French-occupied territory.
After the war Morocco faced two major problems. The first was pacifying the outlying areas in the Atlas Mountains, over which the sultan’s government often had had no real control; this was finally completed in 1934. The second problem was the spread of the uprising of Abd el-Krim from the Spanish to the French zone (see below World War II and independence: The Spanish Zone), which was quelled by French and Spanish troops in 1926. That same year, Marshal Lyautey was succeeded by a civilian resident general. This marked a change to a more conventional colonial-style administration, accompanied by official colonization, the growth of the European population, and the increasing impact of European thought on the younger generation of Moroccans, some of whom had by then received a French education.
As early as 1920 Lyautey had submitted a report saying that “a young generation is growing up which is full of life and needs activity.…Lacking the outlets which our administration offers only sparingly and in subordinate positions they will find an alternative way out.” Only six years after Lyautey’s report, young Moroccans both in Rabat, the new administrative capital, and in Fès, the centre of traditional Arab-Islamic learning and culture, were meeting independently of one another to discuss demands for reforms within the terms of the protectorate treaty. They asked for more schools, a new judicial system, and the abolition of the regime of the Amazigh qāʾids in the south; for study missions in France and the Middle East; and for the cessation of official colonization—objectives that would be fully secured only when the protectorate ended in 1956.
On the death of Mawlāy Yūsuf (1927) the French chose as his successor his younger son, Sīdī Muḥammad (Muḥammad V). Selected in part for his retiring disposition, this sultan eventually revealed considerable diplomatic skill and determination. Also significant was the French attempt to use the purported differences between Arabs and Imazighen to undercut any growing sense of national unity. This led the French to issue the Berber Decree in 1930, which was a crude effort to divide Imazighen and Arabs. The result was just the opposite of French intentions; it provoked a Moroccan nationalist reaction and forced the administration to modify its proposals. In 1933 the nationalists initiated a new national day called the Fête du Trône (Throne Day) to mark the anniversary of the sultan’s accession. When he visited Fès the following year, the sultan received a tumultuous welcome, accompanied by anti-French demonstrations that caused the authorities to terminate his visit abruptly. Shortly after this episode political parties were organized that sought greater Moroccan self-rule. These events coincided with the completion of the French occupation of southern Morocco, which paved the way for the Spanish occupation of Ifni. In 1937 rioting occurred in Meknès, where French settlers were suspected of diverting part of the town water supply to irrigate their own lands at the expense of the Muslim cultivators. In the ensuing repression, Muḥammad ʿAllāl al-Fāsī, a prominent nationalist leader, was banished to Gabon in French Equatorial Africa, where he spent the following nine years.
World War II and independence
The French Zone
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the sultan issued a call for cooperation with the French, and a large Moroccan contingent (mainly Amazigh) served with distinction in France. The collapse of the French in 1940 followed by the installation of the Vichy regime produced an entirely new situation. The sultan signified his independence by refusing to approve anti-Jewish legislation. When Anglo-American troop landings took place in 1942, he refused to comply with the suggestion of the resident general, Auguste Noguès, that he retire to the interior. In 1943 the sultan was influenced by his meeting with U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had come to Morocco for the Casablanca Conference and was unsympathetic to continued French presence there. The majority of the people were equally affected by the arrival of U.S. and British troops, who exposed Moroccans to the outside world to an unprecedented degree. In addition, Allied and Axis radio propaganda, which called for Moroccan independence, strongly attracted Arab listeners. Amid these circumstances, the nationalist movement took the new title of Ḥizb al-Istiqlāl (Independence Party). In January 1944 the party submitted to the sultan and the Allied (including the French) authorities a memorandum asking for independence under a constitutional regime. The nationalist leaders, including Aḥmad Balafrej, secretary general of the Istiqlāl, were unjustly accused and arrested for collaborating with the Nazis. This caused rioting in Fès and elsewhere in which some 30 or more demonstrators were killed. As a result, the sultan, who in 1947 persuaded a new and reform-minded resident general, Eirik Labonne, to ask the French government to grant him permission to make an official state visit to Tangier, passing through the Spanish Zone on the way. The journey became a triumphal procession. When the sultan made his speech in Tangier, after his stirring reception in northern Morocco, he emphasized his country’s links with the Arab world of the East, omitting the expected flattering reference to the French protectorate.
Labonne was subsequently replaced by Gen. (later Marshal) Alphonse Juin, who was of Algerian settler origin. Juin, long experienced in North African affairs, expressed sympathy for the patriotic nationalist sentiments of young Moroccans and promised to comply with their wish for the creation of elected municipalities in the large cities. At the same time, he roused opposition by proposing to introduce French citizens as members of these bodies. The sultan used his one remaining prerogative and refused to countersign the resident general’s decrees, without which they had no legal validity. A state visit to France in October 1950 and a flattering reception there did nothing to modify the sultan’s views, and on his return to Morocco he received a wildly enthusiastic welcome.
In December General Juin dismissed a nationalist member from a budget proposal meeting of the Council of Government; consequently, the 10 remaining nationalist members walked out in protest. Juin then contemplated the possibility of using the Amazigh feudal notables, such as Thami al-Glaoui, to counter the nationalists. At a palace reception later in the month al-Glaoui in fact confronted the sultan, calling him not the sultan of the Moroccans but of the Istiqlāl and blaming him for leading the country to catastrophe.
With Sīdī Muḥammad still refusing to cooperate, Juin surrounded the palace, under the guard of French troops supposedly placed there to protect the sultan from his own people, with local tribesmen. Faced with this threat, Sīdī Muḥammad was forced to disown “a certain political party,” without specifically naming it, though he still withheld his signature from many decrees, including one that admitted French citizens to become municipal councillors. Juin’s action was widely criticized in France, which led to his replacement by Gen. Augustin Guillaume in August 1951. On the anniversary of his accession (November 18), the sultan declared his hopes for an agreement “guaranteeing full sovereignty to Morocco” but (as he added in a subsequent letter addressed to the president of the French Republic) “with the continuation of Franco-Moroccan cooperation.” This troubled situation continued until December 1952, when trade unions in Casablanca organized a protest meeting in response to the alleged French terrorist assassination of the Tunisian union leader Ferhat Hached. Subsequently, a clash with the police resulted in the arrest of hundreds of nationalists, who were held for two years without trial.
In April 1953 ʿAbd al-Ḥayy al-Kattānī, a noted religious scholar and the head of the Kattāniyyah religious brotherhood, and a number of Amazigh notables led by al-Glaoui (along with the connivance of several French officials and settlers) began to work for the deposition of the sultan. The government in Paris, preoccupied with internal affairs, finally demanded that the sultan transfer his legislative powers to a council, consisting of Moroccan ministers and French directors, and append his signature to all blocked legislation. Although the sultan yielded, it was insufficient for his enemies. In August al-Glaoui delivered the equivalent of an ultimatum to the French government, who deported the sultan and his family and appointed in his place the more subservient Mawlāy Ben ʿArafa. These actions failed to remedy the situation, as Sīdī Muḥammad immediately became a national hero. The authorities in the Spanish Zone, who had not been consulted about the measure, did nothing to conceal their disapproval. The Spanish Zone thus became a refuge for Moroccan nationalists.
In November 1954 the French position was further complicated by the outbreak of the Algerian war for independence, and the following June the Paris government decided on a complete change of policy and appointed Gilbert Grandval as resident general. His efforts at conciliation, obstructed by tacit opposition among many officials and the outspoken hostility of the majority of French settlers, failed. A conference of Moroccan representatives was then summoned to meet in France, where it was agreed that the substitute sultan be replaced with a crown council. Sīdī Muḥammad approved this proposal, but it took weeks to persuade Mawlāy Ben ʿArafa to withdraw to Tangier. Meanwhile, a guerrilla liberation army began to operate against French posts near the Spanish Zone.
In October al-Glaoui declared publicly that only the restoration of Muḥammad V could restore harmony. The French government agreed to allow the sultan to form a constitutional government for Morocco, and Sīdī Muḥammad returned to Rabat in November; on March 2, 1956, independence was proclaimed. The sultan formed a government that included representation from various elements of the indigenous population, while the governmental departments formerly headed by French officials became ministries headed by Moroccans.
