Read first-hand accounts of
Morocco’s independence movement
from Moroccan women who rebelled
against colonial control, rallied and
fought alongside men in Alison
Baker’s Voice of Resistance: Oral
Histories of Moroccan Women .In Morocco’s second parliamentary
elections in 2007, 34 women were
elected, representing 10.4% of all
seats – that’s just behind the US at
12.5% female representation after 110
elections.In the late 18th century, when Sidi Mohammed ben Abdullah ended the officially condoned
piracy of his predecessors and nixed shady side deals with foreign powers, the financial results
were disastrous. With added troubles of plague and drought, Morocco’s straits were truly dire.
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE: EUROPEAN ENCROACHMENT
For all their successful European politicking, the early Alawites had apparently forgotten a
cardinal rule of Moroccan diplomacy: never neglect Berber alliances. Sultan Moulay Hassan
tried to rally support among the Berbers of the High Atlas in the late 19th century, but by then it
was too late. France began to take an active interest in Morocco around 1830, and allied with
Berbers across North Africa to fend off the Ottomans. After centuries of practise fighting
Moroccans, Spain took control of areas of northern Morocco in 1860 – and not incidentally,
generated lasting resentment for desecrating graveyards, mosques and other sacred sites in
Melilla and Tetouan. While wily Queen Victoria entertained Moroccan dignitaries and pressed
for Moroccan legal reforms, her emissaries were busy brokering deals with France and Spain.
Footloose & Duty-Free in Tangier
Order became increasingly difficult to maintain in Moroccan
cities and in Berber mountain strongholds, and Moulay Hassan
employed powerful Berber leaders to regain control – but
accurately predicting Moulay Hassan’s demise, some Berbers
cut deals of their own with the Europeans. By the time Moulay
Hassan’s teenage successor Sultan Moulay Abdelaziz pushed
through historic antidiscrimination laws to impress Morocco’s
erstwhile allies, the Europeans had reached an understanding: while reforms were nice and all,
what they really wanted were cheap goods. By 1880, Europeans and Americans set up their
own duty-free shop in Tangier, declaring it an ‘international zone’ where they were above the
law and beyond tax collectors’ reaches.
But the lure of prime North African real estate proved
irresistible. By 1906, Britain had snapped up strategic
waterfront property in Egypt and the Suez; France took the
prize for sheer acreage from Algeria to West Africa; Italy
landed Libya; Spain drew the short stick with the unruly Rif and
a whole lot of desert. Germany was incensed at being left out
of this arrangement and announced support for Morocco’s
independence, further inflaming tensions between Germany and
other European powers in the years leading to WWI.
FRANCE OPENS A BRANCH OFFICE: THE PROTECTORATE
Whatever illusions of control Morocco’s sultanate might’ve been clutching slipped away at the
1906 Conference of Algeciras, when control of Morocco’s banks, customs and police force was
handed over to France for ‘protection’. The 1912 Treaty of Fez establishing Morocco as a
French protectorate made colonisation official, and the French hand-picked a new sultan with all
the backbone of a sock puppet. More than 100,000 French administrators, outcasts and
opportunists arrived in cities across Morocco to take up residence in French villes nouvelles
(new cities).
Résident-Général Louis Lyautey saw to it that these new French suburbs were kitted out with