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Washington DC – The French focus on Morocco began to take shape towards the last quarter of the 19th century, especially with France’s decision to grant protection to the Sheriff of Ouazzane and extend it to Moroccans at large. In addition to the protection of Moroccan subjects, who therefore escaped the judicial and fiscal control of the state, France sought to use other means to lay the foundation for the gradual occupation of the Moroccan territory, and eventually the total subjugation of the country.
Propaganda and the demonization of Morocco are the two main weapons France used to achieve its expansionist goals. This imperialist French campaign was carried out particularly through the denunciation of the kingdom’s inability to guarantee the safety of European subjects settled on its territory.
French and European schemes to undermine Morocco’s sovereignty
Thus was born a myth, widely peddled in the media and accepted in European diplomatic circles, of Morocco as a fertile ground for brigandage and deadly attacks targeting European nationals. Of course, the economic problems in which Morocco had sunk at that time deprived the Moroccan central authority of human and financial resources that would have enabled it to enforce the law across the vast territory of the kingdom.
However, the country’s security situation would have been less compromised and its image less tarnished if the European powers, more particularly France, had not sought to exacerbate the country’s financial situation through schemes that reflected the Europeans’ determination to undermine the Sultans’ sovereignty by casting doubt on their legitimacy in the eyes of their people.
Authors like Edmond Burke and Jean Louis Miège have rightly shown how the European powers set about instigating disorder, to the point of even inventing cases of clashes between Europeans and the local population. Fabricating cases of lethal attacks by locals targeting European settlers, they would then demand that the Moroccan Sultans apologize and pay exorbitant financial compensation for the damage caused to European nationals.
Over the years, the payment of indemnities became the most effective means that the Europeans relied on to weaken the prestige of the Sultan, his sovereignty over the territory, as well as deplete the coffers of the state and push the Sultan into debt with European banks. In 1906, the sultan mortgaged 65% of customs revenue to guarantee the payment of his debt to France, which amounted to 100 million francs.
Moroccan Sultans Face Public Anger and French Duplicity
Caught in this vicious circle, Moroccan Sultans, notably Moulay Abdelaziz and Moulay Hafid, were forced to impose more taxes on their subjects. These unpopular measures led to the anger and discontent of Moroccans who began to question not only the religious legitimacy of these measures, but also the legitimacy of the Sultan as a “Commander of the Faithful” and guarantor of the country’s independence, territorial integrity, stability, and social peace.
Under such conditions, there was an explosion of revolts, in several regions across the country. In turn, these measures led to the aggravation of xenophobic feelings among Moroccans towards Europeans, some of whom occasionally incurred the wrath of a population that was increasingly upset by the encroachments of European powers. But while clashes of this nature were only exceptions, the European press and chancelleries exaggerated them and amplified their impact.
Taking advantage of the Moroccan central authority’s inability to ensure security in the country, foreign powers sowed the seeds of trouble and created the impression that the country was sinking into extreme chaos and insecurity. The more insecure the country became, the more the Europeans demanded that the Sultan introduce new political reforms, make additional expenditures in maintaining security, and adopt new fiscal measures.
France especially seized this opportunity to its advantage to both undermine the sovereignty of the Moroccan Sultans and expedite the country’s takeover by the French army. Making the most of the pressure to which the Sultans had been subjected since 1894, France began to occupy entire parts of the Moroccan territory under the pretext that it sought to maintain order and protect its nationals and commercial interests in Morocco.
The first step that France took to this effect was to occupy Touat in 1900. This was followed by the occupation of Béchar by Lyautey in 1903. From 1907 onwards, a year after the Algeciras Conference which gave France the right to control the security situation in Morocco, the French colonial government moved up a gear.
Paris now felt that it had legitimate reasons as to proceed with the occupation and the dismemberment of Morocco since the Algeciras Conference had led to the isolation of Germany, which had sought, through this conference, to break the agreement reached between France, Great Britain, and Spain in April and October 1904.
The myth of the primitive Moroccan in need of civilization
The 1907 assassination in Marrakesh of Emile Mauchamp, a doctor and agent of the French intelligence services, provided Paris with a golden opportunity to hammer home the myth that Moroccans lived in witchcraft, rejected progress and science, and that the country was plagued by brigandage. Therefore, France claimed it had to intervene to save Moroccans from their supposed barbarism and to ensure the safety of its nationals. Paradoxically, instead of sending its troops to Marrakech upon this incident, France decided to occupy the city of Oujda. A few months later, France undertook the occupation and bombing of Casablanca in July-September 1907.
This bombardment, which resulted in between 2,000 and 9,000 deaths, occurred as a result of the Chaouia tribe’s opposition to the construction of Casablanca’s port quay and a railway section whose route crossed a cemetery. Immediately after the occupation of the Chaouia region, French entrepreneur Henri Popp founded the Moroccan Telegraph Company and opened stations in Tangier and Casablanca without the Sultan’s permission. Faced with the Sultan’s protests, France committed to withdraw its forces if the Sultan was to buy out the company and put it under French control.
Unsurprisingly, however, France failed to meet its commitment despite the Sultan’s payment of 560,000 francs in 1908 for the purchase of the company and its placing under the management of Henri Popp. By then, France had made a major military breakthrough with the occupation of Oujda and Casablanca, which left no doubt as to the outcome of its confrontation with the Makhzen, whose control over the country decreased alarmingly.
Nevertheless, Sultan Moulay Abdelhafid, who had just deposed his brother and pledged to fight for safeguarding the country’s independence, was determined to preserve his sovereignty over the country. From 1911, the Morocco Committee, the linchpin of the French colonial enterprise in Morocco, was eager to see the kingdom officially come under French domination.
The weakening of Morocco’s administrative structures
But since France up until that moment still professed respect for the Sultan’s sovereignty and Morocco’s independence, it had to find a pretext that would pave the way for the definitive subjugation of the entire country. In this sense, the political instability and social discontent that rattled the country from July 1910 onwards offered France a golden opportunity to shape the course of events and establish its effective grip on the country.
At that juncture, Sultan Moulay Abdelhafid, already in the grip of a financial crisis, which put the State on the verge of bankruptcy, decided to reshuffle the administrative structures that had hitherto helped him maintain, as best he could, his control over the whole territory. Previously, some key government positions were reserved for certain families who enjoyed the trust of the Makhzen, while rural governorates across the country were the preserve of the leaders of major tribal factions.
However, the whole system turned upside down when Moulay Abdelhafid decided to put an end to this organization and entrust the control of the most important levers of power to two families: the El Mokris and the Glaouis.
While Mohammed el Mokri was in charge of the strategic ministries of finance and foreign affairs, El Madani Glaoui and his brother Thami were entrusted with controlling the administration of rural areas, including tax collection. The Glaoui’s clan was thus rewarded for supporting the new Sultan in his uprising against his brother Moulay Abdelaziz in 1904.
But this decision led to increased tensions across the country, particularly in the neighboring areas of Fez and Meknes. Outraged by the excesses but also the failure of the military reform introduced by the Sultan in 1910, the Amazigh and Arab tribes of these two regions disapproved of the exactions and abuses inflicted on them by Thami El Glaoui during the tax collection.
The situation became even more untenable as the abuses committed by Glaoui’s agents took on alarming proportions as even the tribes that were once exempt from paying taxes thanks to their provision of soldiers to the Sultan’s army, as was the case of the Cherarda tribe, were no longer spared. The abuses committed by El Glaoui and his agents reached such a scale that the dignitaries of the tribes of the Fez region went to the French legation towards the end of 1910 to ask France to intercede on their behalf with the Sultan, to put an end to these exactions.
The excesses committed by el Glaoui intensified the anger of Moroccans who saw how the new Sultan had failed to fulfill the commitments on the basis of which he had been brought to power in place of Moulay Abdelaziz. Added to these abuses was the Sultan’s decision to take as hostages members of certain tribes who had supported him during the Chaouia crisis in 1907.
Once proclaimed Sultan, Molay Abdelhafid undertook to lead the “jihad” against the French, to renounce the debts contracted by his predecessor, to repudiate the Act of Algeciras, to put an end to the presence of the French in the country, to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Morocco, and to restore Islam across the country.
Yet his determination to safeguard the country’s independence soon came up against the reality of the advanced state of French penetration, both financially and militarily. Realizing that the coffers of the Moroccan state were empty and that he did not have the financial means to carry out his administrative and military reforms, Moulay Abdelhafid abandoned his initial objectives and in 1910 took out a new loan from the same France he was supposed to fight.
The deterioration of the country’s social and economic conditions and the Sultan’s inability to avoid the progressive erosion of his sovereignty and the encroachments of France pushed a group of tribes, led by the Cherarda, Beni Hassan and four Amazigh tribes, to rebel against the Sultan’s authority.
The sultan’s decision in November 1910 to implement the military reform worsened the situation. This decision came at the very moment when France declined the tribes’ request to intercede in their favor with the Sultan. All the conditions were thus met to push the tribes to take their destiny into their own hands, therefore to take action and rebel against the Sultan.
Initially, the plan concocted by the insurgents aimed to assassinate all the viziers, including el Glaoui, as well as take the Sultan as a hostage and declare the “jihad” against the French on his behalf. It was agreed that the plot should be carried out on the occasion of the Prophet’s birthday (Aid Al mawlid Annabaoui) which fell on 14 March 1911.
A few days earlier, the insurgents changed their plan at a time when other tribes decided to join their fight. Under the new plan, the insurgents would no longer seek to take the Sultan as a hostage or assassinate members of the government, but rather lay siege to the capital in order to force the Sultan to reconsider the measures he had taken since July 1910. They also demanded the dismissal of the European military instructors (mostly French and Spanish) and the release of the members of the Ait Ndir tribe the Sultan had taken hostage.
In early April, the rebellious tribes began to harden their position, demanding the dismissal of the Grand Vizier and the abolition of the military missions introduced by the sultan’s new reforms. They also demanded that that be determined the amount of taxes each tribe had to pay, that each tribe choose its caïd (governor) and that the money that Glaoui’s agents had extorted from them be returned to them.
The discontent against Sultan Moulay Abdelhafid took on a new dimension when, on April 19, the ulemas (religious scholars) of Meknes proclaimed his brother, Moulay Zayn Al Abidin ibn Al Hassan, as the new sultan. The political situation in the country became increasingly unstable, especially as the capital was cut off from the coast. As Edmund Burke pointed out, during the 1911 rebellion, the tribes did not at any time seek to revolt against the monarchical system nor to question the Sultan’s legitimacy as the Commander of Believers. Rather, their insurrection reflected their rejection of the reforms introduced by the Sultan.
French deceit at work
French Consul Henri Gaillard, who exerted a great influence in the Sultan’s court, used the country’s new circumstances to his advantage. He described the situation to the sultan in alarming terms and sought to convince him to request the intervention of the French army in order to end the siege of the capital and safeguard his throne. However, it took the French diplomat almost four weeks to obtain from the Sultan a solemn request asking for France’s military support.
The Sultan was reluctant to make such a request that France resorted to Kaddour Ben Gharbit, Algerian advisor to the French legation in Tangier, to convince the Sultan of the need to seek France’s military support. Finally, in early May, the Sultan committed to sending an official request for France’s support. This request reached the French legation in Tangier on May 12.
Contrary to popular belief, at no time did the Sultan authorize in that letter the landing of the French army on the Moroccan coast. What he did authorize was the sending of a contingent of French-trained goumiers (indigenous Moroccan soldiers) to Fez from the Chaouia region. The sultan also ordered the deployment of a contingent of 1,500 men from the Marrakech region.
But France would not hear of it. As Edmond Burke has shown, what France sought in the Sultan’s letter was legal proof to justify a military intervention that it had decided upon and which was already underway. On April 17, three weeks before the Sultan appealed for French support, the French government, upon the instigation of Eugène Etienne, a Deputy in Oran and one of the leading figures of France’s colonial action in Morocco, had already ordered the sending of an expeditionary force to Fez, which was to leave for Morocco on May 13.
Meanwhile, towards the end of April, a rumor spread in Fez that the French army was preparing to land on the Moroccan coast. Gaillard intervened with the notables of Fez to dispel their fear of such an eventuality and reassure them as to France’s intentions and desire to strictly adhere to the sultan’s request. Given that the Sultan’s official request did not reach the French legation until 24 hours before the departure of the French soldiers for Morocco, Gaillard backdated it to April 27.
According to Burke, this reflected a vague commitment the Sultan had made to the French legation about his intention to make an official request for military support to France. By backdating the Sultan’s letter, Gaillard sought to remove any suspicion about France’s true intentions. To do so, he hastened to present the arrival of the French expeditionary force as a response to the Sultan’s request.
According to John Macleod, then British consul in Fez, until the last minute the capital’s residents were led to believe that the siege of the city would be lifted by Moroccan “goumiers.” Moreover, two hours before the arrival of the French forces, town criers had invited merchants to decorate their shops to welcome the arrival of the “Mehal-La” of “our lord” the Sultan. On May 21, however, the residents were devastated when they realized that they had been deceived by France and that those who had come to end the siege of the town were not Moroccan goumiers but French soldiers.
While the first round of the French plot was thus successful, the French colonial lobby and its sympathizers in the French government set about creating favorable conditions to obtain the support of French public opinion and the European powers for sending soldiers to Morocco. And since cunning, deceit, and propaganda have always been the preferred tools of the French political-economic and media elites, they hatched a whole plan to strike the final death blow to Moroccan independence.
In April 1911, Maurice Rouvier, spokesperson for the Moroccan Committee and former French Prime Minister, spread a rumor that Fez, the capital of the kingdom, was under siege by thousands of insurgents from neighboring areas and that Europeans were in danger of certain death. Under pressure and shocked by the scale of the made-believe impending attack on the French community in Morocco, the French government gave General Moinier the order to send an expeditionary force of 30,000 men to Fez with the aim of avoiding the carnage and massacre of the French.
Great Britain, which had already given France the green light to take over Morocco, expressed its support for the French government’s decision. Even Germany, which had hitherto been the party most affected by the British-French arrangement, expressed no opposition. Berlin merely made sure to obtain a commitment of the French government to withdraw its forces once they had accomplished their mission.
As for Spain, fearing to be outpaced by France and no longer be able to implement the secret clauses of the 1904 agreement, whose content would be revealed in November 1911 by the Parisian newspaper Le Matin, decided to dispatch its troops to Larache and Lakser El Kebir, paving the way for its effective occupation of northern Morocco.
Under the influence of the Morocco Committee, which had significant clout in the French economic, political and media landscape, a colossal propaganda campaign was set in motion. The ultimate goal was, of course, to create a favorable climate for the intervention of the French army in Morocco. Very few French people lived in Fez at the time, and there were no records of clashes with, or deadly attacks from local populations. Yet the French public was suddenly bombarded for several days by a flood of media reports claiming that French nationals in the Moroccan capital were the object of deadly attacks by the Moroccans, who had supposedly spared neither children nor the elderly.
In keeping with the agenda of the Moroccan Committee, the Parisian press reported in great detail on the misdeeds and crimes allegedly committed by Moroccan assailants. To add a touch of drama to the situation, the French press warned of the food shortage that the capital would face in the event that the siege of the city lasted more than two weeks. If the siege was prolonged, it claimed, the city’s residents would have had only the equivalent of two weeks’ worth of food to spare.
Everything had thus been set in motion to galvanize the French public and obtain its support for sending its army to Fez and the financial expenditure that would result from it. To their surprise, however, the 30,000 French soldiers found no one on site when they arrived in the Moroccan capital. And, even worse, there were neither assaults against the French community in Fez nor Moroccan assailants determined to kill French people of all ages. Rather, life in the Moroccan capital was going on as normal and there were no clashes between the police and the residents.
In his book Morocco in Diplomacy,” published in 1912, the Franco-British journalist and politician Edmund Dene Morel reported that one of the journalists who had taken part in spreading fake news about the alleged assault on the city of Fez, acknowledged that no such assault had ever taken place, and that at no moment had the safety or life of the handful French nationals been in danger in Fez. As for the city’s food supply, he said that the kingdom’s capital had enough to feed its residents and the 30,000 French soldiers for over a year.
Regardless, the plot had paid off and France managed to strike one last fatal blow to Morocco before forcing its Sultan, a year later, to sign the Protectorate Treaty. “The dice had been cast” for France’s subjugation of Morocco, as Morel pointed out in his book, “After Casablanca, Fez France had, almost without realizing it, taken a decisive step. An indefinite occupation of the capital was the natural prelude to a Protectorate. The era of concessions, profits, and dividends was about to begin.”
Samir Bennis is the co-founder of Morocco World News. You can follow him on Twitter @SamirBennis.
