But pirate loyalties being notoriously fickle, Barbary pirates attacked Ireland, Wales, Iceland and even Newfoundland in the 17th century. Barbary pirates also took prisoners, who were usually held for ransom and freed after a period of servitude – including one-time English allies. Captives were generally better off with Barbary pirates than French profiteers, who typically forced prisoners to ply the oars of slave galleys until death. Nevertheless, after pressure from England secured their release in 1684, a number of English captives were quite put out about the whole experience, and burned the port of Tangier behind them. But other English saw upsides to piracy and kidnapping: when the Portuguese were forced out of Essaouira in the 17th century, a freed British prisoner who’d converted to Islam joined a French profiteer to rebuild the city for the sultan, using free labour provided by European captives.
Moulay Ismail was pen pals with England’s James II and Louis XIV of France, and tried to convert the Sun King to Islam by mail.
Troubled Waters for Alawites
After Moulay Ismail’s death, his elite force of 50,000 to 70,000 Abid, or ‘Black Guard’, ran amok, and not one of his many children was able to succeed him. The Alawite dynasty would struggle on into the 20th century, but the country often lapsed into lawlessness when rulers overstepped their bounds. Piracy and politics became key ways to get ahead in the 18th and 19th centuries – and the two were by no means mutually exclusive. By controlling key Moroccan seaports and playing European powers against one another, officials and outlaws alike found they could demand a cut of whatever goods were shipped through the Strait of Gibraltar and along the Atlantic Coast.
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.
Impress Moroccans with your knowledge of the latest developments in Moroccan society, Amazigh culture and North African politics, all covered in English at www.moroccoworldnews.com
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 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.
The most comprehensive Berber history in English is The Berbers, by Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress. The authors leave no stone carving unturned, providing archaeological evidence to back up their historical insights.
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 had 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 up 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 towns).
Résident-Général Louis Lyautey saw to it that these new French suburbs were kitted out with all the mod cons: electricity, trains, roads and running water. Villes nouvelles were designed to be worlds apart from adjacent Moroccan medinas (historic city centres), with French schools, churches, villas and grand boulevards named after French generals. No expense or effort was spared to make the new arrivals feel right at home – which made their presence all the more galling for Moroccans footing the bill through taxes, shouldering most of the labour and still living in crowded, poorly serviced medinas. Lyautey had already set up French colonial enterprises in Vietnam, Madagascar and Algeria, so he arrived in Morocco with the confidence of a CEO and a clear plan of action: break up the Berbers, ally with the Spanish when needed and keep business running by all available means.
Nationalist Resistance
Once French-backed Sultan Yusuf died and his French-educated 18-year-old son Mohammed V became sultan, Lyautey expected that French business in Morocco would carry on as usual. He hadn’t counted on a fiery young nationalist as sultan, or the staunch independence of ordinary Moroccans. Mining strikes and union organising interfered with France’s most profitable colonial businesses, and military attention was diverted to force Moroccans back into the mines. Berbers had never accepted foreign dominion without a fight, and they were not about to make an exception for the French. By 1921 the Rif was up in arms against the Spanish and French under the leadership of Ibn Abd al-Krim al-Khattabi. It took five years, 300,000 Spanish and French forces and two budding Fascists (Francisco Franco and Marshal Pétain) to capture Ibn Abd al-Krim and force him into exile.
The French won a powerful ally when they named Berber warlord Thami el-Glaoui pasha of Marrakesh, but they also made a lot of enemies. The title gave the pasha implicit license to do as he pleased, which included mafia-style executions and extortion schemes, kidnapping women and children who struck his fancy, and friendly games of golf at his Royal Golf Club with Ike Eisenhower and Winston Churchill. The pasha forbade talk of independence under penalty of death, and conspired to exile Mohammed V from Morocco in 1953 – but Pasha Glaoui would end his days powerless, wracked with illness and grovelling on his knees for King Mohammed V’s forgiveness.
Although the French protectorate of Morocco was nominally an ally of Vichy France and Germany in WWII, independent-minded Casablanca provided crucial ground support for the Allied North African campaign. When Morocco’s Istiqlal (Independence) party demanded freedom from French rule in 1944, the US and Britain were finally inclined to agree. Under increasing pressure from Moroccans and the Allies, France allowed Mohammed V to return from exile in 1955. Morocco successfully negotiated its independence from France and Spain between 1956 and 1958.
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.
A Rough Start: After Independence
When Mohammed V died suddenly of heart failure in 1961, King Hassan II b
ecame the leader of the new nation. Faced with a shaky power base, an unstable economy and elections that revealed divides even among nationalists, Hassan II consolidated power by cracking down on dissent and suspending parliament for a decade. With heavy borrowing to finance dam-building, urban development and an ever-expanding bureaucracy, Morocco was deep in debt by the 1970s. Attempts to assassinate the king underscored the need to do something, quickly, to turn things around – and then in 1973, the phosphate industry in the Spanish-controlled Western Sahara started to boom. Morocco staked its claim to the area and its lucrative phosphate reserves with the Green March, settling the area with Moroccans while greatly unsettling indigenous Saharawi people agitating for self-determination.
WESTERN SAHARA
Talk of ‘Greater Morocco’ began in the 1950s, but in the 1970s it became the official explanation for Morocco’s annexation of phosphate-rich Spanish Sahara. There was a snag: the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Sagui al Hamra and the Rio di Oro (Polisario – Saharawi pro-independence militia) declared the region independent. Putting his French legal training to work, Hassan II took the matter up with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague in 1975, expecting the court would provide a resounding third-party endorsement for Morocco’s claims. Instead the ICJ considered a counter-claim for independence from the Polisario, and dispatched a fact-finding mission to Spanish Sahara.
The ICJ concluded that ties to Morocco weren’t strong enough to support Moroccan sovereignty over the region, and Western Sahara was entitled to self-determination. In a highly creative interpretation of this court judgment, Hassan II declared that Morocco had won its case and ordered a celebratory ‘peace march’ of more than 350,000 Moroccans from Marrakesh into Western Sahara in 1975 – some never to return. This unarmed ‘Green March’ was soon fortified by military personnel and land mines, and was vehemently resisted by armed Polisario fighters.
The Green March is no longer the symbol of national pride it once was; Green March murals that once defined desert-cafe decor have been painted over with apolitical dune-scapes, and images of the march have been removed from the new Dh100 note.
In 1991 a truce was brokered between Morocco and Polisario and continues to be monitored by UN peacekeepers. As part of the deal a referendum on independence was promised, but Morocco has never allowed it to be held. At best, Rabat maintains that it will grant Western Sahara autonomous status. Today, the status of Western Sahara remains unresolved in international law, a rallying cry for many Saharawi, a political taboo in the national conversation and an awkward conversation nonstarter for many deeply ambivalent Moroccan taxpayers.
Years of Lead
Along with the growing gap between the rich and the poor and a mounting tax bill to cover Morocco’s military spending in Western Sahara, King Hassan II’s suppression of dissent fuelled further resentment among his subjects. By the 1980s, the critics of the king included journalists, trade unionists, women’s-rights activists, Marxists, Islamists, Berbers advocating recognition of their culture and language, and the working poor – in other words, a broad cross-section of Moroccan society.
The last straw for many came in 1981, when official Moroccan newspapers casually announced that the government had conceded to the International Monetary Fund to hike prices for staple foods. For the many Moroccans subsisting on the minimum wage, these increases meant that two-thirds of their income would be spent on a meagre diet of sardines, bread and tea. When trade unions organised protests against the measure, government reprisals were swift and brutal. Tanks rolled down the streets of Casablanca and hundreds were killed, at least 1000 wounded, and an estimated 5000 protesters arrested in a nationwide laraf, or roundup.
Far from dissuading dissent, the Casablanca Uprising galvanised support for government reform. Sustained pressure from human-rights activists throughout the 1980s achieved unprecedented results in1991, when Hassan II founded the Equity and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human-rights abuses that occurred during his own reign – a first for a king. In his very first public statement as king upon his father’s death in 1999, Mohammed VI vowed to right the wrongs of the era known to Moroccans as the Years of Lead. The commission has since helped cement human-rights advances, awarding reparations to 9280 victims of the Years of Lead by 2006.
According to the 2014 Human Development Index, the annual gross national income (GNI) in Morocco is US$6850 per capita, but 13.3% of its population live on US$2 a day.
New Regime, New Hopes
As Moroccans will surely tell you, there’s still room for improvement in today’s Morocco. The parliament elected in 2002 set aside 30 seats for women members of parliament, and implemented some promising reforms: Morocco’s first-ever municipal elections, employment non- discrimination laws, the introduction of Berber languages in state schools, and the Mudawanna, a legal code protecting women’s rights to divorce and custody. But tactics from the Years of Lead were revived after the 2003 Casablanca trade-centre bombings and a 2010 military raid of a Western Sahara protest camp, when suspects were rounded up – in 2010 Human Rights Watch reported that many of them had been subjected to abuse and detention without counsel. Civil society is outpacing state reforms, as Moroccans take the initiative to address poverty and illiteracy through enterprising village associations and non-governmental organisations.
In Morocco’s lower parliament, 60 seats out of 395 are reserved for women (30 are reserved for men aged under 40).
Morocco's Arab Spring
In early 2011 Morocco was rocked by the Arab Spring protests that were sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa. Protestors demanded more devolution of power and political accountability. Mohammed VI reacted with a deftness that eluded many other leaders, and announced a series of constitutional reforms, which included giving more power to parliament and making Berber an official state language. The reforms were quickly passed in a national referendum. Although some demonstrators have continued to call for deeper reforms, Morocco's stability continues be a valued prize for most of its citizens.
2000 YEARS OF MOROCCAN JEWISH HISTORY
By the 1st century AD, Jewish Berber communities that were already well established in Morocco included farmers, metalworkers, dyers, glassblowers and bookbinders. The Merenids established the first official Jewish quarter in Fez, where Jewish entrepreneurs excluded from trades and guilds in medieval Europe were able to conduct business. Jewish Moroccans were taxed when business boomed for the ruling dynasty and sometimes blamed when it didn’t, yet they managed to flourish under the Merenids and Saadians, while European Jews faced the Inquisition and persecution.
Under Alawite rule in the 17th to 19th centuries, the official policy toward Jewish Moroccans was one of give and take: on the one hand they had opportunities as tradespeople, business leaders and ambassadors to England, Holland and Denmark in the 19th century; on the other hand they were subjected to taxes, surveillance and periodic scapegoating. But in good times and bad, Jewish Moroccans remained a continuous presence.
By 1948, some 300,000 Jewish Moroccans lived in Morocco. Many left after the founding of the states of Morocco and Israel, and today only an estimated 3000 to 8000 remain, mostly in Casablanca. A Jewish community centre in Casablanca was a bombing target in 2003, and though no one was harmed at the community centre, trade-centre blasts killed 33 and wounded 100. Yet the Casablanca community remains intact, and Casablanca is home to the recently expanded Moroccan Jewish Museum.
Under the current king, Jewish schools now receive state funding, and a few Jewish expatriates have responded to a royal invitation to return, contributing to the revival of Essaouira’s mellah. Yet the everyday champions of Jewish heritage in Morocco remain ordinary Moroccans, the one million people worldwide of Moroccan Jewish heritage, and culturally engaged travellers, who together ensure Moroccan Jewish customs, festivals, and landmarks get the attention they deserve.
Timeline
Origin
According to Amazigh folklore, the earth’s first couple birthed 100 babies and left them to finish the job of populating the planet.
248,000–73,000 BC
Precocious ‘pebble people’ begin fashioning stone tools far ahead of the European Stone Age technology curve.
5000–2500 BC
Once the Ice Age melts away, the Maghreb becomes a melting pot of Saharan, Mediterranean and indigenous people. They meet, mingle and merge into a diverse people: the Amazigh.
1600 BC
Bronze Age petroglyphs in the High Atlas depict fishing, hunting and horseback riding – a versatile combination of skills and cultures that would define the adaptable, resilient Amazigh.
950 BC
Amazigh rebuff Rome and its calendar year, and start tracking Berber history on their own calendar on 13 January; it’s maintained for centuries after the Muslim Hejira calendar is introduced.
800–500 BC
The Maghreb gets even more multiculti as Phoenicians and East Africans join the Berbers, making the composition of the local population as complex as a ras al hanout spice blend.
4th–1st century BC
Romans arrive to annex Mauretania, and 250 years later they’re still trying, with limited success and some Punic Wars to show for their troubles.
Lonely Planet Morocco Page 83