Twilight in the Lands of Disorder: Spain, France, and the Conquest of Morocco (1906-1927)

By Comer Plummer III

Twilight in the Lands of Disorder: France, Spain and the Conquest of Morocco (1906-1927) describes the conquest and pacification Morocco, a kingdom that had, due to its strategic value, survived as an independent country until the end of the European rush to colonize Africa. That ended in 1906, when France, obsessed with protecting her imperium in Algeria, succeeded in bartering with her European competitors for supremacy in Morocco. Unfortunately for the French, this arrangement required working with a junior partner, Spain, which was already installed along the northern coast of Morocco; and the consequences for her were nearly disastrous. While the French succeeded in bringing peace and development to their zone, Spanish irresolution and ineptitude unleashed several of rebellions, culminating with that of a coalition of Riffian tribes under the inspired leadership of Mohammad Abd el-Krim. The Riff War (1921-1926) began with the calamitous defeat of Spanish forces at Annual and ultimately carried into the French zone before the combined military might and France and Spain finally brought tiny Riffian Republic to heal. While this conflict ended indigenous rule in Morocco, the conquerors would derive small satisfaction for their triumph; each would reap its bitter reward. And the Quixotic Mohammad Abd el-Krim became an inspiration to freedom fighters everywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781365403118

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Title

Copyright © 2022 by Comer Plummer III

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

ISBN: 978-1-365-40311-8

For Dorsey

Contents

Maps and Illustrations

Preface

Prologue

Part 1: Interregnum

Chapter 1: The Agadir Crisis

Chapter 2: Franquito’s Land

Chapter 3: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Chapter 4: The Eccentric

Chapter 5: Bad Summer, Tragic Week

Chapter 6: The Sultan of the Mountains

Chapter 7: The Protectorate

Chapter 8: Decision in Lorraine

Part 2: The Hitch

Chapter 9: Reasonable Expedients?

Chapter 10: A Bad Tenant

Chapter 11: The Noose

Chapter 12: The Bogeyman Cometh

Chapter 13: Collapse

Chapter 14: The Road Back

Chapter 15: The Blame Game

Chapter 16: Two Republics, Opposite Directions

Part 3: End Game

Chapter 17: The Reset

Chapter 18: Master of the Mountain

Chapter 19: Whirlwind

Chapter 20: Pincer

Chapter 21: The Public Relations of Peace

Chapter 22: Defeat

Chapter 23: Fates

Chapter 24: Vae Victis

Epilogue

Appendices

Treaty of Fez

Riffian Army Regulations

Glossary of Terms

Bibliography

Notes

Index

Maps and Illustrations

Figure 1: Morocco Divided

Figure 2: Early Conflicts

Figures 3-4: Early Crises

Figure 5: Moulay Abdel Azziz and Moulay Hafid

Figure 6: Melilla War of 1909

Figure 7: Morocco Crisis of 1911

Figures 8-13: Actors

Figure 14: The Riffian Republic

Figure 15: Riffian Military Organization

Figure 16: Riffian Terrain

Figures 17-18: Cities

Figure 19: Operations of 1921

Figure 20: Abarran and Igueriben

Figure 21: The Road to Izumar

Figures: 22-23: The Spanish Camp at Mount Arruit

Figure 24: Operations of 1925 and 1926

Figures 25-28: The Riff War

Figure 29: Surrender and Exile

Figure 30: Franco’s Moorish Guard

Preface

Twilight in the Lands of Disorder describes the formative period of the modern Moroccan state, a time during which the great powers of Europe—in the final sprint in the Scramble for Africa—bargained the kingdom away to France and its junior partner, Spain, in exchange for considerations elsewhere. In the decades that followed, the two powers—led by France—brought the entire country under the control of a central government by crushing tribes in the more remote areas of the interior, peoples who for centuries had been largely autonomous. In modern history, this had only happened once before, when the second Alaouite sultan, Moulay Ismail (1672-1727), in repeated campaigns over more than two decades, subdued the mountain tribes and garrisoned the interior with his slave army, the Abid al-Bukhari. That project of nation building had collapsed almost immediately after his death, and these tribes reverted to their traditional autonomy.

This time was unique in another way: Until then, Islamic Morocco had never been occupied by a Western power. Only once had it been tried, and the results were catastrophic. In 1578, a polyglot Christian army of Portuguese, Spaniards, Germans, and Italians led by the Portuguese king, Sebastian I, invaded Morocco and was promptly annihilated at the Battle of Ksar el-Kébir. Otherwise, European countries (Spain, Portugal, and England) contented themselves with occupying strategic coastal positions, ports namely, to support their global mercantile interests. This changed in 1912, with the Treaty of Fez. Under the terms of the accord, the French and the Spanish made the Morocco kingdom a protectorate, or a state under their tutelage and protection. This meant that, theoretically, Morocco maintained a large degree of local autonomy, in contrast with a colony, which was subject to the direct rule of a foreign power. The difference was largely semantic. The protectorate system implied a temporary nature, according to which the governing power was to relinquish power at a certain point, when the protected state no longer needed assistance, or when it ceased to be a threat to regional stability, or both. In practice, this never occurred. As with colonies, the governing states of protectorates had to be impelled to give up their possessions, as France and Spain would do in Morocco in 1956.

I wrote this book to provide a readable treatment of this underappreciated chapter of African history and to do so in a way that achieves a degree of parity between the viewpoints of the protagonists. Since most chroniclers of time were Westerners, their optic represents most of what has been written about these events. Furthermore, due to political sensibilities, Moroccan historians have tended to distort or neglect certain aspects of the events described in this book, notably the Riff (also, Rif) War—a separatist Berber conflict that the ruling Alaouite Dynasty has been disinclined to celebrate. The tension between Arabs and Berbers in Morocco, and the strong Riffian identity may have declined over the years, but they remain powerful political undercurrents that Morocco’s ruling elite would rather leave undisturbed. My goal is to weave a story that achieves a balanced perspective between Spain, France, and Morocco, and to address the legacy of the leader of the Riffian rebellion, Mohammad Abd el-Krim, in the Morocco of today. Additionally, I aim to underscore how the conflict in Morocco influenced political developments in Spain during the first four decades of the twentieth century, culminating in the calamitous Spanish Civil War, something that many historians of this period have failed to do.

Given the aforementioned political sensitivities, finding quality Moroccan primary sources for this period was a major challenge in writing this book. This is underlined by the fact that the best reference from the Moroccan side was provided by the French journalist, J. Roger-Mathieu, in his compilation of interviews with Mohammad Abd el-Krim published as Mémoires d’Abd el Krim. Fortunately, Western writers have provided a wealth of material from various points of view, which compensates to a degree for this lack of indigenous material. Some of the finest and most emotive material came from Spanish authors, though they tend to focus on the disastrous events of 1921. Of note are Juan Palma Moreno’s Annual 1921: 80 Años del Desastre and Eduardo Ortega y Gasset’s, Annual. For a history of the Spanish Foreign Legion, José Álvarez’s The Betrothed of Death: The Spanish Legion during the Rif Rebellion is the definitive account. In terms of measuring the Riff rebellion’s impact upon Spanish politics, Sebastian Balfour’s Deadly Embrace: Morocco and the Road to the Spanish Civil War, and Carolyn Boyd’s Praetorian Politics in Liberal Spain offer exceptional perspectives. For the Riff rebellion, C.R. Pennell’s Country with a Government and a Flag, David S. Woolman’s Rebels in the Rif, and Zayka Daoud’s Abdelkrim: Une épopée d’or et de sang are excellent. In terms of sheer entertainment value, Western journalists and travel writers are unsurpassed, including Walter Burton Harris’s France, Spain and the Rif and The Morocco that Was, Rosita Forbes’s El Raisuni: Sultan of the Mountains, Vincent Sheean’s Personal History, and Arturo Barea’s Forging of a Rebel.

Naturally, with so many national perspectives, historians differ on numerous details of the events described in this book. My first recourse to divergent data from these sources was to favor the prevailing view of historians and chroniclers. When required, I used my own analysis. The explanation for both may be found in the endnotes.

For the spelling of Arabic terminology, I relied primarily on the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. The translations from Spanish and French into English are my own, as are any errors or omissions within the pages of this book.

White Plains

June 1, 2022

Prologue

Setting

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time or war where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Thomas Hobbes, from Leviathan.¹

In his signal work, Leviathan , the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) espoused the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of civil conflict. For Hobbes, a man without a political community was consigned to the dog-eat-dog world of the state of nature. Hobbes’s writing reflected his experience during the English Civil War of 1642 to 1651. If he were to have cast a wider net in searching for case studies to support his conclusions, Hobbes might have included Morocco.

The country that we call Morocco today had already existed for eight centuries by the time Hobbes came into the world. Islamic Morocco was founded in 788 by the Idris ben Abdallah, an Arab who had rebelled against the Abbasid Caliphate and then fled to the distant reaches of the Maghreb to escape reprisals. In a short time, Idris organized a rudimentary Islamic government, recruited Berbers to his banner, and established a new city, Fez. Three years later, the assassins finally caught up with him. For many of the 92 rulers who followed Idris I (counting those up to the events described in this account; and excluding pretenders and repeat rulers) on the throne of the Sharifan Empire, as Morocco was commonly called, governing this land was no small challenge. Building a coherent Moroccan state has been the work of centuries and entailed confronting and overcoming several obstacles to national evolution—geography, societal contradictions, and political Sufism. Understanding the kingdom’s history starts with these topics.

Geography is the first, and the essential element. In Morocco, it is about the primacy of mountains, which cover roughly a third of the country. The kingdom has four primary mountain ranges; from north to south, they are the Riff, the Middle Atlas, the High Atlas, and the Anti-Atlas. Most of these ranges are of a moderate elevation, around 1,500 to 2,000 meters at their highest points. The High Atlas, however, has peaks double that size, the highest being the Jebel Toubkal at 4,165 meters.² Together, these ranges form a crescent with its opening toward the west; and they furnish the critical barrier from the hostile climate of the Sahara Desert. They also provide the moisture that replenishes the rivers and streams upon which agriculture depends. Without them, the Moroccan heartland would probably resemble the country’s distant southern reaches, the former Spanish Sahara.

In addition to providing the basis for a sedentary and agrarian society, the mountains had a profound influence over the social development of the country. Historian Henri Terrasse has aptly described Morocco as the cul-de-sac of North Africa.³ From time immemorial, various people traversed the Barbary Coast into Morocco, some passing north and across the Strait of Gibraltar into Europe, others to various points south. Many crossed over the ranges of the Riff and Atlas and pooled in the plains. In time, the overflow carried some into the mountains and the shelter afforded by jigsaw heights, innumerable recesses, and hidden valleys. It was a geography that ensnared, isolated, and diversified; in short, it was a topography that fostered tribalism.

Secondly, it is important to understand the prevailing societal contradictions of the country, the sources of conflict that plagued the development of a national identity. These consist of north-south regionalism, the differing outlooks between the people of the lowlands and those of the remote regions, and Berber and Arab relations.

Morocco is essentially a nation of two sub-regions, the north and the south, and each has a different axis of orientation. The northern axis points east, toward the Islamic heartland, to Damascus and Cairo. Fez, the first Islamic-built city in the Maghreb, is its capital. The pride of this city is the Qarawiyyin Madrassa, Islam’s oldest and one of its most prestigious centers of learning. The country’s most respected ulama, a clique of urban holy men and jurists, are here. Given the clear Islamic orientation of Fez, it was inevitable that the Fassis, as the people were called, would develop inflated egos. They have always considered their city, and themselves, to be superior to the rest of the country—a fact not lost upon the southerners. While there are several other important urban centers in the north, including Tétuoan, Salé, and Meknes, they pale in comparison to Fez. Indeed, for centuries Western maps of the country bore the name, the Kingdom of Fez.

The southern axis looks to the Sahara; its capital is Marrakech. For centuries, southern Morocco was tied to the trans-Saharan caravans. Marrakech and Tafilet (also called Sijilmassa), were two of the main terminus points for goods from the bled es soudan, the Land of the Blacks. Until recently, the rivalry between these two distinct regions has been an important political factor of the country. Rabat has been the country’s capital since 1912. Before that, except for a brief period when Meknes was the capital, for a thousand years the seat of the Moroccan government, the makhzen, had been either at Fez or Marrakech.

Regionalism is nothing unique to Morocco; probably every country has it to some degree. A more pronounced problem was the friction between Moroccans of the lowlands and those of the remote interior, as embodied in the concept of the bled es makhzen (the lands under the sultan’s control) and the bled es siba (the lands of disorder). The former were the coastal areas and plains, centered on urban areas, governed by officials (caїds or pashas) appointed by the sultan; some of governors of the larger cities also were heads of their provinces. Outside the cities, the political structure was the tribal djemma (council), composed of representation from all the subgroups, each headed by an elected amghar or shaykh.⁴ The farther one got away from the urban areas, the more influential became the tribal government.

It follows that people of the lowland and those in more isolated areas had differing views of the sultan’s government. While the average Moroccan had very low hopes of the sultan’s regime, such was the venal culture of the land, the urbanites had some expectations since they bore the brunt of the cost of government. They were accessible to the tax collector, and they were more vulnerable to the coercive power of the makhzen; furthermore, they had come to rely upon the ruler for security and certain necessities, such as drinking water. Additionally, many of the tribes near the major urban centers, ethnic Arabs for the most part, were tied to the makhzen through feudal terms of service. These jayish, (also, guiche) tribes agreed to provide military support to the sultan in times of crisis in exchange for tax exemption.⁵ In the siba, the mountains and desert regions, the sultans had only an intermittent presence, and the tribes were virtually independent. The government gave them nothing, so they expected to be left alone in their ksour (single, ksar), or earthen fortress communities. They would go through the motions of fealty, pledging loyalty upon a ruler’s enthronement, mentioning his name at the khutuba (Friday prayers), and perhaps sending an occasional gift to the capital; however, unless compelled to do so, they refused to pay taxes. Most sultans, weighing the costs of sending troops to remote areas, found it expedient to leave them alone.⁶ Therefore, with contrasting outlooks, and with the difficulties of geography and the lack of infrastructure—for Morocco had no roads to speak of until the twentieth century—these two Moroccos pursued different paths. In the best of times, they went their own ways; in the worst of times, they were in open conflict.

The so-called Arab Problem reinforced the geographic divergence. The bled es makhzen tended to be majority ethnic Arab, reflecting the tribes that migrated in several waves into the Maghreb beginning in the eighth century. The siba was predominantly Berber, the majority ethnic group and Morocco’s original inhabitants, who had gradually relocated to the highlands and desert oases to escape waves of invaders, Romans, Visigoths, Byzantines, and finally Arabs. While the Berbers adopted Islam, they maintained their own language (Amazigh), customs, and fractious nature. While the great Berber dynasties of the Almoravids, Almohads, and Merenids, ruled the land for centuries, this obscures the fact that the Arabs and Berbers never integrated. The Arab, like the Fassi, believed himself to be a superior sort of man. He was of God’s chosen people. He was educated, even urbane: a city man, a scholar or a jurist. At worst, he was a pastoralist. To him, the Berber was a rube. Naturally, the aboriginal people of this land did not appreciate being considered second-class citizens, nor did they forget that the miserable conditions of the mountains and desert oases had been bequeath to him by the Arab.

Political Sufism was the third problematic element of national culture. Today, Morocco appears to be a pragmatic Islamic society. The predominant sect of the faith is Malikite, one of the four schools of Islamic thought within the Sunni faith, and the predominant system of North Africa. The ideology was unique in that it accepted consensus as a source of Islamic law (so long as it did not contradict the Qur’an and the hadiths). However, in Morocco’s past, the religion practiced in the country was anything but progressive; and it further served to devolve Moroccan society.

The Sufi brotherhoods were the problem. Historians sometimes refer to the phenomenon of the Sufi orders as maraboutism, however, this is a misnomer. In Morocco, the term refers to the tomb of a Muslim saint. Sufism and its mystical interpretation of Islam arrived early in the kingdom’s Islamic period. As elsewhere in the Dar al-Islam, or the House of Islam, Sufism paved the way for Islamization through its readiness to accommodate essential local religious practices and thus made the new faith more appealing to potential converts. As such, Sufism allowed Islam to put down roots in many lands that might have otherwise resisted the new faith. In Morocco, these vital indigenous tastes included the common quest for baraka and the cult of the saint.⁷

Baraka was a kind of divine favor and a power that a possessor might use or bestow, or that a follower might absorb, even after the possessor’s death. Not surprisingly, it was a power claimed by all manner of Moroccan saints. Morocco’s religious establishment, so to speak, evolved to three distinct groups. On the traditional side were the ulama of madrassa-trained scholars and jurists and the comparatively small class of bluebloods, the shurafa (singular, sharif). As descendants of the Prophet Mohammad, these few men enjoyed the ultimate stamp of sociopolitical legitimacy in the Muslim world. At the other end of the spectrum were the mystical brotherhoods. While all three groups were believed to be imbued with baraka, the Sufis offered common folk the greatest access to it.

As part of providing a wider entrée to baraka, Sufism co-opted the ancient Berber cult worship of saints. In search of local roots, early Sufi shaykhs gravitated to the tombs of venerated holy men as sites for their religious brotherhoods. In this way the Sufis joined traditional spiritual practices with a less structured Islam. Simple people were drawn to Sufi asceticism, its quest for a more direct relationship with Allah, the distinct rituals (tariqa) of brotherhood, and the promise of baraka. The lodge, or center of devotion and learning, was called a ribat. The brotherhoods, the zawaya (singular, zawiya), proliferated, eventually checkering the land, and attracting tens of thousands of adherents. The zawaya were also about more than the esoteric. As the primary mediators between tribes and ethnic groups, they served as the essential arbiter in a consensus-based society. They also provided important services, such as lodging and guides for traders and travelers, and charitable and social services.⁸ The zawaya became an indispensable part of the national fabric. As it was commonly said, He who has no shaykh, has [Shaitan] for a shaykh.⁹

In time, the religious shaykhs began to take on a political role. The unrivaled Berber Sufi shaykh, Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Jazuli (807-870 CE), provided the philosophic underpinnings for this evolution. Along with his emphasis on social activism, al-Jazuli’s Sufism conjoined the concepts of Divine presence and the exercise of worldly authority, thereby making the religious shaykh the incarnation of the Mohammadian tradition and fully justifying his role in political life.¹⁰

After al-Jazuli’s time, the religious devolution of the country continued along urban and rural lines. While the traditional elites of the ulama, the qadis and imams, held sway in the cities and towns, in the countryside the zawaya became the predominant religious force. Before the twentieth century more than 90 percent of Moroccans lived in the countryside,¹¹ and the political influence of the Sufi shayhks was enormous. Often, they were the de facto administration in the interior, particularly during periods of political turmoil.¹² The more zealous of them became regional potentates, leaders of jihad, kingmakers, and, on occasion, kings themselves.

The consequence of these three obstacles, geography, societal contradictions, and political Sufism, was a Hobbesian nightmare: a highly decentralized country, lacking any real political community, and a place of brutishness and misery. Morocco’s political stability is a recent phenomenon. Before the present dynasty, the Alaouites, five dynasties had come and gone since the coming of Islam to Morocco in the eighth century. None was able to confront the headwinds of these challenges and put down institutional roots; they all crumbled within one to two centuries under factional squabbles and palace intrigues. In between the dynastic periods, chaos reigned and untold thousands, perhaps millions, died of famine, disease, and civil conflict. One example speaks volumes about the lot of the Moroccan people: In the early sixteenth century, Leo Africanus—diplomat, traveler, and author of the celebrated book Description of Africa—estimated the kingdom’s population at about six million people. In 1914, nearly four centuries later, the French colonial administration conducted a more precise assessment that placed the population at approximately five million.¹³ Clearly, life was hard in Morocco. The kingdom would have been wonderful grist for Hobbes’s mill.

But Hobbes could not have written about Morocco; few could have before the twentieth century, given the country’s notorious hostility to outsiders, and to Westerners in particular. Though Leo Africanus lived in Morocco for years, he was an exception. He was a convert to Christianity and living in Italy when he wrote Description. He was, however, an Andalusi, born al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi; and, as the last part of his name indicates, he spent his formative years in Fez. In the centuries that followed, the few published accounts of Morocco came from one intrepid traveler, Vincent Le Blanc, mariners and passengers either shipwrecked or captured by corsairs, and diplomats and religious figures sent to negotiate their ransom or to minister to their health and religious needs, including Dominique Busnot, Germain Moüette, Thomas Pellow, François Pidou de Saint-Olon, John Windus, and Francisco Jésus Marıa de San Juan del Puerto.¹⁴ The theme was universal: Morocco was a cruel and barbarous place. However, since these early accounts did not receive wide circulation, for the Western world, the land was understood to be just another lawless region of the Barbary Coast, its details shrouded in mystery.

To the present-day outsider, especially to those who have visited Morocco, the aforementioned conditions would seem farfetched. Today, it is possible for a visitor to penetrate into the heart of Morocco. Other than the imperial precincts and the religious places open only to Muslims, the country is wide open. One can stroll in perfect security through the warren of Fez al-Bali, the sacred city of Moulay Idris, and the old corsair haunts of Salé. The more enterprising traveler can crisscross the siba, through the winding roads of the Riff, or into the jagged peaks of the Deren, or thrill to the white-knuckle experience of the Tizi-n-Test pass of the High Atlas. Any Moroccan he or she encounters, Arab or Berber, will hardly give the interloper a second glance. Until the last century, such forays would have been considered suicidal.

In short, the Morocco of our times is a very different place than it was only a few generations before. This book is about that transition.

Part 1

Interregnum

Figure 1: Morocco Divided

Map courtesy of Cradel

Figure 2: Early Conflicts

Battle of Isly (1846) by Horace Vernet © Art Resource

The Peace of Wad-Ras (1870) by Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer © Art Resource

Figure 3: Early Crises

The Assassination of Emile Mauchamps, as reported by Le Petit Journal, April 7, 1907

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 212

Figure 4: Early Crises

Top: Destruction of Casablanca Railroad, July 1907 (unknown photographer) Memorial du Maroc, V5, 70; Above: Bombardment of Casablanca August 1907 (unknown photographer) Memorial du Maroc, V5, 64

Figure 5: Melilla War of 1909

Spanish troops advancing toward Mount Gurugú on July 27 (unknown photographer)

Spanish troops inside of a blockhouse near Melilla (1909)

(unknown photographer) © Alamy

Barranco de Lobo (Wolf’s Ravine)

(author photo)

Figure 6: Morocco Crisis of 1911

SMS Panther viewed from kasbah of Agadir

(unknown photographer)

Memorial du Maroc, V5, 110

French troops arrive in Morocco on March 30

(unknown photographer)

Memorial du Maroc, V5, 114

Figure 7: Actors

Moulay Abdel Aziz

October 1907 (unknown photographer)

Memorial du Maroc, V5, 83

Moulay Hafid

February 1913 (photo by J. Giry)

Memorial du Maroc, V5, 111

Figure 8: Actors

Ahmad el Raisuni

(photo by Rosita Forbes)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 211

Jilali Zerhouni, aka Bou Hamara

(unknown photographer)

Memorial du Maroc, V5, 107

Bou Hamara’s entrance into Fez

(unknown photographer)

Memorial du Maroc, V5, 107

Figure 9: Actors

Dámaso Berenguer Fusté

(photo by Franzen)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 214

Dámaso Berenguer (cape) visiting with a unit of Regulares at Melilla in 1913

(photo by José Demaria Lopez)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 212

Figure 10: Actors

Dámaso Berenguer Fusté

(photo by Franzen)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 214

Manuel Silvestre on the Melilla front, June 2, 1921

(unknown photographer)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 214

Figure 11: Actors

Hubert Lyautey

(unknown photographer)

Memorial du Maroc, V, 111

Manuel Primo de Rivera (left) and King Alfonso XIII (center)

(unknown photographer)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 213

José Sanjurjo

(unknown photographer)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 212

Figure 12: Actors

Francisco Franco Bahamonde

(unknown photographer)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 213

José Millán Astray

(unknown photographer)

La Grande Encyclopédie du Maroc: Histoire, 213

Figure 13: Actors

Mohammad Abd el-Krim

(unknown photographer)

Memorial du Maroc, V5, 113

Horacio Echevarrieta and Mohammad Abd el-Krim at Adjir

(unknown photographer) Memorial du Maroc, V5, 114

Mhamad Abd el-Krim

(unknown photographer)

Memorial du Maroc, V5, 114

The Agadir Crisis

Diplomacy without arms is a little like music without instruments.

Fredrick the Great¹

Paris and Agadir

July 1 to November 28, 1911

It was a stifling day in Paris, and life was slowing down. The signs were abundant: the sluggish lifts at the Eiffel Tower, the thinning cascade of automobiles and horse carts through the Place de la Concorde; the absence of a queue outside of the Louvre Museum, and more. Only in the leafy Blois de Boulogne park, did the parasols and boater hats approach routine numbers. The August holidays were approaching. In a month’s time, everyone who was able would flee the city for relative comfort of the seaside or the country.

There would be no summer vacation for Justin de Selves, the silver-haired, mustachioed 63-year-old politician who had only a week earlier assumed the portfolio of foreign minister. Perhaps he had hoped to join his family for a short getaway in Deauville or some such retreat, but today the Germans dashed that possibility. That morning, Selves had received Wilhelm von Schoen, Berlin’s ambassador, at his office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building at the Quai d’Orsay. Schoen presented him with an aide mémoire, which read:

Some German firms, established in south Morocco and especially at Agadir and its environs, are alarmed at certain fermentations among the tribes of this region, which the recent events in other parts of the country seem to have produced. These firms have addressed themselves to the Imperial Government to ask from it protection for their life and their property. On this demand, the Government decided to send to the port of Agadir a warship, in order to lend, in case of need, aid and succor to its subjects and protégés as well as to considerable German interests engaged in said region. When the state of things in Morocco will have returned it is former calm, the ship charged with its protection mission will leave the port of Agadir.

When asked whether this was an action underway or planned, Schoen’s walrus mustache twitched its reply: It was a fait accompli.²

Selves had maintained his sang foid before Schoen, but his mood soured in the course of the afternoon. The timing of his stunt suggested that Berlin was trying to profit from the change of government in Paris, as Joseph Caillaux had only days earlier become prime minister. Furthermore, while he was no expert on Morocco, Selves had served in the Senate and had been party to enough speeches and debates on France’s role in that land to find Schoen’s claims dubious from the first reading. His staff later confirmed what he had suspected: German claims were baseless. Agadir was a closed port, so no German firm had legal right to operate there; moreover, other than a few mining experts, Germany had no nationals or business interests in Agadir and its environs.³

Obviously, this was more transactional diplomacy on the part of Berlin. In all likelihood, the Germans were playing for territorial concessions in southern Morocco, Equatorial Africa or Congo. They key to deflecting Germany’s gambit would be broad political backing. He knew that he could count on the majority support among French parliamentarians and the domestic press, but how would the other government of Europe react? France was not yet ready for a military confrontation with Germany. Would France’s allies, Great Britain and Russia, be sufficiently alarmed to offer their unconditional support? Would the kaiser’s friends, Austria-Hungary and Italy, allow themselves to be goaded toward a European war over German colonial ambitions? Even less clear were the potential reactions of a half dozen other nations, those with minor interests in Morocco, including Spain, Belgium, and Norway. Diffusing this crisis was going to entail transcontinental diplomacy. It was going to be a crash course, Selves observed glumly, for this novice foreign minister.

Perhaps it occurred to Selves and educated men like him how queer it was that Europe might tie itself in knots over Morocco. For ages the capitals of Europe had demonstrated utter indifference toward that country—a sentiment returned by Moroccans. However, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, attitudes began to change. This story had elements of what transpired in places like Ottoman Turkey, China, and Japan. Foreign mercantilism, backed up by gunboat diplomacy, gradually pried open a hitherto closed society. A commercial treaty with one foreign power, in Morocco’s case England, established a precedent that led to similar conventions with other European nations. Merchant colonies grew in port cities; foreign diplomats imposed upon the sultan’s government special privileges, such as tax exemptions, for their compatriots. Some Moroccan rulers tried to resist, but they were too weak, having neither the money nor the military capacity to do so. A few tried to reform in order to grow their coffers and modernize their militaries, but each initiative only seemed to increase their reliance on foreign advisors and creditors, and to leave them more vulnerable to the domestic forces of tradition. The central government grew progressively weaker, and riots and internal rebellions proliferated.

For a time, the exploitation of Morocco was slowed by Europe’s inward focus; however, after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), European nationalism found an outward expression in the drive for colony.⁴ Around the globe, Western nations vied for the few unclaimed prizes. By the turn of the century, when the Scramble for Africa had begun to wind down, Morocco was one of three countries (the others being Liberia and Ethiopia) that had not fallen under European domination, a condition probably due to the multitude of international interests in the land.

By the twentieth century, there were many foreign actors in Morocco. Spain was the most tenured, with a history in that kingdom dating back to the fifteenth century. Then it had occupied a series of presidios, or fortified places, mostly ports, on the North African coast. At the time, Madrid considered such a presence as part of its strategy to contest the Ottoman Empire for control of the Mediterranean Sea. With that contest long concluded, these Spanish outposts had dwindled to two port enclaves on the Moroccan coast, Ceuta and Melilla.

Neither had held much value to Spain. Ceuta and Melilla had been periodically attacked and besieged over the centuries; defending them required important garrisons and elaborate fortifications. Trade with the Moors was sporadic under the best of times, so supplying these enclaves and their populations fell to metropolitan Spain. Nevertheless, there was plenty of vaporing about the reasons to hang onto these places: fear of encirclement by France, which had occupied Algeria and was poised to take over Morocco; some economists speculated on the mining potential of northern Morocco; and the clergy disdained the notion of surrendering Church lands to the Muslims. The determining factor, however, was national prestige.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, Spain’s self-image was probably at an all-time low. Beginning with the debacle of the Armada in 1588, the kingdom had suffered an avalanche of defeats and humiliations at the hands of France, England, and the United States; rebellious colonists had thrown off Spanish rule in the Americas; and Mexico had turned back a feeble attempt at reconquest. By the twentieth century, the Spanish Empire—once the world’s largest—had been reduced to a worthless track of desert between Morocco and the French Sudan, known as the Spanish Sahara, Equatorial Guinea, a few islands, and the Moroccan presidios. The traditionalists in Spain were determined to hang on to what remained. For the king, the aristocratic class, political conservatives, and the officer corps, Spain’s status as a nation that counted in Europe depended on its overseas dominions, however puny they might be.⁵

French interests were clear-cut. Ultimately, French policy in Morocco was based upon its position in Algeria, a land that was to Paris what India was to London—the crown jewel of its empire. The French, however, had taken it one step further: They had declared Algeria to be an integral part of France, and it was administered accordingly. In order to secure Algerian borders from the troublesome tribes and brigandage emanating from east and west (and keep European competitors out of North Africa), French imperialists sought to expand their control beyond Algerian frontiers. The French had occupied Tunisia in the previous century; by the early twentieth century, they had moved into the principal oases of central Algeria. Morocco, then, was the final piece. The French aim was not colonization, or so it was publicly stated, but the imposition of reforms through peaceful penetration, with an eye to reversing the growing lawlessness and decay of the Sharifan Empire. For public consumption, French imperialists spoke of France’s privileged position in Morocco; their true aim, however, was the establishment of a protectorate. Commercial considerations were also important. French businessmen had invested tens of millions of francs in Morocco, including textiles, shipping, and agricultural concerns. French banks, endorsed by their government, had loaned staggering sums to prop up the creaky finances of the kingdom, credits guaranteed by 60 percent of Morocco’s customs duties over a 35-year period.⁶

The United Kingdom’s interest in Morocco centered around maintaining clear lines of communication with India, which meant freedom of traffic through the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. To this end, control over the Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal were vital interests. Accordingly, Whitehall was determined to keep any competitor (Germany first, and France second) away from the northern Moroccan littoral; the British government was equally committed to its de facto protectorate in Egypt. Though the territory remained nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire, the English had been in control since 1882, when they invaded the land to put down a nationalist uprising that threatened their interests in the Suez Canal. Of secondary importance—and a distant second—was England’s growing trade and investment in Morocco.

Spain, France, and Britain had avoided serious difficulties over Morocco through bi-lateral accords signed in 1904 (France and England; and France and Spain). According to these agreements, colonial spoils were divided: France recognized England’s interest in Egypt, England ceded to France primacy in central Morocco, and Spain’s zone of influence in northern Morocco was acknowledged.⁷ Additionally, Italy was also a player, albeit a minor one. A relative newcomer to the colonial game (Italy only became a nation in 1860), Italy was scrambling to pick up whatever scraps were left, and the Ottoman province of Libya was a prime target. To win French approval or a free hand in that place, Rome recognized French rights in Morocco.

It all might have worked very well but for one fly in the ointment—Germany. Berlin’s Morocco policy was yet another reflection of the peevish nature of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s foreign policy, a kind of inferiority complex that demanded that Germany have a voice in anything that mattered. So, not being a participant in the negotiations, the German government rejected the 1904 accords. The kaiser interrupted a Mediterranean cruise the following year to visit Tangiers, where he made a bellicose speech challenging the French position in Morocco. He declared Germany’s support for a sovereign Moroccan state and demanded an economic open door with that country. Overnight, the future of Morocco became an international predicament, later known to history as the First Morocco Crisis.

The kaiser’s message was clear: Germany would be a player in the colonial game; and before France could complete its plans in Morocco, it would have to deal with Berlin. The kaiser and his foreign office at Wilhelmstrasse figured that saber rattling would force the French to the negotiating table; and they hoped that the threat of war would drive a wedge between French and British interests.

In January of 1906, the Germans seemed poised for success. In order to solve the Moroccan problem, representatives of 11 European nations, the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and Morocco gathered for a conference at the Spanish city of Algeciras. On April 7, they signed the Act of Algeciras, upholding the independence of the sultan’s government, the territorial integrity of the kingdom, and equal economic rights for the signatories, and security and economic reforms of the Moroccan state. France’s privileged position in Morocco was only implied. The Act looked like a triumph for Germany diplomacy.⁸

Not quite. Germany’s belligerence did not rattle Anglo-French cooperation as embodied in their alliance, the Entente Cordiale of 1904. It did the opposite. Both countries coordinated their positions during the conference, and the British resolutely supported the French. While the Act appeared to check French penetration, in reality it changed nothing. The agreement acknowledged that France and Spain had preponderant interests in the maintenance of order in Morocco. To that end, both countries were given the right to organize a Moroccan police force, to be trained by their officers. They also had the responsibility to suppress contraband trade. Additionally, the French had a leading role in the application of reforms aimed at improving banking, the tax system, and the supervision of customs.⁹ While the Act had imposed certain international encumbrances upon French penetration, the French role in Morocco also gained broader legitimacy. And, at the end of the day, the basic fact remained: No other nation was more prepared to back up its interests in Morocco with blood and treasure.

Events in Morocco quickly overtook the Algeciras agreement. The kingdom continued to slide into anarchy. Xenophobia, fanned by the growing Western presence in the country, was enflamed by news of the Act. In 1907, in a number of highly publicized events, locals murdered several Europeans, mostly French, in Marrakech and Casablanca. In July, armed bands penetrated into Casablanca, home to a thousand European merchants and diplomats, and sacked part of the city. Westerners took shelter in consulates and aboard ships. Meanwhile, in eastern Morocco, Berber tribesmen attacked two French columns near the border town of Oujda. The French, the only European power willing and able to restore order, did so. Marines landed in Casablanca and were soon joined by reinforcements from Algeria. The city secured, the French continued their offensive into the surrounding countryside to smite the unruly tribes. In the northeast, a rising star in French imperial camp, General Hubert Lyautey, soundly defeated the offending tribes and secured the frontier from further attacks.

As the French did the heavy lifting in Morocco, the Germans continue to make mischief in that country, meddling in dynastic politics, supporting regional strongmen, spreading anti-French propaganda, and so forth. Tensions between Paris and Berlin flared anew when,