Moroccan Independence from France and Spain
France had exiled Sultan Mohammed V in August 1953, replacing him with the more pliant Mohammed Ben Arafa, after the sultan refused to endorse French plans to marginalise the nationalist Istiqlal Party. The exile — first to Corsica, then to Madagascar — backfired: it turned Mohammed V into a nationalist martyr and triggered a rural guerrilla campaign (the Armée de Libération Nationale) alongside urban unrest that made the protectorate increasingly ungovernable. Facing an escalating war in Algeria and unwilling to fight a second colonial conflict simultaneously, France allowed Mohammed V to return from exile on 16 November 1955, where he was received by enormous crowds and delivered a speech promising 'the advent of freedom and independence' while pledging to preserve ties with France. Negotiations that followed produced the French-Moroccan Joint Declaration, signed in Paris on 2 March 1956, by which France recognised Morocco's independence and abrogated the 1912 Treaty of Fez that had established the protectorate. Spain, which held smaller protectorate zones in the north and south, followed suit on 7 April 1956, though it retained the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Mohammed V, restored as sultan and later styled king, began the task of unifying the formerly separate French, Spanish and international (Tangier) zones under a single administration — a negotiated, largely peaceful transition that stood in sharp contrast to the war then raging in neighbouring Algeria.
- Year: 1956 CE
- Category: Independence
