French Morocco

The larger of the two European zones in Morocco, established by the Treaty of Fez in March 1912 after France had spent a decade manoeuvring rivals out of the way - buying off Britain over Egypt, buying off Italy over Libya, and facing down Germany twice at Tangier and Agadir. The protectorate was a legal form rather than a conquest on paper: the sultan remained sovereign and kept his court, his seal and his religious authority, while a French resident-general held the actual power to legislate, tax and command. Hubert Lyautey, the first resident-general, built the system deliberately around that fiction. He preserved the monarchy and the old walled cities, forbade European building inside them, and raised entirely new French towns alongside - a policy that spared Morocco's medinas and produced the doubled cities of Casablanca, Rabat and Fez. The point was not sentiment but control: a sultanate that kept its prestige was cheaper to rule through than one destroyed. Pacification of the interior nevertheless took twenty-two years, ending only in 1934 after a long campaign in the Atlas and the Rif. The strategy eventually failed on its own logic. Having kept the sultan as the visible source of legitimacy, France found that when Mohammed V began backing the nationalist Istiqlal party, the throne became the centre of opposition rather than a shield against it. Deposing and exiling him to Madagascar in 1953 produced precisely the national symbol the protectorate could not survive. Violence spread, Algeria was consuming French resources, and Paris brought him back in November 1955. Independence was recognised on 2 March 1956, and the Spanish zone rejoined within weeks.

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