Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

1905-1914

li^U

Land

over 1000m

3S°N

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Safi,

AgadirYjaXi-

3O"A>

./ •

3gokm

200miles

Aige^

Tangier,-

Arzilaif'

Larache^

Sale,

Rabat/

Casablanca-*^

/—Tp

Louis-

1 ^.^

Gentil

/ i|

l^ii^lOJfli

/1'

MeknesVi

V \^

SPAIN

<O^Gibraltar(Br.)

*V^6TU8

jzzane

Fez

•I

Melilla.

>-—2—-^H

^fe?0NE

^•^

G E R

s—'

ador

^/^ ,jg!.

7^*?iguig

Colomb-

Bdchar

30°N

6 Morocco,

1938

purchased the approval

Spain

for

his plan

use the Moroccan

debt

the means

ultimate French domination with the promise

of territory

the

far

south and along the Mediterranean.

In 1905

France

was

briefly defied

by the

sultan with

the

encouragement

of Germany.

The

landing

the

Kaiser

Tangier

March,

however, was followed by the Conference of Algeciras in January

1906.

This authorised

the

French,

leaders

an international

commission

supervise

the

government

Morocco,

take

their plans further with

the

separate administration

the eight

ports,

notably Tangier

and

Casablanca, where Europeans were

resident,

and the

setting-up

of a

Banque

d'fitat

charge

all

finance except

the

unpopular tertib.

The Act

Algeciras

was

signed

by 'Abd

al-'Azlz

June.

Moroccans were opposed to the Act. Its signing was considered

not simply as

defeat but as

betrayal of his people by the sultan.

281

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE

MAGHRIB

It came in the middle of three years of famine, when the effects

of currency depreciation and rising prices were intensified.

Resentment was expressed in 1907 in scattered attacks on Euro-

peans.

These culminated in July in an attack upon the railway

outside Casablanca. In March, Lyautey had occupied the town of

Oujda just across the border with Algeria to the west of Tlemcen,

as a reprisal for the killing of the missionary doctor Mauchamps

at Marrakesh. In August a French force landed at Casablanca to

defend the city against a widespread rising in the Chaouia, the

surrounding region.

The rising in the Chaouia was a popular action joined by people

from the rest of Morocco. Localised in its opposition to the French

in Casablanca, however, it was subordinated to a country-wide

movement to depose the ineffective 'Abd al-'Aziz. the campaign

was a thoroughly traditional solution to the problems of the

country, a call for a new sultan from the royal 'Alawite family

who would defend the land of Islam against the infidels, and

restore the golden age of justice. The leadership was equally

traditional, centred on the brother of 'Abd al-'Aziz, the pasha of

Marrakesh 'Abd al-Hafiz (Abd al-Hafid). Initially it was composed

of the governors and chiefs of the south. Most prominent among

these were the great

eaids

of the High Atlas, notably the brothers

Madani and T'hami el-Glaoui (al-Glawi), who had risen to power

as supporters of the government over the past twenty or thirty

years.

Funds were collected from confiscations and gifts, and an

army assembled for the advance northwards. The campaign lasted

a year, from the proclamation of 'Abd al-Haflz at Marrakesh in

August 1907 to the abdication of'Abd al-'Aziz at Casablanca in

August 1908. Its success was due less to military victory than to

the support of

Fez,

which entailed widespread recognition of the

rebel. Defections in the south and the failure to triumph over the

French in Casablanca, on the other hand, meant that the final

defeat of 'Abd al-'Aziz as he advanced from Rabat on Marrakesh

was perhaps only just in time to prevent the movement's collapse.

As sultan, 'Abd al-Hafiz completed his victory with the

submission of the Rif. In the west, towards Tangier, the virtually

independent al-Raysuni came to terms. In the eastern Rif the

pretender Bu Himara was defeated and executed in August 1909.

That was the limit of the sultan's success. While northerners

whose loyalty he doubted were drastically dealt with, 'Abd al-Hafiz

282

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

1905-1914

was unable to break out of the constraints imposed by the Act

of Algeciras. Attempts to obtain diplomatic support and aid from

Germany and Turkey were abandoned in 1910 for yet another

French loan on terms still more severe. To find money, the tribes

around Fez and Meknes were harshly taxed. Discredited by such

brutality and such weakness, 'Abd al-Hafiz was faced by yet

another revolt in favour of a member of the royal family, his

brother Mawlay Zayn al-'Abidin, at Meknes in 1911. This was

not a conspiracy of the great. The rising of

the

tribes in the region

may have been more of an appeal to the sultan to remain true to

the hopes he had once embodied. Besieged in Fez, however, 'Abd

al-Hafiz turned in alarm to the French. Fez was relieved by a

French expedition mounted by those in favour of a quick military

solution instead of diplomatic and financial pressure. The expedi-

tion provoked the landing of Spanish troops at Larache and the

arrival of a German cruiser at Agadir, but as in 1905 the crisis

was resolved in favour of the French. While Germany recognised

the French claim to Morocco in return for concessions of territory

in the Congo, a protectorate treaty on the Tunisian model was

prepared for presentation to the sultan in March 1912.

The signing of the Treaty of Fez by 'Abd al-Haflz took place

without the effective occupation of the country by the French.

Mutiny and rioting in Fez were followed in May 1912 by a second

siege of the city by well-armed tribesmen who showed

considerable organisation and determination in their attack. This

time the enemy was clearly the French, and although the attack

was repulsed, the soldier Lyautey, appointed first French resident

minister, spent an anxious summer. In August 'Abd al-Hafiz was

removed, with a huge pension and large estates as the price of

his abdication, to make way for yet another relative as sultan.

Marrakesh and the south were dominated as before by the lords

of the High Atlas, who had done so much to bring 'Abd al-Hafiz

to power. The principal figure continued to be Madani el-Glaoui,

who had made himself unpopular at Fez by the rough methods

he had used as minister of war and grand vizier to force the tribes

to submit, and who after his dismissal in 1911 had retired to the

south to await events. He and his fellows were all inclined, despite

their mutual jealousies, to ally with the new regime. Their

calculations were only briefly upset when in that same month of

August 1912 they were obliged to fall in with the leader of

holy

283

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE MAGHRIB

war. Al-Hayba (el-Hiba), son of Shaykh Ma' al-'Aynayn, led a

mass invasion from the northern Sahara to sweep away the infidel

and proclaim himself sultan.

The movement was irresistible until

the horde was massacred on 6 September in its assault upon an

advancing French force. Al-Hayba fled, leaving the great caids to

recover their authority as allies of the French, and Lyautey to

begin the long task of reducing the country to order.

Al-Hayba continued to resist in the Sous and the northern

Sahara, where for many years his father Ma' al-'Aynayn had ruled

the tribes in their resistance to the French advances from the south

into Mauritania. Ma* al-'Aynayn had blessed the Hafidiyya, the

campaign to instal 'Abd al-Haflz, and the jihad of his son was a

logical consequence of its failure, an attempt to go still further

with an onslaught to evict the French and establish a dynasty in

place of the 'Alawites entirely. The episode demonstrates the

traditional ability of the marabout or holy man of North African

Islam to accumulate both wealth and power within the tribal

society, and in the right circumstances to step across the gap

between the man of saintly wisdom and the warlike ruler.

Those

circumstances were traditionally the collapse of the state and its

authority. In similar circumstances in Libya, the tradition proved

still more effective.

Libya

Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and the Fezzan had formed the Ottoman

province of Libya since the fall of the Qaramanli dynasty in 1835.

Since the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881, however, the

country had been regarded by Italy as her just due in North Africa.

The arguments were those which had been employed immediately

before the creation of the French protectorate to justify Italy's

claim to Tunisia, namely the proximity of the country and the

number of Italian residents, higher than that of other Europeans.

As in Tunisia, Italian investment and settlement had been

encouraged; Italians had begun to buy land and establish businesses

with the aid of the Banco di Roma. Like the French in Morocco,

• See chapter 4, p. 197.

Cf. M. Brett,

Problems in the interpretation of the history of the Maghrib in the

light of some recent publications'',

Journal of African

History,

1972, 13, ), 489-506.

284

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

1905-1914

however, occupation depended upon international consent. By

1902 this had been obtained, after years of diplomatic bargaining,

from Britain and France on the one hand, and Germany and

Austria on the other. As the ally of the Ottoman empire, Germany

nevertheless remained reluctant to countenance the complete loss

of Libya by the Turks. The situation changed only with the advent

of the Young Turks in 1908. Suspicion then mounted that

Germany and the Ottoman empire intended to halt the progress

of Italian colonisation in favour of German settlement. In

September

1911,

in the midst of the Agadir crisis in Morocco, Italy

declared war on the Ottoman empire, and in October invaded

Libya.

The pretext was an alleged threat to Italian lives from Turkish

policies. Resistance, however, was sharp. Turkish administration,

enforced by the Turkish army, was accepted in the coastal cities

as a lawful government, and particularly as a defence against the

growing threat of European rule. In the vast interior, Turkish rule

had steadily reduced the independence of tribal chiefs, though it

had promoted their establishment among peoples who had

hitherto largely dispensed with such authorities. Thus by the end

of the nineteenth century, especially in Tripolitania, a native

political elite had been constituted in the tribal population,

organised on local family lines, but educated, sometimes in

Europe or Egypt, and involved in the politics as well as in the

administration of the Ottoman empire. In 1904, adherents of the

Young Turks amongst its members had become deputies in the

Ottoman parliament. The rivals whom they had defeated in this

way in the competition for preferment welcomed the Italians as

allies,

but were outweighed by these government supporters, who

with the assistance of the Ottoman army mobilised their peoples

for war. In Cyrenaica, less well developed and more remote from

Tripoli, the Ottomans received support from the powerful Sanusi

brotherhood of marabouts, who in this crisis feared the Italians

more than they disliked the Europeanising policies of the Young

Turks.

After the initial occupation of Tripoli, Horns, Benghazi,

Derna and Tobruk, therefore, the Italians were confined to these

five ports until the Turks, under heavy pressure from the

European powers to capitulate, consented to withdraw under the

Treaty of Lausanne in October 1912. By this, they agreed first to

grant Libya independence, then to acknowledge Italian

285

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE

MAGHRIB

3gf

ntPE N

I >

^*-Ghac

jap.*

*-v~

Tripol

wJloms

TRIPOLITANIA

8IT10S

N 1 G E

Murzuq

I"--....

R \ '

Frontier as revised in 1935

but not ratified

l».lfcl Land over 1000 metre

, 300 km

' 260 miles

(

ata

Bengha

Gulf of Syrlis

•

v^^

. ,.- j "'•-..,'.:..,

i *

CHAD

_^,_Oerna '

JS^-

Akrama \.—

vSallum

CYRENAICA 1

Awjila*

2o\"E

S 30°N

Jaghbub* ^

'Jalu |

25°N

Kufra. 1

v 1

*•* 0

"••••. "" "*

'••-•. 1 I

'"'! 2sh

1 Libya, 1940

sovereignty, saving the authority of the sultan as the allegedly

spiritual head of the Muslim population.

This ambiguous formula enabled the Libyan leaders to claim

a formal legitimacy in their efforts to continue the war with the

assistance of Turkish officers who stayed behind to help organise

their resistance. While other Turkish agents vainly tried to assist

al-Hayba in Morocco, these found an effective ally in Ahmad

al-Sharif,

the Sanusi leader. Like Ma' al-'Aynayn and his son in

southern Morocco, Ahmad was in the first place a holy man. The

Sanusiyya was a Sufi brotherhood based on the

tariqa

or way of

its founder, a Moroccan whose studies had been in the Middle

East, and who had settled in Cyrenaica in the 1840s. His sons and

disciples were missionaries, engaged like the Wahhabis of Arabia

286

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

1905-1914

upon the propagation of the true faith in opposition to the spread

of European influence in the lands of Islam. In Cyrenaica they

were at the same time marabouts in the North African tradition

of holy men within the tribal society of kin groups, large and

small, which governed themselves by their alliances and enmities.

The Sanusiyya, like other marabouts, received land and other gifts

from the beduin in return for their blessing and their arbitration

in tribal disputes. By the 1890s the ^awaya (sing, s^wiya) or

settlements of the order reached southwards from its headquarters

in the oasis of Jaghbub, with its large library and school, as far

as Wadai and Darfur in the Sudan. These settlements marked the

stages of

trade route across the Sahara which the Sanusiyya had

developed, and from which the brotherhood drew still further

wealth. The route had been the means to a great extension of the

brotherhood in the Central Sudan. From there, however, it had

been driven by the French as they advanced rapidly eastwards in

the years preceding the Italian invasion. As the French stamped

out the order in the lands they had conquered, Ahmad al-Sharif

returned northwards to the oases of Kufra and Jaghbub to fight

the new enemy.

The organisation, wealth and prestige of the Sanusiyya gave it

predominance over the pastoral and agricultural tribes of the Jabal

Akhdar and the desert. Its doctrinal hostility to European

influence brought it into armed conflict with European imperial-

ism. When Ahmad al-Sharif laid claim to the whole of Ottoman

Libya as the rightful emir in succession to the Turks, he was on

the brink of the final transformation of the man of God into the

man of power, a ruler. He was nevertheless distrusted in the

coastal cities and in Tripolitania, the metropolitan province, as an

outsider. The four main tribal leaders of Tripolitania, notably

al-Baruni in the Jabal Nafusa, resisted his intrusion. They were

themselves unable to agree to cooperate, and following the Treaty

of Lausanne began to make their peace with the Italians as the

new power in the land. The Italians broke out of the five ports

in 1913 to occupy the whole of the coast apart from the barren

stretch around the Gulf of Syrtis.

287

THE MAGHRIB

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH

Morocco

By 1914 the pacification of Morocco was far from complete.

The country was nevertheless divided in ways which put an end

to the possibility of a national resistance. The sultan, upon whose

recognition as the rightful ruler over a very wide area the sense

of nationhood traditionally depended, was effectively controlled

by a new monarch, the French resident, Marshal Lyautey. The

public respect which he paid to the new Sultan Yusuf (Youssef)

and to the religion of Islam reassured the Moroccans, and turned

traditional sentiment to the advantage of the French. Royal visits

were arranged for the sultan to the principal cities of the kingdom

and to France. Islam was honoured as a national religion, with

the additional intention of discrediting the ideas of Islamic reform

emanating from the Middle East

both foreign and objectionable.

The leading families of the old regime were similarly favoured.

Gestures of this kind satisfied the Fassi (al-Fasiyun), the merchants

and scholars of Fez whose name was applied by extension to all

those throughout Morocco who shared their manners and way

of life. They found no great cause for offence and much for relief

in the establishment and gradual extension of orderly government

after years of confusion. Their business, whether it was concerned

with the traditional exchange of goods between town and

country, or with the import and export of commodities abroad,

began once again to grow. Thus when Lyautey captured Taza in

May 1914, to secure the route from Fez to the Algerian frontier,

he found himself in relatively peaceful possession of what he called

Maroc

utile,

the main cities and the plains.

The remaining parts of the country were separated from each

other. The northern region of the Rif and the Djebala in the

hinterland of Tangier and the old Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and

Melilla had been assigned to Spain under an agreement of

November 1912 by which France honoured her undertaking to

provide Spain with a share in the protectorate. This Spanish zone,

which excluded Tangier, was much smaller than the Spanish had

expected, and caused much bitterness. It was governed from

Tetuan by a Spanish high commissioner acting in conjunction

with a khafifa or deputy of the sultan, and a cabinet of three

288

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND AFTER

Moroccan ministers. The administration was

in the

hands

Moroccan caids supervised by Spanish district officers. But this

regime remained embryonic, and the region stayed quiet from

neglect. The only exception was the rebellion of al-Raysuni,

for

many years the lord of the Djebala, who had hoped

be made

khalifa. Denied the appointment, he remained independent until

forced by

more determined campaign

withdraw to

refuge

at Tazerout in 1920.

In the far south, Spain was forced to be content with the enclave

of Ifni, and the long coastal stretch of the Sahara known as the

Rio de Oro. The desert itself was still dominated by al-Hayba and

his brothers. Lyautey, without the resources to deal with al-Hayba

himself,

entrusted the defence of his southern frontier to his allies,

the great caids

the High Atlas, el-Glaoui, el-Mtouggi and

el-Goundafi.

May 1913 they drove al-Hayba from his base

Taroudant in the Sous, and established a precarious lordship over

the valley. They were likewise employed

in the

south-east

contain the tribe of the Ait Atta in the Tafilelt after the defeat of

a French expedition in 1918. Beyond the Tafilelt, which remained

independent but isolated down to 1934, the region of the northern

Sahara which Lyautey himself had conquered prior to 1905 was

largely assigned

Algeria. The remainder was entrusted

yet

another protege, Mohammed Oufkir, who had risen

power

since 1900 as an agent of the French.

The great caids of the High Atlas effectively relieved Lyautey

of direct concern for the security and administration of the whole

region centred upon Marrakesh. This delegation

authority

began

as an

expedient. With the passage

time, however,

became

permanent feature of the regime, changing as

did so

into the personal power of one man. Madani el-Glaoui remained

head of

the

Glaoua until his death in 1918, when he was succeeded

by his brother T'hami. T'hami, already pasha of Marrakesh and

the warrior

the family, took over not only from his brother

but from the rivals of the Glaoua, the Mtougga and Goundafa,

as these lost favour with the French

were deserted

their

clients.

1922

was defeated

in an

attempt

subdue

the

tribesmen of the eastern High Atlas, but by then his outstanding

position was virtually secure. Throughout the rest of the period

he ruled the region from Marrakesh despite the protests of French

officials at the means by which he obtained obedience and wealth.

289

THE

MAGHRIB

So far as Lyautey was concerned, he was able for ten years after

1913 to devote his slender resources to the pacification of the

remaining area, that of the Middle Atlas, with an extension

eastwards towards Algeria and northwards into the Rif. The most

severe fighting was with the two great chiefs Moha ou Hammou

of the Beni Zaian and Moha ou Said of the Ait Ouirra, whose

personal honour was at stake. However, the character of the

resistance is illustrated by the fact that after their defeat in 1921-2

their sons succeeded them as notably loyal allies of the French.

One by one the tribes surrendered to persuasion. The use of force

was kept to a minimum. Detailed records of alliances and enmities

between the various groups enabled the French to avoid pro-

voking a united resistance. Instead, they isolated and dealt with

each people in turn. Denial of some vital resource such as fields

in the bottom of a valley or access to a market proved more

effective than the fighting which might be required to satisfy the

honour of the group concerned. Equally important were the

inducements offered. The establishment of a military post in a

newly-pacified district meant not only sacks of grain in exchange

for the tribesmen's rifles, but the building of

new and attractive

market. The benefits were not simply commercial. Particular

groups and individuals could hope for political and social

advantages from collaboration. As the French introduced caids

into districts where they had never been known before, or simply

recognised the representative of each group, the process apparent

elsewhere in Morocco was extended into the mountains. Power,

wealth and influence came to be dependent upon a special

relationship with the new regime.

The mountainous regions, once pacified, were nevertheless

kept separate. Morocco was

protectorate on the Tunisian model,

in which the sultan in theory ruled with the advice of

the

resident,

who in turn was responsible to the ministry of foreign affairs in

Paris.

Each of the sultan's caids acted with the help of a French

official. The

caidat,

however, was not everywhere employed in the

creation of an effective administration for the entire country.

Lyautey laid stress upon a fluid distinction between the bled

el-makh^en

and the

bledes-siba,

which in the pre-protectorate period

loosely described the territory governed and taxed by the

makh^en

or state, and the land 'running free' which escaped such control.

The distinction took no account of the many ways in which the

290