Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
1922—1950
al-Sa'dawi
left the country in 1924, while SafI al-Din retired to
Jaghbub. In Cyrenaica the Sanusi camps were attacked by surprise
in March 1923, and many prisoners taken. Ajdabia, Idris's
official
capital, was seized, and all agreements with the Sanusiyya de-
nounced. But the
return
of the sixty-year-old 'Umar al-Mukhtar
from Cairo was the beginning of a long guerrilla war in the
Jabal
Akhdar
and the desert, in which for ten years the Italians ruled
by
day and the
partisans
by night. The war was only won from
1930
onwards, when Graziani collected the tribal population in
concentration camps by the sea, and built a 300 km barbed-wire
fence
down the Egyptian frontier. Deprived of the people on
whose
sympathy they relied, and of supplies from Egypt, the
guerrillas suffered a final blow when in September 1931 'Umar
al-Mukhtar himself was captured and hanged.
In Morocco, the
uninterrupted
progress of pacification was
rudely disturbed when the Spanish at last moved to occupy the
mountains of the Rif, where they
threatened
with their favours
to upset the tribal balance. Resistance first gathered around the
cadi of
Melilla,
a scholar and shaykh of the Rifian
tribe
of the Beni
Ouriaghel.
Typically,
however, it was the son who assumed the
leadership
of
the jihad in place
of
the venerable father. Muhammad
b.
'Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi,
better
known as Abdelkrim el
Khatabi or al-Jatavi, had with his
brother
been educated in Spain
and, like al-Baruni for example in Tripolitania, was more
than
the
traditional leader of a traditional confederation banded together
against attack. With no real rival to contend with, his achievement
against the Spaniards was certainly more spectacular
than
that
of
the Tripolitanian leaders against the Italians. In 1921 the
rout
of
the Spanish army at Anoual gave him the mastery of the Rif. To
conduct the war of religious and national liberation, a Republic
of
the Rif, with Abdelkrim as president, was proclaimed in 1922.
Directed by a central government of various ministries, the caids,
who
were appointed one to each people, helped the continual
mobilisation of the tribes in support of the small regular army of
about 2,5 00 infantry and artillery. Possession
of
the
ports
of
Nador
and Zelouan
near
Melilla facilitated the private supply
of
arms
and
military instructors from Europe, and by 1924 the Spanish were
confined to the coastal towns of Melilla, Ceuta,
Arzila
and
Larache.
No
official
aid or recognition, however, was forthcoming from
301
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MAGHRIB
any of the powers, who as in Tripolitania refused to take the claim
to republican independence seriously. Eventually, therefore,
Abdelkrim
was left alone to face a massive attack by the Spanish
and the French. The latter intervened when it seemed
that
Abdelkrim,
already a popular hero, might become the leader of
a countrywide movement for Moroccan liberation. In 1925 the
Rifians
advanced close to Fez. With his whole strategy
thus
called
in question, Lyautey was relieved of his position as commander-
in-chief, and in the New
Year
resigned as resident. On the advice
of
the expert scholar Robert Montagne, the offensive directed by
Marshal Petain was aimed at Abdelkrim's headquarters. As
predicted, the
surrender
of the leader in May 1926 entailed the
collapse
of the confederation. Abdelkrim was deported to
Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, and the Rif settled down to a
collaboration with the European authorities which produced an
army of Moroccans for the Spanish
Civil
War.
The
result seemed to confirm
that
Abdelkrim had been no more
than
a tribal leader. Certainly it made clear
that
there
would be
no short cut to national independence. Nationalism as known in
Tunisia,
which had been a minor element in the Moroccan
resistance prior to
1912,
was left on the margin of a society which
after its initial defeat had been persuaded to come to
terms
with
the conquerors. The close alliance between the French and the
traditional order which Lyautey had fostered encouraged a
conservative
resistance to the revolutionary ideas current in
Europe and the Middle East, whose newspapers were not allowed
into the country. In the 1920s the erosion of this complaisance
by
European settlement had only just begun. The failure of
Abdelkrim
restricted the nationalist opposition to a few young
men from well-to-do families who were at variance with their
elders in the
matter.
Some, educated in Paris, were Western in
outlook,
and were mostly found in the new capital, Rabat. Others
at Fez had received an Islamic education
under
the influence of
the
Salafiyya,
the movement for Islamic reform. These, represented
notably by
Allal
al-Fassi, touched the protectorate more closely
in
that
their call for religious revival was a direct attack upon the
beliefs
and practices of the influential Sufi brotherhoods in the
country, whose leaders and
chief
members, like the sharif of
Ouezzane
and T'hami el-Glaoui himself, were among the main
supporters of the regime. The group at Fez was loosely associated
502
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
1922—1
with those at Rabat, men like Ahmed Balafrej, Mohammed
el-Ouezzani and Mohammed Lyazidi, in a so-called Reform Party,
and more distantly with a group at Tetuan led by Abdelkhaleq
Torres. The French thought of them, as they thought of the
Young Algerians and Tunisians, as malcontents wanting jobs.
Moroccans suspected them because they were young.
'Muslim nationalism' was a term employed by the French in
Algeria to condemn all claims for political rights put forward or
supported by les
indigenes.
In the controversy over Muslim
representation in 1919—22, it was used especially of the demands
made by the 'emir' Khaled, grandson of the great 'Abd al-Qadir
and a former officer in the army. His call for the naturalisation
of all Algerian Muslims as French citizens, Islam notwithstanding,
resembled the programme of the Young Tunisians rather than
that of the Young Algerians, in that it was intended to enable
Muslims not to be assimilated, but to keep their cultural identity
as recognised equals of the French. In the elections of 1919-20
for the Algerian assemblies, it proved more popular with the
Muslim voters than the proposals of the Young Algerians.
Khaled's candidates were elected to the municipal council of
Algiers as well as to the territorial assemblies. But faced by
growing opposition to their 'nationalist' demands, they were
defeated in fresh elections in 1922-3. Khaled himself withdrew
his candidature and in 1923 he left for Egypt. In 1924 he moved
to France after the left-wing Cartel des Gauches had come into
power there. However, the fact that Khaled was then taken up
by the Communists lost him all sympathy among Socialists and
liberals concerned with Muslim rights. He returned to Egypt
where he died in 1936.
The Khaled affair helped to keep the concessions made to the
Muslim population in 1919 to a minimum; the
code de Pindigenat
in particular was
•
renewed at the insistence of a frightened
European population. At the same time it marked the beginning
of movements more hostile to France than the Young Algerians,
who in close alliance with the French Socialists continued the
campaign for assimilation. From 1925 the Salafiyya found an
outlet in the journal
El-Mountaqid
produced by the scholar Ben
Badis (Ibn Badis), followed by El-Chihab. Ben Badis and his
associates stood for Islam and the Arabic language as the signs
of an Algerian nation culturally if not politically independent of
303
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE
MAGHRIB
France. The idea of political independence arose in connection
with the new French Communist Party. On the one hand the
Communist International included Algeria among colonial terri-
tories to be liberated. On the other, the Algerian branch of the
party took the view that the separation of
a
Muslim Algeria from
France would destroy the unity of the working class, one of the
premises on which the French Socialists founded their Algerian
policy of total assimilation. The Communist Party in France,
strongly opposed to the Socialists, approached the question
through the recruitment and organisation of some 100,000 North
African workers in France. Their rights were defended by the
Communist-dominated Confederation Generate du Travail Uni-
taire (CGTU), whose activities extended to Algeria in competition
with the more socialist Confederation Generate du Travail (CGT).
Meanwhile an Algerian member of the Central Committee of the
party, Hadj Ali Abdelkader, was involved in the creation in France
in 1926 of an organisation and newspaper called the Etoile
Nord-Africaine. By 1927—8, the Etoile had fallen under the
control of Messali
Hadj,
for whom national independence,
especially for his own country of Algeria, the home of most of
the North African workers in France, took the place of the
ambiguous attitude of French Communism.
9
For this illegal aim,
and for the incitement of workers to revolt, the Etoile was
prohibited and dissolved in 1929. Messali Hadj and his followers
went 'underground'.
The conflict in France between Socialists and Communists had
its repercussions also in Tunisia, where it helped to delay
throughout the decade the development of a nationalist party with
an extensive organisation in the country. In 1923 Taalbi left
Tunisia for the Middle East, but the coming to power of the Cartel
des Gauches in 1924 encouraged the remaining leaders of the
Destour, Ahmed es-Safi and Salah Ferhat, to petition Paris for an
assembly which should be both more representative and more
powerful than the Grand Conseil, in accordance with the nine
points of the programme presented at the beginning of 1921.
Their campaign, however, was overtaken by the major strike of
Tunisian workers at the end of the year. Labour unrest, with
occasional violence, had resumed at Tunis immediately after the
» The origins of the Etoile are a matter of dispute: cf. Ageron,
Histoire,
II, 349; M.
Kaddache,
Histoire
du
nationalisme
algerien,
1919-19; 1 (Algiers, 1980), I, 183-9.
304
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
1922—193°
war. The extension of French union activity into North Africa
had led to the formation of a Tunisian section of the socialist CGT,
which recruited both European and Tunisian workers. In October
1924,
however, the Confederation Generate des Travailleurs
Tunisiens (CGTT) was formed with Communist approval by
Mohammed
Ali,
a Tunisian returned from Germany. In December,
dockers, cement workers and agricultural labourers in and around
Tunis struck for recognition of the new union, forcibly opposing
the continuation of work by European employees.
The resident, Lucien Saint, accused the Destour of conspiring
with the Communists in the matter, in a bid for national
independence. Obliged in this way to declare
itself,
the party
showed that it was still an association of essentially moderate
intellectuals from the upper classes of the capital, who hesitated
to commit themselves to the radical populism which their political
demands implied. Rejecting the resident's accusation, the Destour
hastened to join with the Socialists in condemning the strike and
calling for the dissolution of the CGTT. Its hope of obtaining a
sympathetic hearing for its proposals for constitutional reform
within the framework of the protectorate was nevertheless
deceived. While the CGTT was dissolved in February 1925, and
Muhammed Ali and certain Communists were tried and
imprisoned, the French commission sent to Tunisia to study the
possibility of reform recommended only minor changes. At the
beginning of 1926, as Salah Ferhat drew the conclusion that only
independence would serve, decrees prohibited any criticism of or
activity against the protectorate on pain of fines, imprisonment
and
exile.
Until the departure of Lucien Saint in 1929, the Destour
remained incapable of overt action. More important, it had lost
a great deal of its popularity.
Changes
in the Muslim community
Good harvests in Algeria and Tunisia no doubt accounted for
some of the peacefulness of French North Africa during the last
years of the 1920s. Impoverishment was briefly disguised. The
factors, however, remained constant. In Algeria the burden of
taxation on the Muslim poor apparently remained the same
despite the abolition of the impots
arabes.
10
The Muslim population
10
C.-R. Ageron, Poliliques
coloniales
au Magbreb (Paris, 1972), 231-48.
3°5
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MAGHRIB
continued to increase, despite the mortality of the war and the
years of influenza, famine and typhus,
1918-21:
it numbered
around four million at the beginning of the century, almost five
million in 1921 and 5.6 million in 1931. Of these, about 550,000,
rather more than half
the
number of adult males, owned land, but
70 per cent owned an average of four hectares each in a country
where 12-20 hectares was considered the minimum needed to
make a living; 23 per cent had just about enough.
11
The
inadequacy of these tiny holdings appears from the total cereal
production of the country which, despite the efforts of European
agriculture and the recovery towards the end of the 1920s, was
down by an average of 20 per cent from pre-war yields in the
course of the decade. Agricultural wage labourers were no more
than 160,000; the old-fashioned tenant sharecropper was vanish-
ing. Many in the countryside had little or no employment.
Vagrants were common; in bad years their numbers increased,
and they became dangerous.
Dispossession coupled with a corresponding growth in popula-
tion produced similar results in Tunisia and Morocco, if not to
the same extent. In 1931 the Muslim population of Tunisia stood
at
2,15
9,000,
an increase of 270,000 during the previous ten years;
of this increase, 200,000 was in the rural population. The area of
land under native cultivation correspondingfy increased to well
over a million hectares sown for cereals, but with almost a third
of the cultivable area in the north (the best land for the purpose)
taken up by colonists, much of this increase was on land largely
unsuitable for crops. For Morocco the collection of statistics was
not yet satisfactory.
12
A growth in the area under cultivation may
have been partly due to the end of feuding, which made it possible
to venture farther from home. But certainly in the northern and
western lowlands, tribesmen were induced to part with, or simply
forced off, their usual territory. It was the pastoral tribes who were
most affected as enclosures made their migrations increasingly
difficult. Throughout North Africa the number of animals tended
to fall, although nowhere so drastically as in Algeria, where the
" Ageron,
Histoire,
II, 294-5, 469-79, 507-15.
12
Censuses in 1936 gave a figure of almost seven million for the native population
of the French and Spanish zones, which may be too high but may well reflect a
substantial increase since the beginning of the century. Cf. Great Britain: Admiralty
(Naval Intelligence Division),
Morocco,
II (1942), 32-9; J. Despois, UAfrique du Nord
(second edn., Paris, 1958), 185.
306
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
1922—193°
number of sheep, for example, had fallen from nine million before
the war to five million by 1930. It was an aspect of that
sedentarisation and settlement on marginal land which in Algeria
was at its most extreme.
Little was done to help the peasant adapt. Credit made available
by the state was tiny by comparison with that provided for
European agriculture, despite some improvement. In Algeria,
little was achieved by agricultural co-operative societies, first
introduced in
1893.
In Tunisia on the other hand, the co-operative
societies created in 1907 were reinforced by a special office set up
in 1925 to make government loans to native farmers. In 1928 these
loans exceeded 8m francs (£70,000 at the current inflated rate of
exchange). Land itself was distributed for settlement on a
considerable scale, although in small lots of five to ten hectares,
compared to those of hundreds of hectares for Europeans. Almost
200,000 hectares had been allocated in this way by 1930. Distribu-
tions of this kind in Morocco had scarcely begun; nevertheless
provident societies multiplied from 1917. Farmers paid their
contribution by law along with their basic tax, the tertib, and
received in return a minimum of insurance against natural
disaster, and access to small loans which reduced their dependence
on usury.
13
Once again, the Moroccan protectorate proceeded less
inequitably than the regimes elsewhere.
Nevertheless, peasants were largely left to help themselves.
From 1920 this increasingly meant migration. In Algeria, the
denser areas of European settlement, like the Mitidja plain near
Algiers, received an influx from the barren outskirts of the
cultivable area. More and more people, however, found their way
to the towns. In 1920 the urban population of Algeria and Tunisia
was about 20 per cent of the whole, much less in Morocco. Up
to half this percentage was accounted for by Europeans. By 1930
the percentages had increased, markedly so in Morocco. In ten
years of population growth, even small increases of 2-3 per cent
as in Tunisia meant a substantial rise in actual numbers, especially
in the case of the Muslims. In Tunisia the number of Muslims in
the towns went up by 70,000 from the post-war figure of 310,000.
In Algeria the increase was over 100,000, to about 600,000. Still
more important in Algeria was the number of young adult males
who went outside the country altogether, up to 100,000 working
11
Cf. chapter 7, p. 377.
3O7
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MAGHRIB
in France at any one time. About half came from the relatively
well-populated region of Kabylia, which became heavily de-
pendent upon their remittances to keep their extensive families
still in place in the poverty-stricken countryside.
European resistance to this emigration had been undermined
by the abolition of the need for Muslim travel permits in 1913,
followed immediately by the recruitment of North Africans to
work in France during the war; the 1924 requirement that
emigrants should have guarantees of employment in France was
rescinded as unlawful in 1926, following the protests of the Young
Algerians in the Algerian assemblies and the Muslim press. The
fear of Europeans was for the supply of cheap labour. Despite the
growth of population, this was not a simple question of numbers,
either in agriculture or in industry, but of the different require-
ments of employers and workers. J. Despois, who taught geo-
graphy at the Sadiki College, argued that agricultural wages in
Tunisia were driven up partly because nomads, traditionally
available for seasonal chores, were now sedentarised and occupied
with their own plots, and partly because of the money to be had
in the towns. This was doubly bad because high wages made
Tunisians disinclined to work more than part-time; they had not
learnt to appreciate the long-term benefits of earning as much as
possible by sustained effort. Mining suffered in the same way,
especially in years of good harvests; labour had to be imported
from Algeria and Libya. Still greater increases in population were
needed to undermine this attitude, and provide a workforce of
the right size and quality in industry as well as agriculture.
14
Even in Algeria, that goal was still in the future. The attitude
of which Despois complained was rooted in a basic need to remain
at home, economically and socially, on the land, within the
community. The workman left his land and his family in response
to both need and opportunity, but as far as possible temporarily.
Seasonal employment at harvest time was a familiar feature of the
traditional economy, as was sharecropping to eke out an
insufficient patrimony. The European economy imposed new
constraints, which reduced the value of such traditional occupa-
tions.
At the same time it created fresh activities which could fulfil
the same purpose of contributing to an existing way of life. In
Morocco, and even in Tunisia, the opportunities to supplement
14
J. Despois, La
Tunisie
(Paris, 19J0), 144-6.
308
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
1922-193°
the family income might well outweigh the need to do so; in
Algeria, the need was likely to outweigh the opportunity, obliging
the workman to go as far as France for a job he might not find.
The basic attitude to wage labour nevertheless endured, and while
it might seem unsatisfactory to the European employer, in many
cases it did provide him with workers of the quality desired.
The departure of young men to the towns in search of
employment dated back to pre-colonial days, and was accelerated
with the growth of the European city. The growing facility of
transport by rail, by coastal shipping, and especially by road with
the advent of the motor-vehicle from
1919
onwards, together with
the expansion of the cash economy, made it both much easier to
travel over long distances and to retain close links with home. For
Europeans, therefore, the local labour market was swollen by
immigrants with the same motivation as the people in the vicinity,
but who were prepared, because they were far from home, to work
steadily for two or three years at a time for as much as they could
get from the one job. This willingness went with a tendency,
likewise dating back to the pre-colonial period, for immigrants
from a particular area to concentrate in one particular occupation
which they would monopolise to their advantage. Europeans thus
found themselves employing, through native foremen, groups of
workers from an often remote region who were not only fairly
satisfactory in themselves but who would, after completing their
spell of work, arrange for an equally satisfactory replacement from
their own people. This was especially apparent in Morocco, both
in Casablanca and in the
mines.
In French North Africa
as a
whole,
migrants originally constituted the bulk of the indigenous mine
labour force, whose numbers rose to over 40,000 between the
world wars. By the end of our period, however, migrants were
in a minority, for permanent settlements with resident mine-
workers grew up around the mines, for example at Khouribga and
Louis-Gentil in Morocco, or Metlaoui and Redeyef in Tunisia.
The growth of the new mining towns shows how the migrant
gradually turned into the permanent immigrant, without necessa-
rily losing all connection with his homeland, and certainly
without renouncing his membership of the community of im-
migrants from that homeland. This membership was essential, not
merely for success, but often for survival in an urban situation.
The traditional urban population clung to what remained of its
309
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
THE MAGHRIB
livelihood after the decline of the crafts and trades of the old
medinas.
Families of newcomers settled around the European as
well as the native quarters. In small market towns, the problems
of such growth were manageable, but in the big cities the rapid
expansion of the slums quickly defeated the authorities. Not all
could gain a living by working for Europeans, for industry was
confined to building, public works and utilities, and the manu-
facture of cement and foodstuffs.
Instead, many of the new townsmen turned to trade. The
hillmen of southern Tunisia made a modest living selling news-
papers and cooked food on the streets of Tunis. But for many
years the Ibadites of the Mzab in the northern Sahara had been
active in the retail trade of Algeria, especially in groceries and
textiles, where they predominated. In Morocco, even before the
pacification of the Sous, the Swasa or people of the Sous had come
north, first of all into western Algeria, where at Oran they
specialised in the grocery trade for the European market. Recruited
as workers during the First World War, they became shopkeepers
in the suburbs of Paris. In the northern cities of Morocco in the
1920s, they were on the way to dominance in the retail trade in
foodstuffs, moving into tobacco, hardware, cafes, restaurants and
small hotels, preparing to enter the wholesale business. In all these
cases,
the occupations were developed by men who came north
in relays under the care of the older and more successful members
of their communities.
For some there was real prosperity, as when the Mzabis and
the Swasa accumulated capital in excess of what they needed to
send back or invest at home. Others from the traditional
bourgeoisie of the old cities had already made their fortune out
of imported commodities, for example as wholesalers to the retail
trade in town and country. In Morocco the Fassis, the merchants
of Fez, had taken the opportunity to move into Casablanca, where
their wealth and experience enabled them to patronise retailers like
the Swasa until these in turn made good. The commodities they
dealt in were basic, cereals for export, tea, sugar, coffee and fine
fabrics for import. From the ports where their business was
concentrated, dealers extended their operations inland. Alongside
the Muslims were the Jews, who numbered in 1930 about 130,000
in Morocco, 110,000 in Algeria and 60,000 in Tunisia, some 2 per
cent of the population of each country. Traditionally artisans and
310
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008