Did Amrika promise Morocco's independence? The nationalist movement, the Sultan, and the making of the ‘Roosevelt Myth’

Abstract

In January 1943, the leaders of the Allied Forces met in Casablanca to discuss their war strategy. During the course of the Anfa Conference, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) had a private dinner with Sultan Mohamed ben Youssef, which came to change the course of Moroccan history. Although the details of the conversation between the two statesmen remained shrouded in mystery due to FDR's untimely death just two years later, the Moroccan side later claimed that the American leader had promised to support their country's independence once the Second World War had ended. This article sheds fresh light on both the meeting and its impact on the trajectory of Moroccan history by utilising a number of new sources. It argues that the Sultan and the local nationalist movement seized this opportunity and created a ‘Roosevelt Myth’, thus turning FDR into a saint-like figure whose anti-colonial stance legitimised their own aspirations to abolish the French and Spanish Protectorates established in 1912. Until they finally obtained complete independence in 1956, the Moroccans used FDR's supposed promise to convince the highly reluctant US diplomats and politicians to support their anti-colonial struggle. The meeting between Roosevelt and Sidi Mohamed became one of the central elements of the national historical narrative, and the memory of the late President is still very much alive in the political discourse of today's Morocco.