Tents, Palaces, and “Imperial Souvenirs”: Mobilizing cultural authority in the French Protectorate of Morocco

Abstract

ABSTRACTA press photograph taken at the 1922 National Colonial Exposition in Marseille captures Hubert Lyautey, resident general of the French Protectorate of Morocco from 1912 to 1925, departing from his own Moroccan-style imperial tent, pitched in the courtyard of the French protectorate’s pavilion. While it is tempting to understand this image as rather generic colonial propaganda built upon a visual language of Orientalizing tropes, this study argues that Lyautey’s appropriation of elite Moroccan tensile architecture indicates the early French protectorate regime’s larger strategy of exhibiting cultural authority in the service of political legitimacy in colonial Morocco.