The Maghreb Review, Vol. 40, 1, 2015 © The Maghreb Review 2015 This publication is printed on longlife paper THE MOROCCAN COLONIAL ARCHIVE AND THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF MOROCCAN RESISTANCE EDMUND BURKE III* Although the period 1900–12 was replete with numerous important social upheavals and insurrections, many of which directly threatened the French position in Morocco, none of them generated a contemporaneous French effort to discover what had gone wrong. Instead, the movements were coded as manifestations of supposedly traditional Moroccan anarchy and xenophobia and as such, devoid of political meaning. On the face of it, this finding is surprising. How could a French policy that billed itself as scientific imperialism fail to consider the socio-genesis of Moroccan protest and resistance? Despite its impressive achievements, the Moroccan colonial archive remains haunted by the inability of researchers to pierce the cloud of orientalist stereotypes that occluded their vision of Moroccan society as it actually was. For most historians, the period of Moroccan history between 1900 and 1912 is primarily known as ‘the Moroccan question’. A history of the Moroccan question centring on Morocco was impossible for Europeans to imagine. Moroccan history was of interest only in so far as it shed light on the diplomatic origins of the first world war. European diplomats were the main actors in this drama, while Moroccans were pushed to the sidelines or reduced to vulgar stereotypes: the foolish and spendthrift sultan, Abd al-Aziz, and his fanatic and anarchic people. Such an approach has a degree of plausibility, since the Moroccan question’s chronology does provide a convenient way of structuring events: the Anglo-French Accord (1904), the landing of the kaiser at Tangier (1905), the Algeciras conference (1906), the landing of French troops at Casablanca (1907), the Agadir incident (1911) and the signing of the protectorate treaty (1912). But while these dates helped define the available options to Moroccan leaders, they did not constitute essential developments in a more specifically Moroccan context and do not provide much assistance to those seeking a stronger grip on events. Any review of Moroccan history in the period 1900–12 must necessarily come to terms with the ubiquity and importance of Moroccan protest and resistance, which runs as a leitmotif through the entire period. Protest and resistance began early, and was persistent over the entire national territory. Thousands of Moroccans, both elites and popular classes, rural and urban, Arab and Berber and all types of people – tribesmen, peasants and city dwellers – fought against the French and other Moroccans. Other Moroccans decided to play the French * University of California, Santa Cruz THE MOROCCAN COLONIAL ARCHIVE 109 card, while most Moroccans preferred to remain on the sidelines. Those who could not recalculated the odds and shifted sides continuously, all the while trying desperately not to be noticed. By the time of the signature of the Treaty of Fez (31 March 1912), most elite Moroccans were prepared to acquiesce in the French takeover and to accept the obvious. Because French efforts to conquer Morocco were both uncertain and piecemeal, Moroccan protest and resistance themselves were partial and unsystematic. A brief overview of the main chronological markers of this more specifically Moroccan history is useful before we proceed further.1 An alternative Moroccan chronology of the period begins in 1900 with the death of the regent, Ba Ahmad, and the French conquest of the Tuat oases in the Sahara. Tuat was the first piece of Moroccan territory to be lost to France (the Algerian colonial administration disagreed with this perspective). This event coincided with the coming to power of the boy sultan, Abd al-Aziz.2 Already by the end of the previous century powerful rural magnates (the famous Lords of the Atlas) had emerged in the High Atlas Mountains. Armed with modern rifles and artillery provided by the makhzan, they lived like grands seigneurs in picturesque castles, and imposed their rule over a newly servile peasantry. At the time Moroccan society was wracked by numerous struggles, as corrupt elites vied for political favours at court and juicy contracts with European firms while rural society stagnated, and urban artisans found themselves increasingly undermined by an influx of cheap imported goods. Rural...