The Imperialism of French Decolonisaton

French Policy and the Anglo-American Response in Tunisia and Morocco

Ryo Ikeda

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781349676521
  9781137368942
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137368959
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

This book examines French motivations behind the decolonisation of Tunisia and Morocco and the intra-Western Alliance relationships. It argues that changing French policy towards decolonisation brought about the unexpectedly quick process of independence of dependencies in the post-WWII era.

1

Tunisia and Morocco under French Protectorates

Tunisia became a French protectorate when the Treaty of Bardo was concluded on 12 May 1881. This treaty allowed France to control certain geographical areas under the guise of re-establishing order and protecting the Bey from internal opposition, and also allowed French diplomatic agents to protect Tunisian interests in foreign countries. Then the Convention of Marsa of 8 June 1883 gave France a right to intervene in Tunisia’s domestic affairs. Now Tunisia was placed under the control of the French Resident-General. Morocco became a protectorate as a result of the conclusion of the Treaty of Fez on 30 March 1912, whereas the coast area along the Strait of Gibraltar was ceded to Spain with the exception of the Tangier zone in November 1912. The Treaty of Fez gave France the right to occupy certain parts of Morocco with the same pretext as in Tunisia, that is, the protection of the sovereig from internal opposition, and to hold actual reins of power while preserving the mask of indirect rule consisted of the Sultan and the Sharifian government.¹ The Treaty also provided that only the French Resident-General was capable of representing Morocco in foreign countries. Thus subject to the Resident-General’s absolute power, the two countries lost almost all autonomy not only in external but also internal affairs. The Resident-Generals had strong powers to formulate specific plans, the outline of which was decided by Paris, and to make decisions on the methods by which to negotiate with local representatives. Tunisia and Morocco would henceforth absorb a great number of settlers from European countries,² but for the most part Tunisia remained an Arabic country and Morocco Arabic and Berber.³

Thus France made the two countries protectorates, and therefore local rulers and corresponding state machinery were retained. This fact resulted in several important consequences. First, France started to commit itself to modernising them. Under the protectorate regimes, both countries were to be equipped with certain modern political institutions like the Grand Council in Tunisia and the Government Council in Morocco. Yet the real French aim was not only at wooing the locals’ grievances but also at institutionalising the rights and interests of French settlers. Second, unlike Algeria, both countries did not become France’s departments and preserved indigenous state machinery. The sovereigns of the two countries retained the right to sign the decrees, called dahirs in Morocco, which were submitted by the Resident-Generals. This was an important right, because in the post-World War II era it would enable both sovereigns to resist French attempts to impose projects on their countries. Third, a sense that they formed a community separate from France was developed, and therefore nationalist sentiments grew relatively easily in comparison to sub-Saharan territories where peoples had more aspirations to assimilation until the mid-1950s. Fourth, as a certain indigenous hierarchy remained, the French had fewer difficulties in finding a group or an individual to whom they would be able to transfer power in the future decolonisation process than in the Algerian case. This partly explains why the two countries’ decolonisation process was not to be as violent as Algeria’s.

After 1881, France moved into key positions at all levels of government in Tunisia while carefully maintaining a semblance of Tunisian rule but forcing the Tunisian prime minister to have a French adviser. The process of French infiltration continued as the commander of the French occupation forces became minister of war in the Tunisian government. In the provinces, caids, who were the heads of each tribe, held a semi-independent status, but a system of French civil controllers was established in 1884 who introduced central government supervision over the caids.⁴ Overall, the French protectorate met no serious opposition from the Tunisians.⁵

Undoubtedly encouraged by US President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points of 1918 which implicitly referred to national self-determination, the Destour party, or le Parti Libéral Constitutionnel, was established in Tunisia in February 1920. The party demanded the termination of the protectorate but did not exclude negotiations with France.⁶ In April 1922, Nanceur Bey called for a constitutional guarantee for the Tunisian people, but was forced to withdraw this request by the Resident-General.⁷ This event prompted the French authorities to react in two ways: firstly, France began to promote the emigration of French people to Tunisia, though so far Italian immigrants held a majority. Secondly, in July 1922 it was decided to establish the Grand Council at the national level and the Prefectural Council (le Conseil des Caïdat) at local levels.⁸ This represented French concessions in the sense that now the Tunisians were allowed to voice their opinion in making decrees, but both types of assemblies were consultative in character, so indigenous people remained unable to affect decision-making substantively.

In March 1934 the Destour party broke up into the Neo-Destour, led by Habib Bourguiba, and the Vieux-Destour. The former recruited its members mostly from moderate intellectuals, while the latter did so from the religious bourgeoisie. Based on grass-roots mass movements, the former was inclined to seek gradual transition to greater Tunisian autonomy while safeguarding legitimate French interests. On the other hand, the Vieux tended to be radical, putting more emphasis on pan-Arab solidarity. Especially after World War II the Neo-Destour was inclined to seek independence through negotiations, whereas the Vieux-Destour came to denounce the Neo-Destour for close collaboration with the French.⁹ In 1936 Bourguiba started to demand Tunisian greater autonomy from France. Referring to the idea of co-sovereignty, the Bardo Treaty guaranteed a distinct Tunisian sovereignty, according to him.¹⁰ Actually, it is the idea of co-sovereignty that represented a complex and variable legal status of Tunisian sovereignty. As Lewis vividly reveals, first invented as a concept to justify ascribing French nationality to Europeans born in Tunisia, this term was, after World War II, to be taken by French settlers to mean that they were themselves ‘sovereign’ over Tunisian territory and consequently should have a permanent role in governing the protectorate.¹¹

Unlike in Tunisia, Moroccan affairs were far from stable; the Sultan’s agreement to establish the protectorate in Northern Morocco did not mean a French conquest of the whole territory. France wasted no time in penetrating into Southern Morocco, populated mostly by the Berbers, and started the suppression of the opposition through military operations called pacification. In this process the French authorities distributed the captured lands to warlords who collaborated with them. The French appointed them as pashas and caids, with almost a free hand in each area, and armed these tribal overlords with modern weapons.¹² There were four phases of pacification: the first was 1912–1914, intended to subjugate an area called bled Maghzen which had traditionally been under the Sultan’s control. The second was to vanquish the Middle Atlas from 1914 to 1920, and the third was to suppress an armed revolt of the Rif rebels which lasted from 1921 to 1926. Led by the Abd al-Krim family from the Spanish zone, the Rifians defeated the Spanish force and founded ‘the Rifian Republic’. Alarmed by this, France intervened and the Abd al-Karim finally surrendered to its troops under the command of General Philippe Pétain.¹³ The final stage lasted from 1930 to 1934 which conquered the High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas, and the edge of the Sahara. Thus more than 20 years were required before order was restored under the authority of the Sultan, and therefore of France.¹⁴

The conquest of Southern Morocco did not destroy its feudal social structure which was based on tribes. Si T’hami el-Glaoui, Pasha of Marrakech and the head of these Berber tribes, was at the top of this structure with enormously concentrated power.¹⁵ Importantly, French troops in Morocco were recruited among the Berber people. This was indeed a classic example of French ‘divide and rule’ policy,¹⁶ because the French greatly helped el-Glaoui to establish his own position with the purpose of making him a counter-force to the Sultan. As a part of this policy, the so-called Berber dahir was issued in May 1930, by which the Berber populations were administratively divided from the Arab ones, and were allowed to be governed by their own customary tribunals and courts of appeal instead of the Islamic sharia courts, though the Berbers were Muslims. In other words, this dahir was meant to drive a wedge between the Arabs and the Berbers, thereby facilitating French control. The Arab population’s harsh protest movements made the Residency retreat, and troubles subsided as a result of the Sultan’s letter of August 1930 to allow the Berbers to submit to the rule of sharia if they wished. This revolt was to be an embryo of nationalist movements in Morocco.¹⁷

After the outbreak of World War II and France’s surrender, Vichy France and Gaullist France were subject to international pressure for the liberation of their colonies, as the Atlantic Charter in July 1941 stated the Anglo-American wish ‘to see sovereignty and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them’.¹⁸ On 30 May 1942, the Soviet Union approved the principle of putting all the European colonies under international supervision. Faced with violent protests from the British, however, the United States suggested at the conferences of Cairo and Teheran that an international trusteeship be applied only to the French colonies, although this proposal did not bear fruit.¹⁹ These developments made the French suspicious that the Anglo-Americans might intend to eject France from its overseas territories. This suspicion was to be strengthened by the events of the summer of 1945 when French troops would be forced to withdraw from Syria and Lebanon by the British.²⁰

After Anglo-American forces landed in North Africa in November 1942, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a dinner party in January 1943 in honour of Mohammed V in Anfa, a suburb of Casablanca.²¹ There was a rumour that Roosevelt promised him independence, but irrespective of whether the US promise was true or not, this event was bound to boost nationalist sentiment. The awakening of Arab nationalism culminated in the establishment of the Istiqlal, the largest nationalist party in Morocco, on 10 December 1943, with Allal el-Fassi as President and Ahmed Balafrej as Secretary-General. It issued a manifesto reclaiming Morocco’s independence to the Sultan, the French, the British and the Americans on 11 January 1944, urging the Sultan to take the initiative in negotiations with ‘interested nations ... whose object would be the recognition ... of that independence’.²² Angered by this act, the French authorities in Morocco arrested the Istiqlal leaders. Significantly, soon after its foundation, the party already aimed to attract international support to the nationalist cause.

The French Committee of National Liberation, which had been founded in Alger in June 1943, opened the Brazzaville Conference on 30 January 1944. With the chair of Charles de Gaulle as its sole established President, the Conference’s goal was to ‘determine on what practical bases a French community including the territories of Black Africa could be gradually established’.²³ Given Roosevelt’s hostility to colonial regimes, it was considered urgent to modernise French method and concepts of colonial rule, though by making clear that there was no question of African independence.²⁴ Its result turned out to be very disappointing for the nationalists. The Brazzaville recommendations stated: ‘the objectives of the work of civilisation accomplished by France in the colonies exclude any idea of autonomy, any possibility of evolution outside the French imperial bloc; the constitution of “self-governments” [sic] in the colonies, even in the distant future, is to be excluded’.²⁵ Indeed, this position was to constitute the original framework of French policy towards its overseas territories, not only in Black Africa but also in North Africa in the post-war era. This was in stark contrast to Britain’s colonial goal: ‘the ultimate, if distant, aim of British colonial policy was evolution towards self-government’, as Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald announced in 1938.²⁶

The doctrines that underlay the recommendations were assimilation and association. The two ideas should be elucidated here. The former can be described as an idea that aims ‘by giving the colonies institutions analogous to those of metropolitan France, little by little ... realizes their intimate union through the application of common legislation’.²⁷ Offered as the antidote to assimilation, association is a more flexible and practical type of colonial rule, aiming to retain native institutions.²⁸ It was expected this would better serve as a means of gaining native cooperation. The Brazzaville Conference recommendations contained these two different doctrines: on the one hand, the highly centralised political unity was asserted, as mentioned above; on the other, however, the need to respect traditional society was also emphasised. Thus the recommendations represented what Tony Chafer called ‘an uneasy balancing act’ b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Tunisia and Morocco under French Protectorates
• 2  The Commencement of Negotiations
• 3  The UN Debates in 1951
• 4  The UN Debates in 1952
• 5  The Impasse
• 6  Tunisias Internal Autonomy
• 7  The Restoration of Mohammed V
• 8  Towards the Recognition of Independence
• 9  The Establishment of Diplomatic Relations
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: The Key Texts
• Appendix 2: List of Key Persons
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index