‘Not a drop for the settlers’: reimagining popular protest and anti-colonial nationalism in the Moroccan Protectorate

Abstract

This article reevaluates the so-called Meknès water riots of 1937 as a way to understand how rural economic decline and the contest over natural resources during the Protectorate period sparked anti-colonial protest in Morocco. The ‘riots’ have long been considered an early example of Moroccans unifying under the banner of an emergent anti-colonial nationalism. This article argues, however, that the revolt cannot be adequately conceptualised as simply a reflection of the nationalist message based on the rehabilitation of the Alawi sultan and Islamic scriptural reform. When situated in the long-term transformations of the regional economy, urban infrastructure and local forms of religious power, the protest emerges as an organic and powerful attempt by Meknès residents to reclaim local sovereignty over natural resources that had been wrested away from their pre-Protectorate arbiters by the sultan's government and French forces. Popular action in Meknès took many forms based on a range of local logics that had little to do with abstract questions of national rebirth and was often diametrically opposed both to nationalist groups from outside the city and to the sultan's government.

Keywords:

• Moroccan protectorate
• nationalism
• popular protest
• environmental sovereignty

Notes

1. A.D., D.I., 344, Bulletin de renseignements 24, 15 September 1937. The old city received 38 l/s of water for private use and for public baths and fountains. The new model planned to divert 20 l/s to Tanout. M. Chardeeaux, an engineer for the Services des ponts et chaussées, published his assessment of the medina's dire water shortages in the journal Nord-Sud (October, 1937).

2. The majority of the articles from 1936 to 1937 were published in Al-Moghreb, Al-Atlas, and the intermittently prohibited L'Action Populaire, all nationalist journals published in Fez and Rabat. See Baida (1996).

3. A.D., D.I., 344, Note de Renseignements, 13 September 1937. Ahmed ben Chekroun, Moulay Driss el Menouni, Mohammad ben Azouz, Mohamad el Madani and Mohammad ben Berrada were all committed nationalists with close ties to the Fez-based leadership.

4. In the Protectorate system, the controleur civil was the chief regional official of the French civil administration.

5. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Note de Renseignements, September, 1937.

6. The initial toll counted 13 dead; at least 10 would die of injuries in the coming weeks. A.D., D.I., 344, Notice de Renseignements, 158C, September 10, 1937; Région de Meknès, 134, Bulletin de Renseignements, 38S, 20 September 1937.

7. Details of the story were grossly exaggerated in many cases. The Sydney Morning Herald, for example, reported that, ‘10,000 natives, many armed with rifles clashed with troops and caused at least fifty injuries to the forces of order while suffering fifteen casualties.’ ‘Riots in French-Morocco,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 3 September 1937.

8. Makhzan came to mean, for French reformers, the ensemble of offices and institutions that made up the sultan's government. The Arabic definition of ‘makhzan’ as a ‘storehouse’ or ‘treasury’ is revelatory of the North African conception of government as a vehicle for extracting wealth from the population.

9. See also Bazzaz (2008).

10. A 2007 law established a budget and timeline for the creation of a National Archive ‘to promote a rational and pluralistic history.’ In 2011 the Equity and Reconciliation Committee (IER) and the National Human Rights Council of Morocco urged the state ‘to establish a scientific and peaceful relation with our history and memory.’ The IER made the recommendation after ‘discovering to what extent a part of the public and private archives was degraded, and due to the absence of a national modern institutional framework responsible for the collection, sorting and preservation of archives’ (Anon 2011)

11. There are, of course, compelling recent exceptions to this historiographical trend. See, for example, Lawrence (2012), Wyrtzen (2009) and Holden (2009).

12. These negotiations were distinct departures from Maliki interpretation of the Qur'an, which does not allow for ‘ownership’ of water. Historically, the more ecologically precarious the region in the Maghrib, the more resistant residents were to impositions of shari‘a by representatives of the makhzan.

13. The memberships of the major orders in the Meknès region fluctuated throughout the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the 1930s, the Nasiriyya order arguably commanded the most endowed properties in the city while having the smallest membership. French observers estimated – not without a dash of hyperbole – that ‘three-quarters of the medina belong to the Aissaoua order.’ A.D., Région de Meknès, 135, Services Municipaux, 1937.

14. BnM., F234, Service Topographique Chérifien, 2 June 1927 (fiche #1763), Statistiques des réquisitions déposées annuellement.

15. The French industrialist Eugène Regnault leased for 40 years all the land claimed by Moulay ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Hassan al-Alawi, a powerful caid of the Haouz, Rharb and Fez regions and brother of sultans Moulay ‘Abd al-‘Aziz and Moulay Hafid. Determining the extent of ‘al-Kebir's’ substantial land holdings took decades of circuitous litigation at various levels of the makhzan and Protectorate governments and involved countless members of the governmental and private financial spheres. Ultimately the company gained control of thousands of hectares of land throughout the Protectorate (Pascon and Hall 1986, 103–111).

16. A handful of private firms (Associations syndicates agricoles privilégiés [ASAP]) were able to purchase access rights to public domain water for use in modern irrigation works.

17. Archives Nationales de la France [A.N.], 475, 7, document 75: ‘Letter: Abdelqader Tazi to General DeCherd,’ October, 1923. Although the revolt in 1920 long predated any recognisably nationalist organisation in Morocco, Al-Fasi claims it as one of his nationalist group's many accomplishments (1954, 117).

18. The average size of a colon farm at this time was 250 hectares (Swearingen 1988, 20).

19. A.D., Région de Meknès, 135, Circulaire, 650A, January, 1938.

20. Approximately 5–10% of the populations of Meknès and Fez lived in peripheral shanty-towns by the end of the 1930s; in Casablanca the figure may have been as high as 20% (Seddon 1980, 226).

21. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Note de Renseignements, October, 1937.

22. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Letter, Division de santé et hygiène publique, October, 1937.

23. A.D., Région de Meknès, 243, Enquête sur le problème des migrations, Contrôleur civil-Chef des services municipaux, January, 1938.

24. A.D., Région de Meknès, 243, Enquête sur le problème des migrations, Contrôleur civil-Chef des services municipaux, January, 1938. Most of the increased budget for the SM came from the sale of previously inalienable properties. The SC relied more on private donations matched by the Ministry of Habous.

25. A.D., D.I., 344, Correspondance: contrôleur civil, 1931.

26. Wazani resigned his post as secretary general and formed a splinter group, Action Nationale, which he claimed would move away from the religious orientation of Hizb al-Watani and focus on a party programme along the lines of the French ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen’ that would press for national independence and not simply reform of the Protectorate system. The split between Wazani and al-Fasi was as much personal as doctrinal. Wazani never published anything along the lines of his proposed ‘Declaration’ and only years later developed a programme that was distinguishable from the reform-oriented Hizb al-Watani.

27. A.D., D.I., 344, Note de Renseignements, 4148; Région de Meknès, 180, Services Municipaux, January, 1938.

28. Bibliothèque Nationale du Maroc [BnM], F202, Rapport Trimestrielle de Meknès, December, 1936.

29. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Note, Summer, 1936.

30. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Sureté Général, Procès-verbaux, 234–258, Summer, 1937.

31. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Bureau de Sureté Régionale, June, 1937. Petition reprinted in al-Wazani (1937).

32. Petition reprinted in al-Wazani (1937).

33. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Bulletin de Renseignements, September, 1937.

34. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Letter, Contrôleur civil à la Résidence, October, 1937.

35. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Services municipaux, 158/C, September 10, 1937.

36. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Note, September, 1937.

37. A.D., D.I., 344, Bulletin de Renseignements, 24BR, September, 1937.

38. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Rapport, 139A, September, 1937.

39. A.D., D.I., 344, Notice de Renseignements, 158C September 10; Bulletin de renseignements politiques, 1BR, 5 January 1938.

40. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Rapport, 1904C, 5 September 1937.

41. Dahir of June 29, 1935: ‘Repression of manifestations or attacks against the dignity of makhzan authority.’ Fifty-five participants arrested on the night of 2 September were tried in the makhzan criminal court and received punishments ranging from heavy fines to six months in civil prison. Five protesters were called before a French-makhzan military tribunal for ‘armed attacks against the army’ and received the maximum penalty of five years in prison.

42. Copies of the Arabic letters found at the BnM, F254, Questions musulmanes, 1938; F278, Notes: politique et droit, 1938.

43. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Sureté Général, note, 728, 11 October 1937.

44. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Bulletin de Renseignements, 70BR, November, 1937.

45. French sources say that Hizb-al Watani offered upwards of eight francs a day to recruits – an exhorbitant amount considering the domestic economy of most rural Moroccans at the time. A.D., Région de Meknès, 253, Note: nationalism et les tribus, October, 1937.

46. The Services municipaux changed the amount of water to be redirected to Tanout from 20 l/s to 12 l/s and added 400,000 francs to the Habous fund for public works employment. A.D., Région de Meknès, 250, Renseignements, September, 1937.

47. French files note Saidi Laraichi, Mekki Baddou and Djillali ould Menouar leading the people at the Bab Berlaïn mosque.

48. The Latif was a prayer reserved for times of calamity, which was considered seditious and had been prohibited by the sultan's vizier al-Mokri in 1930.

49. Well-known nationalist journalists who were either on the scene or arrived the following day included Mohammad ben Layzid from Al-Atlas, Mohammad ben Moussa from As-Saada and Mohammad al-Left from L'Action du Peuple. Correspondents from the European and Middle Eastern press arrived by 4 September, while many Algerian, Tunisian and Egyptian journals simply reproduced existing accounts. A.D., D.I., 344, Bulletin de Renseignements, NP 165; lettre, Sûreté régionale de Meknès, 717S.

50. A.D., Région de Meknès, 168, Revue de Presse, October, 1937.

51. A.D., D.I., 344, Note de Renseignements, September, 1937.