Assessing Resistance in Morocco: Comparative European Perceptions During the Early Protectorate (1912–1936)

This article explores contrasting approaches to local resistance in Morocco in the early stages of the Protectorate (1912–1936), addressing a rather neglected comparative potential in imperial studies. The article argues that European counter-insurgency policies generally relied on a cluster of assumptions that remained largely stable during the early Protectorate and were often invoked to justify such practices. Interpretations of domestic opposition, however, evolved through time and experience and initial views were frequently revised and adapted to new circumstances. Therefore, even though most interpretations of Moroccan resistance depended on long-held premises about the relationship between the rulers and the ruled, ongoing criticism and frequent disputation by British, French and Spanish diplomats and military leaders regularly challenged official narratives, thus enriching understandings of native defiance. Such ‘orientalist’ alternatives often offered more insightful perceptions of local resistance than established discourses and more convincing explanations of the shortcomings of European policies to deal with it. The limitations of a text-based analysis, where Eurocentric attitudes would appear as uncontaminated by native contestation, have been very much a concern in this article, which aims at recreating pre-existing beliefs, disputing forces, cultural differences and varying positions of domination and subservience in the light of the social context in which they were produced.