The Casablanca Connection

The Casablanca Connection examines France’s colonial policy in Morocco from the Popular Front to the end of the Vichy regime in North Africa, relating it to overall French imperial policy and placing it in a European and world context. At the center of this study is General Charles Noguès, resident general of Morocco from 1936 to 1943, who, during this period, provided the protectorate with purpose, authority, direction, and continuity. Noguès restored the precepts of colonial rule established in Morocco twenty-four years earlier by Marshal Hubert Lyautey, France’s most illustrious soldier-administrator. Nogues’s accomplishments made Morocco stronger for France than it had been in a decade. This “French peace,” however, was disturbed by the Spanish Civil War and World War II, and Noguès’s well-intentioned but misguided decisions during this time ended his career amidst charges of collaboration and anti-Allied sentiment. Nevertheless, William A. Hoisington Jr. argues, Noguès had interpreted Lyautey’s lessons with talent and originality.

Originally published in 1984.

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