B. the Modern City

B. THE MODERN CITY CASABLANCA: THE CITY IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD Jean-Louis Cohen Casablanca lies outside the polygon of centres in which Morocco’s destiny was played out up to the nineteenth century. Places of trade like Tangier, Tétouan, or Mogador, and imperial cities like Fez, Marrakesh, Rabat, or Meknès, formed a network whose confi guration and hierarchy were transformed by the rise of Casablanca. The meeting of populations and the fruitful cooperation of businessmen, speculators, professionals and enlightened bureaucrats made it the melting pot of a modern culture. At the same time, it has remained a constant theatre of confl ict between national groups, social classes, and political forces. Casablanca shows the contradictions of its position as the main port of modern Morocco, the luxury and refi nement of its bourgeoisie existing side by side with the wretchedness of those transplanted from the countryside. It has remained the cradle of insurrections and popular movements, just as it was during the struggles for Independence, and control of it is the subject of sharp political confrontations. It is the centre of mass culture, beginning with its written and audio-visual media. In the fi eld of contemporary architecture—and despite the vigour of the scenes in Rabat or Marrakesh—it is the recipient of the abundant production to which industries, banks, and private promotion give rise. The very name of the city preserves the legendary resonances of the fi rst times of the French conquest. A city of adventures—“strange and troubling,” according to a popular song, and almost disreputable in lit- erature—colonial propaganda marked it down as a place of innovation. The work of historians has validated this dimension, to the point of creating from it a kind of second or third generation myth.1 Its development 1 This essay is based on research conducted with Monique Eleb and essentially brought together in Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casablanca, mythes et fi gures d’une aventure urbaine (Paris: Hazan, 1998); English version, Casablanca: Colonial Myths and Architectural Ventures (New York: Monacelli Press, 2002). In a more contemporary perspective, a concentrated treatment may be found in Casablanca, portrait de ville (Paris: 1010 jean-louis cohen has been contemporary with the rise of a major illustrated press and of the cinema, and this explains its rapid celebrity. From 1907 on, with the operators of Lumière, the cinema was to endow Casablanca with a fame it positively snatched when Michaël Curtiz made (in Burbank) his politico-sentimental fi lm.2 In the novels set there, though, the city is presented rather as a perilous fi eld of manoeuvres in the fi elds of real estate and fi nance.3 In accounts published since 1980, it has tended to become once more a place of hard-edged intrigue or a theatre for reminiscence.4 Casablanca’s literary fortune is just one aspect of its lustre over the fi rst half of the twentieth century, when the modernization of colonial policy, and of French society, began to make its appearance there. The military conquest was, it is true, followed by plundering of the land, economic domination and a repression continuing up to the end of the Protectorate that was in place from 1912–1956. Yet, at the same time, Casablanca condensed all the experimentation brought about by Hubert Lyautey, the inspiring force behind the conquest and the fi rst French Resident-General. To the Algerian model, which was based on extensive destruction of the pre-colonial culture, he opposed the preservation of old cities and support for crafts. Above all, he gathered around him the most advanced experts in the juridical, economic and cultural fi elds, with a view to making Morocco, and Casablanca, a “school of energy” able to serve as a model for a French renascence.5 Institut français d’architecture, 1999). Finally, a detailing of the contemporary city, quarter by quarter, constitutes the main thread of Les mille et une villes de Casablanca (Paris: ACR Édition, 2003). 2 To Curtiz’s fi lm Casablanca (1942) may be added the parodies A Night in Casablanca (Archie Mayo, 1946) and My Favorite Spy (Norman Z. McLeod, 1952), and also Le Roman d’un spahi (Michel Bernheim, 1936), Les Hommes nouveaux (Marcel L’Herbier, 1936), La Môme vert de gris (Bernard Borderie, 1953) and Casablanca, nid d’espions (Henri Decoin, 1963). 3 The chief best-seller would be Claude Farrère, Les Hommes nouveaux (Paris: Flam- marion, 1922). See also: Émile Nolly, Le conquérant, journal d’un ‘indésirable’ au Maroc (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1915); Marcel Frager, La ville neuve, odyssée d’un écumeur (Paris: Ollendorf, 1924). 4 The fi rst of these is exemplifi ed by Tito Topin’s novels 55 de fi èvre (Paris: Gallimard, 1983) and Piano Barjo (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). The second may be found in Michel Chailloux, Mémoires de Melle (Paris: Seuil, 1993), and, indeed, in François Salvaing, Casa (Paris: Stock, 2003). 5 Alfred de Tarde, Le Maroc, école d’énergie (Paris: Plon, 1923); Paul Rabinow, “Techno- Cosmopolitanism: Governing Morocco,” in French Modern, Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1989); “France in Morocco: Technocosmopolitanism and Middling Modernism,” Assemblage 17 (April 1993): 52–56; Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)..

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