1 “Scientific Imperialism, British India and the Origins of the Moroccan Protectorate” by Edmund Burke III In: Hesperis

1 “Scientific Imperialism, British India and the Origins of the Moroccan Protectorate” By Edmund Burke III In: Hesperis 2013 Central to rewriting Moroccan colonial history is considering the establishment of the French protectorate as a world event. If we accept that Morocco was but one of many countries that underwent the experience of colonialism, we are able to move away from a binary colonizer/colonized narrative and toward a more complex, dynamic and multi-causal world historical narrative. After all, it was not fore-ordained that Morocco would become a French protectorate. Nor was it destined that Lyautey would become its Resident General, nor that the protectorate would take shape as it did. Awareness of the multiply contingent character of the French protectorate is a central feature of Daniel Rivet’s magisterial Lyautey et l’institution du protectorat marocain (1988).1 The decisions made by individuals and groups and the sequence in which events unspooled shaped alternatives, opening some possibilities and forestalling others. For example consider the role of Moroccan pre-colonial protest and resistance in shaping French and Moroccan options in 1912,which was the subject of my 1976 book, Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco, Pre-colonial Protest and Resistance, 1860-1912.2 Upon closer inspection, an examination of the origins of the French protectorate finds it to have been shaped by the chaotic collision of multi- dimensional political forces, rather than being the product of carefully designed French policies. In this sense, the early Moroccan protectorate represented not the triumph of the “Lyautey method” or of French scientific spirit, but rather of the spirit of what the British call “muddling through” (known to the French as “Système D”). It is only retrospectively that the origins of the protectorate appear as the systematic application of previously devised plan. In fact there was a plan- -it was the attempt to apply the principles of what was then called “scientific imperialism” to Morocco--Lyautey’s attempt to apply the lessons of British India to Morocco. But as we’ll see in this chapter, it was systematically thwarted by developments both in Morocco and in France. The Moroccan Protectorate and British India Inspired by Joseph Chailley-Bert, Lyautey looked to British India for models of what worked. The French problem, colonial theorists agreed, lay not in military pacification (at which the Galliéni/Lyautey system had proven its effectiveness), but in the domain of colonial governance. What Morocco required, the theorists agreed, was a system of colonial governance inspired by the best practices of other colonial powers, notably the British in India. Lyautey had considerable experience in colonial warfare (Algeria, Indochina, Madagascar) and was a strong supporter of Chailley-Bert’s approach to comparative colonial 2 administration. (Lyautey’s terse comparison of the British and French approaches: “British power, unified conception, continuity in design, governmental stability, inflexible method, instantaneous execution, practical sense, tenacity, flexible adaptation to countries and climates. In a word, everything we’re not).”3 Lyautey believed that the French protectorate in Morocco would do well to consider the British example. Central to his strategy was the establishment of an administrative staff college for the training of native affairs personnel, the Bureau politique. The graduates of the B.P. would be rigorously schooled in Moroccan languages (Arabic and Berber), as well as Moroccan history, politics and culture and the main elements of Moroccan law (both sharia and customary law). But what was the British system of rule in South Asia? According to historian Clive Dewey, Indian colonial governance consisted in the gathering of knowledge about colonial populations and governance and its implementation by a highly trained core of officials. After the 1856 Mutiny, India was ruled by the Crown via the senior Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.). Indian Civil Service officers were the most powerful officials in the Empire, if not the world.4 A tiny cadre, a little over a thousand strong, ruled more than 300,000,000 Indians. The Indian Civil Service directed all the activities of the Anglo-Indian state. Each Civilian (as they were called) ruled over an average 300,000 subjects, and each Civilian penetrated every corner of his subjects' lives.5 Known as “the steel frame of empire,” the 1,200 officials of the Indian Civil Service were recruited via a rigorous meritocratic examination (to which until the late 19th century, no Indians could apply).6 By comparison, the training and recruitment of French North African administrators was lacking. Lyautey regarded Algeria as especially problematic. The corruption and partisanship of the civilian officials, and the high-handedness of the officers of the Arab Bureaux were legendary. While the Tunisian system had been created to avoid the excesses of military rule of the Arabes Bureaux, its standards of recruitment were low (there was no entrance examination and knowledge of Arabic was optional) and candidates tended to be appointed based upon whom they knew, rather than what. Since he was eager to establish a modern professional native administration in Morocco, Lyautey looked toward British India for models of what worked.7 In India, the local I.C.S. administrators were tasked to provide information on South Asian societies, customs and history in response to official questionnaires. The results were collated and published in provincial and local gazetteers, whose purpose it was to introduce newly arrived officials to the locales to which they had been posted.8 Nothing like the provincial gazetteer existed for any part of the French empire. Multi-volume compendia like the Description de l’Egypte and the Exploration scientifique de l'Algerie drew their origins from the Enlightenment project of Diderot’s Encyclopedie. Their scientific taxonomies lacked the local detail and applicability that colonial officials required. Given the knowledge deficit on Morocco at the time of his appointment, Lyautey believed the British handbooks and gazetteers for India provided the best model of what was needed. The Moroccan protectorate would do well to equip itself with similar sources of reliable information. This is where the French doctrine of scientific imperialism became relevant. 3 An expression of the new positivist confidence in social analysis, the doctrine was based upon the comparative study of colonial administrations. That it also reflected the widening gulf between European and colonial societies is an insight that is only available to us now. Leading French policymakers and colonial officials had long wished to organize the Moroccan protectorate in accordance with the contemporary theories of scientific imperialism. Only through the comparative study of the experiences of other European colonial powers, it was believed, could France expand its empire without major political misadventure or budgetary and political strife. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, a leading colonial theorist, concluded that in the absence of a scientific understanding of colonial societies, France risked wasting its national blood and treasure for no certain advantage.9 Joseph Chailley-Bert (1854-1928), another key figure, insisted that because France had been slow to see the necessity of a detailed social mapping of the societies under its colonial tutelage it lagged behind other European colonial powers (especially the British in India).10 It was General Joseph Gallieni, whose career spanned French Sudan (1886-91), Indochina (1892- 96) and Madagascar (1896-1905) who most concisely formulated the new teachings: “The officer who has successfully drawn an exact ethnographic map of the territory he commands is close to achieving complete pacification, soon to be followed by the form of organization he judges most appropriate.”11 Gallieni’s endorsement of military ethnography became one of the leitmotifs of scientific colonialism and a vivid framing of the connections between knowledge and power. With the French public more than ever opposed to issuing a blank check for colonial expansion, Chailley-Bert argued, only by promising to adhere to a scientific program of rule would France gain the backing it needed for the Moroccan venture.12 Louis-Hubert Lyautey, who had first encountered the new military sociology while serving as Gallieni’s subordinate in Indochina and Madagascar was a strong backer of the nostrums of scientific imperialism. Morocco provided a new context for the conduct of ethnographic research on the British model, one that was more purpose-driven, and more closely linked to the needs of the conquest. Although Lyautey sought to adopt the approach of the new scientific imperialism in the months that followed that dream was soon rendered unfeasible. In the rest of this talk I’ll explore what was at stake, and why the protectorate did not follow this path. In Lyautey’s Morocco, questions of governmentality and the ordering of the state were to be keyed to the rational apprehension of the population in its statistical manifestations, the manipulation of social hierarchies and groups and the coercive deployment of instruments of power. Symbols of authority were theatrically deployed to shape in an effort to bring about the willing consent of Moroccans subjects in the colonial enterprise. Morocco was to be an example of the techno-colony, a conservative monarchy where respect and homage was accorded Moroccan crown and religious and social hierarchies while real power lay with French agents of authority. For Lyautey and the colonial theorists with whom he was in contact, Morocco was to serve as a pilot project for a restored French monarchy. Every detail of its organization would be rationally conceived and ordered in function of the whole. Morocco would develop a modern agricultural and mineral-extracting economy in alliance with French financial 4 and industrial capital via the Compagnie marocaine, whose holdings dwarfed all other economic players in Morocco.13 Small stakes settlers and businessmen would be permitted to establish themselves, but only at the sufferance of the Residence Générale.

Load more