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Morocco in 1912
This week in 1912 French authorities launched a crackdown in Fez, Morocco, following the suppression of a popular revolt the previous week. French troops guarded the city gates, restricting access, and arresting anyone suspected of participating in the revolt. French deaths incurred during the uprising totaled 68, including 15 officers, 40 soldiers, and 13 civilians.
The revolt broke out less than a month after Morocco had become a French protectorate under extremely unfavorable terms. The agreement, signed with the sultan, granted the French the right to dispatch troops to any part of Morocco and control all of the country’s foreign transactions, and concentrated power in the hands of a protectorate government.
While it began with native troops turning their guns on the French, the revolt rapidly spread. The London Times commented that there was “a growing consensus of testimony that the Fez revolt was the result of a popular movement produced in part by the native belief that the Sultan was practically in the hands of the French.”
Historian Edmund Burke has written that the revolt was fueled by the discontent of the laboring masses over price rises, increasingly difficult living conditions, the hostility of religious elements to the removal of their tax-free status, and the recognition amongst merchants that they would not receive contracts on favorable terms. However, the uprising was directed by local elites into the blind alley of communalism. Fez’s Jewish quarter was ransacked, with 45 people killed. French authorities had previously disarmed the Jewish population.
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