The Bu Himara rebellion in northeast Morocco: phase I
1981; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00263208108700456
ISSN1743-7881
Autores Tópico(s)Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender
ResumoMorocco's submission to French and Spanish protection in 1912, climaxed more than a decade of political turmoil marked by rebellions, civil war, and armed resistance to foreign invasions. As in other Islamic lands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries these disturbances were symptoms of profound social transformations taking place largely in response to expanding European economic and commercial power. The central government of Morocco, the makhzan, was ill-equipped in the later nineteenth century to manage the internal economic and fiscal effects of European trade or to resist European demands for special commercial and political privileges. The consequences were depletion of the state treasury, recurring monetary crisis, rampant inflation, and poverty and unrest in both the cities and the countryside. Sultan Mawlay al-Hasan (1873-94) had some modest success at administrative and military reform, but he failed to achieve any firm control over the country's deeper economic disorders. His son and successor Mawlay Abd alAziz, who took the reins of government in 1900 after a six year regency, set at once to work out comprehensive reform plans of his own. But his first two years in power saw only a rising tide of popular unrest and increasing pressures from European governments, banks, and corporations for more latitude to manipulate the Moroccan economy. It was in these troubled conditions that a major revolt broke out in the northeastern part of the country under the leadership of the pretender Bu Himara. This rising was the first in a succession of major internal crises leading inexorably toward the European protectorates. Colonial historians have written about it as one of the more dramatic and colourful political episodes presaging the Moroccan government's inevitable collapse. But more than that, the rebellion was a manifestation of disturbances in Moroccan rural society. Its significance in history may be made clearer by examining it in relation to some of these.'
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