In 1881, a Moroccan Jew named Masʿud Amoyal presented himself at the French legation in Tangier in order to register as an Algerian living in Morocco. Amoyal hoped to obtain a patent attesting to his French nationality. This patent would ensure him access to French consular jurisdiction, exemption from taxation, and the support of consular authorities in pursuing lawsuits against Moroccans in the event of unpaid debts and other legal matters. Almost immediately two different versions of the true Masʿud Amoyal emerged. Amoyal's own story, supported by official documentation from the French colonial authorities in Algeria, stated that he had been born in Saint Denis de Sig in Algeria and had moved to Morocco on business. In a competing account, Amoyal's Jewish and Muslim neighbors and later French and Moroccan officials asserted that Amoyal was born in al-Qasr, a town in northern Morocco; had lived in Algeria for only a matter of months—just long enough to obtain false documents; and had no legal right to the French nationality he claimed. Yet Amoyal passed as an Algerian and claimed French nationality for nearly a decade before he was officially declared to be a Moroccan subject.
These two accounts of Masʿud Amoyal echo the double lives of many Moroccans who crossed the border into Algeria in order to return to their native country as “Algerians” and thus French subjects. After 1830, French authorities became potentially responsible for Algerians living outside of colonial territory. In neighboring Morocco, independent until 1912, the benefits of being a foreign national or protégé were increasingly evident; exemption from taxation and from the jurisdiction of the makhzan (the Moroccan government) greatly benefited these lucky few in their business ventures. So it was not long after Algeria became French that Moroccans caught on to the advantages of being Algerian—or of claiming to be Algerian. In fact, throughout North Africa and the Middle East individuals declaring themselves to be Algerian registered as French subjects at consulates.Footnote 1 These new claims to French nationality were part of a broader trend in which individuals in North Africa, the Middle East, and as far as East Asia developed strategies to benefit from newly created legal categories.Footnote 2 The expansion of European imperialism created new legal statuses, thereby increasing the plurality of legal identities and institutions that people like Amoyal used to their advantage.
The global nature of this new legal pluralism requires a transnational approach that transcends the boundaries of both states and empires in order to understand local developments in North Africa. The prevalence of national and nationalist paradigms has led the historiography of the modern Maghrib to proceed mostly along the lines of present-day political borders.Footnote 3 Similarly, our understanding of colonial history has largely been limited to the colonies themselves, excluding the independent states and other empires that bordered them. As the strategies of individuals like Amoyal show, the impact of France's colonization of Algeria was felt not only in France and Algeria but also in Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler rightly argue for a transnational approach that places metropole and colony within a single analytic frame.Footnote 4 However, in order to understand the full impact of European imperialism we also need to look beyond “the relationship between empire and nation” to include the independent neighbors of colonial states.Footnote 5 The French colonization of Algeria transformed legal categories beyond the empire's borders, especially in neighboring Morocco.
Building on Cooper and Stoler, John Comaroff has suggested that colonies were laboratories where colonial authorities could experiment with new legal orders in ways they might not have been willing to risk in the metropole.Footnote 6 The new legal regimes created by the colonization of Algeria threw not only Algeria but all of North Africa into a state of flux. This disorder resulted in part from the proliferation of new legal categories whose precise contours were in the process of being defined; individuals like Amoyal successfully turned this confusion to their advantage. The transnational nature of the Maghribi legal laboratory also created a context in which those living outside the French empire participated in blurring the sharp distinctions that French officials attempted to create between Europeans and “natives.”Footnote 7
The categories at play in describing the legal status of Algerians and pseudo-Algerians in Morocco are fairly complex and require some explanation. Four terms are particularly relevant: subject, citizen, national, and protégé. French nationals could be either subjects or citizens. Algerians were only technically declared to be French nationals with the Sénatus-Consulte of 14 July 1865 (although they remained subjects, not citizens).Footnote 8 Nonetheless, before 1865, Algerians in Morocco (and elsewhere) began claiming French nationality on the grounds that they were subjects of France and thus entitled to the same status enjoyed by other French subjects outside of French territory.Footnote 9 In other words, it seems that outside of Algeria, Algerians were treated like French nationals even before they had been formally declared as such. In 1870 the Crémieux Decree granted Algerian Jews citizenship en masse.Footnote 10 While there were significant differences between citizens and subjects inside colonial Algeria, this distinction was not relevant for those Algerians outside of Algeria because once outside French territory, citizens and subjects were equally entitled to the benefits of French nationality. Finally, the term protégé has been used by historians to describe those Moroccan subjects who had acquired foreign protection (and its concomitant extraterritorial legal status) but retained their Moroccan nationality. Nonetheless, while Algerians living in Morocco were technically French nationals—not protégés—French consular officials often referred to them as protégés or as being under French protection.Footnote 11
The significance of pseudo-Algerians lies not in their numbers—the best estimate we have is from 1886, when one report counted seventy-five in all of Morocco—but rather in the reactions they engendered among both French and Moroccan officials. The sometimes desperate efforts by Morocco and France to curb the numbers of false Algerians represent a relatively rare moment of shared interests between the two states. Yet French officials’ attitudes toward would-be Algerians were not only a reaction to complaints from the makhzan; French diplomats’ disproportionate condemnations of Jews as abusers of French nationality also reflected anti-Semitic prejudice. The scant scholarship addressing this issue has followed in the footsteps of French officials in treating it as an exclusively Jewish question.Footnote 12 In fact, both Jewish and Muslim Moroccans falsely claimed to be Algerian, though Jews did so in greater numbers because Jews’ liminal status in North African society both provided them with greater motives to seek French nationality and allowed them to do so with greater ease.
When placed in their broader historical context, the strategies of Amoyal and others like him illustrate the ways in which ordinary Maghribis responded to the currents of political, social, and legal change engendered by colonial conquest. These stories elucidate why and how Moroccans passed as Algerians, at least in the eyes of French officialdom, and how their actions affected the politics of the Moroccan and French governments. Paying attention to differences of religion opens up insights into why more Moroccan Jews than Muslims assumed Algerian legal identities.
THE TWO LIVES OF MASʿUD AMOYAL
According to the physical description in his French passport, Masʿud (or Messaoud in the French spelling) Amoyal (or Moyal) was five feet, seven inches tall and had grey eyes and black hair. Like most Jews from northern Morocco, he was literate only in his native language of Judeo-Spanish.Footnote 13 According to the story that Amoyal told about himself to France's representatives in Algeria and Morocco, he was born in Saint Denis de Sig (today simply Sig), a small European town on the coast of western Algeria in the province of Oran. He claimed to have joined the Algerian colonial army at the age of twenty (in the class of 1870) to fulfill his required military service. In 1880, asserting that he wanted to get married, Amoyal went to the justice of the peace in Sig in an attempt to find his birth certificate. When no such document was found—not unusual at the time because recordkeeping was haphazard—Amoyal produced seven Jewish witnesses who were residents of Sig; they all testified that he was indeed born there and that they knew him well. On the strength of this testimony, the justice of the peace gave him an affidavit (acte de notoriété), proof that Amoyal was an Algerian and thus a citizen of France (as a Jew he benefited from the Crémieux Decree).Footnote 14 Before leaving Algeria on business, Amoyal served thirteen days of reserve duty with the French military in the Sixth Land Battalion.Footnote 15 He then traveled to al-Qasr al-Kabir (or al-Qasr), a town on the Atlantic coast of northern Morocco.
Once across the border, Amoyal applied to the French consulate for a patent of protection—which he claimed was his right as a French subject. (The fact that Algerians were given patents of protection, as opposed to formally being recognized as French nationals, was part of the complexity of legal categories discussed previously.) While waiting for his request to be processed, he returned to Algeria to perform additional military service. There he asked his coreligionists in the Consistoire Israélite d'Oran to write on his behalf to the governor general of Algeria requesting that Vernouillet, the French ambassador to Morocco, confirm Amoyal as a French subject.Footnote 16 On 2 March 1882, Amoyal received his patent of protection, which he was able to renew annually until 1886, when Laurent-Charles Féraud, the new French ambassador, confiscated the document.Footnote 17Amoyal continued to have difficulties with the French authorities, only partly succeeding in benefiting from French nationality. Finally, in 1890, Jules Patenôtre, Féraud's successor, definitively revoked Amoyal's status.
Another version of the same story—one undoubtedly closer to the events as they actually occurred—began not in Algeria but in Morocco. As French consular officials later determined, Masʿud Amoyal was born in al-Qasr to Yaʿaqov Amoyal, who hailed from Fes, and Lebibé Medina, a native of al-Qasr.Footnote 18 Masʿud married his maternal cousin, Esther Medina, in his home town. In the fall of 1880, he traveled to the province of Oran in Algeria. From there he made his way to Saint Denis de Sig, where, on 19 November, he convinced seven of his coreligionists to bear false witness in the local court that he was born in Sig and had lived there all his life. It is likely that Amoyal paid them for their trouble. Four days later, he also managed to get a military-record booklet that claimed he had entered the armed forces in 1870.Footnote 19 On 29 November Amoyal obtained a passport in Mostaganem to travel to al-Qasr “for commercial matters.”Footnote 20 Armed with these documents, Amoyal returned to his native town and soon after applied to the French consulate in Tangier for a patent of protection based on his claim to be an Algerian subject.
The French ambassador to Morocco, Vernouillet, soon learned from his contacts in Tangier that Masʿud Amoyal was “manifestly Moroccan” (notoirement marocain) and had been born in al-Qasr.Footnote 21 Vernouillet kept Amoyal's documents for a few months in an attempt to verify his status.Footnote 22 Yet the inquiry was never completed, and by the following spring Ladislas Ordega had replaced Vernouillet as French ambassador to Morocco. Ordega was known to be more lenient on matters of protection than his predecessors and was perhaps less concerned about the possibility that Amoyal had committed fraud.Footnote 23 On 2 March 1882 Ordega granted Amoyal a patent of protection. Amoyal renewed this patent without incident in 1883, 1884, and 1885.
During this time, Amoyal used his French protection to good advantage. As an active moneylender, he found himself with a number of debtors—all Moroccan and mostly Muslim—who had defaulted on their debts. In the spring of 1884 Amoyal asked for the French ambassador's assistance in collecting the money owed to him, which he listed as totaling 11,109 douros.Footnote 24 By the end of the year, Amoyal had successfully secured the intervention of the French legation in 206 cases of default on debts owed to him by Muslims.Footnote 25 Although the outcome of all these cases is not clear, it is certain that Amoyal succeeded in having many of his debtors imprisoned by the makhzan for periods ranging from six months to more than two and a half years.Footnote 26 His status as a French subject secured the intervention of the French ambassador, which made his complaints to the makhzan more effective given the leverage that foreign diplomats could exert on the Moroccan government in the late 19th century.
Amoyal's successful ruse seemed destined to end on 30 December 1885, when Féraud, the newly appointed French ambassador to Morocco, revoked Amoyal's patent of protection and replaced it with a provisional patent—effectively depriving him of French nationality until his situation was regularized.Footnote 27 Féraud had discovered that Amoyal was “manifestly Moroccan,” either from Vernouillet's files or from his own local contacts. He launched an official inquiry into Amoyal's background with the Moroccan vizier Muhammad b. al-ʿArabi al-Turis (or Torres). On 17 March, two notaries in al-Qasr signed a declaration testifying that they knew Masʿud Amoyal personally, that his father Yaʿaqov had moved to al-Qasr from Fes, and that Masʿud had been born and raised in al-Qasr.Footnote 28 On 11 April, al-Turis sent Féraud this proof of Masʿud Amoyal's Moroccan origins.Footnote 29 The next day, Féraud wrote to his superiors in Paris about “this affair which I consider to be pure trickery”Footnote 30 and informed them that he was rescinding Amoyal's protection: “It is perfectly established that Amoyal, a native of Alcassar, is a Moroccan subject.”Footnote 31 He similarly notified al-Turis that Amoyal was no longer under French protection and thus subject exclusively to Moroccan jurisdiction.Footnote 32
One would expect that after his protection was rescinded, Amoyal would have disappeared from the records of the French legation in Morocco. But he continued to successfully claim the status of French subject through 1889. From December 1887 to March 1888, French consular officials supported Amoyal in a lawsuit brought against him by Pinhas Assayag, a Moroccan Jew.Footnote 33 When two Muslims were imprisoned in al-Qasr for debts they owed to Amoyal in the summer of 1889, the French legation's involvement was again required.Footnote 34 Amoyal even succeeded in obtaining another patent of protection on 15 May 1889; Féraud had died in the fall of 1888, and it seems the staff of the legation was no longer familiar with Amoyal's case. Although the new French ambassador, Jules Patenôtre, later declared this patent null and void—apparently it was granted by his subordinate M. Wiet while Patenôtre was in Fes—Amoyal nonetheless was officially a French national again, if only briefly.Footnote 35
It was not until May 1890 that the governor general of Algeria wrote to Patenôtre that he had firmly established the falseness of Amoyal's claims to Algerian origins.Footnote 36 The governor of Oran had questioned the witnesses from Saint Denis de Sig who had originally testified on Amoyal's behalf; because none of them had any recollection of Amoyal, he concluded that their testimony had been false. Nevertheless, a man who was “manifestly” known to be a native Moroccan managed to deceive the French government for a full decade before being definitively deprived of the privileges of French nationality.
IN AND OUT OF ALGERIA
We have seen how Amoyal passed as a French subject by claiming to be an Algerian outside of Algeria, yet his strategy was just one of many used by pseudo-Algerians in Morocco. The phenomenon of people crossing the frontier between Morocco and Algeria was as old as the border itself; individuals had long been traveling back and forth for commercial and religious reasons, and semi-nomadic tribes regularly moved across political boundaries.Footnote 37 Some of the Moroccans who crossed the border into Algeria settled there permanently—especially Jews.Footnote 38 In the other direction, Algerians settled in Morocco both before and after the French conquest.Footnote 39 What was new after 1830 was the potential change in legal status initiated by crossing the Algerian border—and the challenge to French legal categories the new border posed. As discussed previously, Algerians outside of Algeria successfully claimed French nationality soon after colonization.
French subjects residing in Morocco potentially enjoyed access to significant privileges. Under the capitulation treaties between Morocco and European states, foreign subjects and protégés escaped most local taxes and were exempt from local jurisdiction.Footnote 40 Exemption from taxation was even more significant for Jews than for Muslims, because Jews paid the extra tax levied on dhimmīs (protected non-Muslims) called the jizya. Perhaps most important, foreign subjects and protégés could appeal to their consuls to demand that the sultan pay outstanding debts owed by Moroccan subjects.Footnote 41 Given the high rate of default, many creditors thus recovered sums that they probably never would have seen otherwise. Finally, for Moroccans—especially Jews—patents of foreign nationality or protection brought a substantial increase in social prestige, and foreign subjects and protégés formed something of a new aristocracy in Moroccan Jewish society.Footnote 42
There were many ways for Moroccans to “become” Algerian. Some moved to Algeria long enough to qualify for French naturalization; once they had acquired their new legal status they were free to return home. Moroccans taking this route after 1865 benefited from a new French law that reduced the minimum residency requirement in Algeria to become a French subject from ten to three years. The law was intended to attract more non-French Europeans—such as Spaniards, Maltese, and Italians—to adopt French nationality, but it unwittingly facilitated the claims of Moroccans who stayed in Algeria just long enough to return home as French subjects.Footnote 43
Other aspiring French subjects did not even need to cross the border into Algeria to obtain the necessary paperwork. After 1865, French consuls entered some local Moroccans into the registers of French protégés because their parents or even grandparents had been born in Algeria. At least three Jews living in Essaouira obtained the status of French nationals by declaring themselves to be the children of Algerians.Footnote 44 French officials presumably based their actions on the principle that just as individuals born to French parents outside France were considered French nationals, so were those born to Algerian parents outside of Algeria.
While some Moroccans thus became Algerian French subjects by legitimate means, many others acquired their Algerian identity illegally. Some, like Amoyal, stayed across the border only long enough to procure the necessary documents entitling them to the status of French national. Before 1880, it usually sufficed to obtain an Algerian passport.Footnote 45 In the 19th century, passports were not considered definitive markers of national identity, so it was relatively easy for Moroccans to acquire these documents.Footnote 46 The requirements for obtaining a passport were not particularly stringent; in France, the testimony of only two witnesses was necessary.Footnote 47 In Amoyal's case, it is likely that the affidavit he had had drawn up in Sig was sufficient to prove his identity and thus obtain a passport, though others undoubtedly acquired passports by convincing two Algerians to testify that they were natives of Algeria. Many must have paid for this favor.Footnote 48 Some even managed to be registered on the lists of French protégés by presenting passports that had been verified (visé)Footnote 49 at a French consulate in places like Spain, Italy, or Egypt.Footnote 50 Féraud, the French ambassador, estimated that two-thirds of Moroccans then under French protection had “obtained a passport, upon the presentation of which—and without any other procedure—they registered at the legation in Tangier and received a patent of protection as Algerians.”Footnote 51 These manipulations of identity documents occurred despite—as well as because of—efforts by European states to extend their regulatory reach. Although laws pertaining to passports and identification became more stringent over the course of the 19th century, colonial and consular officials were still largely unable to control the comings and goings of their subjects.Footnote 52
In theory, the rules of the game changed somewhat after 1880, when Morocco and twelve other nations signed the Treaty of Madrid. The initial purpose of the treaty was to curb abuses of foreign nationality and protection in Morocco. Article 15 was aimed particularly at Moroccans who were naturalized as subjects of foreign countries but had returned to live in Morocco:
After a stay equal in length to that which would normally have been necessary to obtain [foreign] naturalization, every Moroccan subject naturalized abroad who returns to Morocco must choose between submission to the laws of the [Moroccan] Empire and the obligation of leaving Morocco, unless it is established that his naturalization was obtained with the consent of the Moroccan Government.Footnote 53
This article limited the amount of time that one's status as foreign national could be retained in Morocco. Even if a Moroccan went to Algeria for the legally required three years in order to be naturalized as a French subject, he could enjoy French nationality for only three years after returning to Morocco. It thus became more advantageous to obtain proof that one had been born in Algeria; native Algerians in Morocco were entitled to French protection for life, because Article 15 did not apply to them.
Obtaining an affidavit, as Amoyal did, became an increasingly popular option for Moroccans aspiring to pass as Algerians. Féraud explained that “these documents are delivered by the justices of the peace or the Cadis of Algeria based on the testimony of natives who have usually been bought [i.e., bribed] or who are in commercial relations with the applicant.”Footnote 54 The Treaty of Madrid did not put a stop to the growing numbers of pseudo-Algerians; Moroccans simply adapted their strategies to the new regulations.Footnote 55
THE MOROCCAN GOVERNMENT PROTESTS
Individuals like Amoyal posed a particularly thorny problem for Franco–Moroccan relations. The question of Moroccans claiming to be Algerians was intimately linked to that of consular protection more generally. At the end of the 19th century, protection was perhaps the single most contested issue among Moroccan officials and foreign governments. By the 1850s large numbers of Moroccans had obtained patents of protection—both legally and illegally—or, like Amoyal, had been naturalized as subjects of foreign states.Footnote 56 The proliferation of Moroccans living in Morocco with the status of foreigners seriously eroded the authority of the Moroccan government and reduced its tax revenues.Footnote 57 Foreign states also used consular protection as an excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of the Moroccan state. By claiming that they were simply looking after the interests of their nationals and protégés, foreign diplomats made frequent demands of the Moroccan government and managed to chip away at its independence.Footnote 58
Although the makhzan was concerned about foreign protection in general, government officials were particularly incensed at the ease with which Moroccans falsely claimed to be Algerians and thus French nationals. Moroccan officials usually discovered the ruses of pseudo-Algerians by recognizing that Moroccans claiming to be Algerian had local roots, as in Amoyal's case.Footnote 59 French officials in Morocco and Algeria did not have the same access to this sort of knowledge; they were generally unfamiliar with most individuals in the localities they served and unable to distinguish between Moroccan and Algerian dialects, dress, customs, and so forth. The need for local knowledge to prevent such trickery was inherent to the reasoning of French passport laws, which presumed that officials would personally know the people under their authority and be able to vouch for them.Footnote 60 This is one reason Maghribis—whose personal lives generally eluded French officials—were well poised to exploit the new political realities created by European imperialism. Even when French officials did try to crack down on pseudo-Algerians (which they did not do in all cases), they were not always equipped to succeed.
It is not entirely clear at what point the makhzan first realized that pseudo-Algerians were posing a problem. A letter sent in 1870 by Sultan Muhammad IV to his minister of foreign affairs, Muhammad Bargash, indicates that Bargash had discussed the matter with the French ambassador, though the letter does not explicitly state the Moroccan government's position.Footnote 61 It is likely that Moroccan officials knew about the ruses of Moroccans passing as Algerians even earlier, though they may have not yet deemed the matter important enough for concern.Footnote 62
By the time of the Conference of Madrid, the makhzan was well aware that Moroccans falsely claiming foreign nationalities posed a serious problem. On 8 February 1880, Bargash wrote to all the ambassadors in Tangier, informing them that the sultan would no longer recognize the foreign nationalities claimed by Moroccan subjects.Footnote 63 Bargash quoted a letter from the sultan, Mawlay Hasan:
Inform the consuls in Tangier that the law of our country [sharīʿat iyālatinā al-saʿīdati] does not permit any of its subjects, Muslim or Jew, to exchange his nationality for another one [abdala raʿīyatahu bi-raʿīyatin ukhrā] . . . and now we are writing to our governors not to accept this . . . and that the documents called “patents,” “passports of naturalization,” and others do not render void the laws of our country.Footnote 64
Although neither Bargash nor Mawlay Hasan specifically mentioned the problem of pseudo-Algerians, there is little question that they had these individuals in mind given the ease with which Moroccans falsely claimed to be Algerian. It is not surprising that the foreign consuls did not accept the sultan's unilateral decision to stop recognizing the foreign nationalities of Moroccans returning from abroad.Footnote 65 And although this issue was addressed at the Conference of Madrid, the new regulations were never properly enforced.
In 1887, Bargash again wrote to the French consulate, this time specifically about the problem of Moroccan Jews who sought naturalization as French subjects in Algeria:
If Moroccan Jews want to leave this country and settle in Algeria, by all means [let them]. But that they leave for a little while in order to return to Morocco, after having obtained naturalization, and live here as foreign protégés—this is what His Highness [the sultan] cannot abide . . . In returning to Morocco equipped with an attestation of French naturalization, these Jews will [hereafter] be considered Moroccan subjects and treated as such.Footnote 66
However, the Moroccan government again failed to hold to the hard line it took in this letter. The French consulates in Morocco continued to recognize pseudo-Algerians as French subjects, and the makhzan continued to complain about the proliferation of Moroccans who escaped Moroccan jurisdiction and taxes.Footnote 67
FRANCE ACKNOWLEDGES THE PROBLEM
The makhzan's complaints did not fall on deaf ears indefinitely; during the last few decades of the 19th century, French officials in Morocco became increasingly concerned about pseudo-Algerians’ claims to French protection. These concerns eventually reached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, leading to new coordination efforts among French officials in the metropole, Algeria, and Morocco.
French reactions to pseudo-Algerians reflect the complex interplay of the competing political agendas of Morocco and France, anti-Semitic prejudice, and even the personalities of officials on the ground—which makes it difficult to say exactly what motivated French authorities at any given moment. At times, their efforts to prevent Moroccans from falsely claiming French nationality stemmed from a desire to respond to the demands of the makhzan. These instances in which the Moroccan government effectively exerted pressure on French officials suggest that relations between France and Morocco were not always characterized by France imposing its will on the makhzan (though there is no doubt that France held huge political and military advantages over Morocco). Yet at other times, French officials seemed more concerned about the undesirable character of the people under their authority, particularly Jews who had acquired French nationality. In these cases, officials used language with overtly anti-Semitic references. The relative importance of these factors also varied depending on the official's personal beliefs and inclinations.
Despite French officials’ mounting commitment to curb the numbers of pseudo-Algerians, it took nearly four decades to end this “abuse” of French nationality. Regardless of their intentions, French authorities consistently failed to rein in would-be Algerians’ fabricated claims to French nationality. This was largely due to the difficulties of coordinating a response among officials in Morocco, Algeria, and Paris—difficulties that Amoyal and others exploited to their own advantage.
French authorities in Morocco became aware that a number of Moroccans were enjoying the benefits of French nationality by falsely claiming to be Algerian as early as 1850; that year, Bourée, the French ambassador, described a trip to Tetouan during which he ordered the Algerian subjects living in the city to assemble.Footnote 68 Although he expected between twenty and thirty Algerians to appear, when he announced that everyone claiming to be Algerian would have to bring his passport and that each person's documents would be examined, only four were able to meet this requirement. Bourée must have realized that most of the “Algerians” in Tetouan were actually Moroccans, because he noted that “when these so-called Frenchmen return to Morocco, they put us in an untenable position vis-à-vis the [sultan].”Footnote 69 It was clear the Moroccan government had already communicated its displeasure about the numbers of pseudo-Algerians.
Nearly twenty years later, the French legation in Tangier circulated a bulletin ordering consular officials to annually register Algerians living in Morocco.Footnote 70 In Essaouira, at least, this new requirement yielded mixed results. Judas Amar was the only diligent Algerian who renewed his patent of nationality every year, from 1870 until 1875 (after which records no longer exist).Footnote 71 Yet the majority of Algerians registered in Essaouira appear only once, with a few appearing two or three times.Footnote 72 While it is possible that these Algerians only lived in Essaouira briefly, it is far more likely that they failed to register annually. Even had these efforts at registering Algerians been successful, they did not address the problem of verifying the origins of individuals claiming to be born in Algeria.
In the lead up to the Conference of Madrid, French officials became more concerned about the legal status of pseudo-Algerians, largely because the Moroccan government increased its pressure on France to rein in the abuses of consular protection. During this time the makhzan notified French officials about a number of Moroccans who were falsely claiming to be Algerian.Footnote 73 The first French ambassador to become deeply concerned about curbing the numbers of pseudo-Algerians was Vernouillet, who served from 1877 to 1881. In 1879, Vernouillet requested permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deny French protection to Moroccans who falsely claimed to be Algerian. He noted that this was in direct response to the repeated requests of the makhzan: “I believe that if the Moroccan government insists on this measure, we cannot reject its demand completely.”Footnote 74 In 1880, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ruled that those who wanted to be recognized as Algerians in Morocco must produce not only a passport but also an affidavit.Footnote 75 Yet two years after his initial complaint, Vernouillet still considered the problem quite grave. On 8 April 1881—only one year after the Conference of Madrid—Vernouillet wrote to the minister of foreign affairs “to once again draw his attention to the distressing ease with which the most disreputable Moroccans obtain French naturalization in Algeria.”Footnote 76 With the word “disreputable,” Vernouillet tried to emphasize the distance separating “true” Frenchman from the natives who claimed French nationality for all the wrong reasons. His strong language suggests anxieties about the meaning of French nationality and the implicit challenge to categories such as “European” and “native” posed by the growing numbers of pseudo-Algerians.
In his reply to Vernouillet, the French minister of foreign affairs agreed that something had to be done about the pseudo-Algerians.Footnote 77 He informed Vernouillet that he had written to the minister of the interior and the governor general of Algeria. They had agreed that officials in Algeria would consult with the French legation in Morocco concerning the “background and morality” of all Moroccans seeking French nationality in Algeria. This measure would make it more difficult for a Moroccan to become naturalized in Algeria and then return immediately to Morocco. It was also the first time that French consular officials in Tangier attempted to coordinate with colonial officials in Algeria to prevent Moroccans from falsely claiming to be Algerians. There is some evidence that French officials followed these guidelines.Footnote 78 However, the fact that it was necessary to renew this commitment to coordination in 1883 and again in 1885 suggests that it was not always followed assiduously.Footnote 79 In the meantime, French officials in Morocco proposed other solutions to the problem, such as requiring Moroccan Jews to take an oath on the Torah before their rabbis when claiming to be Algerian.Footnote 80 Though never adopted, this suggestion reveals the extent to which French officials were willing to adapt local customs and legal practices in their quest to gain control over their borders.
There was no French official as dedicated to eradicating the problem of pseudo-Algerians as Féraud, French ambassador from December 1884 until his death in November 1888.Footnote 81 Féraud, who had lived in North Africa since the age of sixteen and was fluent in Arabic, was especially determined to curb abuses of protection in Morocco.Footnote 82 He considered pseudo-Algerians a major part of this problem and wrote numerous letters to his superiors in Paris about the need to more effectively prevent Moroccans from successfully posing as Algerians. Féraud was particularly concerned about the effects of pseudo-Algerians on France's relations with the Moroccan government: “[T]he immediate consequences [of this situation] are to cause us constant embarrassment with the local authorities and to discredit us among the natives, who are understandably surprised to find that the least worthy among them boast of a nationality which they were accustomed to seeing as inaccessible.”Footnote 83 Féraud, like Vernouillet, wanted to preserve French nationality from the abuses of unscrupulous Moroccans. He was also more determined than any of his predecessors to prevent Moroccans from duping the French authorities into believing they were Algerians. In April 1886, he assured his superiors in Paris that “since I started this post, both out of duty and in order to accommodate the just claims of the Sharifian [Moroccan] Government, not a single certificate of nationality has been delivered by this Chancellery without the identity of the applicant having been subjected to meticulous examination.”Footnote 84 Nonetheless, Féraud estimated that over two-thirds of all Maghribis under French protection in Morocco—which included both protégés and foreign nationals—had illegally obtained passports or affidavits abroad, most of them in Algeria.Footnote 85
Féraud was especially outraged at the abuses of Moroccan Jews posing as Algerians who used their French nationality to further commercial interests, such as recovering debts. In the second half of the 19th century, Jews increasingly engaged in lending money on credit. This was partly a result of changing economic patterns in Morocco that caused more peasants to be in need of cash. As Morocco became more integrated into the world economy, many corrupt makhzan officials extracted money from those under their authority in order to pay their mounting debts to European merchants. At the same time, consumption patterns shifted toward a growing taste among Moroccans for foreign imports. Finally, peasants’ growing impoverishment was intensified by a series of bad harvests over the course of the 19th century.Footnote 86 Jews were not the sole moneylenders in Morocco, but they were overrepresented in relation to Muslims, in part because of Jews’ increasingly important role as middlemen selling imported European products, often on credit.Footnote 87 Moneylenders (both Jewish and Muslim) with foreign protection were particularly well positioned, because foreign states forced the Moroccan government to compensate foreigners for the unpaid debts they were owed by Moroccan subjects.Footnote 88 Considering the regularity with which Moroccan debtors defaulted, the prospect of having the makhzan guarantee a significant portion of unpaid debts was extremely attractive. Amoyal took ample advantage of this privilege, demanding over 75,000 francs in unpaid debts.Footnote 89
Féraud's ire at the ruses of Moroccan Jews who illegally obtained French nationality to further their pecuniary interests rings loudly of anti-Semitism. His indignation at Jews like Amoyal nearly jumps off the page: “We cannot give our protection to people who are exclusively devoted to the cult of the golden cow, without patriotism in their hearts, and for whom the status of French citizen is only a means to obtain wealth.”Footnote 90 In a subsequent letter, Féraud quips, “Pilgrims go to Mecca or Jerusalem for religious reasons; here, one goes to Algeria for commercial reasons, in order to oblige us [France] to safeguard certain interests.”Footnote 91 Even if we believe Féraud's claims that he was not motivated by anti-Semitism, his remarks unquestionably drew on anti-Semitic stereotypes.Footnote 92
Féraud became increasingly convinced that extending protection to Moroccan subjects, including those claiming to be Algerians, was doing France far more harm than good. Eventually he proposed outlawing the naturalization of Moroccans in Algeria completely, or refusing to recognize their naturalizations once they were back in Morocco—a measure that would have curbed the numbers of Moroccans who were legally naturalized as French subjects in Algeria and then returned to Morocco.Footnote 93 Yet his superiors ignored these ideas, and it took many more years before French officials succeeded in addressing the problem of pseudo-Algerians.
By the turn of the century, the balance of power had changed, and France had effectively extended its regulatory reach beyond its imperial borders into Morocco. During the 1890s there was a gradual crackdown by French officials in both Morocco and Algeria.Footnote 94 Officials in Algeria exchanged volumes of correspondence with their colleagues in Morocco in an effort to investigate Moroccans—especially Jews—applying to become French subjects in Algeria.Footnote 95 When this procedure lapsed in 1893, the governor general in Algeria and the French ambassador to Morocco again renewed the order to send all requests for naturalization by Moroccans to the legation in Tangier.Footnote 96 Later that year, the governor general of Algeria suspended all applications of Moroccans seeking naturalization as a precaution against reported abuses of French nationality by pseudo-Algerians in Morocco, presumably in an effort to prevent Moroccans from claiming to be Algerian through either legal or illegal means.Footnote 97 Subsequent communication between French authorities in Algeria and Morocco functioned more efficiently, making it difficult for Moroccans to return home from Algeria as French subjects.Footnote 98 By 1902, the consular agent in al-Qasr, Amoyal's native city, opined: “It does not seem to me that the Jews of El Ksar particularly seek out French protection today.”Footnote 99
PSEUDO-ALGERIANS—A JEWISH QUESTION?
Although the incomplete nature of the archives makes precise statistical analysis impossible, there is no question that Jews outnumbered Muslims among pseudo-Algerians living in Morocco.Footnote 100 The best source for determining the proportion of pseudo-Algerians who were Jews is a list that Féraud created in 1886 with the names of all the French protégés in Morocco.Footnote 101 He took special care to mark those he believed had acquired their patents of protection by falsely declaring themselves to be Algerians. Of a total of 325 Moroccans under French protection (including both protégés and French nationals), Féraud claimed that 75 had illegally been naturalized as Algerians. Of these 75, 45 were Jewish—that is, 60 percent of the false Algerians. Jews were clearly over-represented among those who illegally claimed Algerian origins. Jews constituted a third of the total number of French protégés on Féraud's list (109 out of 325) despite the fact that Jews probably made up no more than 3 percent of Morocco's population.Footnote 102 However, Jews made up more than half of the pseudo-Algerians on the list. Even assuming that Féraud's calculations were not entirely accurate—it seems unlikely that he was aware of every case in which Jews had falsely claimed Algerian origins—the over-representation of Jews suggests that they were generally more likely than Muslims to falsely claim to be Algerian.
Jews were also over-represented among those registered as Algerians at French consulates in other Moroccan cities. In Essaouira, for example, of the nineteen Algerians registered at the consulate (including one from Safi), only three were Muslim, while the remaining sixteen were Jewish.Footnote 103 In a similar vein, out of forty-four passports deposited at the French consulate in Essaouira between 1845 and 1896, over half (twenty-six) were from Jews claiming to have been born in Algeria, while only six were from Muslims.Footnote 104 There is no way to tell how many of these registered Algerians were actually born in Algeria. Nonetheless, the fact that Jews outnumbered Muslims among those claiming to be Algerians suggests that Jews also falsely claimed Algerian origins in disproportionate numbers.
Although it is tempting to link the large numbers of Jewish pseudo-Algerians to the Crémieux Decree of 1870, which made most Algerian Jews French citizens, this connection is misleading. In fact, as discussed previously, there was little difference between French subjects and French citizens for Algerians outside the country. Yet Maghribi Jews’ position as a religious minority in a Muslim-majority society gave them greater motives and abilities to pass as Algerian. One could argue that Jews throughout the world had an advantage in navigating new kinds of legal identities precisely because of their marginality, although further research on this question is needed.Footnote 105 Neither fully insiders nor fully outsiders, North African Jews were more eager than Muslims to seek alliances outside their immediate social and political circles. In Morocco, Jews had served as intermediaries between Muslims and Christians throughout the medieval and early modern periods, often relying on their connections to Sephardim in Europe.Footnote 106 These transnational networks meant that seeking foreign protection or nationality was a natural step for Jews in Morocco when the opportunity arose in the 19th century (and as we have seen, Jews held patents of protection in disproportionate numbers compared to Muslims).Footnote 107 Jews’ greater tendency to seek French nationality in colonial Algeria was partly an extension of their greater predilection for obtaining the status of foreign national or protégé.
Jews’ liminal status in North African society also meant that they were well positioned to take advantage of transnational ties to fellow Jews across political borders. Religious links gave Jews a distinct advantage over Muslims in convincing French authorities that they were Algerian. Although transnational Muslim networks such as Sufi orders might have played a similar role, Jews’ experience as a minority everywhere they lived strengthened feelings of solidarity across national boundaries. Jews usually relied on coreligionists when procuring false testimony in Algeria.Footnote 108 Once back in Morocco, ties of solidarity could help dissuade other Jews from betraying a pseudo-Algerian to the French authorities even when he was, like Amoyal, “manifestly” Moroccan.Footnote 109
This religious affinity found an institutional expression in the Algerian consistoires (consistories), the official Jewish organization of the French state. Each Algerian administrative department had its own consistory that answered directly to the Consistoire Central in Paris. These consistories often played a role in establishing the false Algerian identities of Moroccan Jews. In 1850, Bourée, the French ambassador, commented that many Moroccans were illegally naturalized because the consistory of Oran “is too interested in Frenchifying [franciser] all the Jews of Morocco.”Footnote 110 While this claim was undoubtedly exaggerated, the consistories clearly played a role in helping Moroccan Jews obtain French nationality. In 1881, while Amoyal was waiting for Vernouillet to verify his status as an Algerian, he enlisted the consistory of Oran to help him.Footnote 111 At this point, Vernouillet was reviewing Amoyal's documents but had refused to grant him a patent of protection, because he suspected that Amoyal was actually Moroccan. Amoyal convinced the consistory in Oran to write to Algeria's governor general to request that Amoyal's patent of protection be granted; the consistoire's letter was duly forwarded to Vernouillet.Footnote 112
In addition, commercial networks linking Jews across the Moroccan–Algerian border played a role in simplifying the process of finding willing co-conspirators.Footnote 113 Even if this involved paying their Algerian coreligionists for their trouble, Moroccan Jews no doubt found that these previously existing networks of trade aided them in their ruse. Féraud noted that Moroccan Jews often asked Algerians “who are in business relations with the applicants” to falsely testify that they were born in Algeria.Footnote 114 Undoubtedly the large numbers of Moroccan Jews who had permanently settled in Algeria further facilitated the granting of such favors.
A number of factors might also have discouraged Muslims from seeking French nationality. Moroccan scholars strongly condemned Muslims who acquired the protection of foreign states because doing so meant subjecting oneself to a law other than that of Islam.Footnote 115 This censure applied to Moroccan Muslims who returned from Algeria as French subjects, because once back in Morocco they were under the jurisdiction of French consular courts. While there is no doubt that many Muslims ignored these directives, the objections of the religious elite did not always fall on deaf ears. Distinct advantages in their quest for proof of Algerian identity, as well as the absence of doctrinal disincentives, go a long way in explaining why Jews falsely claimed to be Algerians in larger numbers than their Muslim neighbors.
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The two lives of Masʿud Amoyal testify to the ingenuity with which North Africans responded to the changing political, legal, and social realities around them. By crossing the newly established border dividing Morocco from French territory, Moroccans could assume the legal identity of Algerians and thus return to their native land as French subjects. The strict binaries with which French officials attempted to separate “true” Frenchmen from natives broke down when North Africans started claiming the status of French subjects simply by virtue of having lived in Algeria. In response to the growing numbers of pseudo-Algerians—and the corresponding complaints of the Moroccan government—French officials adopted stricter standards for proof of identity. Yet the relative ease with which Moroccans continued to pass as Algerians until the turn of the century, despite efforts to curb the number of pseudo-Algerians, testifies to the limited powers of French authorities in a world of increasing legal pluralism.
The strategies of Moroccans like Amoyal, as well as other North Africans who used the new political realities of the 19th century to their own advantage, demonstrate the importance of observing the impact of colonialism in a context that includes countries and empires neighboring colonial states. France's colonization of Algeria affected not only governmental politics in Morocco but also the daily lives of Moroccans who capitalized on the possibilities opened up by new legal regimes. As Amoyal's crossing of the Moroccan–Algerian border demonstrates, Maghribis’ response to European colonization transcended colonial boundaries. Understanding the trajectories of individuals like Amoyal requires a transnational approach to both North African and colonial history, one that straddles the boundaries not only of Maghribi nations but also of colonial states. Ultimately, Amoyal's story raises many questions beyond the history of border crossings between Morocco and Algeria. Just as the colonization of Algeria had effects across North Africa and the Middle East, so imperialism in other places must have transformed the legal (not to mention the social and political) worlds of individuals far beyond those particular colonial frontiers. A global approach is called for in order to fully contextualize the kinds of border crossing practiced by pseudo-Algerians in a world of increasing mobility and legal complexity.
