The western Egyptian desert separates the Maghrib geographically from the other three still existent sub-regions of the Arab world so eloquently delineated by Albert Hourani.Footnote ¹ Often perceived as not quite Arab, nor sufficiently Islamic, nor really African by outside observers, North Africa does indeed remain culturally distinct from Western Asia.Footnote ² The region's colonization by France as well as Italy and Spain that commenced during the 19^th century further accentuated this division, which was subsequently reproduced by Western academia. The historiography on the modern Maghrib consequently became the purview of francophone scholars. For example, studies of North African nationalism written in English—with the notable exception of the Algerian Revolution—remain scarce.Footnote ³ So how do we overcome this historiographical bifurcation?Footnote ⁴ One way to do so, I argue, is by focusing on the process of decolonization that spawned countless transregional links. Morocco provides a good example for this dynamic. Even though the country called “the Far West” (al-Maghrib al-Aqsa) might have been situated on the Arab world's geographical margins, the local anticolonial movement ultimately created social networks of solidarity that reached from Rabat to Baghdad. The history of the North African kingdom thus enables us to better understand the trajectory of the entire Arab world during the 20th century.

Morocco's colonization by France and Spain in 1912 occurred relatively late; Tunisia had already experienced its first anticolonial mass-protests by the time the Moroccan sultan agreed to the establishment of a protectorate regime. Just a few years later, in the aftermath of World War I, intellectuals across Africa and Asia began the first worldwide debate about the moral bankruptcy of Western-style modernity.Footnote ⁵ Pan-Islamism and Socialist Internationalism offered ideological alternatives.Footnote ⁶ And the term “decolonization” began to make the rounds among Europeans reflecting upon the future of imperialism.Footnote ⁷ The “Wilsonian moment” passed quickly as the global political and economic orders teetered toward collapse, the impact of which would be particularly hard felt in the colonies.Footnote ⁸ By the mid-1930s, French rule in North Africa began a slow but steady decline as its inherent contradictions accelerated the region's social disintegration.Footnote ⁹ Spain, by contrast, lacked the resources to rapidly modernize its protectorate, and the civil war (1936–39) further complicated its tenuous hold over northern Morocco. The Francoist regime thus sought to accommodate the local nationalist movement.Footnote ¹⁰ This unique confluence of global and local factors created the context in which Moroccan anticolonialism developed at a breakneck speed; the different stages—armed resistance, protonationalist cultural reformism, liberal bourgeois nationalism, and popular mass-mobilization—unfolded within only two decades.Footnote ¹¹ As Britain and France were reaching their “imperial zenith,” Morocco underwent a dramatic social transformation in an astonishingly short period of time.Footnote ¹²

The trajectory of the Bennouna family from Tetouan, the capital of the Spanish protectorate, offers a window onto the evolution of Moroccan anticolonialism—as well as its links to developments in the Middle East. Hajj Abdelsalam Bennouna (ʿAbd al-Salam Binnuna), the patriarch, represented the city's bourgeoisie of Andalusi origin that cultivated its social status as a culturally refined elite loosely connected to the royal court in Fez (Figure 1). During the first two decades of colonial rule, he worked for the newly established tax office, cofounded the reformist newspaper al-Islah in 1917, facilitated the establishment of Tetouan's first electric power plant in 1928, and was elected to the municipal council in 1931.Footnote ¹³

Figure 1

Abdelsalam Bennouna in June 1930 (courtesy of Aboubakr Bennouna).

Yet Bennouna also sought to strengthen the region's traditional links with the wider Arab world.Footnote ¹⁴ Together with a few associates, he founded the first “free school” in 1924 to disseminate modernist Islamic thought emanating from Cairo and beyond. He also established Morocco's first independent Arabic-language printing house in 1928.Footnote ¹⁵ His network of associates with whom he exchanged letters about global events reached as far as Lebanon and the Arabian Peninsula. In August 1930, at his urging, the famous pan-Islamist Shakib Arslan visited Tetouan to bring the efforts of the bourgeoning local anticolonial movement to the attention of the wider Islamic world. For his compatriots, Bennouna became the “father of Moroccan nationalism”; in the eyes of prominent Mashriqis such as Rashid Rida and Riyad al-Sulh Bey, he confirmed Morocco's status as an integral part of the Arab world. When he unexpectedly died in 1935, his funeral procession attracted thousands and condolences arrived from across North Africa and Western Asia.

Transregional links during the era of decolonization thrived on multiple levels. In 1928, Bennouna sent a group of students––including his two eldest sons, Tayeb (al-Tayib) and Mehdi (al-Mahdi)––to Nablus to complete their education at the Najah School under the aegis of prominent intellectuals like Ibrahim Tuqan (Figure 2).Footnote ¹⁶ In their free time, the young Tetouanis participated in the activities of the Boy Scout movement organized by Jamaʿiyyat al-Shubban al-Muslimin to strengthen themselves, physically and morally, against the continuing threat of European colonialism (Figure 3). Even though limited to the male scions of wealthy families, such student missions reaffirmed the attachment felt by many Moroccans to the wider Arab world. The two Bennouna brothers maintained their interest in the Middle East long after their departure from Palestine.

Figure 2

The Moroccan student delegation in Nablus in 1929, including Tayeb Bennouna (seated, left of center) and Mehdi Bennouna (standing on the far right) (courtesy of Aboubakr Bennouna).

Figure 3

Nablus branch of the Jamaʿiyyat al-Shubban al-Muslimin boy scouts honoring its Moroccan members, July 1932. Tayeb Bennouna is seated on the far right, Mehdi Bennouna on the far left (courtesy of Aboubakr Bennouna).

Upon graduation in 1932, and after a brief stay at the American University in Cairo, Tayeb moved to Istanbul to study engineering at Robert College, but had to end his training upon the death of his father. Back home, he served as the secretary general of Hizb al-Islah al-Watani (Party of National Reform) and coauthored the first Moroccan independence manifesto published on 14 February 1943. Tayeb Bennouna returned to the Middle East on several occasions to lobby Arab politicians to support the case for Moroccan independence on the global stage. His visits to Cairo caused mixed emotions: he felt inspired by the passionate atmosphere caused by raucous mass demonstrations against both the Egyptian regime and the British colonial authorities during the aftermath of World War II. But the impotence of the Arab League stood as an awkward counterpoint to the energy he felt each time he walked the city's streets. Nonetheless, Egypt remained his ultimate political reference point throughout the years of the liberation struggle. After Morocco's independence in March 1956, Tayeb Bennouna worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as ambassador in Madrid, Istanbul, and Tehran.

Mehdi Bennouna also moved to Cairo in 1936, where he studied journalism at Fuʾad University and the American University Cairo while becoming a student organizer and writing a number of articles for Egyptian newspapers, thereby “filling the press with propaganda for the beloved homeland.”Footnote ¹⁷ In July 1947, at the behest of Morocco's two leading nationalist parties, he traveled to New York where he laid the groundwork for an anticolonial lobbying campaign that flourished until late 1955.Footnote ¹⁸ His reputation among fellow Arab diplomats reached extraordinary heights, and they enabled him to enter the UN headquarters as a member of their delegations. Mehdi Bennouna even attended their secret deliberations just prior to the General Assembly vote on the partition of Palestine on 27 November 1947. Throughout his years in New York, he worked closely with representatives from the Arab world even though their support proved often more rhetorical than practical. In 1956, Mehdi Bennouna became the Moroccan king's press secretary before founding the country's first news agency.

These three brief biographies underline the close connections between Morocco and the wider Arab world throughout the first half of the 20th century. They are also representative of a broader trend. Hundreds of students attended Egyptian universities where many of them became politicized. Moreover, Moroccan nationalists participated in two of the most important anticolonial regional events of the interwar period, the General Islamic Congress in Jerusalem in 1931 and the Arabic-Islamic Parliamentary Conference for the Defense of Palestine in Cairo in 1938. And they played leading roles in the establishment of Maktab al-Maghrib al-ʿArabi (Office of the Arab Maghrib) in Cairo in 1947.Footnote ¹⁹ The transregional links based on commerce, religious learning, and the hajj that had existed for centuries underwent a transformation during the colonial period.Footnote ²⁰ The countries of the Middle East emerged both as inspiring examples of modern political activism and as targets of anticolonial solidarity efforts whose active diplomatic support might hasten the decolonization of Morocco.

At the same time, a growing generational divide became apparent all across Morocco. Abdelsalam Bennouna, for example, had explicitly chosen the Najah School for his sons because it was “based on religious principles” and far removed from “the life in Egypt filled with cabarets, political parties, and distracting newspapers.”Footnote ²¹ His goal had been to raise a new generation of status-conscious gentlemen well-versed in modernist Islamic thought as well as Western scientific achievements. But his sons could not resist Cairo's undeniable attractions. After he accidently found himself in the midst of a violent street battle between anti-British protesters and the police in October 1951, Tayeb showed himself deeply impressed by this personal encounter with mass politics, concluding that “Egypt's soul is great and powerful. It is a spirited people, which has proven that it cannot be colonized.”Footnote ²² The Middle East continued to simultaneously fascinate culturally and disappoint politically. Mehdi's activities also symbolized the widening gap between young and old accelerated by the realities of interwar world politics. Whereas his father had created Morocco's first printing office to enable educated debates among genteel elites, he founded the country's first news agency, Maghreb Arabe Press, in 1959, which became a pillar of the mass media closely allied with the royal family. The second generation of anticolonial activists had indeed continued Morocco's historical relationship with the Middle East while adjusting it to the realities of 20th century politics.

How, then, does this case allow us to rethink the liberation of the Arab world during the age of imperial decline? It highlights the links—both personal and intellectual—between Maghrib and Mashriq. The countries of the “Arab East” remained points of reference for many Moroccans, because they symbolized the possibility of an authentic Islamic anticolonial modernity that could counteract European hegemony. Ideas and movements emanating from Egypt and beyond inspired activists challenging their local conditions. Learning from developments abroad seemed necessary not only for practical reasons, but also because it legitimized those seeking to reform Moroccan society. However, Moroccans did so on their own terms and not as mere “derivative player[s]” of trends emanating from the Middle East.Footnote ²³ The founding of the Arab League in April 1945 represented the climax for any hopes of transregional unity, even though the constraints of geopolitics soon thereafter disillusioned its adherents. Yet the idea of Arab solidarity that had emerged during the interwar period still inspired many Moroccans long after their country had achieved independence. Studying the decolonization of North Africa is thus not just a worthwhile endeavor for its own sake or a means to better understand the making of modern France.Footnote ²⁴ Rather, it allows for a historiographical integration of an Arab world that was much less fragmented than we often assume.