The colonization of Morocco ... a blessing´-or-a curse?

Mohamed Moussafir
2021 / 4 / 23

We will be free, once we are convinced of the necessity of examining the axioms, we are not obliged to accept the information without scrutiny, regardless of its source, whether it started from a jurist, a teacher,´-or-a righteous father ...
Let us address one of the topics, the colonization of Morocco, for example, is a disgraceful event, because the word colonialism implies: restriction and incapacity to act ...
But things will never be clear if we are satisfied with this type of definition because there is another aspect absent from the minds of those whom the fervor of patriotism takes to the sanctification of official history ... Do you really know that the colonization of Morocco at the time was mercy on a people that was exhausted by the attacks of the Makhzen!
You would never know that ...
How was Morocco before colonialism ...
Imagine! the lands called the Siba areas were nothing but areas with people who clung to their independence and rejected the Makhzen s attempts to subjugate them ... where all the lands, before the Makhzen policy extended to them, were in the ownership of the community, and the production was semi-collective ... So each family enjoys the right to dispose of a specific plot of land determined unanimously by the administrative apparatus represented by the community, without imposing the type of cultivation on the owners of the land, then dividing the water shares and assigning the chiefs to the waterways and canals alternately.
The vast properties were in the possession of the Sultan, some members of the Makhzen, chiefs, and some major families. At the same time, property dispossession movements were taking place in the rest of the country, which had a negative impact on the population, pushing some of them to emigrate and -convert-ing some members of the tribe into producers isolated from their lands, waiting for wages ...
The Sultan used to exploit the wives of the poor peasants, to cultivate, plow and harvest his lands, reap the fruits, and build canals and waterways for free.
And when the sultan becomes generous, then he grants lands to whoever he wants from the accomplices, in the form of "execution", that is, the exploitation of the land without owning it, and colonization only that broke this system and authorized the sale of lands...
Despite the extreme poverty experienced by the Moroccan people, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, due to drought and the spread of cholera and yellow fever that claimed the lives of nearly three million Moroccans, despite this, the poor peasant and the simple craftsman were exhausted by the increase in legal taxes such as zakat and tithe, Those who are forcibly taken and possibly murdered, as theft, banditry, and the complicity of the chiefs with the gangs increased, and at the same time, power-holders went into a life of extravagance.
And maybe ... the image was darker than the one shown above!
Of course, this is if we turn a blind eye to the infrastructure, the legislative level, and...
French colonialism is indeed colonialism, except that it was accompanied by civilization - even innocence was absent there - because it was able to open the eyes of the people And it pushes them to think of new economic and political relations that break somewhat with medieval patterns!




Add comment
Rate the article

Bad 12345678910 Very good
                                                                                    
Result : 100% Participated in the vote : 1