We are today pleased to offer an interview with Francesco Correale, historian at the CNRS (UMR 7324 CITERES), Tours. He is the author of an important book – La Grande Guerre des Trafiquants. Le front colonial de l’Occident maghrébin (Harmattan, 2014) – in which he offers new insights into another forgotten front of the Great War: the Northwest African countries. Focusing on a (often neglected) aspect of the colonial history, i.e. the weapons smuggling, Correale describes the central role played by resistance movements in the French colonies with the German support and succeeds so in showing how history is not at all the devastating bulldozer that one may think, it leaves underground passages, crypts, holes and hiding places – if we want to recall Eugenio Montale’s poem, that Correale quotes at the beginning of his book. Indeed, the history of the First World War in Maghreb is like an ignored underground passage below the well explored landscape of the European fronts; we can now start to walk anew this passage with the help of Correale’s researches that we can approach in the following interview. This is a unique chance to discover at least few central features of this Mediterranean shore of the war and realize how little we know about the history, the culture and the traditions of these countries. We thank therefore once again Francesco Correale.
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| Woodrow Wilson |
WWIB: Can you
briefly explain how the anticolonialist movement in Maghreb was related to WWI?
FC: Nationalist movements in Maghreb are connected
to World War I by a “triple link”. First by the participation of some people in
the military operations against the colonial
power in situ, in the context
of the Great War in North Africa. It includes not only those people who will
afterwards enter, in one way or another, the national liberation movements in
the different Maghrib Countries, but also those people who become a sort of
“founding myth” of the fight against European colonialism and therefore a
reference point for the next generations of nationalists.
Second by the participation, bon gré mal gré, of conscripted North African soldiers into colonial
armies (the so-called “troupes coloniales”),
particularly the French ones, to fight on the European frontlines. Joining both
European trenches and political circles (especially the Socialist Parties),
they developed their political consciousness and then spread it once they
returned to their countries. Third by the echo of Woodrow Wilson’s statement about
the new order which had to be established after the end of the Great War - the
so-called Fourteen
Points. They had a strong impact in terms of claim of rights expressed by most
of the political leaders in Maghrib countries towards colonial administrators
after the end of the Great War and until the independence.
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| Mulai Ahmed er Raisuni |
WWIB: Could you
introduce the protagonists and the main events in the history of the Great War
in Maghreb?
FC: In my book I analyse the First World War in current Morocco, Western
Sahara and northern Mauritania. The actors in these countries are the French
and Spanish colonial authorities, on the one side, and, on the other side, the
German-Turkish spy network with its head office in the neutral Spain.
German-Turkish authorities sent weapons, money and instructors to most of the
anti-colonial resistance leaders. But the very central actors are the leaders
of the resistance movements.
I. I. Ahmad al-Raîsuni,
active in the North-West region placed between Tangier and the French military zone,
within the area of Spanish influence. Sometimes operating in perfect harmony
with the Spanish troops, he kept a strong anti-French attitude and, by virtue
of his title of Sharif (i.e. descendant of the Prophet Muhāmmad), he seemed to
aspire to the Moroccan throne, or, at least, to become“Khalifa” and represent
the ‘Alawi Sultan in Tetuan, the capital of the Spanish area.
II. Abd al-Malik, active between the
eastern borders of the Spanish area and the region of Taza, in the centre of the
French Morocco. This actor and his political views are usually scarcely
mentioned in history books. Last son of the Algerian Emir ‘Abd-al Qādir,' Abd
al-Malik was born in Damascus and settled later in Tangier, serving the French
police in the town. A few months after the outbreak of the hostilities in
Europe, he became a fervent partisan of the German-Turkish coalition; this
choice was more in agreement with his origins. He created in the middle of the
French Protectorate a small army, which was supported with weapons, money and men
by the Germany through the Spanish Moroccan area. Impregnated with pan-Islamic
principles, he is probably the most idealistic of the leaders of the
resistance, but it was quite hard to him to impose his power over all the
tribes. Indeed, they considered him as a “foreigner” because “alien” to the
Moroccan environment.
III. Ahmad al-Hayba, active in the
Southern region, from the Sūs to the Mauritanian Adrār. Proclaimed Sultan of
Morocco in August 1912, in Marrakesh, he was defeated by the French army in
September. He took over the reins of the anti-French struggle since the
beginning of the hostilities in Europe. He was the son of Sheikh Mā’ al-
‘Aynayn, leader of the Saharan anti-colonial resistance between 1905 and 1910.
In fact, his political action can be considered the pursuit of the agenda of his father,
who died in 1910. Al Hayba settled in southern Morocco but had emissaries all over
the Western Sahara. Colonel Francisco Bens, the Spanish officer in charge of
the administration of the colony of Rio de Oro since 1903, was forced to
negotiate with Al Hayba in 1916, in order to establish the Spanish settlement in
the region of Tarfaya, the southern zone of Spanish influence in Morocco. Even
al-Hayba (often improperly called “Blue Sultan” from French and Spanish
historiography, an appellation used to designate his brother and successor
Murabbī Rabbū) aimed for the Moroccan throne, seriously worrying so General Lyautey, the French
General Resident in Moroccan Protectorate. Lyautey feared a change of dynasty like
that occurred centuries before, when the Almoravids and the Almohads came from
the areas of the Sahara to conquer all territories until the al-Andalūs.
These three
chiefs were considered by German and Ottoman authorities the main leaders of
Morocco-Saharan resistance movements against French colonial powers.
Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning the so-called “Berber resistance” in the
Middle Atlas as well. Berbers brought together various leaders and, quite
independently from the strategies of Berlin and Istanbul, led a struggle
against the colonial troops. One of the most evident consequences was the
French defeat, on 13th November 1914 in El-Harri: 600 dead men (including 33
officers), a high number of wounded and disappeared soldiers and two batteries of
cannons got lost.
Regarding the geographic areas that I didn’t take into account in my
book, it is worth emphasizing the anti-Italian action of the Sanūsiyya, a Muslim
political-religious Sufi order and tribe
active in Libya
and the Sudan
region, which received the support of
Turkish and German reinforcements. We should also mention the Niger, where a
revolt took place of 1917: it is known as the “Kaocen revolt”, by the
name of the Tuareg chief, also supported by German instructors against the French.
It is a fact however that the history of First World War in North Africa
suffers from an important historiographical void. The development of new researches
on this topic could bring out therefore new and unexpected actors. At the same
time, it’s worth underlining that the above mentioned leaders of the
anticolonialist resistance, who were active before the outbreak of the Great
War, kept directly in touch with their Turkish-Germans allies (like Ahmad
al-Hayba or ‘Abd al-Malik did), otherwise they failed to link (although indirectly)
their action with the Great War historical and political context. They took
advantage of the emergency situation as consequence of the War in the colonized
areas of Maghreb. No surprise that the colonial authorities feared a great
revolt assisted by Turkish-German forces across North Africa.
WWIB: How did you
start to work at this book? Which sources did you use during your researches?
FC: The book is the result of my doctoral thesis, defended in 2003 at the
University of Aix-Marseille I, under the direction of Robert Ilbert. Actually,
my previous researches were not really focused on the First Wold War. I was
rather interested to the issue of weapons traffic in Moroccan-Saharan regions,
between the late 19th and the early 20th century. Then I came across a body of
archives completely dedicated to the First World War and to be more precise to
the conflict in Morocco; so I decided to focus my text on the years 1912-1918.
The collection of documents was carried out in the most important
archives in France (Archives of Foreign Affairs, which was at that time located
in Paris, while today it is in La Courneuve; the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer,
in Aix-en-Provence; the Military Archives in Vincennes; the Centre of
diplomatic Archives in Nantes), in Spain (Archivo
General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares and Archives of Foreign
Affairs in Madrid), in Belgium (the Archives of the Foreign Affairs in
Brussels), and of course in Moroccans (Archives of the Protectorate stored in
Rabat).
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| Les tirailleurs marocains |
WWIB: We know
that you often work in loco, so we can suppose you are an expert of the culture
of this region. Can we talk about a WWI remembrance in Maghreb? Is there any
interest for the Centenary? Do people still link WWI and colonialism?
FC: A memory of the First World War can be found in Morocco, but it does not
mention the events I write about in my book. These events have been “forgotten”
in the name of a dynastic legitimacy (that of the Royal family at the power),
which was specifically questioned by the leaders of the anti-colonial resistance.
The memory of World War I in Morocco is mainly related to the “tirailleurs marocains”, who actively
fought on the European fronts. Very few references can be found about the close
relationship between colonialism and the Great War. The interest for the Centenary
is therefore connected to the claim of a role of Moroccan troops in the defence
of the French soil against the German invasion. This attitude often seems the
result of a cultural subordination (in a “Gramscian sense”) of the Moroccan to
the European point of view and celebrative registers of the Great War, or to
affirm in support of the present generations the rights to live in France (and
in the other European countries) given that their grandparents fought there during the World War. These
attitudes omit the fact that, for example, the “tirailleurs” were often recruited by force or that many appealed to
the extremely critical social and economic conditions of the Moroccan
population during those years.
WWIB: Do you
think that the Centenary may offer an opportunity to increase the attention of
the scholars also for these peripheral fronts?
FC: I think it is a duty for the organizers of the various events related to
the Centenary, to affirm and remember that the Great War took place, in fact,
“in the world”.
In my opinion, the centenary offers a central opportunity to stress the
“worldwide” dimension of the Great War. The carnage that took place in Europe
was not the unique consequence of that conflict: an important historiographical
operation has to be made to improve the knowledge of the other fronts.
WWIB: Does it still
make sense to speak about peripheral fronts if we all call it the First “World War”"? Isn't this a kind of
contradiction?
FC: Yes, it is a contradiction that has its roots in the ethnocentrism of
the First World War European historiography. According to this
historiography, the German-French front is the most important place of the war.
Hence, all the other fronts turn out to be marginalised, including the other
European fronts. Stressing this point, I call into question not only the spatial
dimension of the conflict, but also the temporal one. How to deny,
for example, that the World War I could have begun when Italy invaded
Tripolitania and Cyrenaica? How to forget the Ottoman-Italian war, in 1911, or
the Balkan wars in 1912, where all the protagonists of the following WWI were
ready to enter a larger theatre of conflict in 1914? A most truthful perspective may be opened if
we consider a unique historical continuum starting from 1911. It would be a
pity for the scientific community not to take advantage of the opportunity
offered by the centenary, to keep the memory of the Great War in Europe alive,
but also to revise other important aspects of this crucial event such as, for
example, the chronology of the conflict.
