It is often assumed that postcolonial states have very little in common with the colonial versions of themselves. In Morocco, however, there is a very significant degree of continuity between the political-economic policies of the governments of the French Protectorate (1912-56) and the post-independence state. In those regions where the European powers set themselves up as new rulers, their goal was to make the colonies profitable. But economic success was elusive in those primarily agrarian societies where no mineral deposits or oil could be easily harvested. In such colonies the Europeans developed plans for exploitation that usually combined a profound lack of knowledge about the region with a belief in the universal applicability of European methods and technology and a relative indifference to the fate of the indigenous population. In Morocco the French overlords, worked on behalf of large financial interests. The colonization of the country was undertaken primarily at the behest of a French financial consortium made up of half a dozen French banks and investment companies. These investors sought to transform the nation into a major source of agricultural imports--to be produced primarily by colonists with enormous land holdings. Traditional rural society was nearly destroyed under the Protectorate but after independence the government engaged in the pursuit of the same goals, simply replacing colonial landowners with a new class of local gentry who had the same unrealistic hopes as the French colons.
Morocco is one of the few African colonies where independence meant that the old rulers simply wished to take up where they had left off when the Europeans had first taken over. This situation reflects the unusual circumstances in which Morocco became a French protectorate. The French, who "were at best ambivalent about the acres of desert, scrub and jungle brought under the flag by ambitious soldiers," needed to be p...