enormous debts incurred by the Sultan. In 1912, therefore, the Treaty of Fez was signed by the Sultan Abd al-'Aziz and the French Republic.
The treaty, brought about by a combination of military, diplomatic, and economic pressure, created "in Morocco a new regime comprising the administrative, judicial, educational, economic, financial and military reforms which the French government may see fit to introduce within the Moroccan territory" (quoted in Hoffman 156). In addition to this fairly comprehensive agreement, France immediately found it necessary to honor one of its secret treaties with Spain and ceded much of northern Morocco to that nation.
Though it is remarkable how little the French knew about Morocco even in the first decade of the twentieth century, the weakness of the Sultan was not a misperception. In political terms Morocco contained "tremendous contrasts--geographic, racial, linguistic--over much of which the Sultan exercised only nominal control" (Bush 5). Government in Morocco was far from centralized--either in fact or in co
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