The Colonial Canned Goods Lobby

The early 1930s were a tough time for French authorities in Morocco. An ill-advised Dahir (a decree by the Sultan) mandating separate legal systems for the country's Arab and Berber populations sparked widespread protests in 1930. They were fueled in part too by severe droughts and food shortages throughout the year. The "ravitaillement" dossiers of the Archives du Maroc throughout the early 1930s show a colonial administration scrambling to figure out how to keep the country supplied with food. Although the bulk of these files deal with orders, shipments, and payment receipts (the Protectorate often paid for imported consumer goods directly and then redistributed to merchant houses), there are quite a few petitions and letters of clarification from individuals, civil society groups like Chambers of Commerce, and businesses. The below is an entertaining letter from the Secretary-General of the Federation of French Manufacturers of Canned Vegetables, Meat, and Fruit in Paris, a Monsieur H. Lepère. 

12 Mai 1933

M. Le Directeur, Office du Protectorat de la France au Maroc Paris, 

Comme suite à ma visit de ce jour relative à la règlementation des conserves alimentaires, je me permets d'appeler votre attention sur la rédaction du "Dahir" du 24 Juin 1930.Au paragraphe premier de l'article premier, je lis que les conserves enfermées dans les boites métalliques, terrines, bocaux, etc...ne pourront être importées, etc...qu'avec l'indication du poids net.Le troisième paragraphe s'exprime ainsi: les boites, terrines, bocaux vendus à la pièce ne porteront pas obligatoirement l'indication du poids net.Il me semble qu'il y a contradiction entre les deux paragraphes car je n'ai pas connaissance qu'une boîte de conserves se vende autrement qu'à la pièce.Vous m'obligeriez vivement en transmettant mon observation à qui de droit et en me communiquant la réponse qui vous sera faite.Avec mes remerciements anticipés, je vous prie d'agréer, Monsieur le Directeur, l'expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués. 

Signé: H. Lepère, Federation des Syndicats Francais de Fabricants de Conserves de Legumes, Viandes, et Fruits, Paris.*

The casual observer may glean little from the letter aside from a bit of confusion over the packaging of canned goods. But seen in the context of stacks of letters such as these, as Daniel Rivet noted in his 1989 essay on the state of the archives on French Morocco, the Protectorate was a "major consumer of paper." Entire dahirs elaborate on the most minute of details, and are further elaborated in communiques from the Residence-General in Rabat to regional commanders and municipal chiefs. And then sustained correspondence is invariably required to iron out some of more perplexing details contained in the original decrees. 


*As a result of my visit today regarding the regulation of canned food imports, let me call your attention to the drafting of the "Dahir" of June 24, 1930. 
In the first paragraph of the first article, I read that foods enclosed in metal boxes, bowls, jars, etc... can only be imported, etc ... with the indication of the net weight on the container. 
The third paragraph says: boxes, bowls, jars sold by the piece do not necessarily have to carry an indication of the net weight.
It seems to me that there is a contradiction between the two paragraphs because I am not aware that canned food is sold other than by the piece. 
You strongly oblige me by sending my observation to the proper and communicating me the answer that will be made to you.
With my thanks in advance, please accept, Sir, the assurances of my highest regard.

Citation: Importation des produits alimentaires 1915-1937. C202. "Importation de beurre, fromage, vin, biscuit, farine, viande, poisson." Service du Commerce et de l'Industrie.

The Gymnastics Society of Tunis, 1922

This post requires little explanation. From June 1922, courtesy of Gallica, the Société Gymnastique de Tunis pays a visit to Marseille at the annual competition of the Union des Sociétés Gymnastiques de France. Founded by Eugene Paz in 1873, the USGF was a major organization, with the President of the Republic several times presiding over its annual competition as men's gymnastics became an extremely popular spectator sport. Unfortunately the Tunis team went home empty-handed this year. The decade was dominated by the Belfort and Mulhouse squads; 1922 was no different, with the Belfortaise taking home the crown.

Morocco in Sonnets, 1940

In 1940, Emilie Bernard (not to be confused with the post-impressionist pal of Gauguin and Van Gogh, Emile Bernard) published a fascinating and bizarre volume of poems, Le Maroc en Sonnets. The book is difficult to find: WorldCat's only listings are in Paris at the Bibliothèque Nationale. Luckily, Morocco's own Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc has a copy, complete with the original illustrations by Jean Hainut and Jeanne Chiaramonti.

The book first moves through space, devoting a chapter each to Marrakesh, Fes, Meknes, Casablanca, and Rabat, all described in verse. Bernard then turns to vignettes of Moroccan rural life, foodways, and religious practices. "La Vie d'un Fellah" stands out as a good representation of the collection as a whole. In it, Bernard writes from the perspective of a Moroccan fellah, living life in the same "original rhythm," watching her grandmother mill grain between stones. She is stuck on the primitive, portraying life as it always was, "since the time of Rebecca." 

La Vie d'un Fellah

En nos douars, Bouchaïb, ainsi qu’aux premiers ages,

Notre vie a gardé son rythme primitif,

Vois l’aïeule écrasant le grain doré captive

Entre deux ronds de pierre, et nos fillettes sages,

Accroupies au milieu de neigeux assemblages,

Alimentant le vol de leur fuseau furtif

Aux doux flocons de laine, et le plaisir naïf

De nos fils, sous les cieux qui dorent leurs visages.

Semailles et récoltes et garde des troupeaux,

Comme les pâtres grecs jouant sur nos pipeaux,

Et, dans le jour mourant, la jarre sur l’épaule,

Pour aller chercher l’eau qui toujours nous manqua,

Nos femmes s’en allant au puits, bras en coupole,

Tout est pareil, vois-tu, qu’au temps de Rébecca…

See Emilie Bernard. Le Maroc en Sonnets. Rabat: F. Moncho, 1940.

Mapping Tunis, 1764

The esteemed French philosophe and cartographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin was known for his maritime maps. His famous 1764 series, Petit Atlas Maritime, stretched out over five volumes and contained nearly six-hundred separate maps. Within the collection were these two of Tunis. The first shows the Gulf of Tunis, from Cap Farina (referred to as Cap Carthage here) to Cap Bon (Cap Saffran), while the second zooms in on the city of Tunis itself. Note the comment about the silted passage from the gulf to the Lake of Tunis, just below La Goulette, and the island of Chiquely (Chikly), where the Spanish had erected an outpost two centuries prior.

Images from the University of Illinois-Champaign University Library digital collection.

Postcards for the Centennial: French Algeria, 1930

The centennial of French colonial rule in Algeria in 1930 was marked by major celebrations in Algeria and in the metropole. A year prior, President Doumergue established a "Propaganda Committee" to ensure that the momentous year was properly honored. To commemorate the occasion, the Société de Geographie released a series of postcards capturing images of Algeria and Algerians from all three départements. Gallica has thankfully digitized 280 of them. Although unlabeled, they are an endlessly fascinating resource for the researcher. They immediately prompt questions about image construction, and the photographic gaze, to say nothing of what we can glean from the subjects of the photos themselves. Who were these people? How did they come to appear in these photographs?

For further reading about the 1930 centennial, see André Lambelet, "Back to the future: politics, propaganda and the centennial of the conquest of Algeria," French history and civilization: papers from the George Rudé Seminar. Vol. 1. Melbourne: The George Rudé Society, 2005.

Saharan Jews and French Algeria | Sarah Stein

The 1870 Crémieux Decree extended French citizenship to most, but not all, of Algeria's Jewish population. The Jews of the M'zab Valley were excluded from this legislation. As Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein explains in this episode, this was due to a complex web of historical confluences including the chronology of conquest, shifting military and administrative structures for French Algerian rule, and perceptions of Jewish, Arab and Berber indigeneity. This story, while anchored in the local, participates in wider discussions of international Jewish philanthropies, decolonization, citizenship, belonging and marginality amid rapidly shifting global conditions.

Sarah Abrevaya Stein is a professor in the Department of History and Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA. In addition to Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (University of Chicago Press, 2014), she has written a number of award-winning books and articles including Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews and a Lost World of Global Commerce (Yale University Press, 2008), winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She is the co-editor of Sephardi Lives: a Documentary History, 1700-1950 (Stanford University Press, 2014), a primary source reader of over 150 documents translated from fifteen different languages into English along with Professor Julia Phillips Cohen of Vanderbilt University.

Alma Rachel Heckman is a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA's history department. Her dissertation is entitled "Radical Nationalists: Moroccan Jewish Communists 1945-1975" and concerns Jewish engagement in Morocco's national liberation movement, intertwined with global political developments and migrations.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stein, Sarah Abrevaya. Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Brower, Benjamin Claude. A Desert Named Peace The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

Stora, Benjamin. Les trois exils juifs d'Algérie. Paris: Stock, 2006.

Shepard, Todd. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006.

Schreier, Joshua. Arabs of the Jewish Faith The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.

Jewish men, women, and children in the Jewish neighborhood of Ghardaïa.  Stereoscopic photograph, c. 1900.  The street is typical of the cities of the Mzab Valley, while the children’s and adults’ clothing and headgear would have helped to mark them as Jews. (Source: Centre Culturel et de Documentation Saharienne, Ghardaïa)

La Mission saharienne Foureau-Lamy, 1898-1900

In 1898, Fernand Foureau set out to explore the Algerian Sahara, following in the footsteps of the disastrous Flatters expedition in 1881. Working under the auspices of la Société de Géographie and joined by a military detachment under Commander François Joseph Amédée Lamy, Foureau's task was to gather scientific and geographic information on the "immense territory that separates Algeria from our colonies in Senegal and the Congo." The mission included 213 Algerian tirailleurs, 50 Saharan tirailleurs, and 13 spahis (light cavalry). It ended tragically for Lamy, who was killed in a 1900 battle against Sudanese tribes in northern Chad, led by Rabih al-Zubayr.

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France has a collection of 619 photos from the expedition. They present a stark and sometimes intimate portrait of life in the expedition. Some are ethereal, hazy images with a single blurry figure positioned deep in the frame. A series of four images pictures two dogs, one just a small puppy, playing while the troops seem to gather around in a semi-circle. The larger dog is skinny; we see the curve of his ribs clearly in one of the photos. Are they pets? In one photograph, a colonial soldier's stance seems to indicate a hesitation to get too close to the dog. In another, what appears to be a rope leash is looped around his neck.

The images of the dogs let us in to the camp; one begins to wonder about the interactions with this animal along the trail, about camaraderie amongst indigenous soldiers, many of whom would die fighting other indigenous peoples along the way. One wonders, too, who held the camera (the credits say it was Foureau himself) and what exactly they meant to capture. Loaded camels with saddles but no riders walk over a ridge line, with no human in sight.

The Ottoman Barracks of Benghazi

by Adam Benkato

It seems nobody could decide, in the late 1800s, what kind of administrative status was to be assigned to the region of Barqa (Cyrenaica, that is, today’s eastern Libya). It fluctuated between being a sanjaq dependent directly on Istanbul (1863), one dependent on the wilayah of Tripoli (1871), an independent wilayah of its own (1879), and back to independent sanjaq again (1888 until 1911). Needless to say, getting anything official done in those days was probably a nightmare.

A "barracks in Benghazi", Turkish photo, 1908, from the archive of Wasim al-'Ageeb

In about 1891, the wali Rashid Pasha II (r. 1889-1893) of the sanjaq began work on a castle and barracks just outside the city-center of Benghazi, in an area now known as el-Kish (الكيش) after the family who owned most of the surrounding land, but at that time known as al-Berka (البركة), referring to its salty marshes. This same Rashid Pasha was also seemingly responsible for the construction of one of the oldest extant mosques in Benghazi, known as the Osman mosque (جامع العصمان), just across from the Ottoman baladiyya. The initial phase of the barracks was finished by Rashid’s successor, Taher Pasha, in 1895. At the time Benghazi was quite a small town by North African standards, with a population of no more than 10,000, but was certainly the biggest city of the province. The building is known as gaṣr al-berka (قصر البركة) or qishlat al-berka (Arabic قشلة being the Turkish word kışla ‘barracks’).

The military units stationed there, however, seem not to have been under local control, but rather perhaps controlled from Tripoli or Istanbul directly. Thus it was that the barracks of Berka was home to one of the earliest trained physicians in Benghazi, Dr. Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Feytūrī (1882-1941, nicknamed ‘Doctor Bey’), who was a Tripolitanian trained in Istanbul and appointed to the military units stationed at Berka just after the turn of the century.

The Berka Barracks after the Italian bombardment of Benghazi, 1911

The building was damaged during the Italian bombardment of Benghazi in 1911, but then rebuilt and expanded to be used by them as a barracks again. The Italians added two more wings to the building, and increased the number of rooms to 360. Following Italy’s defeat in World War II, the British administration of eastern Libya also stationed troops there, as did the Kingdom. It was used as a barracks and for training purposes into the early 1970s, at which point the regime abandoned it in favor of the new al-Fadhil barracks built just opposite.

The Berka Barracks in Benghazi, post-Italian expansion

The building is a unique example of an Ottoman-Italian building at such a scale in Libya. But most unfortunately, the building has been left to its own devices for more than half a century now. The Ottoman-era mosque within the barracks was destroyed by the Qaddafi regime (as it destroyed a number of mosques and historical buildings), while it simultaneously neglected to restore or renovate the structure, resulting in the collapse of several sections. Increasing damage occurs every year (see here and here), and especially since the Libyan revolution, as there are no real official deterrents against entering or damaging the premises.

In the past ten years or so, the large square next to building has seen use again, for the purposes of informal (and technically illegal) drag racing and drifting where military units were once drilled.

The barracks, mid-1920s, post-restoration and expansion, courtesy of the archives of Wisam al-'Ageeb

Adam Benkato is a Ph.D. student of medieval Central Asia at SOAS. He also researches various historical, literary, and linguistic topics relating to Libya, and collects editions of Libyan poetry and literature.

A Ride in Morocco Among Believers and Traders

The minaret of the Grand Mosque of Tangier (G. Cornwell)

Frances Macnab was the nom de plume of Agnes Fraser, a fairly well-published British author from Essex, who, at the turn of the century, traveled for several months throughout Morocco. Her reflections on the trip were quickly published in 1902 as A Ride in Morocco Among Believers and Traders (with a 1985 reprint by Darf Limited). There is little serious information to glean from her account save a few details here and there, but it is nonetheless an entertaining bit of travel literature and readers will note how infrequently she interacts with Moroccan women. Some highlights:

Discussing the geography of the countryside around Arzila (Asilah):

The scenery does not lend its to photography. Photography deals with facts. It stereotypes, it records. It never idealizes. It is like Mohammedanism. The landscape could only be painted in detail. A group of Moors and cattle, a mass of rocks and marvellous vegetation, or even a piece of the winding track itself, with a solitary hawk the only feature against the perfect blue of the sky. Each contained form, line, colour, and breathed a poetry all its own.

Visiting a prison in Laraiche (Larache):

At the far end of the marketplace there is an open space, clean and well kept; and close by is the kasbah, or residence of the Bashaw, and two prisons, which are generally full. One was empty when we were there, as it was undergoing repairs. I went inside, as nobody seemed to object. It was very bare, but there was a good water-supply; the courtyard was open to the sky; and through the sleeping accommodation was only a bare, dark recess, probably very damp, and the sanitary arrangements practically nil, I did not see any evidence of close confinement or dark dungeons. To an Englishman such conditions would be torture; but taking into consideration the state of most Moorish houses, I did not think the prison was bad. 

On selecting suitable guides and protection in Tangier:

Moors are capable of great fidelity. My Kaid El Hashmy, of a Sus tribe, was a remarkable instance; but he was not the only servant I had of proved fidelity. They will not trust a stranger, but their loyalty to people they know is striking.
The best and most faithful servants are the Riffs. They always carry arms, and I heard of households where as many as six Riffs were employed. They slept in the house, and the Europeans rested in security. The town Moor can never be depended upon, and even if he had arms given him would sooner open the door to a robber than risk his skin. Every house of the least importance is granted a soldier, or a even two soldiers, as guards, or a guarantee of protection from the Bashaw.

Describing a feast in Marrakesh:

The first day after my arrival in Marakish was one of feasting--for the entertainments provided for me were tremendous. I will give an account of one feast, and leave the reader to imagine the rest. We sat on cushions on the floor as usual, and, after water had been poured over our hands by a slave into a brazen dish, the courses opened by a large dish of fowl stewed in olive-oil garnished with olives. A loaf of bread was given to each person; our host, who sat by my side, tore up the fowl with his fingers; and we dipped pieces of bread in the oil and transferred it, or a morsel of chicken, to our mouths with our right hands. We also picked out olives, and my host soaked pieces of his own loaf in the oil, and held it up to my mouth, which I was obliged to open for the reception of the delicate attention. Then the fowl was dismissed, and another was brought, this time stewed with onions. In time this was replaced by mutton, boiled with almonds and apricot kernels. The inevitable kouskous was brought in, and I hoped this would finish the repast; but it was followed by the forequarter of lamb and potatoes. Then a compound of green vegetables, mashed together and boiled in oil, was set before us. And this was followed by several dishes of cakes, made of paste and honey, fried in oil, and a large bowl of orange marmalade made with cinnamon. Then fruits were set before us, and water was again brought to wash our hands, this time being greatly needed, for they were very greasy. Two rose-water sprinklers were set before the host, who went to work to make me wet through with the scent. Incense was then brought in, and handed round, so that each guest might hold his chin over it and let it curl up his face. I found it too strong to be pleasant for my nose. Then the host stood up, and held his trailing draperies over the censer--a practice very desirable as a disinfectant, I feel sure. Tea was then served to us, and I was particularly pleased to eat a most choice delicacy--a rare and curious thing--which proved to be a small biscuit with 'Huntley and Palmer' stamped on it! The Moors called these biscuits 'cakes,' and appeared to find them delicious. Tea was followed by coffee; and then I took my leave.

Tetouan needs barley, 1856

Mohammed Daoud

Students of Moroccan history owe a major debt of gratitude to Mohammed Daoud. Not only did he turn his incredible private library into a research library (albeit a difficult one to find) in his hometown of Tetouan, he also gave the world Tarikh Titwan, a twelve-volume comprehensive history of his city from the Almohads to the Hispano-Moroccan War of 1859-1860 (sometimes called the Tetouan War). 

The breadth of his project, completed over the course of nearly two decades, can be intimidating, but the sheer volume provides lots of possible jumping off points for researchers looking for new projects. Best of all perhaps, it also contains hundreds of reproduced primary sources, from local chroniclers to Spanish military correspondence to letters from the Sultan, Moulay Abderrahman, to makhzan officials.

In 1856, severe grain shortages hit Tetouan and the Jbela region. The qaid of Tetouan (al-Hajj Ahmed al-Haddad) wrote to the sultan informing him of the problem, and the sultan in turn sent a letter to the qaid of Essaouira (Mogador), ordering him to send two boats loaded with barley to Tetouan. Mohammed Daoud reproduces the letter in Tarikh Titwan, volume 9, p. 363. The Sultan repeatedly appeals to the Essaouira qaid's "blessings of generosity," while casually remarking that he "knows well the high price of barley" at the time. 

Dated 14 Safar 1273, the brief letter demonstrates a few things. First, it suggests the makhzan's capacity, however limited, to link distant parts of the empire. Without the Sultan's intervention, it is unlikely the governor of Essaouira would have sent barley to Tetouan. Second, it suggests, as Stacy Holden's recent work shows, the precolonial makhzan's concern with the security of food supply and its willingness to intervene and subsidize when necessary. 

Delacroix's painting of Moulay Abderrahman

Moroccan Pottery Grudge Match

Safi platter from the late-19th century

In 1905, Alfred Charmetant of the Lyon Chamber of Commerce, completed a report for the French Commission de Colonisation on the economic prospects for French control of Morocco. His findings were part of a wide and diffuse system of knowledge production undertaken by French private citizens, military officials, and academics in the decades leading up to colonial rule in 1912. Edmund Burke's forthcoming book, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam, looks at this in greater detail, but while we anxiously await its release, we draw attention to a passage from Charmetant's report, Mission Économique au Maroc. 

Charmetant went one-by-one through Moroccan port cities, noting the annual value of their port traffic, their accessibility to markets of the interior, and the main aspects of their industry. While writing about Safi, an Atlantic port approximately 150 kilometers west of Marrakesh, Charmetant weighed in on an age-old Moroccan debate: which city makes the best pottery? Charmetant quite clearly came down in the Fassi camp: "There is very little industry in Safi. Only glazed pottery is well reknown, and they are much more crudely painted than those made in Fes."

Safi's pottery tended to play second fiddle to that of Fes. Victor Piquet's 1917 report, Le Maroc: géographie, histoire, mise en valeur,  discussed native artisan industries in detail, but glossed over Safi's pottery in favor of the "very special character" of Fes (for which he also noted its distinctive blue color). Henri Dugard's Le Maroc de 1919 failed to mention other pottery industries but talked only of the "curious glazed pottery" of Safi," while Georges Paquot highlighted only the pottery of Fes as one of the city's "most original industries." To some extent, Safi still holds a second tier status today, if only by virtue of its distance from the typical circuits touristiques. 

Fes platter, with fish-scale motif.

As any good faux guide will tell you, three Moroccan cities are known for their pottery production. Salé, across the Bou Regreg from Rabat, is known for its functional, clay-brown pottery. The trademark pottery of Fes is characterized by intricate designs painted in blue and white; the "fish-scale" and floral designs particularly popular. Safi, by contrast, traditionally produces the most colorful pieces of the three, combining lots of yellows, greens, and pale reds into its designs. 

Although nowadays its more common to find ceramics of all sorts of colors and styles produced everywhere, but there remains a strong association of pottery-producing cities with a particular style. Hamid Irbouh's work, Art in the Service of Colonialism: French Art Education in Morocco, 1912-1956, examines the process by which the French classified and systematized art production in the country. The French ethnographic project continued through the colonial period, as Irbouh demonstrates. He dispells the notion of French colonial officials that Moroccan artisanal production had been in crisis in the late nineteenth century. This idea led the French to map out what constituted "authentic" design and to mandate the use of those styles in newly established artisan centers.

Ion Perdicaris and the Protégé System in Morocco

Granger's portrait of Perdicaris

Ion Perdicaris is best known as the captive of the rogue Moroccan bandit-cum-governor El Raisuli. An American citizen, Teddy Roosevelt fans will recognize him as a cause célèbre of his time: upon hearing about his kidnapping, President Roosevelt dispatched seven warships to the north of Morocco to pressure the Sultan to win his release. Despite Roosevelt's catchphrase, "Perdicaris alive or El Raisuli dead," catching on, the White House soon discovered that Perdicaris was no longer an American citizen but not until after the Sultan had given in to El Raisuli's demands. The whole ordeal was also the subject (sort of) of a bizarre 1975 film, The Wind and the Lion, wherein Sean Connery played El Raisuli and Candice Bergen played "Eden Perdicaris," with Ion turned into a woman to play up a romantic storyline.

However, Perdicaris was an active businessman in late nineteenth-century Morocco and took a strong interest in the growth of American trade in the country. In 1885, he published a tract condemning the endemic corruption of protections system at the time. Following new trade agreements in the 1850s and 1860s, foreign powers expanded their relationship with native protégés, often employees of consulates or legations who received tax exemption and a release from Moroccan legal jurisdiction. The relationship worked both ways, as protégés could allow European merchants to maneuver in the interior (where Europeans could not travel) and purchase property. In a letter to American consul Felix Mathews, Perdicaris spelled out his concern over the arbitrary arrest and detention of Moroccans who were the subject of often spurious complaints by persons under foreign protection. From his letter, we can infer quite a bit about the aggressive efforts of European powers to expand their influence through the protection system. It also shows how merchants, diplomats, and protégés, who were ostensibly under the jurisdiction of consular law, operated in fact with near total impunity. 

September 6, 1885
El Minzah, Tangier 

Dear Colonel Mathews, 

I take the liberty of addressing this letter to you in consequence of some appalling revelations which are now being made, regarding the cruelties perpetrated on unfortunate natives of this country, owing to claims against them by certain protected subjects of the United States, and various European Governments.
I also beg to enclose a statement recently made to my secretary by a native named Hadj Ben Omar, and in which allusion is made to the manner in which English, American, Italian, and Portuguese claims are enforced. I may also inform you on the matter being brough to the notice of the English, Italian, and Portuguese ministers, a prompt and searching investigation was instituted by the two former, which investigation is now pending, but which, up to the present date, only too well substantiates the revolting statement of the man Hadj Ben Omar.
It may be in your recollection that last year public attention in England and this country was painfully excited by a series of articles published in the London Globe of July 10th, 11th, 12th, and 17th, and headed "To-day in Morocco." In this searching exposé of Moorish maladministration the fact was brought to light that, in consequence of pecuniary claims made by protected subjects of Foreign Powers, men were dragged from their homes and families, and in the prisons of Morocco were subjected to the horrors which disgraced the Middle Ages of Europe. Yet that this was done without the alleged debtor being allowed to call witnesses, to produce documents which might refute the claim made against him, or without even being confronted with the claimant.
In consequence of the articles in the Globe, the matter was taken up in the British Parliament, and an inquiry was instituted which conclusively proved that the charges were well founded. On this, the English Minister, Sir John Drummond Hay, directed that payment of British claims should be arrested, and that none of these demands pending should be paid, until each separate one was subjected to a rigid investigation.
As it now appears that on demands made by American protégés, gangs of men, chained together like wild beasts, have been marched through the country to endure the horrors of imprisonment in the fetid dungeons of Mequinez, I trust you will permit me, as an American citizen, and one jealous of the honour of our Flag, to ask you to suspend payment of claims alleged to be due to American protégés, until each claim be thoroughly examined by an impartial tribunal, with an opportunity being given to the alleged debtor of being confronted with the claimant.
2nd. That this investigation be of a public character, and that the representatives of the press may be admitted.
3rd. That a list shall be prepared and published in one of the local papers, showing--
(a) The names of American protégés claiming sums of money from native subjects of Morocco.
(b) The names of the alleged debtors, with a statement of the sums claimed against such parties; and I would suggest it would be highly desirable that it should be clearly stated how much of this debt accrued on account of interest, and how much was capital.
4th. The number of persons imprisoned on account of American claims since the payment of them was demanded about two years ago. How many of such persons are still alive, and how many died in prison; also of what particular complaint they died.
5th. It would be satisfactory to know if, in accordance with the local regulations which I understand exist, the alleged creditors supplied the parties whom they imprisoned with a reasonable amount of food daily; and if not, why not?
I need hardly say that neither the Government nor the people of the United States would desire that any person, on American demands, should be subjected to a treatment too bad for even the most hardened criminal in our country; but that without a fair trial, or even the semblance of a trial, persons should be subjected to the horrors described in Hadj Ben Omar's statement, would be absolutely intolerable to the people of America.
Less than a year ago, an investigation was held at Casablanca in consequence of certain disclosures made in London Globe, and it was elicited that, on account of the unsatisfactory state of the regulations regarding debtors and creditors in transactions between protected subjects of Foreign Powers and the natives of this country, the latter are liable to and, in a great number of cases, do suffer from a disgraceful amount of deliberate fraud and cruelty.
When it is remembered that the American claims were enforced under the same conditions and according  to the same procedure as those of other nationalities, I fear that, possibly, a great amount of injustice may have been committed.
The feeling which prompts me to make the request which I have done in this letter, is strengthened by the fact that, within the last few weeks, two men have come here to complain of having been falsely imprisoned on account of an alleged fraudulent claim made by an American protected Jew. The statement made by the two men alluded to may be true or untrue, or more or less exaggerated; but you will admit that neither truth nor justice is likely to suffer by inquiry. 

I remain, My dear Colonel Mathews, Very cordially yours,
ION PERDICARIS.

The house of Ion Perdicaris in Tangier (courtesy of TALIM Blog)

For more information on the protection system and legal jurisdiction in precolonial Morocco, see Jessica Marglin's previous podcast, "Legal Pluralism in Nineteenth-Century Morocco."