Comparing urban life across French North Africa

Source: Gallica

The archival traces left behind by French colonizers demonstrates a range of shared experiences and policies within the three entities of "French North Africa" was a real thing. Trade relationships between Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco were important, and colonial administrations learned from and built off previous experiences in other colonies. 

A fascinating chart from the Fonds Protectorat at the Archives du Maroc offers a glimpse into the major cities of French North Africa at a transitional time in the empire. It lists types of business by number in Algiers, Oran, Tunis, Casablanca, and Rabat in 1924, along with the European populations of each city. It also gives a per capita breakdown of each business type--i.e. there were 4 opticians in Oran, or one for every 29,371 Europeans living there. 

A few numbers jump out immediately. First, despite their relatively small populations, Rabat and Casablanca had quite a few amenities: there was a café or brasserie for every 192 Europeans in Rabat, compared to one for every 931 in Tunis. The restaurant count, too, showed a vibrant public social life for residents of Casa and Rabat. There were roughly 32,000 people living in Rabat at the time (around 9,000 Europeans) but the capital of the French Protectorate had 37 restaurants compared to just 29 in Oran -- a city of at least 150,000, over two-thirds of which were Europeans.  Casablanca had more florists (9) than Algiers (4), a city at least three or four times larger. The volume of architects in Casablanca (39) compared to Oran (26) and Tunis (21) says a lot about where the building and expansion was happening in 1924; even tiny Rabat had 12 registered architects plying their trade that year.

Although the French had occupied Casablanca since 1907, the Protectorate was only twelve years old in 1924, five of those years spent enduring the hardships and relative privation of World War I. There are plenty more quirky comparisons and trivia to dig through--Rabatis were seeing way more movies and riding way more bikes than their neighbors in Tunis or Algiers--but most of what they point to is the wealthier, bourgeois backgrounds of colons in Morocco. The institutions of conspicuous consumption and the leisure class were put into place quickly, ten years before France would even declare Morocco fully "pacified." 

Source: “Nombre Approximatif de Commerçants Installés à Casablanca et Rabat. Comparaison avec les mêmes categories de negoçiants installés à Alger, Tunis, & Oran.” 30 January 1924. Archives du Maroc, G0426.