When the 1912 Treaty of Fes created the French Protectorate of Morocco, the new French administration took charge of a modernization project that included developing a public education system. Avoiding oversight by the Sultan and his government, they instead created separate systems for Arabic-speaking and Berber-speaking Moroccan youth in an effort to artificially separate the population along ethnolinguistic and geographic lines. Whereas much of the existing scholarship on the Protectorate of Morocco focuses on urban Arab nationalism, this dissertation addresses the outcomes of French Berber policy within Berber communities themselves. The lens of education reveals a space of unusually intimate interaction between French functionaries and Berber youth. Based on a Berber myth that placed Berbers higher than Arabs on a European pseudoscientific racial hierarchy, the system of Berber schools was meant to train an intermediary elite class that would serve the French colonial project and turn Berber loyalties from the Sultan to France. Instead, the inequalities and injustices of the imperial order spurred student activism in both Arabic- and Berber-oriented schools, confounding the French educators charged with their instruction and discipline. Drawing on archival and oral sources gathered in Nantes, Aix-en-Provence, and Rabat, this dissertation examines the ideological underpinnings, practical implementation challenges, day-to-day administration, and unintended consequences of the bifurcated public education system implemented by the French in Morocco. I first analyze the rise of ethnography as a colonial science and of ethnographic expertise as both justification of colonialism and a means by which colonial administrators jockeyed for rank and authority. Following the development of a colonial ethnographic archive, I examine the practice of sending French ethnographic researchers with the military in their “Pacification” exercises in southern and eastern Morocco from 1912 until 1934. In addition to rendering Berber country legible to the new centralized administration, this enabled the creation of ad hoc schools that focused on teaching French, which later grew into the Berber school system. An examination of the deliberate creation of separate systems for Arab and Berber youth exposes that the Berber schools were intentionally kept secret from the Sultan and his Makhzen administration, despite French promises of transparency. A narrative history of the Collège Berbère d’Azrou as the keystone of this separate, clandestine educational project reveals that efforts to suppress Arabic language education in the Berber schools had both practical and ideological pitfalls, leading to a backlash that rocked the school in a volatile moment of war and rebellion. Finally, through a case study of Arsène Roux, founder of the Collège, I examine the ambiguous role of a talented and well-intentioned educator and scholar within the exploitative colonial system. By tracing the development of the Berber myth and its use in shaping policy in the Moroccan context, this project prioritizes the experiences of Berber and French individual actors and analyzes the creation of Berber schools as the epitome of colonial divide-and-rule strategies. It decentralizes the urban nationalist movement, arguing instead that activities in the supposed “land of anarchy” provide a clearer understanding of the beliefs and practices of the Protectorate administration. Finally, I contribute to the discussion of how deliberately divisive colonial strategies not only created their own resistance within colonized populations but continue to undergird ongoing divisions and inequalities in postcolonial societies.
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