This paper will analyse 1) Ottoman-German support to foment anti-imperialist movements in the Muslim world during the First World War especially uprisings against the French colonial power in Morocco and 2) how they managed the mobilisation of local leaders and tribes against the French. In October 1914, the Ottoman War minister, Enver Pasha, planned to send a group of Ottoman officers to the Ottoman Embassy in Madrid. This kind of Ottoman military mission in Spain was official and organized in collaboration with the German Embassy. I will present the various actors and their activities, in connection with « Teskilât-ı Mahsusa », the Ottoman Intelligence Service, and the German officials. In fact, they were sent to organize war operations in North Africa, especially to stir up a general insurrection in Morocco, and to contribute to the underground activities of the Central Powers. The Spanish Morocco was used to launch hostilities against the French forces further south. These operations were carried out under the banner of Pan-Islam. Clearly, one of the key actors they wanted to get involved was Mawlay Abd-al Hafiz, the former Moroccan sultan based in Spain. This paper draws from various archives and documents throughout the different areas of the conflict, such as France, Morocco, Germany, the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain.

Panel Title: North Africa: A Forgotten Front During the First World War ? Panel Organizer: Dr. Odile Moreau (Universite Montpellier III, Courriel) Paper Title: United States-Moroccan Relations During the Great War: Ambiguities and Aspirations, 1914-1919 Most accounts of U.S.-Moroccan relations focus on the period of the Second World War and after. Most endeavor to delineate and explain the U.S.’s role in Morocco’s achievement of national independence. None of these works discuss the quality and complexities of the U.S.-Moroccan relationship during the early years of the French and Spanish Protectorates (1912-1925) when all of the involved parties had to make difficult adjustments in their changing relationships with each other while, at the same time, coping with the exigencies imposed on them by the First World War and the peace settlements which followed it. Before the war the United States steadfastly resisted French and Spanish Protectorate authorities’ efforts to strip it of its extraterritorial privileges and to impose their exclusive control over the economies of their protectorates. During the last year of the war, U.S.-French relations were further disquieted by President Wilson’s public support of the right of self-determination for colonial peoples. Such indications of resistance to French control, particularly the call for self-determination, did not go unnoticed by many in Moroccan government and society who saw in them a promise of assistance in their own struggle against the Protectorate regime. These hopes for assistance from the U.S. persisted throughout the interwar period despite American refusals to become involved in any official and formal way in efforts to realize Wilson’s lofty ideals. Using published and unpublished archival materials from the United States, France and Morocco, along with private memoirs, and press reports, this paper will describe and discuss the evolution of American relations with Morocco during the early years of the protectorates, with particular emphasis on the period of the Great War, and its significance for U.S. Moroccan relations during the decades that followed.

My paper investigates the methods developed and used by the French army and government to teach French to indigenous North African soldiers in the French Colonial Army. Although the main focus will be on the methods used in the years preceding and following World War I, some references will be made to methods developed all the way through WW2. The French colonial empire's growing need for more soldiers to be enlisted in its armies was met by an increased awareness of the importance of creating and publishing pedagogical materials allowing a better communication with native soldiers of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. By 1920, France had almost succeeded in imposing the French language as the sole language of communication within its armies. By doing so, the army contributed in a very significant way to the diffusion of French in North Africa. The paper uses materials and documents consulted during my research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France during the summer of 2013. I will talk in details about some major textbooks developed by the military to meet the perceived needs of adult learners who lacked literacy in their first language. I will also investigate the implication of the language policy in the French colonial army and the role of teachers, translators and linguists in this endeavor. The success and limitations of these teaching methods will constitute the last part of the paper.

Thomas Patrick Identities in Transition: Muslims soldiers in WWI The intent of this paper is to show conflicting and evolving attitudes of Muslims who fought in World War I and the rationale for the reasons they fought. This war was a particularly defining moment in the history of those who had been colonized by Europeans. It was a time of identity construction, reconstruction and deconstruction as Muslims within the colonial regimes of various belligerent powers were confronted by conflicting loyalties, desires and obligations, few of which were compatible. For many Muslims poised against the Ottoman Empire, it posed a dilemma: whether to join with the Ottoman Empire and heed their call to Jihad or to serve other colonial masters who opposed the Turks, namely the British and the French. French colonial administrators had to be vigilant of Muslim troops who deserted to the Germans, who made a point of using their alliance with the Ottoman empire to demonstrate their alliance with Islam and attract those deserters. The writings of Rabah Abdallah Boukabouya, who had deserted from the French in 1915, are especially helpful in this regard. The war was a definitive staging ground for a multiplicity of identities that responded in a political way, as either for or against Ottomanism, and in a religious and philosophical and therefore personal way as people confronted what it meant to be Muslim. The answer, however articulated and expressed, would fundamentally alter and reorganize these identities.