‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’: Politics and Patterns of Settler Withdrawal in Independent Morocco

Benjamin Kaplow, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Often unrecognized in studies of colonial legacies is that many settlers choose to remain and maintain investments in newly independent nations. This is particularly true when they have significant immovable assets, such as mineral rights or agricultural lands. When their land is not repossessed, how do settlers decide when to divest and depart from former colonies? To answer this question, I examine settler departures from Morocco following independence from France in 1956, where approximately one million hectares of agricultural land remained in European hands. Drawing from numerous archival sources, I construct an original longitudinal and geospatial dataset of settler land-holding at the property level from the end of the French Protectorate in Morocco in 1956 to the final expropriation of settler lands in 1973. This dataset tracks land ownership for over 1100 farms across multiple periods of land policy in the Rabat Province, one of Morocco’s most important agricultural regions. Through longitudinal regression analysis of land sales, I find that settlers were differentially sensitive to changes in pressure from the Moroccan state and perceived risk of expropriation. At low levels of pressure, owners of both high and low-value properties were equally likely to divest and depart. As pressure and risk rose to moderate levels, those with fewer marginal benefits from continued investment (owners of low-value properties) became more likely to divest than those with higher potential returns (owners of high-value properties). At high levels of pressure and risk, that relation inverted: the owners of high-value properties, with higher potential losses from expropriation, became more likely to divest than owners of low-value properties. Such variation in the departure of settlers and the return of significant economic holdings to Moroccan ownership has significant theoretical and methodological implications for the study of colonial legacies that must be grappled with in future work.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 2. Macro-Historical Dynamics