| Summary: |
This book examines the dreams and deceptions underlying agricultural
development in Morocco. Focusing primarily on the policy-making
process, it reconstructs the decision-making environments in which
major policies were formulated, and explores the rationale behind policy.
Its purpose is, first, to help elucidate policy making during the
French protectorate period (1912-56) and analyze the continuing impact
of colonial policies; second, to explain the failure of agricultural
development efforts since independence—failure that is rapidly precipitating
political and economic crisis.
Conventional wisdom on European colonization and national development
processes in former colonies is a surprisingly rickety construction
of premature conclusions. Far too few actual case studies
have been conducted. Furthermore, generalizations have been drawn
primarily from the British colonial realm. The former French empire
has been relatively ignored, despite the fact that British and French
colonialism were "as different as chalk from cheese."1 Unfortunately,
several dubious assumptions have evolved into truisms.
For example, it is commonly assumed that the European colonial
powers were motivated primarily by hardheaded economic logic in the
development of their colonies. As will be shown, this assumption is
largely false for French development policies in Morocco. Indeed, to
believe that French policy makers were shrewd businessmen completely
misses what was perhaps the most striking feature of French
colonialism in Africa: "the enormous disparity between the hopelessly
unrealistic objectives of French policy-makers and the actual results of
their policies.
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