International Zone of Tangier

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منطقة طنجة الدولية
Minṭaqat Ṭanǧa ad-Dawliyya
International Zone of Tangier
1923-1940 and 1945-1956
Capital Tangier
Form of government internationally administered part of the Sultanate of Morocco
Head of state Sultan of Morocco
Head of government Administrator
surface 373 km²
population 150,000 (1956)
founding 1923
resolution 1956
Detailed map of the zone from 1953 (with borders)
Detailed map of the zone from 1953 (with borders)

The map of the Spanish Morocco Protectorate (yellow) shows more clearly the location of the former International Zone of Tangier in the northwest
International Zone of Tangier Spanish Morocco Protectorate (with the Cape Juby Strip) French Morocco Protectorate France with colonies Spain with colonies





The International Zone of Tangier (also called Interzone ) was an internationalized one from 1923 to 1956 . H. a territory in northern Morocco administered jointly by several powers , which included the city of Tangier and an adjacent 373 km² area.

prehistory

On April 8, 1904, Great Britain and France signed an alliance treaty, the Entente cordiale , which regulated the interests of both countries in Africa . Great Britain recognized France's supremacy in Morocco .

Since 1892 the diplomatic corps of Tangier administered the city ​​and its surroundings, which was considered a neutral zone . By the Act of Algeciras of 7 April 1906, the international status of Tangier and the surrounding area has been confirmed.

France and the Sultan of Morocco , Mulai Abd al-Hafiz , agreed in the Treaty of Fez of March 30, 1912 on the establishment of a French protectorate that included all of Morocco, but not Tangier. With the conclusion of the Franco-Spanish treaty of November 27, 1912, Spain received its own zone of influence in northern Morocco ( Spanish-Morocco ) , Tangier became the center of the international demilitarized area.

history

The Tangier question, which was excluded from the Protectorate Treaty, was dealt with at a conference with representatives from Great Britain, France and Spain, which began on June 29, 1923 in London . The Statute of the International Zone of Tangier was signed in Paris on December 18, 1923 by France, Spain and the United Kingdom, Belgium , the Netherlands , Portugal , and Sweden acceded to the agreement, and Italy signed on July 25, 1928, and finally the Moroccan sultan. The sovereignty remained formally with the Sultan of Morocco. He was represented by the Mendoub - a high commissioner - who resided in the Mendoubia - a palace in the center of Tangier - and had a French adviser. The boundaries of the Tangier zone were drawn up in accordance with the provisions of Article 7 of the Franco-Spanish Treaty of November 27, 1912.

In 1925/26 there was a refugee camp in the neutral zone with around 5,000 to 7,000 men, women and children who had escaped to Tangier from the fighting of the Rif War .

During the Second World War , fascist Spain , which was neutral but on friendly terms with Nazi Germany , occupied the International Zone of Tangier shortly before France's military defeat on June 14, 1940. Tangier was incorporated into Spanish Morocco in November 1940. Under pressure from the signatory powers of Algeciras, Spain retained the demilitarized status of the zone. On October 11, 1945, by order of the Tangier Conference of the four victorious powers of World War II in Paris , Spain vacated the city and the Tangier zone. The area became an International Zone again. At the same conference, it was decided that Italy should leave the international administration of Tangier exercised by the signatory states in 1923. The USA and the Soviet Union were added to this. The Soviet Union withdrew from the control committee in the same year. Italy was not re-admitted to the Control Committee until March 8, 1948.

In 1952 there was an uprising in the zone, which was suppressed jointly by Spanish and French troops.

A conference of the nine states, which began in Rabat in July 1956 , adopted a declaration on the future of Tangier on October 29, 1956, in which all previous treaties and agreements about Tangier were invalid. Morocco pledged to keep Tangier's status as a free trade and free currency area without major revisions in order to use it for the economic development of the country.

In the same year the emigration of the Jews, who called themselves Hebrews there, began from Tangier. On January 1, 1957, the International Zone was returned to Morocco, which had regained its independence a few months earlier.

International administrators of the Tangier International Zone

person country Start of the mandate End of mandate
Paul Alberge FranceFrance France August 24, 1926 August 19, 1929
Joseph Le Fur FranceFrance France August 19, 1929 August 1, 1940
Manuel Amieva Escandón Spain 1938Spain Spain August 1, 1940 November 4th 1940
Spanish occupation June 14, 1940 October 11, 1945
Luís António de Magalhães Correia PortugalPortugal Portugal October 11, 1945 June 18, 1948
Jonkheer van Vredenburch NetherlandsNetherlands Netherlands August 15, 1948 April 9, 1951
José Luís Archer PortugalPortugal Portugal April 9, 1951 June 22, 1954
Etienne de Croÿ BelgiumBelgium Belgium June 21, 1954 December 31, 1954
Robert van de Kerckhove d'Hallebast BelgiumBelgium Belgium 4th June 1955 July 9, 1956

Politics and administration

Postage stamp for the British Post Office in Tangier.

The zone was ruled by a senior administrator and the Diplomatic Corps Control Committee for the International Zone of Tangier, which was composed of the consuls general of the signatory powers of Algeciras. There was a legislative assembly with 26 members representing a cross section of the population of Tangier with a clear European preponderance. This legislative assembly was chaired by the Sultan's representative, the Mendoub .

In the international zone there was no military service , no social security contributions and no foreign exchange restrictions .

The International Mixed Court of Justice had existed in the Tangier Zone since 1925 . It originally had four judges, two British and one each from France and Spain. Since the revision of the Tangier Statute on July 25, 1928, the Mixed Court consisted of five members, a British, a French, a Spanish, an Italian and a Belgian judge.

The International Zone did not have its own postal administration; there were British, French and Spanish post offices. Each post office used postage stamps of the mother country with the name Tangier printed in the respective national language (English Tangier , French and Spanish Tangier ). The values ​​were also given in the respective currencies of the three countries. The British Tangier stamps were also valid for postage in the mother country from 1950 and vice versa, British stamps could be used without imprint in Tangier. The French Post Office stopped issuing separate stamps for the International Zone in 1929 and subsequently used stamps from the Protectorate of French Morocco . The only unprinted postage stamps were issued by the Spanish Post between 1948–1951. Typical scenes and pictures of locals are shown on it.

population

In 1956, around 150,000 people lived in the International Zone, including 60,000 Europeans, 75,000 Moroccans, Berbers and Arabs, and 14,000 Moroccan Jews.

economy

The residents of the Tangier zone enjoyed extensive tax privileges ; there were no income or wealth taxes . Because of this and because of its status as a free trade zone , the city was the seat of 81 banks and 5,000 mailbox companies in 1956 .

The port of Tangier was duty-free, and smuggling was a profitable business. The Tangier Zone imported around 20 times as much as it exported. In the early 1950s, export goods also included products from the Czechoslovak arms industry, which were delivered to Israel , Burma , Vietnam and Indonesia . Many goods from the GDR , such as hunting weapons from Suhl , machines from Erfurt , Chemnitz stockings and motor boats from Rostock , were exported via Tangier.

Culture and subculture

In 1942 Tangier had 13 mosques , 15 synagogues , six Catholic churches and three churches for Protestants. There were more than a dozen European and fifteen Muslim brothels with more than 300 prostitutes . Homosexuality was tolerated and some boys' brothels made Tangier one of the most popular destinations for gays from around the world. The city was notorious for the vast amount of hashish that farmers grew in the Rif Mountains, 100 km away .

Because of its freedom of movement, the International Zone was a magnet for smugglers, seekers of meaning, the rich, gays and eccentrics, for dropouts and outsiders of all kinds. In the 1940s and 1950s, spies met criminals here who were threatened with prison, persecuted Jews and opponents of Franco neighboring Spain to beatniks and hipsters from San Francisco and the rest of the USA.

Barbara Hutton , the Woolworth heiress, one of the richest women in the world, celebrated glamorous parties in her Palais Sidi Hosni on Petit Socco , the oriental souk above the old town. Truman Capote called Tangier the city of rags . Like Tennessee Williams and William S. Burroughs, he was seldom found untamed. Burroughs' Naked Lunch , a classic in modern American literary history and the cult book of the hippie movement, published in 1959, was written here. Tangier was also the real model for the fictional setting in Burrough's short story collection Interzone . Mohamed Choukri's autobiography The Naked Bread is one of the most famous works of this period . Originally in classical Arabic written, the English edition was developed in close collaboration with Paul Bowles , who had moved already in the 1940s to Tangier and his Moroccan novel, The Sheltering Sky (dt. The Sheltering Sky ), made known internationally.

literature

  • Kurt-Fritz von Graevenitz: The Tangier question: a study of the history of international law. Duemmler, Berlin 1925.
  • Manley Hudson: The International Mixed Court of Tangier , in: The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 21, No. 2, April 1927, p. 231.
  • Francesco Tamburini: L'internazionalizzazione di Tangeri nella politica estera italiana (1919–1956) . ECIG, Rome 2007, ISBN 88-7544-114-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dirk Sasse: French, British and Germans in the Rif War 1921-1926 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-57983-3
  2. ^ Convention relative à l'Organisation du Statut de la Zone de Tanger, avec Protocole relatif à deux Dahirs concernant l'Administration de la Zone et à l'Organisation d'une Juridiction internationale à Tanger, signed à Paris on December 18, 1923 ( Memento from December 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) PDF file 1.08 MB of the United Nations Treaty Collection
  3. ^ League of Nations Archives, Chronology 1928 League of Nations Archives, Geneva (accessed July 23, 2008)
  4. ↑ Hans Peter Bull (August 11, 1967): The City Between the Fronts Die Zeit (accessed July 23, 2008)
  5. ↑ Chronicle for November 4th 1940 chroniknet.de, Wissenmedia GmbH (accessed July 23, 2008)
  6. ^ Agreement for the re-establishment of the International Administration of Tangier. Signed at Paris, on August 31, 1945 ( Memento from December 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) PDF file 115 kB of the United Nations Treaty Collection
  7. ↑ Marc Van Daele: Spanish Morocco ( Memento of the original from October 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. collectornetwork.com (accessed July 23, 2008) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.collectornetwork.com
  8. ↑ a b Tangier, Business as usual . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1952 ( online ).
  9. ^ Alfred Hackensberger (February 25, 2008): Protected, suppressed, tolerated - Jewish life in Islamic countries - an endangered tradition NZZ (accessed July 23, 2008)
  10. ↑ KHN: Twenty-Five Years of Mixed Court of Tangier JSTOR (accessed July 23, 2008)
  11. ↑ Michel stamp catalog Europe 1957, Schwaneberger Verlag, Munich, pp. 1361–1366
  12. ↑ a b F. A .: Sinking Paradise . In: Die Zeit , No. 27/1956
  13. ↑ Tangier does everything . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1949 ( online ).
  14. ^ Mark Eveleigh: Tangier: Journey into the Interzone ( Memento of November 4, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) In: Travel Intelligence .
  15. ↑ Michel Rauch: Paul Bowles - The Titan of Tangier . Y @ lla! Bureau Cairo & Berlin (accessed July 23, 2008)