Hubert Lyautey

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Lyautey, Marshal Louis Hubert Gonsalve (1854-1934). Lyautey was born to well-to-do parents in Nancy, and traced his roots to the Norman nobility. Commissioned into the cavalry, he led a conventional career of regimental and staff appointments, enlivened by fashionable social and political contacts. Ambitious but disappointed in an army which seemed to be moving too slowly, in 1891 he published an article on the social role of the officer in the influential Revue des deux mondes. He complained of an officer corps which had not adapted to universal military service and whose members knew their horses better than their men. Lyautey saw the army as the one genuinely national institution that could unite all Frenchmen.

In 1894 he was posted to Indochina and came under the spell of Gallieni, working to elevate his plan for military pacification into a broader scheme which would reconcile narrow colonialism with his own idealism and patriotism. In an article published in 1900 he described the colonial role of the officer as more than purely military: he was administrator, farmer, and engineer. Colonialism, he argued, led to progress, and it was best achieved through collaboration with indigenous élites to establish a gentle but civilizing protectorate. He saw the colonial army as much more than simply a French army in the colonies: it needed to be free of metropolitan bureaucracy to get on with its own essential tasks.

In 1903 Lyautey was appointed to command a military district on Algeria's border with Morocco, where he attempted ‘economic penetration’ by setting up posts which were designed to become local trading centres. However, the experiment was not wholly successful. His irregular Goums had mixed results in the struggle against dissidents, and he was driven to use reprisal raids, the razzias that had traditionally formed part of warfare in North Africa. When France decided to annex Morocco he was appointed her resident-general there, and continued his attempt to achieve ‘a fraternal union between two peoples to vanquish sterility and misery’. Such was his charm, diplomacy, and essential humanity—with a good leavening of solid military skill—that he brought stability to Morocco. However, the results of French annexation were mixed, and if local leaders profited from it not all citizens did: even Lyautey could not prevent Abd el Krim's very damaging Rif rebellion in 1925. Appointed marshal in 1921, Lyautey is rightly regarded as the most distinguished of France's colonial soldiers.

— Richard Holmes

The French marshal and colonial administrator Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey (1854-1934) is famed for the pacification and colonization of Morocco.

On Nov. 17, 1854, L. H. G. Lyautey was born at Nancy to a family with strong military traditions. He was educated at the military academy of Saint-Cyr and the Staff College and was then commissioned as a cavalry officer. He served in Algeria from 1880 to 1887. In 1894 he was transferred to Indochina under Gen. Joseph Simon Gallieni, who first inspired his interest in colonial affairs. When Gallieni was transferred to Madagasgar as governor general, he took Lyautey along as his chief of staff. Together they were very successful in pacifying the island and in applying new methods of government.

In 1900 Lyautey was appointed colonel and, after a short period in France, was given command of the AinSefra territory in Algeria. In 1903 he was promoted to general and, as commander of the Oran division in Algeria, was entrusted with enforcement of international agreements concerning Morocco. He restored order on the border and then served briefly as commander of the X Corps at Rennes.

In April 1912 Lyautey was sent as resident general and high commissioner to Morocco, which had recently been declared a protectorate. He first relieved Fès and then began the tasks of pacification and colonization which were to occupy his attention for the next 13 years. Lyautey's work in Morocco has come to be recognized as a masterpiece of French colonization. He believed that pacification should be achieved with a demonstration of force and as little fighting as possible. To him, colonization was, above all, a creative work. Although he endeavored to preserve the political, social, and economic traditions of Morocco, he wished the country to progress through adopting some of the material civilization of Europe and by acquaintance with its spirit. Medicine, education, public works, and agricultural colonization were the chief means by which he hoped to accomplish these ends.

Although Lyautey was ordered to withdraw from the interior of Morocco at the beginning of World War I, to free as many of his forces as possible, he maintained his ground during the war and even extended the subjugated territory. He served as minister of war for 3 months, from December 1916 to March 1917, and then returned to Morocco, where he remained until his retirement in 1925, successfully subduing the Riff rebellion under Abd el-Krim. He was elected to the French Academy in 1912 and was made marshal of France in 1921. He wrote many articles on colonial administration. Lyautey died on July 27, 1934, at Thorey, in Lorraine, where he had spent his last years.

Further Reading

A vivid portrayal of Lyautey's thought and personality is in the interesting and literate André Maurois, Lyautey (trans. 1931). His career is discussed at length in Eleanor Hoffmann, Realm of the Evening Star: A History of Morocco and the Land of the Moors (1965), and John P. Halstead, Rebirth of a Nation: The Origins and Rise of Moroccan Nationalism, 1912-1944 (1967).

Additional Sources

Hoisington, William A., Lyautey and the French conquest of Morocco, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

1854 - 1934

French officer and colonial governor of Morocco during the French protectorate, 1912 - 1925.

Born in Nancy, France, Louis-Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey was one of the generation of army officers who had been affected by Germany's defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870 - 1871). As did many others, he tried to compensate through the colonial adventure. First in Tonkin (French Indochina), then in Madagascar, under General Joseph S. Gallieni's command, he experimented with a doctrine of colonization after the British model - which respected the culture and institutions of the colonized populations more than the French system had.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when he served in Algeria, first in the southern territories and then as chief of the division based in Oran, he drew a negative image from the colonial system as it was instituted there. Above all, he wanted to keep the original Algerian model from extending into Morocco when that country came under French control. Since the conquest of Morocco was not easy, his theses became attractive to the French government at the beginning of the French protectorate in 1912; they were already preparing for the oncoming conflict with Germany, now called World War I (1914 - 1918), and wanted to maintain their resources and troops in Europe.

After Lyautey's appointment to Morocco in 1912, he succeeded in freeing the commercial and religious center of Fez from the makhzen (mercenary) system of the tribal peoples. He regained the lowlands and the main cities, which traditionally were under their control. Then he had to get Sultan Mulay Hafid, who would not cooperate, to abdicate and put his brother Mulay Youssef on the throne.

Lyautey was a monarchist, and he admired Napoléon Bonaparte's methods of administration in early nineteenth-century Egypt. He wanted to follow them and to get the support of a legitimizing authority, which would help him subdue Morocco without his own submission to strict controls from Paris. Therefore he tried to maintain the Moroccan monarchy while making sure that it would not present a source of future problems. Under such conditions, the new sultan was allowed to keep the major Islamic prerogatives of Moroccan sovereignty: to be a caliph and an imam.

On 30 March 1912, when Lyautey signed the Fes Treaty, establishing the French protectorate over Morocco, which was going to define the relationships between the two countries until 1956, he was given the mission to reform the structure of the colonial administration. He would succeed in doing so by joining to the traditional services of the makhzen at the central and local levels a parallel French hierarchy. Without any resistance on the part of the sultan, Lyautey would create the laws and regulations by edict, which would guarantee the "administrative legal, educational, economic, financial and military reforms the French government will judge have to be introduced on Moroccan territory" (Article 1 of the Fes Treaty). Lyautey would then be able to establish a quick modernization, using only a few competent civil servants. At the beginning, this plan was widely accepted. He would also be able to place most of the country under the formal authority
of the makhzen by using traditional ways of negotiating with the tribes and by limiting his need for force.

His opposition to both parliamentary and political control by France led him to preserve the autonomy of Morocco so that, in the long run, he might exert a larger hidden power. The romantic idea of a feudal system constituted the basis for his debatable policy. As a tolerant Roman Catholic, he was open toward and respectful of Islam; since he was attracted to marginal people (those living neither within one system nor the other), he thought they might help him understand this country's essence - outside official circles. Adept at understanding cultural differences and hierarchical controls, he came to consider the possible development of two distinct but parallel societies that might save old cities and architecture but also lead in education. It was a separated system (akin to a "mild" apartheid) because he refused to introduce into Morocco the French system that prevailed in Algeria, based on colonization by poor whites. He then had to turn to private bankers, especially the Banque de Paris et des Pay-Bas, but he was unable or unwilling to avoid the expropriation of the richest, most fertile lands for the benefit of French settlers. Although he cared about the sultan's interests, he did not or could not prevent the basic elements of a future berber policy to take root.

Under the authority of the protectorate, Lyautey practiced a direct administration policy and benefited from it, because of the fiction of Moroccan sovereignty. In keeping the sultan, he confined him to an outdated traditionalism. Meanwhile, Lyautey's colonial officiers des affaires indigènes (officers in charge of native affairs) had been taught his ruling philosophy, and they used the pashas and the Arab shaykhs as intermediaries, to keep things under control. His system did not leave much space for the development of a Moroccan elite, which he became aware of toward the end of his mission. From 1920, he worried about the future of the country and considered formulas that would allow an easy withdrawal of French control.

His authority was shaken by the beginning of the rebellion of Rif leader Abd al-Karim, who in 1921 began fighting against the Spanish in their sector of Morocco. By April of 1925, Abd al-Karim had turned to fight the French. A French-Spanish force was organized against him in July and in September, under World War I hero French Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain; the Rifians were driven back. Toward the end of September, Lyautey resigned, and he left Morocco for France in October. He was replaced by a civilian resident and by Marshal Pétain as the military leader. Lyautey left as the legendary leader who had safeguarded the sultan's monarchy, the reputation of the country in international affairs, and its resources and finances through development of its phosphate mining company. He left as the launcher of its modernization.

He ended his life in France as an anti-republican, supporting the extreme right - an admirer of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He was suspected, not long before his death, to have encouraged the aborted coup against the French parliament on 6 February 1934, launched by the Croix de Feu (Cross of Fire, a French fascist organization).

— RÉMY LEVEAU

Hubert Lyautey
17 November 1854 (1854-11-17) – 21 July 1934 (1934-07-22)
Hubert Lyautey
Place of birth	Nancy, France
Place of death	Thorey-Lyautey, France
Allegiance	France
Service/branch	French Army
Years of service	1873-1925
Rank	Général de division
Awards	Marshal of France Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor Médaille militaire

Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey (17 November 1854 - 21 July 1934) was a French Army general, the first Resident-General in Morocco from 1912 to 1925 and from 1921 Marshal of France.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Madagascar 3 Morocco 4 Final years and association with fascism 5 Miscellaneous 6 References 7 Literature 8 External links

Early life

Lyautey was born at Nancy (Lorraine) into an upper-middle class family with aristocratic connections, royalist sympathies and a military past.

In 1873 Lyautey entered the French military academy of Saint-Cyr, from 1876 attended the army training school and in December 1877 was made a lieutenant. He made his career serving in the colonies and not in the more prestigious metropolitan France. The first years after graduating, Lyautey served as a cavalry officer in Algeria and from 1894 to 1897 in Indochina, under Joseph Gallieni.

Lyautey adopted and emulated Gallieni's policy of methodical expansion of pacified areas followed by social and economical development to ensure obedience of the natives. This strategy became known as "tache d'huile" (as it resembles oil spots spreading to cover the whole surface).

Madagascar

From 1897 to 1902 Lyautey served on Madagascar, again under Galliéni. He played a key role in the invasion of Madagascar (1896-1898), in which he commanded the French forces. His military skill and success in this campaign greatly contributed to his promotion to general de brigade in 1902.

Morocco

The murder of French citizens in Casablanca was used as a pretext for Lyautey to occupy Oujda in eastern Morocco at the Algerian border in 1907. Having been promoted to général de division, Lyautey was Military Governor of French Morocco from 4 August 1907 to 28 April 1912. After the Convention of Fez established a protectorate over Morocco, Lyautey served as Resident-General of French Morocco from 28 April 1912 to 25 August 1925.

He is considered to have been an apt colonial administrator. During the First World War, he continued the occupation of the country, regardless of the fact that France needed most of her resources in the struggle against the Central Powers. Lyautey served as France's Minister of War for three months in 1917. In 1925, Lyautey lost the military command of the French forces engaged against Abd-el-Krim to Philippe Pétain and resigned to return to France.

Final years and association with fascism

In his final years, Lyautey became associated with France's growing fascist movement, admired Italian leader Benito Mussolini, and was associated with the far right Croix de Feu. In 1934, he threatened to lead the Jeunesse Patriotes to overthrow the government. ^[1]

Miscellaneous

• Lyautey died in Thorey, was buried in Morocco but reinterred in Les Invalides in 1961
• The town of Kenitra, Morocco was named "Port Lyautey" by the French in 1933, but renamed after independence in 1956.
• The Garrison of the 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment is named after him.
• Lycée Lyautey in Casablanca, Morocco is named after him.

• Lyautey has been suggested as the author of the famous quote about dialects stating that "a language is a dialect which owns an army, a navy and an air force" ("Une langue, c'est un dialecte qui possède une armée, une marine et une aviation."). A separate article discusses the origin of this aphorism in greater detail.

References

1. ^ Szaluta, Jacques "Marshal Petain's Ambassadorship to Spain: Conspiratorial or Providential Rise toward Power?", French Historical Studies 8:4

• Portions of this article were translated from the French language Wikipedia article fr:Hubert Lyautey.

Literature

• André Maurois: Marshal Lyautey, Paris, Plon, 1931. Translated to English and published in London and New York in 1931.
• William A. Hoisington Jr.: Lyautey and the French conquest of Morocco, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995, ISBN 0312125291, preview at Google Books.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hubert Lyautey

• Short biography

Preceded by Henry Houssaye

Seat 14 Académie française 1912-1934

Succeeded by Louis Franchet d'Espérey

Preceded by Pierre Roques

Minister of War December 12, 1916 - March 14, 1917

Succeeded by Lucien Lacaze

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