Below are the events happening this month at the Legation. If you are in the area, we hope to see you there.
Monday, March 9, 7 p.m. Movie Night “The Furies,” starring Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston.
Thursday, March 12, 4 p.m. “Languages in the Maghrib,” Lecture by American anthropologist and author Dr. Kenneth Brown. In partnership with the Tangier American Language Center.
Section II, “Architectural and Historical Context and Significance” of the of the Historic Structure Report on the American Legation in Tangier, Morocco is now available on Archnet. You can find it by going to the the page for TALIM and selecting the link above the description labeled “Publication.”
This section of the report explains the historical and architectural significance of the structure, beginning with a general diplomatic history of Tangier. It then provides a functional and architectural history of the Legation building, including the modifications to the building, starting when the United States and Morocco first began negotiations, through the acquisition of Legation in 1821, damage to the property during bombardments of Tangier, expansions by the consul in the 1920s, the role of the Legation during World War II, and finally the conversion into a museum in 1975-1976. Finally it ends with an assessment of the current condition of the property. It is illustrated with historic images and plans.
Read moreArchitectural History of the Legation Now Available on Archnet
TALIM welcomed Smith College Professor of Government Gregory White to the Legation October 27 for an informal round table conversation with professors and researchers from Tangier’s Abdelmalek Essaadi University.
Participants engaged in lively exchanges about links between the environment and touristic and overall development of “Tangier Metropole,” an ambitious program to develop the Tangier region from Cap Spartel in the west to beyond the port of Tangier Med in the east.
Can’t stop curating?
Well, I do have to stop – we’re getting on the ferry to Spain Friday morning! Friends have joked that I’ll still be at it tomorrow morning, mounting yet more exhibits while my wife waits in the car. Not true; I stopped this afternoon.
At the French Consulate’s 14 Juillet reception after we arrived in 2010, a Moroccan friend introduced me as the “nouveau conservateur” in what people in Tangier only knew then as the “Musée de l’Ancienne Légation Américaine.” I joked that I was no conservative… I was a Democrat!
But the point is that conservateur or curator was the way people thought of this position in this city. I thought that was a bit limiting – how about our research library? Our seminars? The Arabic literacy program? Etc. I also didn’t like that ancienne thing – made it sound like we were closed.
Saving the Legation – unique American historic monument overseas – from oblivion and neglect, and telling its compelling story, has been my work over these past four years.
Journalists still cling to the Tangier Sin City image, though the International Zone ended more than a half century ago.
A rare book containing the letters written to the wife of kidnap victim Ion Perdicaris has been put up for sale.
James McBey’s “Zohra” has been called the Moroccan Mona Lisa, but in the 1950s, she was a young teen posing in Tangier, and friends with the children of Marguerite McBey’s American family.
Ali Al Tuma of the Institute for History at Leiden University, the Netherlands, has published "Tangier, Spanish Morocco and Spain's Civil War in Dutch Diplomatic Documents" in the June 2012 issue of JNAS, The Journal of North African Studies (Vol.17:3 (2012) pp.433-453) of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS). Al Tuma has found a valuable resource in the rarely consulted archives of the former Dutch Legation in Tangier, which in its reports did not hide its distaste for Spanish "reds," as it termed the Republicans.
The following excerpts illustrate the confused and "precarious" situation in Tangier at the outset of the Civil War, which ended with Franco's victory and his later takeover of the Tangier International Zone after the fall of France in June 1940. The entire article can be obtained through the JNAS website of publisher Taylor & Francis. The excerpts (in plain text below) are presented with the permission of the author, the publisher, and the JNAS editor.
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Tangier: Spain to the north & Spanish Protectorate to the south; Spanish in the International Zone
An international territory since 1923, Tangier's neutrality was supposed to be guaranteed by "The Powers" – represented in the International Zone by the Committee of Control – in time of war, tested for the first time by the Spanish Civil War.
This was not easy, especially during the first stage of the conflict. Tangier was surrounded by the Spanish Protectorate where the military rebellion against the Republic first started and prevailed. Spanish political and diplomatic representation in Tangier was Republican, but the Spanish colony, the largest European one, was divided between Republicans (the majority) and those pro-Franco.
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Firefights over the bay of Tangier
In July 1936, seven Republican warships came to Tangier, precluded from using the Nationalist-held ports of southern Spain for refuelling.
Republican sailors had formed ‘committees’, imprisoned the officers, and asked Madrid to send leftist officers to take command. Franco requested the Mendoub (Sultan’s representative in Tangier) to prevent the ships from leaving the harbor or he would reserve the right to undertake ‘violent measures’. British and Portuguese envoys requested more ships to safeguard the city. Franco’s planes flew over Tangier from Cadiz, [and Republican] ships opened fire. ‘This happened in the immediate neighborhood of the bay in front of thousands of onlookers’. The situation was so tense that the Comité de Contrôle requested French and Italian marines to guard legations.
[Note: Shortly thereafter a British cargo ship was attacked, and the British destroyer Whitehall engaged Nationalist planes. The Republican ships left Tangier, but later submarines came into Tangier.]
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Read moreTangier, Northern Morocco, and the Spanish Civil War
Tangier’s UNESCO Club put on a day-long symposium on Tangier as a city of intercultural dialogue.
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