Life in Morocco and Glimpses Beyond. Budgett Meakin
in Morocco has gone from bad to worse. Yet more of its products are now exported, and there are more European articles in demand, than were thought of twenty years ago. This anomalous and almost paradoxical condition is due to the increase of competition and the increasing weakness of the Government. Men who had hope a few years ago, now struggle on because they have staked too much to be able to leave for more promising fields. This has been especially the case since the late Sultan's death. The disturbances which followed that event impoverished many tribes, and left behind a sense of uncertainty and dread. No European Bourse is more readily or lastingly affected by local political troubles than the general trade of a land like Morocco, in which men live so much from hand to mouth.
It is a noteworthy feature of Moorish diplomatic history that to the Moors' love of foreign trade we owe almost every step that has led to our present relations with the Empire. Even while their rovers were the terror of our merchantmen, as has been pointed out, foreign traders were permitted to reside in their ports, the facilities granted to them forming the basis of all subsequent negotiations. Now that concession after concession has been wrung from[page 22] their unwilling Government, and in spite of freedom of residence, travel, and trade in the most important parts of the Empire, it is disheartening to see the foreign merchant in a worse condition than ever.
The previous generation, fewer in number, enjoying far less privileges, and subjected to restrictions and indignities that would not be suffered to-day, were able to make their fortunes and retire, while their successors find it hard to hold their own. The "hundred tonners" who, in the palmy days of Mogador, were wont to boast that they shipped no smaller quantities at once, are a dream of the past. The ostrich feathers and elephants' tusks no longer find their way out by that port, and little gold now passes in or out. Merchant princes will never be seen here again; commercial travellers from Germany are found in the interior, and quality, as well as price, has been reduced to its lowest ebb.
A crowd of petty trading agents has arisen with no capital to speak of, yet claiming and abusing credit, of which a most ruinous system prevails, and that in a land in which the collection of debts is proverbially difficult, and oftentimes impossible. The native Jews, who were interpreters and brokers years ago, have now learned the business and entered the lists. These new competitors content themselves with infinitesimal profits, or none at all in cases where the desideratum is cash to lend out at so many hundreds per cent. per annum. Indeed, it is no uncommon practice for goods bought on long credit to be sold below cost price for this purpose. Against such methods who can compete?
Yet this is a rich, undeveloped land—not exactly[page 23] an El Dorado, though certainly as full of promise as any so styled has proved to be when reached—favoured physically and geographically, but politically stagnant, cursed with an effete administration, fettered by a decrepit creed. In view of this situation, it is no wonder that from time to time specious schemes appear and disappear with clockwork regularity. Now it is in England, now in France, that a gambling public is found to hazard the cost of proving the impossibility of opening the country with a rush, and the worthlessness of so-called concessions and monopolies granted by sheïkhs in the south, who, however they may chafe under existing rule which forbids them ports of their own, possess none of the powers required to treat with foreigners.
As normal trade has waned in Morocco, busy minds have not been slow in devising illicit, or at least unusual, methods of making money, even, one regrets to say, of making false money. Among the drawbacks suffered by the commerce which pines under the shade of the shareefian umbrella, one—and that far from the least—is the unsatisfactory coinage, which till a few years ago was almost entirely foreign. To have to depend in so important a matter on any mint abroad is bad enough, but for that mint to be Spanish means much. Centuries ago the Moors coined more, but with the exception of a horrible token of infinitesimal value called "floos," the products of their extinct mints are only to be found in the hands of collectors, in buried hoards, or among the jewellery displayed at home by Mooresses and Jewesses, whose fortunes, so invested, may not be seized for debt. Some[page 24] of the older issues are thin and square, with well-preserved inscriptions, and of these a fine collection—mostly gold—may be seen at the British Museum; but the majority, closely resembling those of India and Persia, are rudely stamped and unmilled, not even round, but thick, and of fairly good metal. The "floos" referred to (sing. "fils") are of three sizes, coarsely struck in zinc rendered hard and yellow by the addition of a little copper. The smallest, now rarely met with, runs about 19,500 to £1 when this is worth 32½ Spanish pesetas; the other two, still the only small change of the country, are respectively double and quadruple its value. The next coin in general circulation is worth 2d., so the inconvenience is great. A few years ago, however, Europeans resident in Tangier resolutely introduced among themselves the Spanish ten and five céntimo pieces, corresponding to our 1d. and ½d., which are now in free local use, but are not accepted up-country.
What passes as Moorish money to-day has been coined in France for many years, more recently also in Germany; the former is especially neat, but the latter lacks style. The denominations coincide with those of Spain, whose fluctuations in value they closely follow at a respectful distance. This autumn the "Hasáni" coin—that of Mulai el Hasan, the late Sultan—has fallen to fifty per cent. discount on Spanish. With the usual perversity also, the common standard "peseta," in which small bargains are struck on the coast, was omitted, the nearest coin, the quarter-dollar, being nominally worth ptas. 1.25. It was only after a decade, too, that the Government put in circulation the dollars struck in France,[page 25] which had hitherto been laid up in the treasury as a reserve. And side by side with the German issue came abundant counterfeit coins, against which Government warnings were published, to the serious disadvantage of the legal issue. Even the Spanish copper has its rival, and a Frenchman was once detected trying to bring in a nominal four hundred dollars' worth of an imitation, which he promptly threw overboard when the port guards raised objections to its quality.
The increasing need of silver currency inland, owing to its free use in the manufacture of trinkets, necessitates a constant importation, and till recently all sorts of coins, discarded elsewhere, were in circulation. This was the case especially with French, Swiss, Belgian, Italian, Greek, Roumanian, and other pieces of the value of twenty céntimos, known here by the Turkish name "gursh," which were accepted freely in Central Morocco, but not in the north. Twenty years ago Spanish Carolus, Isabella and Philippine shillings and kindred coins were in use all over the country, and when they were withdrawn from circulation in Spain they were freely shipped here, till the country was flooded with them. When the merchants and customs at last refused them, their astute importers took them back at a discount, putting them into circulation later at what they could, only to repeat the transaction. In Morocco everything a man can be induced to take is legal tender, and for bribes and religious offerings all things pass, this practice being an easier matter than at first sight appears; so in the course of a few years one saw a whole series of coins in vogue,[page 26] one after the other, the main transactions taking place on the coast with country Moors, than whom, though none more suspicious, none are more easily gulled.
A much more serious obstacle to inland trade is the periodically disturbed state of the country, not so much the local struggles and uprisings which serve to free superfluous energy, as the regular administrative expeditions of the Moorish Court, or of considerable bodies of troops. These used to take place in some direction every year, "the time when kings go forth to war" being early summer, just when agricultural operations are in full swing, and every man is needed on his fields. In one district the ranks of the workers are depleted by a form of conscription or "harka," and in another these unfortunates are employed preventing others doing what they should be doing at home. Thus all suffer, and those who are not themselves engaged in the campaign are forced to contribute cash, if only to find substitutes to take their places in the ranks.
The movement of the Moorish Court means the transportation of a numerous host at tremendous expense, which has eventually to be recouped in the shape of regular contributions, arrears of taxes and fines, collected en route, so the pace is abnormally slow. Not only is there an absolute absence of roads, and, with one or two exceptions, of bridges, but the Sultan himself, with all his army, cannot take the direct route between his most important inland cities without fighting his way. The configuration of the empire explains its previous sub-division