The King's European Morocco : a postcolonial approach to Morocco's quest to become a European Community member

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the membership application of the Kingdom of Morocco to the European Community in 1987 through postcolonial nationalism, which refers to the fact that the impacts of colonizer states continue on the national identity of the colonized states after colonialism. It analyzes the membership application of the Kingdom of Morocco to the European Community in terms of how Morocco felt European so that it claimed its Europeanness according to the article 237 of the Treaty of Rome that required the aplicant states to be European, as the main article of the Treaty that founded the European Community. Taking the Bhabhaian approach to hybridity as one of the main tenets of postcolonial nationalism, this dissertation argues that the Kingdom of Morocco’s relations with the European Community in 1987 should go beyond why it applied to be one of its members that was already explained by different economic and political reasons. Instead, it offers a cultural aspect defined by postcoloniality that analyzes how Kingdom of Morocco asserted its Europeanness, and how it explained to the European Commission that it was a European state according to the Treaty of Rome. Framing Morocco’s colonial status between 1912 and 1956, this dissertation examines how Morocco that constructed its national identity both during and after colonialism against Europe (against France) due to European colonialism (the French Protectorate) added Europeanness into this national identity in its postolonial period, by claiming that Moroccan nation and state together are European, with King Hassan II’s membership application to the European Community. Accordingly, this dissertation argues that Morocco’s 1987 membership application to the European Community is the instrumentalization of hybridity that was created by the French among Moroccan locals between 1912 and 1956 by King Hassan II, in the postcolonial Moroccan national identity to claim that Morocco was European according to the article 237 of the Treaty of Rome.