Between 1777 and 1856, Morocco engaged the Atlantic world selectively — using its ports as instruments of policy to negotiate with foreign powers, control commerce, and defend sovereignty, until the Anglo-Moroccan Treaty of 1856 reordered the terms of that engagement.
In the late eighteenth century, Morocco turned toward the Atlantic. Its ports — Tangier, Salé, Mogador, and later Casablanca — were not simply harbors. They were instruments of policy, through which the sultan negotiated with foreign powers, attracted new commerce, and defended Moroccan sovereignty against mounting outside pressure.
What followed was neither passive opening nor simple resistance. Over eight decades, Morocco engaged the Atlantic world selectively — treating the American republic as a new maritime partner, managing European rivals, and building new port economies — while foreign goods, merchants, and pressures reshaped urban life from the inside. By 1856, the Anglo-Moroccan Treaty had changed the terms of that engagement. The question is not whether Morocco was transformed, but how it transformed itself in the process.
The Sultan Who Opened the Atlantic to America
In December 1777, Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah made one of the boldest diplomatic moves of the late eighteenth-century Atlantic. While the United States was still fighting for its independence from Britain, the Moroccan sultan opened his ports to vessels flying the American flag. Tangier, Salé, and Mogador were named as places where American ships could enter, take supplies, and enjoy the protections granted to nations at peace with Morocco.
This was more than courtesy. Britain still treated the American rebellion as a challenge to imperial authority, but Morocco chose to deal with the new republic directly. In Moroccan waters, the American flag was not reduced to a rebellious colonial symbol. It became the flag of a maritime partner with whom the sultan could negotiate.
The decision also had a practical maritime meaning. American ships were vulnerable in the Atlantic and Mediterranean world, where naval insecurity, captures at sea, and ransom negotiations shaped relations between states. Moroccan protection gave them more than symbolic recognition: it offered access to supplies, safer entry into Moroccan ports, and a legal place within the sultan’s maritime order.
The gesture served Moroccan interests as well. Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah had already made the Atlantic coast a tool of policy by developing Mogador as a controlled commercial port and drawing selected merchants into royal service. By admitting American ships, he widened Morocco’s diplomatic options, encouraged direct trade, and placed the kingdom inside a changing Atlantic world on its own terms.
The United States was slow to answer. Between the opening of the ports and the treaty of 1786, Moroccan pressure continued through letters and intermediaries, including European merchants who carried messages between Moroccan and American circles. The delay mattered: it shows that the relationship did not begin with American power pushing into Morocco, but with a Moroccan ruler insisting that the new republic respond.
The Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed at Marrakech in 1786. It confirmed what the opening of the ports had already begun: a direct relationship between the Moroccan sultan and the new American republic. From that point, Morocco’s Atlantic policy no longer concerned Europe alone.
Mogador: The Sultan’s Atlantic Port
Mogador gave concrete form to Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah’s Atlantic policy. The opening of Moroccan ports to American ships was not an isolated gesture. It belonged to a wider strategy in which the sultan used the coast to organize trade, control foreign access, and make Morocco less dependent on older European circuits.
The earliest witness close to this policy is Georg Hjersing Höst. His Danish work Efterretninger om Marokos og Fes (Accounts of Morocco and Fez), published in Copenhagen in 1779, was based on information gathered in Morocco between 1760 and 1768. Höst was not a passing traveler: he served in connection with the Royal Danish-African trading company and later as Danish vice-consul and consul under Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah. This makes his account useful for understanding the diplomatic and commercial world in which the sultan reorganized Morocco’s Atlantic coast.
William Lempriere gives that policy a sharper form. He notes that Safi had once carried on considerable commerce with Europe before Sidi Mohammed obliged European merchants to reside at Mogador. He then describes Mogador as a large, uniform, well-built Atlantic town, protected by batteries, double gates, a custom-house, a powder magazine, and a small palace for the emperor’s occasional residence. In this account, Mogador appears as a planned commercial concentration protected by military and administrative architecture.
Lempriere also shows the range of trade moving through the port. Mogador’s merchants exported, among other goods, mules to America, Morocco leather, hides, gum arabic, gum sandarac, ostrich feathers, wool, dates, figs, raisins, almonds, and oil. In return, they imported timber, gunpowder, woollen cloth, linen, iron bars, hardware, looking-glasses, watches, small knives, tea, sugar, and spices. The list matters because it shows Mogador as a port of movement, where local, Saharan, European, and Atlantic circuits met.
By the early nineteenth century, James Grey Jackson gives this commercial picture even more weight. Connected to Mogador and Agadir, he presents the port through trade, customs, and circulation. In his later account, he cites Mogador custom-house records from 1804–1806, which list, among other goods, cloth, linen, India cottons, green tea, raw and loaf sugar, hardware, teapots, tea-trays, mirrors, coffee mills, bottles, and Mexico dollars among imports. Exports included almonds, beeswax, gums, calf skins, goat skins, ostrich feathers, dates, cumin, capers, argan oil, tanned leather, and tallow.
This trade did not operate through foreigners alone. Mogador depended on Moroccan-controlled mediation, especially the Jewish merchants known as tujjar al-sultan, royal merchants who linked the Makhzen to European firms, port finance, credit, and export networks. Their role made Mogador more than a foreign trading station: it was a Moroccan-managed port where external commerce passed through selected intermediaries tied to the sultan’s authority.
The Reordering of Morocco’s Atlantic Ports
Mogador did not stand alone. Its rise changed the balance of Morocco’s Atlantic coast and forced older ports to find new roles. Some lost their former weight, others became more closely supervised, and others remained useful for diplomacy, regional exchange, or naval movement. The coastline became a hierarchy of functions rather than a loose chain of maritime openings.
Agadir shows why this reordering mattered. Before 1773, Agadir and the Souss formed one of the strongest southern openings of Morocco toward Atlantic trade. The port connected a productive inland region to foreign merchants and gave the south direct access to revenue, contacts, and maritime circulation. In 1773, Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah ordered the closing of Agadir’s port and restricted European access to the Souss. The decision reduced an uncontrolled southern outlet and shifted priority toward ports where customs revenue, foreign merchants, and maritime movement could be watched more closely.
Other older ports followed different paths. Salé and Rabat did not disappear from maritime life, but their role narrowed. Goods such as wool, leather, and wax still moved through their markets, and their harbors kept practical functions for small vessels, local provisioning, and maritime repair. Their importance was no longer that of independent centers of sea power, but of ports working inside a more controlled coastal order.
Farther north, the coast served other needs. Tangier mattered above all as a diplomatic and consular gate facing Gibraltar and Europe. Larache had a stronger military and naval dimension, while Tetouan and Martil belonged to the Mediterranean side of Morocco’s maritime system. Together, these ports show that the Moroccan coast was being sorted by role: diplomacy in one place, naval use in another, regional trade elsewhere, and international commerce under closer supervision.
During the nineteenth century, this balance continued to move northward. El Jadida, Casablanca, Safi, and Tangier gradually gained or regained importance, while the old southern balance around Agadir and the Souss gave way to a wider coastal geography. Morocco still had room to manage foreign contact, but that room was becoming narrower as European power pressed more directly against the kingdom’s ports and commercial life.
European Pressure and the Anglo-Moroccan Treaty of 1856
By the middle of the nineteenth century, Morocco’s Atlantic opening no longer depended only on the choices of the Makhzen. The ports were still Moroccan, and the sultanate still negotiated as a sovereign state, but the balance had changed. European naval force, industrial production, finance, and diplomatic pressure had widened the gap. Morocco was not conquered, but the space in which it could control trade on its own terms had become narrower.
The warning came before the treaty. In 1844, after Morocco’s support for Emir Abdelkader placed it in direct tension with France, the conflict reached Moroccan territory. Tangier was bombarded, the Moroccan army was defeated at Isly, and Essaouira was struck from the sea. These events showed that pressure on Morocco was no longer only diplomatic or commercial. European power could now appear at the gates of Moroccan ports with military force behind its demands.
Britain understood this moment well. John Drummond Hay, the British representative at Tangier and direct negotiator of the 1856 Anglo-Moroccan treaty, did not look at Morocco only through diplomacy. He saw its ports, raw materials, markets, and strategic position near Gibraltar as part of a wider imperial and commercial field. British merchants wanted easier access, lower obstacles, safer movement, and clearer rules. Their interest was not abstract: Moroccan cereals, wool, hides, wax, gums, almonds, leather, and other products mattered to foreign commerce, while British and European goods — textiles, metalware, hardware, tea, sugar, and manufactured objects — moved in the opposite direction.
The Convention of Commerce and Navigation, signed at Tangier on December 9, 1856, gave this pressure a legal form. It was not simply another diplomatic text. It reorganized the terms under which British merchants could operate in Morocco and opened a new phase in the kingdom’s relationship with European commerce. What had once been a selective opening controlled through chosen ports and intermediaries became a more constrained opening, shaped increasingly by treaty obligations, commercial privileges, and foreign expectations.
This mattered beyond the counting house. When rules of trade changed, the circulation of goods changed with them. Imported tea, sugar, cotton cloth, metal utensils, coffee mills, bottles, trays, and other manufactured items did not remain only port commodities. Over time, they entered shops, houses, habits of hospitality, and urban consumption. At the same time, Moroccan products leaving through the ports tied local agriculture, pastoral production, and inland markets more closely to foreign demand.
The Treaty of 1856 therefore changed the meaning of Morocco’s Atlantic engagement. In the age of Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah, ports had helped the Moroccan state organize contact with foreign merchants. By the mid-nineteenth century, the same ports were becoming pressure points. European powers sought not only goods, but rules; not only harbors, but privileges; not only access, but leverage over the economic life of the kingdom.
From Port to Table: How Atlantic Goods Became Moroccan
After 1856, the story no longer remained only diplomatic. The treaty widened the channels by which goods, merchants, seeds, utensils, and habits could circulate. Morocco was not yet under colonial rule, but its sovereignty was increasingly pressured by war, treaties, foreign privileges, debt, and commercial dependence. In that space between independence and domination, ports, markets, gardens, and urban households were already receiving products that would later become part of everyday Moroccan food culture.
Moroccan cuisine already had its own vessels, techniques, seasonings, cereal dishes, breads, stews, festive preparations, and regional food cultures. What changed was not the existence of Moroccan cooking, but the range of ingredients and objects entering daily life through commercial routes, consular cities, port markets, and foreign trade.
The same ports that carried treaties and negotiations also carried goods. Mogador concentrated Atlantic commerce. Tangier served as a diplomatic and consular gate. Safi, El Jadida, Casablanca, Salé, Rabat, and other coastal spaces connected maritime movement to inland circulation. Manufactured objects, textiles, metal utensils, tea, sugar, coffee mills, bottles, trays, and other goods gradually changed urban consumption. Some remained markers of status before spreading more widely; others entered household routines through markets and repeated use.
Food plants followed slower paths. They did not arrive all at once, and they did not become Moroccan ingredients immediately. Some came through older Iberian and Portuguese circuits, some through British and European commerce, some through consular gardens, port towns, mountain regions, and later agricultural observation. The movement was uneven: one plant could enter early and remain secondary, while another could arrive later and become central to daily cooking.
The sweet potato is one of the clearest early examples. Moroccan ethnobotanical research links its probable introduction to Portuguese Atlantic circuits connected to Madeira and to Portuguese-held coastal places in Morocco. It was an American-origin plant, but it was not the same plant as the later white potato. It did not become a major staple of Moroccan food, yet its presence shows that American plants could enter Morocco through maritime contact long before they became common in everyday cooking.
The white potato followed a slower and more uneven path. Before the Protectorate, it was already known in parts of Morocco, especially in mountain regions such as the Atlas and the Rif. Later agricultural observations near Fez also point to a local presence by the late nineteenth century. Its importance grew gradually, through fields, local markets, household use, and adaptation to Moroccan ways of slow cooking. Once it became more available, it could enter familiar Moroccan preparations without changing their identity.
The tomato entered Moroccan cuisine in the same gradual way. It was not born inside Moroccan cooking, and it did not immediately create the red profile now familiar in many cooked dishes. Later agricultural descriptions around Fez show tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, eggplants, courgettes, onions, carrots, beans, melons, and cucumbers in Moroccan gardens. This matters because Fez was not a marginal food space. It was — and remains — one of Morocco’s major urban centers of refined cooking, connected to gardens, markets, households, learned families, and the movement of ingredients. A product visible around Fez had already entered a place capable of turning it into cuisine.
Peppers also became part of this wider adaptation. As American-origin plants, chili peppers and related varieties entered the Old World through Iberian, Mediterranean, and Atlantic circuits before being adopted in many regional kitchens. In Morocco, their later presence in garden descriptions shows that they entered local cultivation before becoming common in seasoning, color, salads, cooked vegetables, preserved preparations, and sauces. Their importance was not only heat; they helped deepen the color and flavor of many Moroccan preparations.
The strongest culinary line in this story runs through tomato, white potato, and peppers. These ingredients later changed the color, texture, and everyday composition of Moroccan household cooking. Tomato helped build the red profile of many cooked dishes. Potato became one of the most familiar vegetables in family meals. Peppers entered taste, color, and preservation. They did not replace Moroccan cooking; they entered it.
Tea and sugar belong to another side of the same transformation. They were not American vegetables, but they show how imported goods could become deeply Moroccan through use. Green tea, sugar loaves, teapots, tea trays, coffee mills, and other manufactured objects moved through the commercial circuits of Mogador, Britain, and the wider Atlantic economy. Once in Morocco, they were not left as foreign habits. They entered hospitality, service, gesture, sweetness, and domestic ritual, eventually becoming part of the Moroccan tea culture known as atay.
The important point is not that these ingredients were foreign. It is that Moroccan cooking made them Moroccan. Moroccan food did not lose its forms when new products arrived. It worked them into its own techniques: slow cooking, seasoning, oil, preserved lemon, olives, shared service, market rhythm, and household repetition. By the time these foods became ordinary, they belonged to Moroccan taste, Moroccan preparation, and Moroccan domestic life.
By the time the Protectorate began, these changes had not produced one uniform Moroccan table. But the channels were already there: ports, merchants, consuls, gardens, markets, and households. The next stage would not create Moroccan cuisine from outside. It would accelerate, reorganize, and commercialize changes that had already begun.
By Khalil Noramine
Published June 7, 2026