Colonial Infrastructures and Disrupted Mobilities: Unsilencing Itinerant Peoples in Moroccan Colonial History

As the question of controlling mobility and territory is central to any colonial enterprise, Infrastructures, understood both in their material (ports, railways, etc.) and bureaucratic iterations, played a crucial role in reshaping the circulation in the colonies and beyond. Morocco, as a joint French and Spanish Protectorate, was no stranger to these processes of concomitant disrupted mobilities and rampant domination. Based on Archival work conducted in France and Morocco, this presentation answers Trouillot’s radical call to « unsilence the past » by tracing the colonial entanglements between a diverse array of itinerant peoples, underrepresented in the Moroccan colonial historiography. By doing so, it aims to participate in discussions on archives, enduring repertoires of domination, and the « reverberations of the past » (J. Go).