The Tangier International Zone (; ; ) was a international zone centered on the city of Tangier, Morocco, which existed from 1925 until its reintegration into independent Morocco in 1956, with interruption during the Spanish occupation of Tangier (1940–1945), and special economic status extended until early 1960. Surrounded on the land side by the Spanish protectorate in Morocco, it was governed under a unique and complex system that involved several European nations, the United States (mainly after 1945), and the Sultan of Morocco, himself under a French protectorate. Due to its status as an international zone, Tangier played a crucial role for Moroccan nationalists, who wanted independence, to establish international contacts and recruit allies as well as organising gatherings and events.
Background: early international governance in Tangier
For nearly a century after the end of English rule in 1684, Tangier was primarily a military town, the main fortified outpost on the Moroccan Sultanate's side of the Strait of Gibraltar. This role evolved after Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah designated it in 1777 as the main point of contact between the Moroccan monarchy and European commercial interests, leading to the gradual relocation of a number of consulates to the city by the main European nations. Great Britain, an ally of the Sultanate since 1713 as it needed Moroccan help to provision Gibraltar, moved its consul from Tétouan to Tangier in the 1770s, and the consul of France similarly moved in from Rabat in the early 1780s. By 1830, Denmark, France, Portugal, Sardinia, Spain, Sweden, Tuscany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all had consulates in Tangier. In 1851, the sultan appointed a permanent representative to the foreign powers in Tangier, the Naib, and in 1856, all remaining consulates were elevated to legations.
Since the Moroccan legal regime applied Islamic law only to Muslims and Judaic law only to Jews, foreign representatives were kept under a derogatory legal status defined by successive bilateral agreements with the Makhzen, the oldest of which appears to have been concluded with the Republic of Pisa in 1358. Such bilateral arrangements, known as capitulations, were signed with France in 1767, the United Kingdom in 1856, and Spain in 1861 in the wake of the Treaty of Wad Ras. In 1863, France and Morocco signed the so-called Béclard Convention which expanded the protégé system to France's benefit, which in 1880 was extended to other nations by the Treaty of Madrid. Under the capitulations' legal protection the United Kingdom established a postal service in Tangier in 1857, followed by France in 1860, Spain in 1861, and Germany in 1899; the Moroccan Sultanate followed suit with its own service in 1902.
The foreign powers in Tangier soon started developing joint projects, starting with matters of quarantine and public health as early as 1792. In 1840, a Dahir (decree) of Sultan Abd al-Rahman mandated them to establish a Sanitary Council (), chaired by the envoys of the represented nations on a rotating basis in the name of the Makhzen. In the early 1860s, the foreign nations for the creation of the Cape Spartel , inaugurated in 1864.
In 1879, a Dahir of Sultan Hassan I created Tangier's Hygiene Commission (), which coexisted with the Sanitary Council and gradually took shape in the 1880s as a de facto municipal council, with members appointed by the foreign diplomats but also the Sultan and prominent local residents. The Hygiene Commission was chaired by the foreign envoys, on three-months turns with succession based on alphabetical order of nationality. Its leading executive was the vice chair, a position held for most of the decade from 1888 to 1898 by Spanish physician . In 1887, Greek-American community leader Ion Hanford Perdicaris advocated a special status for Tangier as a neutral free port under the great powers' joint control.
In 1892, the Hygiene Commission took over some of the tasks of the Sanitary Council (which nevertheless continued to exist in parallel), and was given legal form on 23 December 1893, with its role broadened and its name extended to road works () with authority to raise levies. In 1904, Tangier was chosen as location of the French-led Moroccan Debt Administration. That same year, a secret treaty between France and Spain acknowledged Tangier's special status and thus marked the first official prefiguration of later formal international arrangements.
The Algeciras Conference of 1906 established the State Bank of Morocco in Tangier, and also created new bodies for the city's management such as an Office of Public Works that in 1909 took over part of the services that had been managed by the Hygiene Commission. The Act of Algeciras also resulted in the creation of a dual police force under foreign control, the Tabor divided between French and Spanish components, respectively in charge of public order outside and inside the city limits.
In March 1912, the Treaty of Fes established the French protectorate in Morocco and raised again the status of Tangier. Both France and Spain wanted to control the city, while the United Kingdom wanted to neutralise it to maintain its dominance of the Strait of Gibraltar. Later that year, Article 7 of the Treaty Between France and Spain Regarding Morocco stipulated that Tangier would be granted a special status and defined its geographical boundaries. A technical committee of France, Spain and the UK met in Madrid in 1913, but only reached agreement in November 1914, after World War I had started, which allowed Spain, which was unsatisfied with the outcome, to suspend its implementation for several years. Meanwhile, Tangier still operated under an ad hoc governance regime with a Sultan-appointed governor, the Naib reduced to a largely ceremonial role since Morocco under the protectorates no longer had an autonomous foreign policy, the extraterritorial courts under the respective foreign delegations (downgraded back to consulate status for the same reason), the Sanitary Council, the Hygiene Commission, the French and Spanish Tabors, and assorted specialized committees.
History
Paris Convention of 1923 and Protocol of 1928
Negotiations restarted after the end of the war, in Cannes in 1922, followed by a preparatory conference in London in June 1923, and a follow-up conference in Paris that started in October and concluded with a convention signed by France, Spain and the UK on 18 December 1923, ignoring Italy's stated wish to participate as well. Under that Paris Convention, Tangier was made a neutral zone under joint administration by the participating countries. In line with UK wishes, it was entirely free from any military presence. It was also made into a tax haven, with no tariffs on imported or exported goods or gold, no exchange controls, no income or revenue taxes, and unlimited freedom of establishment.
Ratifications of the signatories were exchanged in Paris on 14 May 1924. The entry into force of the Paris Convention was further delayed by translation challenges, so that the Tangier International Zone eventually started on 1 June 1925 under a Dahir of 15 May 1925. Simultaneously, the tasks of prior institutions including the Sanitary Council and Hygiene Commission were taken over by the new International Administration, even though the bodies themselves continued to exist for a few more years. The Paris Convention was proposed for ratification to the other powers that were party to the Algeciras Conference, except Germany, Austria and Hungary, disempowered by the peace treaties (respectively of Versailles, Saint-Germain and Trianon), and the Soviet Union, then estranged from the international system. It was ratified by Belgium (on 6 December 1924), Sweden, the Netherlands (on 5 October 1925), and eventually by Portugal (on 28 January 1926), putting an end to an awkward early period during which the Committee of Control practically could not reach a quorum. Fascist Italy had declined to ratify the Paris Convention as it insisted on equal status as a "great Mediterranean power" and was offended about not having been invited to the negotiation in Paris; the United States, meanwhile, preferred to keep their freedom of action. Both consequently kept their nationals under their respective systems of consular courts.
Italy's demand to join the international framework on a par with the signatories of the Paris Convention was supported by Spain from 1926, then by the UK, and a new conference eventually started in Paris in March 1928. The new protocol, amending the previous Paris Convention of 1923, was signed there on 25 July 1928. It was then ratified by Belgium (25 July 1928), Sweden (19 October 1928), Portugal (15 January 1929), and the Netherlands (12 June 1929). That revision also allowed the final abolition of Tangier's former ad hoc institutions, the Sanitary Council and Hygiene Commission, which Italy had previously insisted to maintain.
Spanish wartime occupation
Spanish troops occupied Tangier on 14 June 1940, the same day Paris fell to the Germans. Despite calls by the writer Rafael Sánchez Mazas and other Spanish nationalists to annex "Tánger español", the Francoist State publicly considered the occupation a temporary protection measure, occasionally presented as a way to shield Tangier against the risk of German or Italian invasion and thus safeguard Tangier's neutrality. The Zone's key institutions, the Committee of Control and Legislative Assembly, were abolished on 3 November 1940, triggering a diplomatic dispute between Britain and Spain that led to a further guarantee of British rights and a Spanish promise not to fortify the area. Tangier was effectively annexed to the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco on 23 November 1940. In May 1944, Franco expelled all German diplomats from the Zone.
Postwar re-establishment
A quadripartite conference (France, Soviet Union, UK and United States) met in Paris in August 1945, with Francoist Spain excluded at Soviet insistence. It concluded with a temporary Anglo-French Agreement of 31 August 1945, in which the two powers made arrangements for the re-establishment of the Zone's international institutional framework, invited the United States and the Soviet Union to join it, and reversed the advantages that Italy had secured under the 1928 Protocol. The intent at the time was to establish a new permanent statute following an ad hoc conference. The Anglo-French Agreement entered into force on 11 October 1945, when the Spanish government withdrew its military force and handed over the territory's government to the revived international institutions.
From then on, the U.S. participated in the Committee of Control and appointed a judge to the Mixed Courts. The Soviet Union soon relinquished interest in Tangier, however, which allowed Spain to participate again in the international framework albeit without positions in the administration, and Italy to recover its former position in the Mixed Courts..
A new status was eventually negotiated from August 1952 and finalized on 10 November 1952, with two documents: a protocol amending the Anglo-French Agreement of 31 August 1945 on various aspects of the Zone's administration, signed and subsequently ratified by Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States; and a separate convention signed by France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, by which the Mixed Courts were reformed into an International Jurisdiction with more judges. This entered into force by Dahir of the Sultan on 10 June 1953.
Termination