Relationships between Moroccan soldiers and white women in WW II: ambiguous perspectives

Abstract:The study focuses on Moroccan veterans’ stories about the French military command’s comprehensive interference in romantic relationships between Moroccans and European women in France during the Second World War. It is based on interviews with some Moroccan veterans about European women’s elopement with their alien suitors to Morocco. The Muslim soldiers’ attachment to their Islamic norms in a Western society was quite embarrassing to the French colonial mind. There was an element of ambiguity in the French officers’ objection to the French women and Moroccan men’s marriages, with the aim of establishing stringent demarcations between white females and colonial soldiers. While some French soldiers directly castigated Western women for befriending or marrying Moroccans, other French men were indifferent to the issue of hybrid relationships.