MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Morocco

ONE LAND · 6 ATLASES

Morocco, on the map of history

What was Morocco before it was Morocco? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Mauretania (mod. Morocco) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

Mauretania: client kingdom of Juba II — the scholar-king Rome educated in Italy and married to Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra; their capital at Caesarea (Cherchell) was a Greco-Roman court on the African Atlantic. Caligula had the last king, Ptolemy of Mauretania, murdered in AD 40 — reportedly for wearing too splendid a cloak at the games — and annexation followed the revolt that murder provoked. Rome held it as two thinly-garrisoned provinces, the empire’s far western edge; it slipped from imperial control early in the fifth century, and the Vandals passed through it on their way to richer Africa in 429.

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Morocco · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

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Morocco · The Great War, 1914–1918

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Morocco · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

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Morocco · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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Morocco · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994

Morocco, a French protectorate with a Spanish northern zone, regained independence in March 1956 when France, choosing to concentrate its strength on Algeria, let its protectorates go. Sultan Mohammed V, exiled by the French in 1953, returned as the hero of independence and founded the monarchy that rules still. Morocco later absorbed most of Spanish Sahara, a claim still disputed.

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