1940s: (Wartime Shifts in North African Nationalism — Moroccans Expecting Sovereignty After Roosevelt’s Promise, the French Suppressing Istiqlal, Ferhat Abba…

1940s: (Wartime Shifts in North African Nationalism — Moroccans Expecting Sovereignty After Roosevelt’s Promise, the French Suppressing Istiqlal, Ferhat Abbas’s 1943 Manifesto of the Algerian People, the AML Demanding a Republic Federated with France, Violent Protest Met with Brutal Repression in 1945, Bourguiba’s Neo-Destour in Tunisia, and the British Protecting the Suez Canal While Egyptian Politics Grew Explosive): American, French, and British flags may have fluttered between Cairo and Casablanca during the war’s closing years, but the future of Anglo-Franco-American hegemony across North Africa was far from certain. Moroccans expected the granting of full sovereignty upon Allied victory — reportedly promised by Roosevelt himself — but after the war the French suppressed the new nationalist party Istiqlal, and the Sultan Sidi Mohammad became a key figure in the nationalist struggle through the late 1940s. In Algeria, the US invasion in 1943 gave further impetus to nationalism — French-educated nationalists including Ferhat Abbas drew up a Manifesto of the Algerian People calling for reform, and Abbas founded the AML demanding a republic federated with France. The movement was attacked on two fronts, by settlers and by more radical elements who regarded Abbas as too moderate, including Ahmed Messali’s PPA. Violent protest in 1945 was met with brutal repression, and as the 1940s progressed, nationalists were repeatedly frustrated by French support for the settler community and rigged elections. In Tunisia, the nationalist leader Bourguiba had been loyal to the Free French cause, but when the monarch Moncef Bey agitated for reform he was swiftly exiled and replaced. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood had become stridently nationalist, socioeconomic hardships and high-handed British actions had exacerbated anti-British feeling and hostility toward the ineffectual monarchy of King Faruq. Throughout, the British were concerned first and foremost to protect their strategic and financial investment in the Suez Canal — the artery of empire mattered more than the aspirations of the people through whose land it ran.