page_title: Scramble for Africa
section_title: Moroccan Crisis
hierarchical_section_title: Scramble for Africa / Crises prior to World War I / Moroccan Crisis
caption_attribution_description: العربية: محمد المقري وشاغلز اميل موانيي والسلطان عبد الحفيظ بن الحسن وسي قدور بن غبريط، 8 أغسطس 1912.Français&#160;: Si Kaddour ben Ghabrit et le sultan Moufay Hafid, vers 1912.English: Muhammad al-Muqri, Charles Émile Moinier, Sultan Abd al-Hafid of Morocco, and Si Kaddour Benghabrit, 8 August 1912.
context_page_description: The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa or the Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, occupation, division, and colonisation of African territory by European powers during a short period known to historians as the New Imperialism. In 1870, only 10 percent of Africa was under formal European control; by 1914 this had increased to almost 90 percent of the continent, with only Ethiopia and Liberia remaining independent, the latter of which was a former United States colony. The European colonialists had several motives: a desire for valuable natural resources, the quest for national prestige, rivalry between European powers, and religious missionary zeal. Internal African native politics also played a role.
  The Berlin Conference of 1884, which regulated European colonisation and trade in Africa, is usually referred to as the starting point of the Scramble for Africa. Consequent to the political and economic rivalries among the European empires in the last quarter of the 19th century, partitioning Africa was how the Europeans avoided going to war over it.
context_section_description: Although the 1884–85 Berlin Conference had set the rules for the Scramble for Africa, it had not weakened the rival imperialists. The 1898 Fashoda Incident, which had seen France and the British Empire on the brink of war, ultimately led to the signature of the Entente Cordiale of 1904, which countered the influence of the European powers of the Triple Alliance. As a result, the new German Empire decided to test the solidity of such influence, using the contested territory of Morocco as a battlefield.
  Thus, Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Tangiers on 31 March 1905 and made a speech in favor of Moroccan independence, challenging French influence in Morocco. France's influence in Morocco had been reaffirmed by Britain and Spain in 1904. The Kaiser's speech bolstered French nationalism, and with British support the French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, took a defiant line. The crisis peaked in mid-June 1905, when Delcassé was forced out of the ministry by the more conciliation-minded premier Maurice Rouvier. But by July 1905 Germany was becoming isolated and the French agreed to a conference to solve the crisis. Both France and Germany continued to posture up until the conference, with Germany mobilizing reserve army units in late December and France actually moving troops to the border in January 1906.
  The 1906 Algeciras Conference was called to settle the dispute. Of the thirteen nations present, the German representatives found their only supporter was Austria-Hungary. France had firm support from Britain, the US, Russia, Italy and Spain. The Germans eventually accepted an agreement, signed on 31 May 1906, whereby France yielded certain domestic changes in Morocco but retained control of key areas.
  However, five years later the Second Moroccan Crisis (or Agadir Crisis) was sparked by the deployment of the German gunboat Panther to the port of Agadir on 1 July 1911. Germany had started to attempt to surpass Britain's naval supremacy – the British navy had a policy of remaining larger than the next two naval fleets in the world combined. When the British heard of the Panther's arrival in Morocco, they wrongly believed that the Germans meant to turn Agadir into a naval base on the Atlantic.
  The German move was aimed at reinforcing claims for compensation for acceptance of effective French control of the North African kingdom, where France's pre-eminence had been upheld by the 1906 Algeciras Conference. In November 1911 a convention was signed under which Germany accepted France's position in Morocco in return for territory in the French Equatorial African colony of Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo).
  France and Spain subsequently established a full protectorate over Morocco (30 March 1912), ending what remained of the country's formal independence. Furthermore, British backing for France during the two Moroccan crises reinforced the Entente between the two countries and added to Anglo-German estrangement, deepening the divisions that would culminate in the First World War.
caption: The Moroccan Sultan Abdelhafid, who led the resistance to French expansionism during the Agadir Crisis
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