1955-1957, King, 1957-1961Muh.ammad VI1953-1955, d.1976al-H.asan II1961-1999Muh.ammad VII1999-presentMorocco continues more or less as it had from the Middle Ages, even exerting some influence south of the Sahara. As the Turkish presence waned in Algeria and Tunisia, the area lapsed into a chaos of small states, whose principal business became piracy and slaving. This provoked the occasional sharp response from the European powers, but nothing got settled until in 1830 the French arrived to subdue Algeria. This ended the piracy and makes Algeria the most important French colony for the next 132 years, with a large population of French colonial farmers, the pieds noirs. While colonialism became the bete noire of Marxism, The H.usaynid Beys of TunisiaH.usayn I1705-1735'Ali I1735-1756Muh.ammad I1756-1759'Ali II1759-1782H.amuda1782-1814'Uthman1814Mah.mud1814-1824H.usayn II1824-1835Mus.t.afa1835-1837Ah.mad I1837-1855Muh.ammad II1855-1859Muh.ammad III as-S.adiq1859-1882French Occupation, 1881-1883; Protectorate, 1883-1956'Ali III1882-1902Muh.ammad IV1902-1906Muh.ammad V1906-1922Muh.ammad VI al-H.abib1922-1929Ah.mad II1929-1942Muh.ammad VII al-Muns.if1942-1943, d.1948Muh.ammad VIII1943-1957, d.1962Rashad al-MahdiKing, 1957Republic of Tunisia, 1957-presentthe problem of these French colonials wracked France, brought down the Fourth Republic, and provoked an attempted coup against the founder of the Fifth Republic, Charles de Gaulle.From the colonial foundation of Algeria, France began to lean on Morocco and Tunisia. As Britain embarked on a long term occupation of Egypt in 1882, France, which had backed off joining the British move, consolidated control over Tunisia instead. The H.usaynid Beys then lasted, as French clients, all the way to independence. Briefly, it looked like the dynasty might survive independence, but the nationalist leader, Habib Bourgiba (H.abib Bu Ruqayba), in the tradition of many other familiar dictators, did not need a tradtionalistic rival to his authority.The Moroccan experience was different. While France moved steadily to consolidate its influence, this was not without complaint from other European powers. World War I nearly started early with the Agadir incident in 1911, as Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II offered hope that Germany would dispute any French designs on the Sultanate. As it happened, the War waited a couple more years and a French Protectorate was nevertheless imposed in 1912. Morocco then later became the scene of the mythic presence of "Rick" in the classic movie Casblanca, not far from the real life drama of American troops landing in November 1942, to precipitate French North Africa back into World War II against Germany. The Germans chased out, Morocco became the first French possession to regain independence, not in the dangerous grip of nationalist ideology, but still under the control of the traditional monarchy, the only such traditional national monarchy surviving in the Arab world from the Middle Ages.Morocco and Tunisia now look like islands of bliss in comparison to Algeria, where dictatorship was supposed to end with elections, but then, when the elections went to Islamic fundamentalists, the army set them aside in favor of a more moderate dictatorship. The result has been a particularly nasty kind of civil war, in which whole villages have been massacred by forces that don't even acknowledge which side they are fighting for. This frightening and perplexing dilemma is beginning to seem all too common in the Islamic world, where the most vicious radicals nevertheless seem to command genuine