Tangier International Zone

Baedeker map of Tangier in 1901, showing the walled Medina and multiple foreign consulates and legations

Tangier had developed since the 18th century as the main point of contact between the Moroccan monarchy and European commercial interests, leading to the establishment of a number of consulates in the city by the main European nations.[1] By 1830, Denmark, France, Portugal, Sardinia, Spain, Sweden, Tuscany, the United Kingdom, and the United States all had consulates in Tangier.[2]^: 68 In 1856, its role as Morocco's diplomatic capital was made official, and the existing consulates were elevated to legations.[3]^: 17

Tangier's unique governance took further shape around 1880. That year, it was granted a monopoly of importation of tobacco and opium into Morocco. In 1879, a Dahir (decree) of the Sultan of Morocco established a Hygiene Commission, which was actually established in 1884 and further organized in 1892. The Commission was chaired by the foreign consuls, on three-months turns with succession based on alphabetical order of nationality.[2]^: 78 One of them, the Greek-American Ion Perdicaris, in 1887 advocated a special status for Tangier as a neutral free port under the great powers' joint control.[4]^: 110 In 1893, the Commission's role was broadened to public roads, with authority to raise levies.[5]^: 11

In 1904, Tangier was chosen as location of the French-led Moroccan Debt Administration. The Algeciras Conference of 1906 prepared the ground for the colonization of Morocco and specifically for the creation of the State Bank of Morocco which would be established in Tangier the following year; it did not, however, define the status of Tangier itself. Both France and Spain wanted to control the city, and the United Kingdom wanted to neutralize it in order to maintain its dominance of the Strait of Gibraltar. In 1912, Article 7 of the Treaty Between France and Spain Regarding Morocco stipulated that Tangier would be granted a special status. An agreement to that effect was signed in Madrid in 1914, but its implementation was suspended by World War I.[3]^: 17 Negotiations restarted after the end of the war, in Cannes in 1922.[6]^: 12 Meanwhile, Tangier still operated under the ancient regime of Capitulations under which the Sultan of Morocco delegated wide administrative duties in the town to the foreign consulates established there.

Tangier (top left) and the Spanish protectorate in Morocco

Eventually, France, Spain and the UK reached agreement on the Tangier Protocol on 18 December 1923.[6]^: 12 Tangier was made a neutral zone under a joint administration. In line with UK wishes, it was entirely free from any military presence. It was also made into a tax haven, with no tariffs on imported or exported goods or gold, no exchange controls, no income or revenue taxes, and unlimited freedom of establishment.[3]^: 18 Although misgivings remained about the agreement,[7] ratifications were exchanged in Paris on 14 May 1924.[8] The convention was amended on 25 July 1928,[9] when the governments of Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden joined the international framework.

The initial economic effect of the creation of the zone was sharply negative, because the Spanish protectorate authorities discouraged commerce with it and thus Tangier lost most of its traditional hinterland. Tangier had handled nineteen percent of Morocco's imports in 1906, but only four percent in 1929.[10] With time, however, the service activities favored by the zone's special status enabled a gradual recovery. The Zone had a reputation for tolerance, diversity of culture, religion, and bohemianism. It became a tourist hotspot for literary giants and gay men from Western countries. Many of the latter were able to live an openly "out" life in the Zone.[11][12]

Spanish troops occupied Tangier on 14 June 1940, the same day Paris fell to the Germans. Despite calls by the writer Rafael Sánchez Mazas and other Spanish nationalists to annex "Tánger español", the Francoist State publicly considered the occupation a temporary wartime measure.[13] A diplomatic dispute between Britain and Spain over the latter's abolition of the city's international institutions in November 1940 led to a further guarantee of British rights and a Spanish promise not to fortify the area.[14] Tangiers was annexed to the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco at 23 November 1940.[15] In May 1944, although it had served as a contact point between himself and the later Axis Powers during the Spanish Civil War, Franco expelled all German diplomats from the Zone.[16]

The territory was restored to its pre-war status on 11 October 1945.[17] The activity of Tangier as an offshore financial centre and tax haven took off in the postwar period. In 1950, there were 85 banks in Tangier, up from 4 in 1900 and 15 in 1939.[3]^: 18 Its practice of banking secrecy was extreme, with effectively no bank licensing, no prudential supervision, no accounting obligations, and no transparency whatsoever about a bank's ownership. In some cases, the senior management of a Tangier bank would not even know who the bank's owners were. One author wrote that "the authorities of Tangier had pushed to an unequaled degree of perfection the art of non-governing by reciprocal annulment of rival sovereignties. They took care, better than elsewhere, of the rigorous application of an almost total non-taxation".[4]^: 113

On 29 October 1956, the foreign nations involved in the zone and the Moroccan government, represented by Foreign Minister Ahmed Balafrej, signed a joint declaration that returned Tangier to full Moroccan sovereignty.[18] Mohammed V granted it a charter to smooth the transition and extend its tax and other privileges on a temporary basis. In October 1959, that charter was abrogated with a six-month notice period.[3]^: 22 The expiration of that transition on 11 April 1960 marked the final end of Tangier's special status.[19]

• Dejima
• Concessions in China
• Panama Canal Zone
• Free City of Danzig
• Corpus separatum (Jerusalem)

• Beevor, Antony (2006). The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-29784832-1.
• Payne, Stanley G. (1987). The Franco Regime, 1936–1975. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-11070-3.
• Stahn, Carsten (2008). The Law and Practice of International Territorial Administration: Versailles to Iraq and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52187800-5.
• Stuart, Graham H. (July 1945). "The Future of Tangier". Foreign Affairs. Council on Foreign Relations. 23 (4). doi:10.2307/20029932. JSTOR 20029932.
• Stuart, Graham H. (1955). The International City of Tangier (2nd ed.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Haller, Dieter (2021). Tangier/Gibraltar. A Tale of one City - An Ethnography. Bielefeld: Transcript.

• Finlayson, Iain (1992). Tangier: City of the Dream. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00217857-5.
• Hettstedt, Daniela (2022). Die internationale Stadt Tanger (in German). De Gruyter Oldenbourg. ISBN 978-3-11-073021-0.