ABSTRACT
The civilian administrators or contrôleurs civils were officials of the French government sent to the Moroccan Protectorate to supervise the administration. Over a period of 44 years they were responsible for modernizing all areas of state activity. The Moroccan political institutions were retained, under the sultan, but French administrators belonging to this group of civil servants controlled everything. Lyautey created the Contrôle Civil in 1912 following earlier Tunisian practice. It introduced new techniques, particularly in agriculture or economics, but its work remains is virtually unknown today and has been little studied. This chapter is an attempt to rediscover the men of the Contrôle Civil based on books written by participants and oral interviews with several ex-administrators.
