In the mid-1930s, Moroccan elites living under French protectorate rule petitioned French officials for a number of liberties and reforms. In Algeria, demands for reform were extensive: Algerian elites asked for political equality with French settlers and criticized the French for failing to assimilate Algerian Muslims. But within a decade or two, Algerians and Moroccans no longer advocated reform. In Morocco, the Hizb al-Istiqlal (Independence Party) was formed in 1944, and unlike earlier organizations, began demanding independent statehood. In Algeria, Ferhat Abbas issued the “Manifesto of the Algerian People,” which called for the creation of an Algerian state. As in other parts of the French empire, demands for national independence began supplanting calls to reform the injustices of colonial rule.

The historical literature has largely treated demands for both reform and independence as instances of nationalism. Historians have described the early demands for equitable treatment and better provision of services in Morocco and Algeria as “proto-nationalist” or “early nationalist” activities, suggesting that these kinds of demands represent an early stage in an evolutionary process toward nationalist resistance aimed at liberating Morocco and Algeria from French rule. In their memoirs, nationalists also claimed that calls for reform were merely a first step in the nationalist project of separation from the empire, and spoke of their intention to demand independence all along. Colonial administrators likewise called the reformists nationalists and accused them of secretly harboring separatist goals. Nationalism is primary in these accounts: the foremost form of opposition.