Throughout American history, few years have been as bleak as 1777.
On land, British troops had seized several major cities. They had captured New York, then Philadelphia – the de facto capital of revolutionary America. Washington’s battered army retreated to Valley Forge, 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Of the 11,000 soldiers in the army, a third were “unfit for duty by reason of their being bare foot and otherwise naked.” In his letter to the Continental Congress that December, Washington warned that unless conditions changed, the army would face one of three outcomes: “Starve – dissolve – or disperse.”
At sea, the picture was even bleaker. The Royal Navy dominated the Atlantic seaboard. Independence had exposed America’s greatest vulnerability. The British navy that had protected American ships until 1776 had turned into their mortal enemy. American vessels were now exposed to attack on the open sea. The absence of an American navy was not only a threat for American ships and their crew. More importantly, it was a threat to American survival as it depended heavily on maritime commerce. Besides, the United States had yet to have treaties with other nations that guaranteed access to foreign ports. Without a navy or treaties, American trade had nearly come to a halt.
At that desperate hour, recognition by another sovereign would be a lifeline for America. And it came not from Europe, but from a North African kingdom more than 3,000 miles away. In Morocco, Sultan Sidi Muhammad ibn Abdallah welcomed American vessels into his ports, becoming the first foreign sovereign to publicly recognize the United States.
Yet the generous overture went entirely unnoticed by the founders until years later. So the story of America’s first friendship is also a story of neglect: While looking exclusively toward Europe, the United States overlooked the first nation that stood by it.
The Sultan’s name ran long, as royal names often do: Sidi Muhammad ibn Abdallah al-Khatib of the Alawi dynasty, Commander of the Faithful. He was as much a soldier as he was a scholar. Born in Fez, he had studied Islamic theology and law. By 1777, the 67-year-old Sultan had already reigned over Morocco for twenty years.
There is so much that is ambiguous about the Sultan. According to his enemies, he was a grim, squat man with mismatched eyes. According to his friends, however, he was tall and charismatic. Throughout his years in power, he had fought with his father and publicly disowned and banished his son. But this much is clear about him: During his first two decades on the throne, he transformed Morocco. He led the nation out of a long period of chaos and unrest that had ravaged the country for decades. He restored stability, and then did more. Unlike many of his predecessors, Muhammad III turned deliberately outward. With the goal of expanding trade with Europe, he developed the city of Essaouira into a thriving Atlantic port. He negotiated treaties with Denmark, Sweden, Venice, and Britain. He welcomed Christian merchants into Moroccan ports and relied on Jewish merchants to conduct international trade. For him, power came from commerce rather than conquest. Every ship entering his harbors brought customs revenue into the treasury. Trade enriched Morocco and strengthened the Sultan against his rivals at home.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the American revolution raged on.
To many European rulers, the patriots were insurgents whose survival was far from certain. France had not yet allied with the Americans. Spain, wary of encouraging revolts in its own empire, refused to engage. The Sultan, however, recognized what many European courts still hesitated to admit. From where he stood at the edge of the Sahara, in a Muslim kingdom outside the sphere of Ottoman influence, the United States was not a nation of rebels to be dismissed, but a potential trading partner. Having endured French attacks, declared war on the Dutch, and faced British naval blockades, he likely took some satisfaction in America’s determination to free itself from European domination. Besides, for a ruler who was always looking to elevate his nation’s standing among nations, being the first to recognize the United States must have seemed as an unmissable opportunity. It was his ambition to turn Morocco from a peripheral North African kingdom into a serious global player on the Atlantic.
But that same Atlantic had become a dangerous passageway for American ships. North African pirates ruled the seas. An American captain of a commercial ship could load his vessel with goods – tobacco, timber, or rice – and sail from the port of Boston or Baltimore. But as the coastline disappeared behind him, somewhere off the Iberian coast or near the Strait of Gibraltar, he would often be met by dozens of fast approaching sails, charging toward his ship.
The crews lost more than their vessels. If they did not lose their lives in battle, they lost years languishing in captivity. They were paraded through port cities in chains, stripped of their clothes and dignity. They were put to work in homes, fields, dockyards, and aboard ships. The lucky ones were freed for ransom. The others remained enslaved.
It was during this dire time that the Sultan offered his protection and opened his ports to American ships. He sent out word to all consuls and merchants in the ports of Tangier, Salé, and Mogador to announce that American vessels could now trade, take on supplies, seek shelter, and sail on without interference. Morocco thus placed the United States alongside ten other European powers so privileged, including Russia, Sardinia, and Prussia.
In war-torn America, however, no one noticed.
News traveled slowly in those days. By some accounts, it didn’t reach Benjamin Franklin – serving as the American emissary in Paris – until the spring of 1778. Even then, few American officials had the time or attention to spare. Congress was consumed by war, debt, and the increasingly urgent question of whether the republic would survive.
The Sultan did not give up. He turned to Étienne d’Audibert Caille, a French merchant appointed to represent nations without consuls in Morocco. Caille wrote to Benjamin Franklin on the Sultan’s behalf. When no answer came, he wrote again. Still, no response.
At last, in September 1780, almost three years after the Sultan had issued his original decree, Samuel Huntington, the President of the Continental Congress, reported receiving a letter inviting the United States to trade in Moroccan ports. Congress finally replied, expressing its desire for peace and friendship.
But the Sultan wanted more than a polite reply. He wanted treaties and American business. He had made his intentions clear and repeatedly sought a formal relationship with the United States. So, in October 1784, seven years after he had opened his ports to American ships, Muhammad III ordered the seizure of an American merchant vessel, the Betsey, as it left Cádiz, Spain. The ship’s capture appeared as an act of war, but it was really a calculated diplomatic signal – a forceful way of bringing the Americans to the negotiating table.
And it worked. Washington was finally compelled to act. In 1786, America’s envoy to France, Thomas Barclay, an Irish immigrant turned American patriot, traveled to Morocco to negotiate a formal agreement. Soon thereafter, the two founding fathers who were serving as diplomats in Europe, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, finalized the details.
The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship was signed on June 28, 1786, and ratified by Congress a year later. It covered commerce, the treatment of shipwrecked sailors, the rights of American citizens in Moroccan ports, and the protection of American ships from attack in Moroccan waters. In 1789, President George Washington wrote personally to Sultan Muhammad III. First, he offered “the sincere acknowledgments and Thanks of the United States” for the Sultan’s friendship. Then he praised “the Encouragement which your Majesty has been pleased, generously, to give to our Commerce with your Dominions,” had made “a deep Impression on the United States.”
The Treaty of Friendship remains the longest-running diplomatic relationship in American history. It has survived despite the tumults of decades: The Barbary Wars. The French occupation of Morocco. The two World Wars and the Cold War. In Tangier, the American Legation still stands—the first property the United States ever owned abroad.
Morocco’s gesture in 1777 is more than an intriguing footnote to the American founding. It is a reminder that the American revolution had already begun to resonate far beyond America’s shores, sometimes in places Americans least expected, and sometimes long before they were ready to recognize them.
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Luca Guerzoni contributed to the production of this story.
