Of the four countries covered in this work, Morocco's history as a distinct entity (as traced through its Alaouite monarchy) is the longest and its experience with outside intervention the shortest. Unlike Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan, it was never a part of the Ottoman Empire, and it was the last of the three to come under external control, succumbing for economic and political reasons to the imposition of a protectorate with French, Spanish and international zones in 1912. It secured formal independence in 1956 following an independence struggle that produced the bases of one of the few multiparty political systems in the region, just as it transformed Mohammed V, the grandfather of Mohammed VI, into a beloved national hero. A strong sense of national identity – at least among the elite and the city-dwellers – notwithstanding, Morocco entered the community of nations with a significant divide between rural and urban which coincided to a certain extent with that between Berbers and Arabs.

Hassan II succeeded his father Mohammed V in 1962 and ruled until his death in 1999 using a governing formula that combined the traditional authority of religion (the royal family's claims to be from the line of the Prophet Muhammad), the power of the state apparatus with its attendant patron–client relations (called the makhzen), and at times brutal coercion. It was a formula that preserved the monarchy, but which did little to promote socio-economic development.