At the turn of the century, the Arican country closest to Europe geographically was probably the least known. Morocco was a nation yet to emerge from the Middle Ages, violent and primitive, a place ruled by local warlords out of mud castles, and swept by religious fanaticism. "To strike out from Tangiers," writes Douglas Porch, "was to enter a time capsule -- emperors, slaves, harems, fortified towns, filth, superstition, blood feuds, and barbarism." Yet in the mad scramble for African colonies, backward and poverty-stricken Morocco had one great attraction: it was available. In 1903, with the posting to Africa of one of the oddest of all French military figures, General Hubert Lyautey (royalist, strategist, homosexual), France undertook to change this state of affairs, and by the time World War I broke out the conquest was virtually complete. - Jacket flap.