The Treaty of Peace and Friendship, They Renamed You

What the treaty says

The treaty created specific, named rights for Empire of Morocco subjects on US soil. Here is what the document actually says.

The Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the Empire of Morocco and the United States is a bilateral treaty, the highest form of law between sovereign nations, binding on both parties. The US Constitution (Article VI) makes treaties "the supreme Law of the Land." This treaty has never been superseded, repealed, or lawfully terminated.

"If a Citizen of the United States should kill or wound a Moor, or, on the contrary, if a Moor shall kill or wound a Citizen of the United States, the law of the Country shall take place, and equal justice shall be rendered, the Consul assisting at the trial."

— Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Article 21, 1836

The treaty covers Empire of Morocco subjects on US soil and US citizens in Empire of Morocco dominions, reciprocally. The Sultan of Morocco's dominions include Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa, the full western domain, which includes the Americas. The treaty is not a foreign agreement about a distant place. It is an agreement about this land and the people already on it.

The exit rule they ignored

Article 25 requires twelve months written notice. It was never given.

"This Treaty shall continue in force... until the one Party shall give twelve months notice to the other of an intention to abandon it..."

— Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Article 25, 1836

In 1959, the US State Department declared Article 15 of the 1880 Madrid Convention "obsolete and without effect." Article 15 is the nationality-survival clause: an Empire of Morocco subject who naturalizes abroad remains a subject of the Empire unless the Empire of Morocco consented. The declaration was directed to the Kingdom of Morocco (1956), not the Empire of Morocco, and it:

Was not directed to the Empire of Morocco, the actual treaty signatory
Did not give twelve months' notice as required by Article 25
Was sent fourteen months after the US honored the treaty in a state visit with the Kingdom of Morocco's King Mohammed V (November 1957)
Was contradicted by the US Congress in 2025, which called the treaty "unbroken"

A contract cannot be cancelled by sending a note that ignores the contract's own exit procedure. The 1959 note is void ab initio, it produced no legal effect on the treaty from the moment it was issued.

The treaty timeline

From 1777 to 2025, the official record confirmed the treaty nine times. What follows is each confirmation, and the attempt to erase it, in sequence.

Read the dates. The recognition and the erasure were running at the same time. That is not an accident.

1777

First recognition

The Empire of Morocco, under the Sultan, was the first sovereign nation in the world to formally recognize the United States of America. November 1777. This was not a diplomatic courtesy. It was the sovereign of the land acknowledging the new administrative entity on it.

Source: Moroccan port orders, 1777; US State Department historical record

1786

Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed

The first formal Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the Empire of Morocco and the United States. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson negotiated on the US side. The treaty established reciprocal protection for nationals of both parties.

Source: Treaty of Peace and Friendship, 1786

1836

Treaty renewed, ratified by the US Senate

The 1836 renewal, codified at 8 Stat. 484, was ratified by the US Senate on July 16, 1836. This is the operative treaty, the one in force today. The Senate's ratification made it supreme US law under Article VI of the Constitution.

Source: 8 Stat. 484; Senate ratification, July 16, 1836

1914

State Department confirms treaty class

US State Department correspondence confirmed: "The protection of native Moors rests on the Treaty of 1836." The government's own legal officers acknowledged the treaty class and its basis. This is a government admission on the record.

Source: US State Department, 1914

1952

International Court of Justice confirms the treaty

The International Court of Justice, the highest international court, ruled in the Case Concerning Rights of Nationals of the United States of America in Morocco, confirming the 1836 Treaty was real, in force, and created binding legal obligations. The ICJ ruling is on the record at The Hague.

Source: ICJ, Rights of Nationals of the United States in Morocco, 1952

1957

US honors the treaty in a state visit

In November 1957, the United States conducted a formal state visit with the Kingdom of Morocco's King Mohammed V, honoring the treaty relationship. Fourteen months later, the State Department sent the 1959 note claiming the treaty was "obsolete." You do not honor a treaty in a state visit and then declare it obsolete the following year without following its exit procedure.

Source: US State Department records, 1957

1957

Congressional Record, "The Moroccans are the Indians"

Rep. Emanuel Celler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, read General Guillaume's speech into the Congressional Record. Guillaume stated: "The Moroccans are the Indians, the indigenous people." The chairman of the committee that writes US law said it on the public record.

Source: Congressional Record, 1957; Guillaume speech

1959

State Department note, void ab initio

The US State Department declared Article 15 of the 1880 Madrid Convention "obsolete and without effect." Article 15 is the nationality-survival clause, it preserved the sovereign bond of Empire of Morocco subjects even after naturalization abroad, unless the Empire consented. The US government's own 1939 record confirmed the Madrid Convention "has no terminable date" (FRUS Doc 725) and that terminating Article 15 required a separate naturalization treaty (FRUS Doc 713), which was never made. Obsolescence is not a valid mode of treaty termination. The declaration produced no legal effect.

Source: US State Department Note, 1959

2025

US Congress confirms: unbroken

H.Res.251 (2025), introduced in the US House of Representatives, March 25, 2025, states that the Treaty of Peace and Friendship "remains the longest unbroken diplomatic relationship in United States history." Present tense: remains. The US legislative record itself says the treaty has never been broken. The co-sponsor of H.Res.251 is from South Carolina, the same state that wrote the Moors Sundry Act in 1790.

Source: H.Res.251, 2025

Why there are two treaties

The Sultan did not cancel the 1786 Treaty. The United States asked him to renew it, and asked him to make it permanent.

The 1786 Treaty included an Article 25 with a fifty-year term. That term expired in 1836. The Sultan did not repudiate the treaty, withdraw from it, or declare it void. It ran its course. When the term approached, President Andrew Jackson dispatched the US consul, James Leib, to the Sultan's court at Meknes with one instruction: secure renewal, and specifically, make the new treaty permanent, so it would not expire again.

The United States went to the Sultan of Morocco in 1835 and asked him to continue the relationship. The Sultan agreed. The 1836 Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed at Meknes on September 16, 1836, and ratified by the US Senate. The Sultan's controlling Arabic text, the original and authoritative language of the instrument, opens with his stated intent:

"…that, with the help of God, it may remain firm forever."

— Sultan Abd al-Rahman ibn Hisham, Arabic text of the 1836 Treaty, Meknes, September 16, 1836

The Sultan sealed the 1836 Treaty without payment. The State Department's own treaty scholar, Hunter Miller, documented this as "a circumstance unknown hitherto in the history of Morocco." In Empire of Morocco treaty practice, payment accompanied commercial arrangements. The 1836 Treaty contained none, only peace and mutual protection. Prof. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, the foremost Arabist of the era commissioned by the US government to authenticate the Arabic text, confirmed that 18 of 23 articles were word-for-word identical between the 1786 and 1836 treaties. The relationship between the Empire of Morocco and the United States of America was not being renegotiated. It was being renewed, on the same terms, without price, and made permanent.

Article 25 of the 1836 Treaty was specifically upgraded from the 1786 version. It made the treaty perpetual: after the fifty-year term, the treaty would remain in force indefinitely, unless one party gave the other twelve months written notice of intent to abandon it. Jackson's own instructions to Leib directed him to secure that notice clause. The United States wrote the exit procedure. The United States designed the twelve-month notice requirement. The 1959 State Department Note, the document that claimed the treaty was "obsolete", never gave twelve months' notice. It violated a procedure the United States itself authored.

The Constitutional rule on treaty termination

Two Secretaries of State, Philander Knox (1913) and Robert Lansing (1917), each confirmed that a US treaty can be terminated "only by a treaty… regularly ratified by the United States Senate." A State Department note cannot terminate a treaty. Neither can an executive proclamation. Only a Senate-ratified instrument can.

Knox-Lansing Constitutional Rule, Treaty Termination Requires Senate Ratification

"The termination of a treaty can only be accomplished by a treaty… regularly ratified by the Senate of the United States, with the advice and consent of that body, or by an act of Congress."

— Secretary of State Philander Knox, 1913 opinion; confirmed by Secretary of State Robert Lansing, 1917

The 1959 State Department Note, the document that claimed the 1836 Treaty was "obsolete and without effect", is not a treaty. It is not an act of Congress. It was sent by a subordinate official in the State Department. By the Knox-Lansing rule, it produced no legal effect on the treaty's operative status. This is not a novel argument, it is the State Department's own rule, articulated by two of its own Secretaries of State, on the specific question of how treaties may be terminated.

The US constitutional structure requires Senate ratification for both treaty creation and treaty termination for the same reason: treaties are the highest form of law between nations and cannot be undone by executive branch action alone. A note from the State Department is executive action, and executive action, by the Knox-Lansing rule confirmed by both Secretaries, is insufficient to terminate a Senate-ratified treaty.

The 1959 Note: sixteen (16) independent grounds of invalidity

Sixteen (16) independent grounds establish that the 1959 Note is void. Each ground is independently sufficient. All sixteen are documented from primary sources, the State Department's own Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) record.

Before the grounds: understand when this Note was issued and why. The Note is dated March 17, 1959. At that exact moment, the United States was in active negotiations with the Kingdom of Morocco over US Air Force bases, Nouasseur and Boulhaut, on Kingdom of Morocco-administered soil. Cold War positioning of NATO's southern flank ran through that territory. The Eisenhower-Mohammed V discussions on base rights followed within months. US strategic dependency on that territory was at its documented peak in the spring of 1959. At that exact moment, not years before, not after, the State Department issued a Note declaring that the treaty class's rights on North American soil were "obsolete." The US needed the base land abroad. The Note declared the Empire of Morocco subjects at home had no rights. The FRUS base-negotiation volumes document the strategic context. The US had argued Article 21 as operative law before the ICJ seven years earlier. Two Secretaries of State had established that only a Senate-ratified treaty could extinguish what the Note claimed to extinguish. The people who sent this Note knew all of this. The Note was deliberate foreclosure at documented peak strategic dependency, not administrative oversight. The timing is the intent.

No 12-month notice to the Empire of Morocco. Article 25 of the 1836 Treaty requires "twelve Months previous notice" before any action ending the peace. The 1959 Note was sent without 12 months' notice. It was sent to the wrong party (Kingdom of Morocco, 1956) and without the required notice to the Empire (the actual treaty signatory).

No Senate vote. Knox (1913) and Lansing (1917) both confirmed: treaty termination "can only be" by a treaty regularly ratified by the Senate or by an act of Congress. The 1959 Note was neither. No Senate vote was ever taken on terminating the 1836 Treaty.

The US's own three-instrument termination method was not followed. FRUS records document the US's own established method for treaty termination: (1) diplomatic note with required notice, (2) Congressional approval, (3) formal proclamation. None of these three were completed for the 1836 Treaty.

Article 25 contains no "terminable date" clause. FRUS 1939, Document 725, verbatim State Department internal communication, confirms the 1836 Treaty "contains no terminable date." A treaty with no terminable date cannot be declared "obsolete", there is no date from which obsolescence can be measured.

Article 15 category error. The 1959 Note attempted to use Article 15 (the protégé system provision) as the basis for declaring the treaty "no longer applicable." Article 15 governs the class of individuals elevated from Moroccan subject status to colonial protégé status, it has nothing to do with treaty termination. Using Article 15 to terminate the treaty is a category error: a provision about individual status reclassification being invoked to end a sovereign bilateral instrument.

Knox 1913 / Lansing 1917 constitutional inadequacy. The method used for the 1959 Note, a State Department diplomatic note, was specifically identified as constitutionally inadequate for treaty termination by two Secretaries of State before the note was sent. The officials who sent the 1959 Note violated their own department's established constitutional rule.

The Cannon-Balafrej 1956 letter. FRUS documents an October 1956 letter between US diplomat Cavendish Cannon and Moroccan Foreign Minister Ahmed Balafrej. The letter confirms the treaty relationship was being maintained, two years before the 1959 Note. The 1956 affirmation and the 1959 negation cannot both be legally operative.

Wrong sovereign party. The Kingdom of Morocco (1956) is France's colonial exit mechanism — the governmental construct France established when the 1912–1956 Protectorate ended. It is not the Empire of Morocco, the party that signed the 1836 Treaty. The 1959 Note was addressed to the Kingdom of Morocco. A note addressed to a party that did not sign the treaty cannot terminate the treaty. This defect is jurisdictional and fatal to any termination claim, independent of every other void ground.

Franco-British Convention 1937 instrument class. The 1836 Treaty belongs to the same class of instruments as the Franco-British Convention of 1937, which was subject to League of Nations registration requirements. A note is a lower instrument class than the treaties and conventions that governed the 1836 Treaty's framework. A lower instrument class cannot void a higher one.

Descending instrument class. A diplomatic note is a lower form of legal instrument than a ratified treaty. Under international law's hierarchy of instruments, a lower-class document cannot override or terminate a higher-class document. The 1959 Note's instrument class was legally insufficient to accomplish what it claimed to do.

Algeciras Article 123, all prior treaties preserved. The 1906 Act of Algeciras (signed by the US, among other powers) explicitly preserved all prior treaties in Article 123. The 1836 Treaty was a prior treaty as of 1906. The US's own signature on the Algeciras Act preserved the 1836 Treaty 53 years before the 1959 Note attempted to void it. The Note contradicted a multilateral agreement the US had signed.

Classification authority void. The 1959 Note was classified as an internal diplomatic document, not published in the Federal Register, not submitted to Congress, not publicly available as required for a treaty change that affects US supreme law under Article VI of the Constitution. A classified internal document that changes the US's treaty obligations, treaty law being supreme US law, is void for lack of publication authority.

Algeciras multilateral encirclement, signatory powers never notified. The 1906 Act of Algeciras was signed by thirteen sovereign powers, all committing to the Empire of Morocco's sovereignty and the integrity of its domains. The 1959 Note was bilateral, between the US and the Kingdom of Morocco only. Under VCLT Article 41, a bilateral modification of a multilateral treaty is void where it affects the rights of other parties. The other Algeciras signatories were never notified and retain independent standing to challenge the Note.

Self-defeating, the Note declares its own consent mechanism obsolete. Article 15 of the Madrid Convention is itself the consent mechanism, the clause under which the Empire of Morocco could ever agree to release a subject's nationality. Declaring Article 15 "obsolete" removes the only channel through which the Empire's consent could be recorded. A declaration that destroys the precondition it would need to be valid is self-defeating: the nationality bond is not extinguished, it is placed in perpetual suspension, dormant, not terminated.

Contingent coexistence, foreign nationality was never consented to. Article 15 operates only on a subject who has voluntarily acquired foreign nationality with the Empire's consent. No such consent was ever given for the treaty class. The foreign nationality the Note assumes is contingent, not settled, so the Empire's sovereign bond coexists with it and was never lawfully displaced. The trigger the Note relies on never fired.

Article 15 total collapse, the Americas are not a "foreign country." Article 15's predicate is naturalization in a country foreign to the Empire. Where the western domain of Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa reaches the Americas, the ground on which the subject stands is the Empire's own acknowledged western extension, not a foreign state. With grounds 14 and 15, this completes the total collapse of the Note's reliance on Article 15: the clause cannot supply its own consent, assumes a consent never given, and its "foreign country" trigger never arises.

FRUS: the State Department's own record

The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) is the State Department's official published documentary record. Five key FRUS documents together constitute the evidentiary chain for the treaty's ongoing validity.

FRUS 1913, Knox Opinion

Secretary of State Philander Knox's formal opinion on treaty termination authority. Establishes that the Executive alone cannot terminate a Senate-ratified treaty.

Treaty termination "can only be" by "a treaty…regularly ratified by the United States Senate."

FRUS 1939, Document 713

State Department internal correspondence on the status of the 1836 Treaty. Confirms the treaty's operative status as of 1939, 20 years after the protectorate period began and three years into WWII.

Internal confirmation that the 1836 Treaty remained "the governing instrument" for Empire of Morocco–US relations.

FRUS 1939, Document 725

The critical "no terminable date" document. State Department internal communication explicitly confirms that Article 25 of the 1836 Treaty contains no terminable date, making "obsolescence" legally inapplicable.

"The treaty contains no terminable date."

FRUS 1943, Casablanca Conference

FDR met personally with Mohammed V, Sultan of the Empire of Morocco, at the Casablanca Conference, January 1943, treating him as a sovereign, not as an official of an occupied territory. The Empire of Morocco's northern territory was in the French Protectorate zone, but FDR met him directly. This is a US presidential admission that the sovereign line of Al-Maghrib al-Aqsa was still recognized during WWII, and that the Empire of Morocco was never designated as a hostile nation.

FDR to Mohammed V, Casablanca, January 22, 1943: the conversation was held without French officials present.

FRUS 1956, Cannon-Balafrej

October 1956 correspondence between US diplomat Cannon and Kingdom of Morocco Foreign Minister Balafrej. Confirms the US was still treating the treaty relationship as active three years before the 1959 Note, with the Kingdom of Morocco (the 1956 construct) as its counterparty, not the Empire of Morocco, the actual treaty signatory.

Diplomatic correspondence treating the treaty relationship as ongoing obligation, not as a historical artifact.

The FRUS record is the State Department's own publication. It is not a hostile source. When the State Department's own published record contains a document saying the treaty "contains no terminable date" (FRUS Doc 725) and a document confirming the treaty was the "governing instrument" as late as 1939 (FRUS Doc 713), these documents came out of the same agency that sent the 1959 Note claiming the treaty was obsolete. The right hand documented the treaty's validity. The left hand sent a note claiming it was obsolete. Both came out of the State Department. The FRUS documents are the adverse admissions that make the 1959 Note self-contradicting within the agency's own record.

The legal consequence

The treaty obligation runs directly to the United States. This violation is being documented before international bodies, not invoked individually in domestic courts.

The Empire of Morocco's government was suppressed through the French and Spanish Protectorate (1912–1956). The governmental structure was dismantled. But the rights of the treaty class, the Empire of Morocco subjects, did not require a functioning government to remain in force. The treaty created obligations on both parties. The US obligation to protect Empire of Morocco subjects persists independent of what happened to the Empire of Morocco government.

Article 21 requires consular assistance at trial, a right the United States has not honored for a single Empire of Morocco subject in 190 years. That breach is what is being documented in the active international filings: IACHR P-1365-26, OHCHR h6a662eo. The Empire of Morocco subjects do not require the Kingdom of Morocco (1956) to file on their behalf, the obligation runs directly from the 1836 Treaty to the US government, and the treaty class has standing to press that claim before international human rights bodies.

This is not a self-help defense

Invoking treaty language in a domestic courtroom or during a police encounter, without a licensed attorney and formal consular representation, will not protect you and may result in additional charges. The remedy runs through international human rights bodies. That process is what is documented in the active case record on this site.

"Occupation does not extinguish sovereignty."

— Governing principle, international law

The suppression of the Empire of Morocco government was real. It was an internationally wrongful act. But it did not extinguish the sovereignty or the rights of the Empire of Morocco subjects. The status is intact. The instruments that purported to extinguish it were each void from the moment of issuance. The remedy is recognition. From recognition, restoration follows, not as a grant, but as the legal consequence of acknowledging what the void instruments could not accomplish.

Official recognitions of the treaty class Active filings