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Around 3 a.m. local time on Saturday — hours before other European governments said anything publicly about the earthquake — the French Embassy in Morocco announced that it had opened a crisis hotline.
Hours later, the mayor of the southern French port city of Marseille, said that he would send firefighters to help with rescue efforts in Marrakesh, a sister city. France’s ambassador to Morocco also said that none of the French tourists who flock every year to Marrakesh and Agadir had been reported injured or dead so far.
The comments underscored how, almost seven decades after Morocco won independence from France, the two countries remain bound by more than a century of shared history and culture.
“We are all devastated by the terrible earthquake in Morocco,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on social media. “France stands ready to help with first aid.”
France ruled Morocco as a protectorate from 1912 to 1956. Colonial control was less extensive, and the struggle to end it less bloody, than in neighboring Algeria, where decades of humiliating French rule and a bitter war of independence fueled long-lasting animosity toward France.
Relations between France and Morocco have been mostly cordial since independence, and the two nations have strong economic and social ties. About 1.5 million Moroccans live in France, many of them dual nationals, and French is still spoken in Morocco as a language of business, tourism and diplomacy. Last year, their shared history was on display when they met in a World Cup semifinal. (France won, but later lost to Argentina in the final.)
The relationship soured somewhat two years ago, when France reduced the number of visas it offered to people from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, accusing the three countries of refusing to take back citizens deported from France for being in the country illegally.
France ended visa restrictions for Moroccans a year later in an effort to “re-establish a consular relationship,” as Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said at the time.
But diplomatic relations are still frosty over unresolved issues like the status of Western Sahara. Morocco recalled its ambassador to France in February after the European Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution expressing worries about press freedom in Morocco and about accusations of a bribery operation by the Moroccan authorities at the Parliament, which Morocco has strenuously denied.
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