Morocco's Atlantic engine grew from Anfa to Casa
Casablanca is Morocco's largest city and economic hub on the Chaouia Atlantic plain, with about 3.22 million urban residents and over 4.27 million in Greater Casablanca—the Maghreb's most populous metro and ninth-largest in the Arab world. Its artificial port ranks among Africa's biggest; the stock exchange is Africa's third by market capitalization.
Berbers settled the coast by the seventh century BC; Phoenicians and Romans used the harbor. Leo Africanus praised Anfa as a prosperous Barghawata Atlantic city from 744 AD. Portuguese guns ruined the pirate haven in 1468; a white landmark tower later helped sailors spot Casa Branca. After the 1755 earthquake, Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah rebuilt the port between 1756 and 1790 as ad-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ—Arabic for the Portuguese White House—while maps still labeled Anfa into the mid-nineteenth century.
Nineteenth-century wool exports to British mills swelled a modest town from about five thousand residents in the 1860s toward twelve thousand around the French conquest. The 1906 Algeciras Treaty put French officers on customs, gave La Compagnie Marocaine the port, and created a French–Spanish police force. When a Decauville track to Roches Noires cut a sacred cemetery in 1907, Chaouia tribesmen killed nine laborers; French gunboats then bombarded the city, killing hundreds to thousands and opening a western invasion front. The 1912 Treaty of Fez confirmed the protectorate: Rabat became administrative capital, Casablanca the economic one, and Henri Prost laid a European ville nouvelle beside the medina.
In World War II, Vichy forces held the coast until Operation Torch took Casablanca on 11 November 1942. Berrechid Airfield staged American planes for Europe and later became Mohammed V International Airport. January 1943's Anfa Conference brought Roosevelt and Churchill to adopt unconditional surrender; Roosevelt's private talk with Sultan Muhammad V encouraged independence hopes that erupted in 1940s–50s unrest before sovereignty in 1956. A 1961 Casablanca Conference gathered African leaders including Nasser and Nkrumah.
Today headquarters of major Moroccan and foreign firms cluster here; the city ranked fifty-fourth on the September 2023 Global Financial Centres Index and hosts the Royal Moroccan Navy's main base. Vernacular names still toggle between Casa, Casablanca, and d-Dār l-Biḍā. From Barghawata Anfa through colonial extraction to a Beta-scale financial node, the White House on the Atlantic remains Morocco's workshop more than its ceremonial capital.
Source: Casablanca
