This paper is tightly related to Matthew Adamson’s in this same panel. We both look at the region of Morocco and Western Sahara and we both look at resources to shed light on their recent common and conflictive history. Moreover, uranium and phosphoric acid were connected in the region’s resource history. The recent history of Morocco, including its contested de facto colony of the Western Sahara, is linked to international power struggles over mineral resources. Yet those two rarely come together in historical accounts, which tend to be very partial in terms of periodization, regional focus, or general topic. The search for and exploitation of mineral resources are often treated as the static background of a larger geopolitical story in which colonization, the Cold War, and decolonization are seen as the historical processes to be understood.

In this paper I address Western Sahara geopolitical stalemate putting the focus on the role of phosphates. I describe the Spanish geological explorations that led to the first discovery and the geophysical international cooperation that resulted in what would prove to be the really significant finding: the Bu-Craa mine. I then examine how this mine altered the geopolitical equilibrium revolving around the phosphate world market in the eve of the Green Revolution. I conclude by stressing how the alternatives opened to restore this geopolitical equilibrium are behind Morocco’s seizure of the territory in 1975, for which it found the support of Spain, France and the United States.