Rochester Studies in African History and The Diaspora

ROCHESTER STUDIES in
AFRICAN HISTORY and the DIASPORA

Toyin Falola, Senior Editor
The Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History
University of Texas at Austin
(ISSN: 1092-5228)
Power Relations in Nigeria: Ilorin West Indians in West Africa, 1808—

Slaves and Their Successors 1880: The African Diaspora in
Ann O'Hear Reverse
Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria Nemata Blyden
Edited by Paul Beckett and The United States and Decolonization
Crawford Young inWest Africa, 1950-1960
Science and Power in Ebere Nwaubani
Colonial Mauritius Health, State, and Society in Kenya
William Kelleher Storey George Oduor Ndege
Namibia's Post-Apartheid Regional Black Business and Economic Power
Institutions: The Founding Year Edited by Alusine Jalloh
Joshua Bernard Forrest and Toyin Falola
A Saro Community in the Niger Delta, Voices o f the Poor in Africa
1912-1984: The Potts-Johnsons of Elizabeth Isichei
Port Harcourt and Their Heirs Colonial Rule and Crisis in
Mac Dixon-Fyle Equatorial Africa: Southern Gabon
Contested Power in Angola: ca, 1850-1940
1840s to the Present Christopher J. Gray
Linda Heywood The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial
Nigerian Chief: Traditional Power in Algeria, 1930-1954
Modem Politics, 1890s—1990s Jonathan K. Gosnell
Olufemi Vaughaji
THE POLITICS OF FRENCHNESS IN
COLONIAL ALGERIA, 1930-1954
Jonathan K Gosnell
m UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PRESS

Copyright © 2002 Jonathan K. Gosnell
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this
work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in
public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by
any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2002
by the University of Rochester Press
The University of Rochester Press
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
and at Boydell & Brewer, Ltd.
P.O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk 1P12 3DF, UK
www.urpress.com
ISBN 1-58046-105-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The politics of frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1930-1954 / Jonathan K. Gosnell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 1-58046-105-0
1. French—Algeria—History—20th century. 2. France—Colonies—
Africa—Politics and government. 3. National characteristics, Algerian.
4. National characteristics, French. I. Title. II. Series.
DT283.6.F7 G67 2002
965'.0441—dc21 2002067297
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Designed and typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers
Printed in the United States of America
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
To my family, especially HGG and KBG,
For loving, encouraging, believing
The Mediterranean Basin
Map of Mediterranean basin. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1982.

C O N TEN TS
List of Illustrations viii

Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Chronology xii
Introduction 1
1 L'Algérie française: An Imagined Community? 13
2 Colonial Schools and the Transmission of French Culture 41
3 The Colonial Press and the Construction of Greater France 73
4 An Indigenous Perspective on France and Frenchness 105
5 A Colonial Scale of Frenchness 140
6 Algérianité: The Emergence of a Colonial Identity 186
Conclusion 218
Select Bibliography of Secondary Sources 225
Index 230
ILLUSTRATIONS
Map of Mediterranean basin frontispiece

1. Illustrations from a school textbook 59
2, 3. Illustrations from a school textbook 65
4. Tour de France maps in the Algerian press 97
5. The indigenous Algerian press 111
6. The Jewish press of colonial Algeria 156
7. 8, Caricatures of a heterogeneous European settler
population 164,165
9. Spanish newspaper in French colonial Algeria 167
10. Cagayous, the quintessential Algérien 191
ACKN O W LED G M EN TS
I have many to thank for their part in the completion of this project. The
Politics o f Frenchness in ColonialAlgeria, 1930-1954began as a doctoral disser
tation at New York University’s Institute of French Studies. Professors Herrick
Chapman, Sylvie Kandé, Shanny Peer, Susan Carol Rogers, the late Nicholas
Wahl, and especially my thesis advisor Michel Beaujour provided a great deal
of encouragement and critical feedback throughout the research and writing
process. Former Institute students Harriet Jackson and Chris Thompson
helped me better conceptualize the study overall and generously commented
on early drafts of chapters. I am indebted to the expertise of two eminent
historians of Algeria, Charles-Robert Ageron and Benjamin Stora, who dis
cussed all matters Algerian with me while I was doing archival research in
France on a Mellon Fellowship. French historian Jean-Pierre Rioux helped
direct me to promising sources. Within the American historical commu
nity, Alice L. Conklin, David Prochaska, and David Schalk graciously shared
their knowledge and thoughts with me as I researched, wrote, and edited.
My colleagues in the French department at Smith College have been
very supportive of this work. Early in my tenure at the college, James Sacré
encouraged me to proceed toward publication. Janie Vanpée kept frequent
tabs on my progress. Marilyn Schuster, formerly in French and now in
Womens Studies at Smith, provided moral support and a wealth of judi
cious information. David Ball carefully read through the entire manuscript.
I am in all of their debt. Linda Ahern and Selma Chan, of Information
Technology Services at Smith, generously assisted with the illustrations.
Toyin Falola, senior editor of the University of Rochester Press’s series
Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, has been steadfast
in his support of this work, from beginning to end. To him, I offer my
sincere gratitude. I thank Tim Madigan, Susan Dykstra-Poel, and Molly
Cort of the University of Rochester Press/Boydell & Brewer for their assis
tance during the process of publication. Editor Louise Goldberg worked
closely with me on the text and I extend my thanks to her for her attention
to detail. The book is better for it.
I acknowledge the editors of Contemporary French Civilization for
granting permission to use parts of my article “Aspirations of French Citi
IX
x Acknowledgments
zenship and Identity in the Indigenous Press of Colonial Algeria” (vol. 24,
1, winter/spring 2000) in chapter 4 .1 also thank the editors at Africa World
Press for permission to use in chapter 1 parts of my article, “Mediterranean
Waterways, Extended Borders, and Colonial Mappings: French Images of
North Africa,” which appeared in Images o f Africa: Stereotypes and Realities,
2001.
Lastly and lovingly, I thank Annie and Simone, who remind me of
what is important in life.
LIST OP ABBREVIATIONS
AN Archives nationales
AOM Archives d’Outre-mer
SHAT Service historique de l'armée de terre
xi
CHRONOLOGY
1830, June 14 Beginning of French colonial presence in Algeria. French

forces landed in Sidi-Ferruch, just west of Algiers
1830, July 5 The fall of Algiers
1831 Oran taken by force
1837 Constantine seized
1847 Abd el-Kader surrendered
1848 Algeria becomes an official part of France, creation of
départements
1865 Sénatus-Consulte*, naturalization accorded to indigenous
people who request it
1870 • La Loi Crémieux collective naturalization of Algerian Jews
1870-71 Franco-Prussian War
1889 Collective naturalization of the children of non-French
European setders born in Algeria
1914-18 World War I
1930 Centennial celebrations of one hundred years of French
presence in Algeria
1931 International Colonial Exposition of Paris
1934 Arab-Jewish violence at Constantine
1936 Blum-Viollette naturalization reform project
1939-45 World War II
1945, May 8 German capitulation in the war. Simultaneously, violent
confrontation between Arabs and Europeans in eastern
Algeria
1947 Le Statut de l'Algérie: new administrative structure
1954, Nov. 1 The beginning of armed conflict in Algeria
X lli
INTRODUCTION
The notion that France is simultaneously one and many—“la France est
variété dans l’unité”— is not a new concept.1 During the Third Republic
(1870-1940), French educators asserted that metropolitan French unity
and indeed moral and material strength originated from the diversity of its
regions. Coexisting local and national affiliations were, they thought, not
mutually destructive but rather symbiotic. They nurtured one another. One
could thus be both a Normand or Alsacian peasant and a Frenchmen.2
Could persons of varying ethnic, cultural, and religious descent outside the
borders of metropolitan France, yet within the realms of the French Em
pire, also attain some semblance of “Frenchness”? Or did real and imagined
cultural differences make assimilation improbable or unlikely? This ques
tion is as perplexing in the contemporary French context as it was during
the colonial era a half-century ago.
At the mid-point of the twentieth century, evidence of the great di
versity of provincial and national French identities could be found in dis
tant lands, where French cultural norms were projected onto colonial terri
tories and populations. The francisation of colonies in Africa and Asia, while
affecting the consciousness of some of the colonized, added considerable
force to metropolitan French notions of security, prestige, and influence,
particularly in troubling times. Today, after empire, at the advent of the
1
2 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1 9 3 0 -1 9 5 4
third millennium, French influence is still present in many parts of the
world. Metropolitan France itself is a hybrid entity, both one and many,
French yet of varied extraction, Gaulois but also profoundly multicultural.
Post-colonial studies justly give voice to the multiplicity of realities and
experiences within France and the francophone world. They call attention
to varied cultural, social, political, and economic phenomena that often
originated in the age of empire. Such studies should not be understood as
evidence that France and its population have somehow transcended the
colonial experience.3 The colonial idea, conscious or unconscious, is in
deed quite present now, forty years after the independence of many French
colonies.4
Clearly, what it means to be French is as contested as it has ever been.5
In recent years, a heterogeneous France and changing conceptions of French
identity have been the source of considerable debate in scholarship, litera
ture, and the media. This book examines past and no doubt equally murky
definitions of French identity, but not those forged within the borders of
the French “Hexagon,” as French geographic space is sometimes called. It
is a study of French sentiment in colonial Algeria of the 1930s, 1940s, and
1950s, during the last quarter century of colonial rule in North Africa. It
seeks to uncover elements of French identity that were generated past the
Pyrénées and the Alps, beyond the bordering Adantic Ocean, English Chan
nel, and Mediterranean Sea, outside the geographic space so central to
Frenchness. It asks whether far-reaching state institutions could transform
indigenous and setder populations in colonial Algeria—Arabs, Berbers,
Spaniards, Jews, Turks, Italians, Greeks, and Maltese— into French men
and women. It examines what these individuals wrote of francisation and
French sentiment in colonial Algeria. Did they articulate alternate defini
tions of French identity? We know that the colonial “periphery” is now
quite pivotal to France s evolving sense of self. The empire has been writing
back now for several years.
Colonial Algerian heterogeneity and the country’s unique relation
ship to France make it an especially rich site in which to study French
national and cultural identities of the recent past. French military conquest
and the occupation of the North African coast established one of the oldest
and largest settler colonies within the French Empire.6 Unlike other colo
nies, Algeria lay relatively close to metropolitan France, a daylong journey
by ship from Marseilles. No African colony other than Algeria was attrib
uted French departmental status; it was incorporated into French territory
by the mid-nineteenth century. No other land administered under the aus
pices of the French Empire had as numerous a European settler popula
Introduction 3
tion, many of whom became naturalized French citizens. This setder pres
ence, which reached close to one million residents by 1950, generated the
very raison d’etre of l'Algérie française, a rallying cry that resonates with
some even today.7
Why some hesitantly and others fervently wanted Algeria, a North
African country with a predominantly Muslim population, to be French is
intriguing. Just how French did they envision Algeria becoming and by
what means? It is this thorny question which fuels the following analysis
from beginning to end.8While some stood to profit from the French pres
ence in Algeria and supported colonial activity for this reason, there was no
clear blueprint for French colonial expansion. No decision to appropriate a
territory or population had been formulated when French ships set sail for
North African shores in 1830.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, French politi
cians, colonial administrators, and residents of Algeria supported the idea
of annexation and assimilation, often for very different reasons. A French
colonial identity clearly did not mean the same thing to all concerned. For
some ideologues, the incorporation of Algeria into French territory added
to the prestige of a nation anxious about its world standing. Opponents of
colonialism rejected the francisation of Algeria on the grounds that coloni
zation wasted French energies in lands far beyond metropolitan borders.
It was during the Third Republic that politicians such as Jules Ferry,
perhaps better known for his involvement in educational reform, called
attention to colonial activity. The establishment of French rule over indig
enous populations in different parts of the world addressed several linger
ing concerns. France had been defeated in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871,
losing a part of its territory, Alsace-Lorraine, in the process. Politicians be
lieved that French colonialism in Africa and Asia added land to a national
space that had been reduced.9 Colonial enthusiasts spoke of the formation
of “la plus grande France” or “Greater France,” which extended French
borders across seas and into new territory.10After the founding of Empire,
officials could boast of “la France d’outre-Méditerranée” (“transmediter
ranean France”), “la France des cent millions d’habitants” (“France of 100
million inhabitants”), as well as “la France des cinq parties du monde”
(“France of five continents”).11
French territorial acquisitions and colonial populations helped to as
suage fears about potential war with Germany, fears that lingered through
out much of the Third Republic. Several million indigenous people were
added to a rather loosely defined French population from whose ranks regi
ments of the French army would be filled. Politicians and demographers
expressed concerns about chronically low metropolitan birth rates that threat
ened French prosperity. The French civilizing mission addressed such con
cerns by supposedly disseminating Frenchness far out into the field, gener
ating thousands of new French men and women in the process. Algeria and
its diverse populations could become French, according to enlightened
universalist thought, through a progressive process of assimilation. This
philosophy was quite distinct from the British colonial model.12
The rhetoric of French identity transmitted to the colonial world
owes much to a distinctly republican ethos. Frenchness represented a kind
of civic faith, a consciousness or sensibility, a moral unifying force capable
of transcending racial, religious, cultural, and socioeconomic differences.
Through Frances civilizing initiatives, all colonized peoples (allegedly) could
voluntarily be transformed into like-minded Frenchmen, whether from
North Africa or the French provinces. If, as Ernest Renan had pronounced,
the nation were indeed a principle or a spirit {âme) shared by otherwise
heterogeneous individuals, then the French nation and identity could be
thought and taught to extend past natural frontiers.13 Frenchness as such
could not be bound by geography, race, or religion, for it was exportable
and inhabited peoples minds. It is this notion of Frenchness, transmitted
into the colonial world, that is examined here.
As we will see, French colonial discourse was altogether different from
practice. Republican assimilationist doctrine did not necessarily translate
into naturalization reforms for Arabs and Berbers. The rhetoric of assimila
tion in colonial Algeria, as in other parts of the French world, obscured the
issues of race and religion, both of which proved to be impediments to
francisation. Frenchness, defined again as inclusive, was parceled out spar
ingly among indigenous and setder populations. If all were theoretically to
be made equally French, what would remain of colonial systems of domi
nation? Albert Memmi argued convincingly many years ago that assimila
tion and colonization are in fact contradictions in terms; authentic assimi
lation undermines a colonial system built on hierarchy and thus can only
lead to its end.14 Colonialists in Algeria and France, however, saw no con
tradiction in republican universalism and particular colonial exceptions.
They sought to use assimilationist practices to further consolidate la France
cobniale.15
For those who supported French colonial activity in Algeria, the North
African shores of the Mediterranean Sea represented an only slighdy more
distant French region to assimilate. Institutions of the French State alleg
edly promoted the same process of francisation in Algeria as they did in
metropolitan provinces. A centralized, state-run system of education or
Introduction 5
chestrated the spread of Frenchness beyond hexagonal borders. The French
public school system had long been believed to generate French identity
among diverse regional populations in France, largely through the teaching
of French language, culture, and history. Primary school teachers in par
ticular were responsible for the production of French sentiment.16
Obligatory military service represented another experience through
which French identity was generated. As we shall see, the First and Second
World Wars did much to produce a shared sense of Frenchness, for people
from metropolitan France as well as from the colonies.17 The defense of
besieged France, on two separate occasions in the twentieth century, height
ened consciousness on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. Spokespersons
for indigenous Algerian populations referred to the “impôt du sang” (“blood
tax”) paid by Arab and Berber soldiers who had earned the rights to French
citizenship through their efforts.18
Could Muslims be transformed into Frenchmen, as culturally dis
tinct peasants at the end of the nineteenth century arguably had? If they
could, it would perhaps spell the end of the colonial system according to
Memmis framework. Even if they could become “almost but not quite”
French, in the words of Homi Bhabha, their simultaneous sameness and
difference represented a threat to imperial domination.19 Eugen Webers
assimilationist thesis obscures the continued existence of cultural differ
ence in outlying French provinces, or overseas territories in the case of
Algeria. These differences themselves affected metropolitan sensibilities. Peter
Sahlins, among others, has shown that the role of the periphery in the
creation of the nation is considerable.20 Colonial peripheries helped to shape
sentiment in the metropolitan center, and Algeria was at the core of this devel
oping thought. Ann L. Stoler and Frederick Cooper righdy assert that métropole
and colony need to be studied concurrendy as a part of a coherent whole.21
Since the French civilizing mission was based on the notion that in
digenous populations could be assimilated or made into Frenchmen, legal
doctrine reflected definitions of French identity that were not bound to
ethnic or racial conditions.22 Despite these long-standing tenets, very par
ticular ways of determining French identity in the colonial world limited
the extent to which it could be appropriated. Naturalization laws recog
nized some populations and not others as officially French. Citizenship,
however, provided just one way of measuring, defining, and regulating
Frenchness in Algeria. All French citizens in colonial Algeria did not neces
sarily embody “authentic” Frenchness. This study seeks to examine, among
other things, the unclear link between citizenship and identity in the colo
nial world.
6 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeriay 1 9 3 0 -1 9 5 4
If Algeria were to be in fact francisée or made French, authorities first had
to demonstrate that colonial activity mattered and that individuals in the
métropole, the mére-patrie or “mother-country,” had an interest in the ac
tions that were being undertaken. Commemorative celebrations and uni
versal expositions provided a means of stimulating French interest in colo
nial activity, perhaps even creating in peoples imaginations a notion of
Greater France. They informed persons on both sides of the Mediterranean
Sea of the Franco-Algerian collaborative effort. Universal expositions in
particular contributed to a new representation of the world, specifically a
French world that had been expanded yet brought closer together by in
creased access to information.23
Despite the extensive efforts and scale of events organized by the French
government, the average person may have known or cared little about the
French Empire. Scholars disagree about the impact of expositions on the
development of the “colonial idea.”24 Some assert that they accurately de
scribed the fusion of colony and métropole into one body. “True France”
was no longer restricted to the boundaries of continental Europe; it had
extended itself across seas and into new territories.25 Others contend that
colonial France may have been more the objective of a small group of indi
viduals than representative of the aspirations of a nation.26 I suggest that
voices from Algeria's past reflect the complex nature of the metropole/colony
relationship.
Representations of the colonies in France, in the displays of local life
at expositions, and in school textbooks, the press, or literature, generated
new interpretations of national identity. In European literature alone, the
colonial experience was incorporated into developing national traditions.27
The nation is a narrative, to paraphrase critic Homi Bhabha's well-known
words.28 Activity in distant lands enabled novelists, journalists, assorted
French officials, and educators to stretch “the short, tight skin of the nation
over the gigantic body of the Empire.”29 “Print capitalism” in particular, as
Benedict Anderson has called it, facilitated the construction of “imagined
communities,” joining disparate groups separated by distance, ethnicity, or
socioeconomic status. I examine in detail one such imagined and very real
community—French colonial Algeria—in the mid-twentieth century.
This study of Frenchness in colonial Algeria is in part an analysis of rheto
ric and of representation, influenced by the paradigms developed by cul
tural theorists.30 The meanings of French identity in North Africa, I con
tend, can be read from a variety of French texts written during the colonial
period. These documents contain the convictions of French-educated set-
Introduction 7
tiers and indigenous dites, those who had access to French culture and
could articulate their own sense of Frenchness (or otherness). Colonial writ
ings provide a means of penetrating a largely vanished society and culture,
that of French colonial Algeria or l'Algérie française. One must not take
these writings as truths but rather as position papers within a specific and
contested colonial moment. They allow one to interpret the complexities
of culture from the vantage point of those living it.31 Critical readers of
colonial Algerian texts enter into the mythologies described by Roland
Barthes, a realm "non tel qu'il est, mais tel qu’il veut se faire” ("not such as
it is, but as it wants to be”).32 French Algeria clearly represented different
things to different groups of people; it was to a large extent imagined and
could thus be shaped to fit varying aspirations and desires.33
My analysis of French colonial identities cannot claim to represent
the views of most Algerian Arabs and Berbers, the voices of the colonized
or subaltern. Indigenous groups constituted the vast majority of the total
colonial population, but only a small number had attended French schools
and been granted French citizenship rights by 1940. Very few persons in
deed had access to French culture.34 Moreover in a colonial country of few
"Français de souche” or “truly French” French individuals from France, a
critical mass of naturalized Europeans (and a much smaller number of as
similated Arabs) was the predominant component of “Frenchness.”35 Due
to such culturally distinct populations in Algeria, French colonial identities
were perpetually ambiguous.
Within the cited parameters, French colonial texts provide important
clues as to how individuals, groups, and institutions came to define French
identity in North Africa. They record the varying degrees of Frenchness
that were conceived and recognized over time by specific populations.
Frenchness in colonial Algeria was a volatile, fluctuating sensibility, not
limited to strict legal definitions.36 In a place where French identity was not
measured equitably, in which populations were divided into subjects and
citizens, rivalries and jealousies emerged. Unwilling or unable to collec
tively grant French citizenship to all, French officials contributed to the
proliferation of what many wanted to see disappear from the Algerian con
text— non-French affinities— which jeopardized colonial rule.
I argue that within a French colonial country, there existed numer
ous, competing local Algerian and French national sensibilities. Colonial
literature reveals a plethora of French, Algerian, and hybrid identities exist
ing simultaneously in Algeria of the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. Census
reports recorded official definitions of French identity, but other sources
reveal more slippery, amorphous affinities. They identify évolués znd Algériens
8 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 19 3 0 -1 9 5 4
among populations living in North Africa, terms which corresponded to
very specific groups in colonial society. The term “Algerian” during the
colonial period referred not to the Arab-Berber population but to settlers
of European descent exclusively.
Two prominent intellectuals from the settler and indigenous popula
tions whose names appear frequently in this study are Ferhat Abbas and
Albert Camus. Abbas was a Berber born in Kabylia in 1899 and a product
of the French school system. He was assimilated, or culturally French, yet
not a French citizen. As intellectual, writer, and journalist, Abbas struggled
with French and Algerian identities throughout much of his life (he died in
1985). Camus, the celebrated writer of Spanish descent, was born in Algiers
in 1913. He had an intimate knowledge of the European settler experience
and an understanding of indigenous Algerian realities. He, perhaps more
than any other, grasped the complexities of the métropole/colony relation
ship. Both Abbas and Camus conveyed the intensity of the Franco-Alge-
rian debate in their writings, as it unfolded on either side of the Mediterra
nean Sea.37 Both were troubled by the illusions and difficulties of the stormy
Franco-Algerian romance. Each, informed by his own North African experi
ence, described the entanglement of identity in a French colonial country.
The first chapter of The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria explores
the notion of “French Algeria” in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, when
French influence in the colonial world was at its apex. Algeria was the cen
terpiece of what the advocates of colonial activity called “Greater France.”
I examine the discourse of essayists, administrators, and association direc
tors who claimed that Algeria was French, yet that French influence in
Algeria was rapidly and worrisomely diminishing. I examine in detail the
political debate surrounding the demographics of French Algeria: the ris
ing indigenous population, the decreasing European presence, and the call
for renewed European migration to Algeria. Chapter two analyzes perhaps
the most important producer of French sentiment in colonial Algeria: French
schools. Using a corpus of primary school textbooks written specifically for
pupils in Algeria, I demonstrate that such texts helped to formulate ideas
about France and notions of Frenchness to an elite within the indigenous
and settler population. Many of these texts simultaneously perpetuated no
tions of difference which called into question the assimilation of certain groups.
Chapters three and four draw into focus the construction of Algerian
interpretations of France and Frenchness in the colonial and indigenous
presses respectively. The daily colonial press, aimed at European audiences
in large towns and cities, constituted a medium in which literate, French
Introduction 9
speaking groups were drawn into French social, political, and economic
life. Such papers, I argue, helped to integrate colony and métropole, situat
ing Algeria within the configuration of “Greater France.” Meanwhile, in
the indigenous Algerian press, Muslim journalists reflected on their par
ticular relationship to metropolitan France. A significant shift in the think
ing of the Arab and Berber elite, progressively more distant from France
and French identity, is made clear in these pages.
The last two chapters explore the development of colonial French
and Algerian identities. Using fiction, newspapers, census data, and archi
val sources, chapter five examines definitions of Frenchness with respect to
various populations. The assimilation of indigenous and European popula
tions seemed dubious to officials and intellectuals throughout much of the
colonial period. Many of these groups had lived in North Africa long be
fore the French arrived and had maintained distinct cultural traditions.
The preservation of non-French linguistic and cultural practices produced
French fears of a “foreign threat.” I examine how civil strife in Spain, the
World Wars, and the creation of a Jewish state stirred up competing loyal
ties among populations in Algeria.
Chapter six explores the development of a distincdy non-French, Al
gerian colonial identity. European writers, journalists, scholars, and offi
cials claimed that settlers in North Africa had fused over the generations
and become Algerian, by virtue of entire lives spent there. Novelists in
particular described the appropriation of Algerian identity by Italian, Span
ish, and Maltese emigrants. They depicted these persons as exhibiting traits,
language, and traditions that distinguished them from the metropolitan
French as well as from Muslims and Jews. Although this imagined identity
had no official status, it had very real local meaning.
I attempt to demonstrate that although Algeria was indeed French in
numerous measurable ways, the extremely heterogeneous composition of
the country generated lingering questions for residents, state officials, writ
ers, and all concerned about colonial Algeria's “real” and “phony” Frenchness.
French Algeria, even that confined solely to European populations and settle
ments, was far more diverse than its title indicates and lasted for a longer
period of time than has often been stated. Throughout the colonial period,
the proponents of French Algeria hoped to eradicate foreign influences
that never completely disappeared, despite the assertions of colonial au
thorities. Settler and indigenous populations frequently found themselves
to be rivals, aspirants to the distinction of official French status in a place
where it was awarded stingily. This rivalry created the context for a politics
of Frenchness in colonial Algeria.38
10 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1930—1954
Notes
1. Anne-Marie Thiesse, Ils apprenaient la France (Paris: Editions de la Maison des
sciences de l’homme, 1997), 3.
2. This adds nuance to the assimilationist argument developed in Eugen Webers
convinving yet contested Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization o f Rural France, 1870-
1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1977).
3. Anne McClintock questions the use of ‘post” in post-colonial studies. See “The
Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism/” Social Text, 31/32 (1990): 84—
98.
4. Elizabeth Ezra, The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2000). See as well Raoul Girardet s classic study, Vidée coloniale en
France, 1871-1962 (Paris: La Table ronde, 1972).
3. Two references from a large body of work include Fernand Braudels Uldentité de
la France (Paris: Flammarion, 1986) and Edmond M. Lipianskys Uldentité française:
Représentations, mythes, idéologies (La Garenne-Colombes: Editions de l’espace européen,
1991). In terms of recent American scholarship, see Steven Ungar and Tom Conley, eds.,
Identity Papers: Contested Nationhood in Twentieth-Century France (Minneapolis: U. of Min
nesota Press, 1996) and Maxim Silverman, Deconstructing the Nation: Immigration, Racism
and Citizenship in Modem France (New York: Roudedge, 1992).
6. Two dated but still very useful histories are Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de
lAlgérie contemporaine, vol. 2 (Paris: PUF, 1979) and Jacques Berque, French North Africa:
The Maghreb betweeen the Two World Wars, (London: Faber, 1967). A more recent account
can be found in Benjamin Storas Histoire de TAlgérie coloniale, 1830—1954 (Paris: La
Découverte, 1991). For an American perspective, see James Ruedy, Modem Algeria: The
Origins and Development o f a Nation (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992).
7. Charles-Robert Ageron, ed., Les Français d*Algérie (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1993).
8. For more background information, see Mahfoud Bennoune, The M aking o f Con
temporary Algeria, 1830-1987 (New York: Cambridge UP, 1988) and David Prochaska,
M aking Algeria French: Colonialism in Bone, 1870-1920 (New York: Cambridge UP, 1990).
9. Girardet, L’Idée coloniale en France, 63.
10. Léon Archimbaud, La Plus Grande France (Paris: Hachette, 1928).
11. Raoul Girardet, Le Temps des colonies (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1979), 64.
12. For more information, see Winifried Baumgart, Imperialism: The Idea and Real-
ity o f British and French Colonial Expansion, 1880-1914 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982).
13. See Ernest Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu une Nation?” in translation in Nation and Nar
ration, ed. Homi Bhabha (London: Roudedge, 1990), 8-22. Renan first read this at a
conference at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1882.
14. Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé suivi du portrait du colonisateur (Paris, Buchet/
Chastel, 1957), 165.
15. Alice L. Conklin has criticized the perversion of republican principles in the
colonies in her book, The Republican Image o f Empire in France and WestAfrica, 1895—1930
(Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1997).
16. See Mona and Jacques Ozouf, La République des instituteurs (Paris: Editions du
Seuil, 1992), and Yves Déloye, Ecole et citoyenneté: Lindividualisme républicain deJules Ferry
à Vichy: Controverse (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1994).
Introduction 11
17. See Marc Baroli, La Vie quotidienne des Français en Algérie, 1830-1914 (Paris:
Hachette, 1967).
18. See for instance, Ferhat Abbas, De la Colonie vers la province: Le jeune Algérien
(Paris: Editions de la jeune parque, 1931).
19. Homi Bhabha, “O f Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,”
in Tension o f Empire: Bourgeois Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann
Laura Stoler, 132-60 (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1997).
20. Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The M aking o f France and Spain in the Pyrénées (Berke
ley: U. of California Press, 1989).
21. Stoler and Cooper, eds., Tensions o f Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World,
1.
22. Since 1889, a tradition of “jus soli” granted French citizenship to all persons
born on French soil. See Rogers Brubacker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Ger
many (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992).
23. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 173.
24. In L’Idée coloniale en France, Raoul Girardet describes the colonial exposition of
1931 as an apex of French influence, while Charles-Robert Ageron, in his “Êxposition
coloniale de 1931,” in Les Lieux de mémoire, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), maintains that
its impact was not enduring.
25. See Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity 1900-1945
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992).
26. Charles-Robert Ageron, France coloniale ou parti colonial? (Paris: PUF, 1978).
27. Edward Saids Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993) studies the
symbiotic relationship between literature and Empire.
28. Bhabha, Nations and Narration, 1.
29. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
o f Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983), 86.
30. Scholars such as Lynn Hunt, in The New Cultural History (Berkeley: U. of Cali
fornia Press, 1989), and Roger Chartier, in Cultural History: Between Practices and Represen
tations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1988), illustrate how different forms of cultural production
provide an important resource to the student of identity. They and others are indebted to
earlier social scientists, such as Emile Durkheim, from whom they borrow extensively.
31. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
32. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1957), 230. My own translation.
33. For other colonial imaginings, see Panivong Norindr, Phantasmatic Indochina:
French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film and Literature (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1996).
34. When referring to indigenous Algerian populations collectively in this analysis, I
use the terms Arab, Arab-Berber, and Muslim interchangeably. They are not necessarily
synonymous however, which I indicate.
35. Abdelmalek Sayad, “Naturels et naturalisés,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales
99 (septembre 1993): 26-35.
36. See Denis-Constant Martin, ed., Cartes d ’identité: Comment dit-on ‘nous’ en
politique? (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1994); and Terrance Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm, The
Invention o f Tradition (New York: Cambridge UP, 1983). See also Nicholas Canny and
Anthony Pagden, eds., Colonial Identities in the Atlantic World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
UP, 1987); and Raphael Samuel, Patriotism: The M aking and Unmaking o f British National
Identity (London: Routledge, 1989) for comparative analyses.
37. For more information on the lives and writings of these two individuals, see
Benjamin Stora, Zakya Daoud, Ferhat Abbas, une utopie algérienne (Paris: Dcnoël, 1995),
and Albert Camus, The First Man (New York: Knopf, 1995).
38. The Algerian War brought about a rapid end to assertions of difference among
Algeria’s European population. Once nationalists began armed attacks on French targets in
November 1954, quibbling ceased as setders rallied behind France.
1
L’ALGÉRIE FRANfAIIEl AN
IMAGINED COUNTRY]
“L'Algérie est française” (“Algeria is French”), wrote French essayist and

colonial advocate Armand Megglé confidently in 1931.
Elle est fière de l’être, comme la France, dont elle est le prolongement à travers
la Méditerranée, et heureuse de l'affection que lui portent tous ses enfants.1
[She is proud of this, as is France. Algeria is the extension of France across
the Mediterranean Sea, a France happy about the affection shown by all of
her children.]
It seems Megglé truly believed this, given his fervent, paternal tone. Such
affirmations of French influence (parenthood) in the colonial world, par
ticularly in Algeria, reflected intense, lasting convictions. Essays such as
that by Armand Megglé described a familial relationship between Algeria
and France, a close rapport between the sovereign métropole and its colo
nial satellite. Algeria had fused with France, they suggested, becoming a part of
a greater French whole in the process. The indigenous and setder populations
of Algeria, the metaphorical offspring of this union, were thus decidedly French.
The titles of studies devoted to French colonial Algeria indicate some
of the ways in which the country was imagined. La France nord-africaine
(1920), En Algérie avec la France (1927), L'Algérie, fille de France (1935),
13
France algérienne (1938), and Notre Enfant TAlgérie (1949) represent a few
of a sizeable body of texts, all of which emphasize the nature of this unique
colonial relationship.2 France represented the patrie or “fatherland” for her
colonial citizens and subjects, the country whose benevolent authority and
leadership they acknowledged. In a somewhat confusing clash of meta
phors, France also constituted the mire-patriey “motherland” or matrie, a
maternal figure who nurtured her infant daughter, Algeria, to health. France
being both mother and father to her Algerian progeny, one can imagine the
North African country needing little more care. Colonial paternity and
maternity were neatly rolled into one. Such metaphors insist that a replica
of France, a French colonial child, had been reproduced in North Africa; a
vibrant new country weaned in the very image of France.
If Algeria was French by birth, as it matured into adolescence and
adulthood its identity became more blurred. It developed both French and
Algerian characteristics. For colonial officials and residents alike, Algeria
could be imagined as being French, North African, or even a hybrid entity
altogether. Given its colonial status as a French territory comprised of three
départements or administrative districts, it was certainly not a colony like
others. It was, in a manner of speaking, France. Essayists described the
sensibilities maintained by indigenous and settler populations toward two
distinct albeit “identical” countries, “la petite patrie” or homeland—Alge
ria, and “la grande patrie”—France.3 For those born in Algeria and who
had often never set foot in France, the petite/grande patrie relationship
between Algeria and France might have existed in the reverse. A distinct,
autonomous Algeria was, for them, of primary importance. Foreign and
often rival sensibilities existed in French colonial North Africa, sometimes
calling into question the very future of the Franco-Algerian union. Metro
politan and colonial leaders pondered over this volatile dynamic for the
entire colonial period.
Works of fiction and non-fiction, newspapers, school literature, and
official documents—a select number of sources among many—convey the
varied meanings of French Algeria in the early to mid-twentieth century.
They suggest that Algeria had not only been organized administratively as
French territory, but that, for some, it had been transformed socially, po
litically, culturally, and perhaps most importantly of all, metaphorically,
through an assimilating process. Supporters of colonial activity insisted that
Algeria, crown jewel in the imperial crown, had been altered by far-reach
ing French institutions and influence. A geographic space called “Algeria”
did not exist, some claimed, before the French gave it shape and named it.
According to one source,
L’Algérie française: An Im agined Country? 15
[. . .] Le nom même d’Algérie est l’oeuvre des Français: Les Français ont
nommé, ont créé l’Algérie, quelques mois même après la reddition d’Alger.4
[. .. The very name of Algeria is the work of the French: the French named
and created Algeria just a few months after the surrender of Algiers.]
Colonial space represented a blank slate on which French colonial desires
could be imposed. What had been an autonomous outpost of the Ottoman
Empire in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries, the
Régence d'Alger (Regency of Algiers) was renamed Algérie by French offi
cials. Its borders penetrated deep into the North African interior, beyond
the original boundaries.
Those persons who claimed that Algeria and France were part of the
same French whole, who publicly voiced support for continued French
influence in North Africa, expressed concerns about the Frenchness of its
populations. Advocates of French colonial activity suggested ways in which
Algeria might become more French. Although the country had obtained
official as well as metaphorical status as a component of French territory by
the mid-nineteenth century, the extent to which Algeria really was French
remained unclear to many. The term French Algeria was common currency
in colonial discussions in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s, but what did
it mean and to whom? This chapter seeks to problematize “French Algeria”
by unveiling its complex cultural and demographic makeup.
Making Algeria French
French Algeria was conceived and reared in a rather unorthodox fashion, to

continue the familial allusions mentioned earlier. It was the French army
that set the process offrancisation in motion by seizing the North African
coast by force (rape is perhaps the more accurate figurative term). An ar
mada of ships landed in Sidi-Ferruch, just west of Algiers, on June 14,
1830.5 Responding to an incident deemed embarrassing to French inter
ests, military officers intended to place the port city of Algiers under French
authority. The dey of Algiers, a ruling figure who had distanced himself
from Turkish authority, struck a French official for the non-payment of ac
crued debts. Leaders of the armada were under orders to seek amends for this
slight and to rectify damaged French prestige. The idea to seize control of the
North African port stemmed, as well, from a growing desire to secure resources
and markets for expanding French trade in the Mediterranean region.
The military represented French interests in Algeria for some forty
years before handing over authority to civilian rule in 1870. Prior to this
however, French dominance by the sword had not been uncontested. For
two decades, Arab and Berber resistance to French activity persisted, but
could not prevent penetration into the interior. French rule was fostered
city by city: Algiers fell under French control on July 5, 1830; Constantine
was seized in 1837. It was ten years later in 1847 that Abd el-Kader, the
Arab leader resistant to French intervention, surrendered and was taken
into custody.6 His efforts to thwart French activity had been enduring.
General Bugeaud, leader of French forces in Algeria, ultimately succeeded
in defeating this rebel who had bepome a respected adversary in some senses.
One year later, after much of the coast had been seized, an administrative
structure was put in place to further consolidate French presence in Algeria.
It was in 1848 that French officials discussed and mapped out the
legal boundaries of French Algeria. French départements encircling the cit
ies of Algiers, Constantine, and Oran were created. Within these adminis
trative configurations communes de plein exercice were founded and admin
istered as communes in France by mayors and a city council. Two deputies
and one senator from each département served in the French parliament in
Paris. Since the establishment of settler rule in 1870, a Governor General
served at the head of the colonial administration. This appointed seat of
power, overseen by the French Ministry of the Interior, connected colonial
Algeria to France, as did the officials representing Algiers, Oran, and
Constantine in the National Assembly and the Senate. Some seventy years
later, in 1947, an Algerian Assembly made up of a European and an indig
enous chamber came into being. Weighted heavily toward European settler
populations, the Assembly was the subject of heated debate in both the
colony and metropolitan France.
The European populations within the three Algerian départements,
aided by their elected officials, could participate in the national discussions
of the métropole. The vast majority of settlers lived in cities at or near the
coast, in places such as Bone (Annaba today), Orléansville (Chleff),
Constantine, and Philippeville (Skikda), in addition to the larger ports of
Oran and Algiers. Algeria was France in very perceptible ways in such met
ropolitan areas where French people congregated. In urban density reports
carried out in 1936, approximately three-quarters of the municipal popu
lation of Algerian cities were of European descent, naturalized French, or
“Français de souche” (“pureblood French”).7
The cities of Algiers and Oran in particular became beacons of French
thought, culture, and technology. Modeled after metropolitan cities, these
L'Algérie française: A n Im agined Country? 17
colonial sites served as laboratories of experimentation in French architec
ture and city planning.8 The design of boulevards, city halls, and opera
houses imitated and improved on techniques used in metropolitan France.
In most of these French-inspired municipalities, commemorative street
names were constant reminders to local populations of French presence.
Colonial avenues recognized the individuals who had helped to create a
French hub in North Africa. Particularly well represented were the French
military leaders such as Bugeaud and Lyautey, who had participated in French
colonial exploits.9 Constantine, perched high atop a ravine, retained a strik
ingly different, non-European aura. Unlike some other large Algerian cit
ies, “la ville juive,” or Jewish city as Constantine was called, had a signifi
cant indigenous presence within its municipal limits.
The French-inspired administrative structure of the three départements
did not stretch very far into the interior. Colonial authorities partitioned
the rest of the country, beyond the coastal mountains, into communes mixtes
and the loosely-defined territoires du sud. Indigenous populations predomi
nated in these remote areas. Only a small “Europeanized” Arab and Berber
elite lived within the communes de plein exercice closer to the coast. Great
expanses of land, most of Algeria in fact, did not function as did French
towns in France. French Algeria represented only ten percent of the total
surface area of the country; approximately ninety percent of the country
and population held little resemblance to the “Hexagon.” It remained a
largely unexplored area, with little French presence or influence. This was
the “foreign” and mysterious Algeria that had inspired a generation of French
novelists and travel writers in the nineteenth century.10 Twentieth-century
authors such as Albert Camus continued to describe Algeria’s interior as a
place filled with non-French peoples, differing dramatically from the French
sites along the coast.
French Algeria in Greater France
French Algeria as defined in the colonial period made up an integral part of

what Léon Archimbaud and other colonialists called la plus grande France}1
For its ideologues and supporters, “Greater France” was the product of
French activity in various parts of the globe. Initially at least, it appears to
have been the idea of a small group of proponents. Recognition of “Greater
France” for the public at large had to be encouraged through a coordinated
effort to disseminate information about empire. Schools, mass media, com
munications, travel, and military service all served, advocates maintained,
to extend the conceptual boundaries of France for her citizens and resi
dents. By instruction and heightened imaginations, France as a geopoliti
cal space would thus no longer be confined to one specific territory or
people. Frenchness would be extended to populations far removed from
the métropole. Written sources allude to the charting of a new definition of
Frenchness. Archimbaud suggested replacing the conventional sense of
Frenchness with what he called Tâme impériale,” or “imperial spirit.” His
idea encouraged French men and women to perceive colonial holdings, in
many different parts of the world, as a unified French whole. They might
then begin to envision their personal stake in colonial affairs. Archimbaud
hoped to help rupture provincial near-sightedness, Frances fabled “esprit
de clocher.”
Other proponents of French expansion employed the term, “la France
intégrale,” to convey the same idea. The notion posited all parts of the
French Empire with the same territorial status.12 Benevolently lying be
tween North Africa and metropolitan France, the Mediterranean Sea, for
such supporters, did not separate but rather connected the various compo
nents of “integral France.” It constituted neither a natural frontier nor an
impasse. The French writer and Mediterranean dreamer Gabriel Audisio
wrote,
“Il ne fait pas de doute [...] que la Méditerranée soit un continent, non pas
un lac intérieur, mais une espèce de continent liquide aux contours solidifiés.”13
[There is no doubt... that the Mediterranean is a continent, not an interior
lake but a kind of liquid continent with solidified contours.]
Common Mediterranean shores, he felt, firmly attached North Africa to
Europe. Similarly, the Algerian chronicler of Italian descent, Jean Mélia,
pointed to geographical and cultural connections between the North Afri
can coast and continental Europe.14 In this optic, the Maghreb was not yet
Africa, specifically not sub-Saharan or Black Africa. It constituted a kind of
“Latin Africa,” European-influenced and much more similar to France and
the European continent. Although some imperialists included the coun
tries south of the Sahara within an extended French notion of national
space, the much larger European settler presence in Algeria gave it special
status.
Ferdinand Duchêne, a prolific essayist and novelist from France, rec
ommended travel across the Mediterranean Sea, a “French lake” of sorts,
from the southern shores of Greater France (coastal Algeria) to its more
L’Algérie française: An Im agined Country? 19
northernly edge (continental France). This would allow Algerian popula
tions specifically to visit “la plus belle moitié de la France” (“the most beau
tiful half of France”). This was their duty as Frenchmen, he claimed:
[. ..] C’est un devoir pour eux, devoir d’utilité, de piété, d’aller de temps en
temps se tremper les mains, se laver le front, et boire aussi, à la source de
grandeur simple, de beauté claire, d’énergie précise, de force mesurée qu’est
l’esprit français, plus pur encore dans son cadre, celui que les fées lui ont
donné pour berceau: la France.15
[... It is a duty for them, a useful, pious one, from time to time to wet their
hands, rinse their faces and drink of the beautifully clear, replenishing well of
simple grandeur, precise energy and measured strength that is the French
spirit, purer still in the natural setting that the gods gave it at birth: France.]
Extended visits to the center of Greater France (namely Paris) could be
especially profitable. Emigrants to Algeria or indigenous people could per
haps absorb elements of Frenchness while in metropolitan locales and re
turn to North Africa with a deeper, appropriated sense of culture.
Emphatic declarations of Frenchness in Algeria flourished particu
larly in the year 1930. It was at this time that colonial officials organized
lavish festivities to celebrate the Centennial of French presence in Algeria.16
One hundred years of French activity in Algeria (1830-1930), they be
lieved, had culminated in the dissemination of French culture and thought
into the furthest reaches of Algeria. Celebratory events scheduled through
out Algeria in the spring and summer of 1930—parades, sporting events,
official proclamations, the erection and unveiling of commemorative monu
ments— paid tribute to the French landing at Sidi-Ferruch in June 1830.
The high point of the festivities was marked by the visit of French Presi
dent Gaston Doumergue in May 1930. Doumergue spent a week traveling
through cities and villages of French Algeria, acknowledging their acquired
Frenchness.17
The French civilizing mission in distant lands was further praised the
following year, at the Universal Colonial Exposition at Vincennes. This
celebration afforded individuals in France the opportunity to witness the
fruits of French influence in Algeria, and indeed throughout the colonies.18
The colonies were thus transported, albeit briefly, to the métropole. Be
tween the Centennial of 1930 celebrated in Algiers and other cities, and
the colonial exposition of 1931 at Vincennes in Paris, consciousness was
raised about the colonies, about the very notion of Greater France.
According to organizers of the Centennial celebration of 1930, the
festivities represented not just an occasion to commemorate French influ
ence in North Africa, but an opportunity to increase the level of that
Frenchness. The official program of the Centennial stated:
[. . .] l’Algérie entend non pas seulement célébrer son propre effort ou sa
réussite, mais surtout organiser une manifestation mondiale en l’honneur de
la France. Elle entend que ce Centenaire soit la glorification des méthodes
colonisatrices de la Mère-Patrie, de son action tutélaire et juste. [. . .] Faire
aimer davantage ce grand pays et surtout le faire mieux connaître. Voilà [...]
un des buts principaux du Centenaire.19
[... Algeria intends not only to celebrate its individual effort or success, but
also to organize an international celebration in honor of France. It expects
that this Centennial mark the glorification of the colonizing methods of the
Mother-Country, of her just and protective action. ... To create more love
and especially more knowledge of this great country. . . . This is one of the
primary goals of the Centennial.]
If the Centennial served to educate the settler and indigenous populations
about French activity in North Africa, and if these populations became
more appreciative and enamored of France, the goals of organizers would
have been met. Local colonial officials as well as Parisian supporters of
Frances overseas endeavors agreed that the general public on both sides of
the Mediterranean Sea knew too little about life beyond the borders of
metropolitan France. A celebration such as the Centennial might provide
an opportunity for discovery of both France and Algeria by those who
remained uninformed.
One enthusiastic participant in the Centennial celebration contended
that a “Second France” lay just south of the Hexagon and that it could
easily be observed.20 Organizers of the commemorative festivities had hoped
to communicate this very sentiment:
La grande affaire, c’est de montrer qu’il existe, à côté de la France millénaire,
à vingt heures de Marseille [. . .] une autre France, âgée de cent ans à peine,
déjà forte, pleine de vie et d’avenir, unissant dans sa formule heureuse les
races latines et les races indigènes, pour en faire des races également françaises.21
[The main objective is to demonstrate the existence, alongside age-old France
and a mere twenty hours from Marseilles . . . of another France, just one
hundred years old, already strong, full of life and vigor, combining in its harmo
nious mix Latin and indigenous races, in order to create equally French races.]
L’Algérie française: An Imagined Country? 21
This citation reflects the sense of Frenchness assumed to concern all groups
in Algeria, despite the colonial reality of difference between French citizens
and subjects. Using the platform of the Centennial to their fullest advan
tage, organizers sought to extend the influence of France and French cul
ture in colonial Algeria. Gustave Mercier, spokesperson for the event, in
sisted,
[. . .] que cette grande manifestation soit l’occasion de faire mieux aimer et
mieux connaître la France des jeunes générations algériennes, quelle leur
permette de s’imprégner de ses idées, de ses traditions, de son histoire, de son
art.22
[. . . that this grand celebration be the occasion to better know and love
France for Algerian generations, so that France may allow them to imbibe
her ideas, her traditions, her history, her art.]
While the Centennial brought visual and textual representations of France
and of French culture to North African shores, sponsors strongly encour
aged people to experience the métropole for themselves. For those who
could not travel to France and experience its culture, the inauguration of
museums of French art, the exposition of French books and other printed
materials, scholarly congresses, philosophical debates, and assemblies of
French and Algerian university students, all organized under the auspices
of the Centennial, aimed to help disseminate French thought in North
Africa.23 It is of course difficult (if not impossible) to measure the success of
these initiatives. But they indicate the extent to which efforts were made to
facilitate the movement of ideas and persons across the Mediterranean Sea.
The celebration of one hundred years of French presence in Algeria
was not universally applauded. In France, articles in the Communist news
paper L'Humanité denounced what it considered to be the commemora
tion of calculated exploitation.24 Victor Spielmann, author, editor of sev
eral Algerian newspapers, and close to the French Communist Party,
condemned the Centennial as a reenactment of past oppression.25 French
surrealists organized a Counter-Exposition entided “La Vérité sur les colo
nies.”26 Others, while recognizing the benefits of French presence in Alge
ria, cited the potential dangers of celebrating the conquest of a territory
and population. Ferhat Abbas, the assimilated Muslim intellectual, main
tained that
Les fêtes du Centenaire ne sont quun rappel maladroit d’un passé douleureux,
une exhibition de la richesse des uns devant le paupérisme des autres.27
[The festivities of the Centennial are nothing more than an awkward re
minder of a tragic past, an exhibition of the wealth of some vis-à-vis the
poverty of others.]
Essayist Jean Mélia stated that French officials might take advantage
of the heightened focus of 1930 to promulgate reform, to redress past in
justices, and right wrongs.28 Instead of making claims about the assimilated
French identity of settler and indigenous populations, he argued, the Cen
tennial might be used to place all persons on equally French footing. All
groups, not simply selected populations, should benefit from citizenship
status, Mélia concluded. He believed that Algerian Muslims, many of whom
were not French citizens, had proven their Frenchness by serving alongside
French troops in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war and in the “Great War”
of 1914-1918. Members of the Muslim elite had internalized French cul
ture by attending French schools and serving in administrative capacities.
Yet in his opinion, Arabs and Berbers, collectively lacking French citizen
ship, remained “français sans l’être véritablement,”29 (“only partially French”).
It is telling that Ferhat Abbas, perhaps the most French of the assimilated
indigenous elite in colonial Algeria, never became a French citizen.
The Demographics of French Algeria
As Algeria was France, colonial literature suggested, so local populations

residing there were, theoretically, French. Yet within this same body of texts,
certain groups seemed clearly more French than others. For some advo
cates of colonialism, French Algeria implied a broad definition of French
sentiment and sympathies, one that included French subjects of Arab and
Berber descent (i.e., non-citizens subject to French authority); assimilated
Algerian Jews; naturalized settlers from Spain, Italy, and Malta; and a few
metropolitan French emigrants. Others believed that French Algeria con
stituted a body in which only an elite, a select few from settler and indig
enous groups, should be full participants. Throughout the colonial period,
representatives from the European settler population contested collective
naturalization of indigenous populations, fearful of an Arab seizure of power.
Metropolitan politicians periodically proposed reform measures that would
recognize more people as French citizens in colonial Algeria. This often
gave rise to hostility between settler and French authorities.
Jean Mélia argued in 1929 that the Algerian population consisted to
a large extent of persons whose Frenchness remained ill-defined by law.30
French Algeria’s critics often focused their attention on this phenomenon,
particularly on an ambiguously French population. During the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, a succession of laws drew distinctions between
specific groups. The inaccessibility of French citizenship for some popula
tions and the resulting rivalry among groups created a malaise that rever
berated in colonial society.
Naturalization reform enacted in 1865, 1870, and 1889 established a
measure by which to identify the Frenchness of settler and indigenous popu
lations. Although they defined official French status in Algeria, such laws
did not necessarily reflect French sentiment among the chosen groups.
French citizens in colonial Algeria may very well have spoken Berber, Span
ish, or Judeo-Arabic. They may have lived according to Islamic custom. At
the same time, French non-citizens or subjects may have been fluent in
French and familiar with French cultural practices. —
The Sénatus-Consulte of 1865, a decree emanating from the French
Senate, established the subject status of indigenous Algerian populations,
namely Arabs, Berbers, and Jews. As colonial subjects, Muslims and Jews
could be drafted into the French army, but did not have voting rights or
other privileges. They continued to adhere to Islamic or Judaic law, but
were otherwise governed by the regulating institutions of the French state.
Subjects could choose to apply to become citizens (which authorities could
also refuse), but they would have to agree to abide by French civil, not
religious, law. Very few were willing to do so. Thirty years after the arrival
of French forces in North Africa, fifteen after the departmentalization of
the country, the vast majority of Algeria’s population remained “French” by
subject status alone. The relative absence of French citizens in French Alge
ria continued into the twentieth century. Census reports indicate that from
a combined European and indigenous population of 6,470,000 in 1931,
5,550,000 were French Muslims, i.e., subjects as established by nineteenth-
century doctrine. The number of French citizens in Algeria, as determined
by birthplace or naturalization, represented a tiny percentage of the pre
dominant Muslim population. It totaled 733,000 in 1931 and 819,000 in
1936, just over a tenth of the entire population.31
Despite such proportionally small numbers of French citizens, a co
lonial discourse of inclusion recognized all groups, including subjects, as
French. “Inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices,” as Ann L.
Stoler has called them, created uncertainties about assimilation in the colo
nial world.32 Official statements from the colonial administration expressed
the universality of Frenchness, but concrete differences were inscribed in
law. The Code de Vindigénat of 1881 established a set of judicial procedures
specific to the Arab and Berber population.33 Penalties for crimes commit
ted by Islamic populations were enforced. They further separated French
subjects from citizens.
The naturalization proposals of September 20, 1870, and June 26,
1889, established the status of citizenship in French colonial Algeria. The
Crémieux decree of 1870 collectively naturalized all of Algeria’s 35,000
Jews. These newly recognized French citizens had been among the earliest
inhabitants of North Africa, settling and intermingling with Berber groups
over the centuries. Five years after the Sénatus-Consulte of 1865, Jews thus
became legal citizens. Legislators considered Algerian Jews to be an assimi
lable population, but this view was not always shared in colonial Algerian
society. The Crémieux decree generated considerable debate about whether
or not Jews could indeed assimilate. Anti-Semites, of course, were never
convinced of the potential francité of this population.34
The 1889 naturalization law established French citizenship status for
non-French European emigrants. Many individuals and families had relo
cated from the southern Mediterranean region, primarily from Spain, Italy,
and Malta. This presence clearly attracted the attention of colonial offi
cials, some of whom considered it a menace to French Algeria. Collective
naturalization could potentially lessen the number of non-French Euro
pean nationals and increase the number of French citizens. The 1889 decree
granted the Algerian-born children of non-French European immigrants au
tomatic French citizenship. Official French status for settlers became perma
nent if it was not formally declined and Italian or Spanish nationality requested.
By the end of the nineteenth century, and for the first time in colo
nial Algeria’s history, the number of native and naturalized French men and
women outnumbered the foreign European population. This was largely
due to the reforms of 1870 and 1889.35 Earlier proposals in 1865 and 1881,
which had accorded citizenship to European settlers on a voluntary basis,
had not generated much interest. Many foreign nationals, living in French
Algeria yet having no desire to be naturalized, had retained their non-French
status. Even after passage of the 1870 and 1889 acts, foreign groups were
large enough and perhaps distinct enough to warrant special classification
in official studies. In the 1930s, Spanish, Italian, Maltese, and other sub
groups were singled out as separate census categories.36 Later reports in the
1940s and 1950s did not distinguish between groups within the non-French
European population. Foreign groups had dwindled enough in size that
they no longer aroused great concern.
If a self-sustaining population of French citizens was to establish itself
in Algeria, naturalization would clearly have to play an important role.
Relatively few settlers from metropolitan French provinces emigrated to
North Africa. French peasants tended to stay put rather than emigrate, as
did their poor or displaced Spanish and Italian counterparts. British set-
ders to Australia and New Zealand established communities five times greater
in number than the total number of French settlers in Algeria. The failure
to establish a coherent colonial policy, the lack of effective promotion, high
rates of departure and mortality due to disease and poor sanitation were
reportedly to blame for colonial Algeria’s small and declining European
population, referred to sometimes as “dépeuplement.”37
The proponents of French colonial efforts in the métropole had failed
to galvanize interest in the French settling of Algeria. Nor had they created
the kinds of conditions that would allow emigrants to stay in Algeria once
they arrived. The relatively small numbers of French people who emigrated
and remained in North Africa came primarily from southern departments
such as the Vaucluse, Aveyron, and Hérault, as well as from Corsica.38These
emigrants and their families constituted the bulk of the French population
in colonial Algeria, not the prisoners, revolutionaries, and Communards
expelled from France in the mid-nineteenth century.39
Various municipal officials in Algerian cities and towns expressed
concern about the proportionally small numbers of French citizens and
communities in the country, in comparison to growing numbers of indig
enous French subjects. The “truly” French population appeared to stag
nate, despite the cited naturalization reforms, because of slowing migration
to Algeria from Europe. The most significant movement of migrants south
ward across the Mediterranean Sea had occurred during the nineteenth
century. After 1900, studies indicate, natural population growth rather than
migration accounted for the modest increases in the European population.40
Between 1931 and 1954, the French citizen population had grown from
733,000 to 934,00, but represented an increasingly smaller proportion of
the total Algerian population. Between these two dates, the indigenous
population had risen from 5,550,000 to 8,400,000.41 As we will see,
colonialists sought to reverse this trend in order to support French Algeria
with a greater population of “authentically” French people. The sketchy
Frenchness of colonial Algeria left them concerned.
As a result of the collective naturalization laws of the late nineteenth cen
tury, French presence had been increased moderately if not enduringly.
Most Algerian Jews and Europeans were French citizens, but the vast ma
jority of the country’s Arab and Berber population were not. In the twenti
eth century, the phenomenon of two world wars created a context for dia
26 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1 93 0-1954
logue about the naturalization of Algerian Muslims. The need for French
soldiers led to promises of reform by metropolitan politicians. French au
thorities sought to reward soldiers with citizenship for their service to France.
173.000 Arab and Berber soldiers fought alongside French infantrymen in
the First World War, conscripted into the army beginning in 1912.42They
served longer periods of duty than did French soldiers and were compen
sated less generously. Approximately 134,000 indigenous soldiers took part
in the military campaigns of the Second World War. Indigenous leaders
suggested that Algerian Muslims had made a considerable sacrifice and
were entided to citizenship privileges.43 Authorities in France agreed and
turned their attentions toward policies that would allow more Arabs and
Berbers to become naturalized-Word ofWoodrow Wilsons “fourteen points”
and the declared right of colonized people to self-determination reverber
ated among Muslim elites in Algeria after 1914.
At the conclusion of the “Great War,” French politicians and legisla
tors began discussing ways in which more Muslims could in fact be offi
cially recognized as French. In 1919, the French Prime Minister Georges
Clémenceau issued a reform proposal, the “loi Jonnard” or Jonnard law,
which listed categories of persons within the Arab and Berber elite who
would be considered eligible for candidacy to French citizenship status. It
specified that aspirants be male, single, over twenty-five years of age, and
either a veteran, an elected official, a graduate of the French school system,
a civil servant, a land-owner, or a recipient of an honorary award for service to
France. Candidates to the status of French citizenship also had to have lived at
the same address for two consecutive years and not have been convicted of any
crime.44 The requirements for naturalization of Arabs and Berbers were
stringent, and under such conditions, few people expressed any interest.
When legislators again sought to make French citizenship more ac
cessible to members of the Muslim elite, over a decade later in 1936, Euro
pean settlers expressed strong opposition. The new reform bill stemmed
not from a wartime need for legions of men, but from the political zeal of
the newly elected Popular Front. The Blum-Viollette project, sponsored by
the coalition government, offered French citizenship to approximately
25.000 indigenous persons. It extended eligibility to more (although still
privileged) categories within the Muslim elite. The naturalization project
may have grown out of the growing acceptance of cultural difference tak
ing shape during the interwar period. This coincided with the general shift
to a framework of association for French colonies.45 In Algeria however, an
official part of French national territory unlike other colonies, the
assimilationist model continued to be upheld.
L’Algérie française: An Imagined Country? TJ
Under the terms of the Blum-Viollette proposal, individuals would
have all the rights and obligations of French citizens, but where Islamic and
French law were in conflict, they could continue to live as Muslims.46The
requirement that they comply with French civil law had presumably pre
vented many from becoming naturalized earlier. In reaction to the pro
posal, deputies to the French assembly, representing the interests of the
European community, voiced their dissatisfaction. The mayors of several
Algerian towns and villages threatened to abandon their posts. Such strong
reaction was curious, given that the proposal concerned a relatively small
number of people. Pervasive fears of lost authority, resulting from the in
creased electoral power of enfranchised Muslim voters, led to the bills per
manent; freeze.
Eight years later, in 1944, another World War and a French military
t t
desirous of still more able bodies, reopened debate on the assimilation of

indigenous peoples. On March 7 of that year, General Charles de Gaulle
proposed reform in order to encourage Muslim populations to willingly
aid France in the final push against Germany. Citizenship was again the
incentive for military service. De Gaulle s plan suggested that approximately
70,000 Arabs and Berbers receive access to French citizenship rights upon
their reentry into civilian life after the war. The proposal passed, but it did
little to satisfy the desire long articulated by Muslim elites for collective
naturalization of all indigenous Algerians.
The Second World War fused Algeria, France, and their respective
populations in many ways that the First World War had not. Algeria was
the site of a great deal of intrigue in 1940s.47The patriotic mobilization of
the fall 1939 ended abruptly with the armistice in June 1940. Many colo
nial officers and administrators pledged their allegiance to Marshall Philippe
Pétain. The British attack on the French fleet at Mers el-Kebir in July 1940
obliged officials and civilians in Algeria to weigh their allegiances carefully.
Two years later, in November 1942, allied forces, including the Free France
movement led by General de Gaulle, established a base at Algiers. Both the
colonial government as well as the local European population wavered in
their support of the Vichy regime and the Résistance movement.
By 1943-44, the tide had begun to change. Military units composed
of Europeans and Muslims from Algeria became increasingly involved in
the Allied war effort, participating in the French campaigns in Provence,
Italy, and Germany. Algerian aid to the mère-patrie took on near mythical
proportions. Colonial primary school materials informed children of the
liberating role that Algerians (Europeans and Arabs) had played in the war.48
News of Franco-Algerian collaborative war efforts, the proverbial colonial
28 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 193 0 -1 9 5 4
child coming to the assistance of its besieged metropolitan parent, served
to consolidate Algeria’s place within the realm of Greater France.
Fewer Arabs and Berbers were able to benefit from their participation
in the Second World War than activists had hoped. Written testimony from
the period notes a generalized feeling of disillusionment, a sentiment that
increased after the events of the spring 1945. On May 8, 1945, the Ger
man army capitulated, marking the end of war. An outpouring of relief and
jubilation was expressed in France and in many parts of the French colonial
world. Yet at the same time, a violent series of events in eastern Algeria
unfolded. A rally organized by Muslim activists ended in insurrection and
rioting at Sétif, and spread to Guelma and other locales over the next sev
eral days. Accounts differ considerably over the exact causes of the violence,
but tension allegedly mounted after the police broke up an authorized dem
onstration.49A shot was fired, resulting in the death of one participant. An
angry mob later took to the streets, and rioters killed dozens of European
settlers. Repression of Arab and Berber communities followed, which in
cluded summary executions and internment in camps. Approximately 100
Europeans died in the turmoil, and anywhere from 1,500 to 50,000 Mus
lims, according to sources. Ten years earlier, in 1934, in the same general
area near Constantine, pogroms had also destabilized colonial society.50The
1945 upheaval contributed to a growing sense of pessimism for officials
and civilians alike about relations between European and indigenous com
munities.
After the Second World War, political reform proposals were again
debated and they introduced new ways of defining French identity in the
colonial world. The constitution of the Fourth Republic announced the
creation of a “French Union,” which incorporated all parts of the Empire
into a French commonwealth. Meant to placate nationalists in the colonies
who were becoming increasingly hostile, it reaffirmed the colonial notion
of la plus grande France despite its claim of respecting desire for more free
doms. According to a May 7, 1946 law, all persons within this union were
henceforth recognized as French.
In 1947, debate continued about substantive administrative change.
It was in this year that a revised Statute for Algeria dominated colonial
conversations. Legislators eventually adopted the policy change, but its
implementation was uneven. On paper, the statute included a number of
reforms: the creation of an Algerian Assembly or parliament, with separate
indigenous and European houses; the eradication of communes mixtes and
the creation of new communes de plein exercice within newly organized de
partments; the establishment of Arabic as an official language of Algeria. It
transferred more administrative authority to local Algerian officials, but
also reconnected more of North Africa to France. Like many colonial docu
ments, its messages were contradictory, giving some semblance of autono
mous rule to colonial authorities while solidifying ties to France. Indig
enous leaders objected to having the same number of representatives in the
Algerian Assembly as Europeans, who made up ten percent of the popula
tion. This did not constitute fair representation in their eyes. Settler repre
sentatives denounced what they considered to be a reform measure im
posed by metropolitan officials and that jeopardized their control of Algerian
affairs.
The cited nineteenth-and twentieth-century decrees established a legal ba
sis for French citizenship in colonial Algeria. While only a very small per
centage of the total Algerian population had become naturalized, some
individuals claimed to have assumed a French cultural identity. Citizenship
and cultural identity were sometimes detached in the colonial setting. What
had arguably fostered the growth of French sentiment in metropolitan France
was common schooling and military service, as well as accessible travel by
train and roadway into the furthest corners of the country.51 Had Algeria’s
settler and indigenous populations, whose lives were increasingly influenced
by such infrastructure, become assimilated in ways that Eugen Weber de
scribed? The proponents of Greater France certainly hoped that French
institutions as well as life in an officially French country had fostered the
development of French identity for both indigenous and settler groups in
Algeria.
The Call for New French Settlement
How might French Algeria maintain self-sustaining numbers of French

citizens? How might the trend of European “dépeuplement” in North Af
rica be reversed? These questions were entertained frequently by those in
terested in sustaining French colonial vitality in the 1930s and 1940s. Since
not all colonial populations were believed to be assimilable, despite the
rhetoric of inclusion, perhaps more metropolitan settlers, persons consid
ered to be truly French, could be persuaded to emigrate? Colonial support
ers argued that a fortified French presence might help to quell the growing
settler fear caused by anti-colonial activity. Government reports concluded
that in order to preserve a French population, and to counterbalance the
rapidly growing numbers of Muslims, European migration to North Africa
30 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria , 1 9 3 0-1954
would have to be resumed. Past efforts to stimulate emigration to Algeria
had attained limited results at best. So how could French men and women
be encouraged to relocate in the first few decades of the twentieth century?
The organizers of the 1930 Centennial hoped that colonial exhibits
and informational displays might inspire people to take an interest in life
in North Africa, perhaps enough of an interest to persuade them to resettle.
The presentation of fruitful French activity in North Africa and the publi
cizing of the potential benefits to be reaped from a colonial venture could
perhaps stimulate such migratory activity. The official Centennial program
announced, as mentioned earlier, that an important objective of the event
was to strengthen French demographic roots in North Africa. To this end,
the General Government of Algeria authorized a promotional advertise
ment in 1930 recommending that migration between France and North
Africa resume. Two texts, “Ventes de terres de colonisation en Algérie” (“Co
lonial Land Plots in Algeria”) and “Comment devenir colon” (“How to
Become a Colonial Settler”) provided information for individuals and fami
lies thinking about transmediterranean relocation.52
The first of the brochures stated that through metropolitan initiative
and financial assistance, nine hundred villages in Algeria had already been
established, and that Frenchmen were currently cultivating one and a half
million hectares of choice land.
Ces groupements fortement installés forment autant de centres detraction
pour les éléments actifs de notre race, en même temps que des foyers
d'expansion de la civilisation française et du progrès.53
[These strongly entrenched groupings form centers of attraction for our race
as well as expansion sites for French civilization and progress.]
A September 9, 1924, regulation stipulated that such land was reserved for
“Français d’origine européenne et aux Européens naturalisés. [...]” (“French
of European extraction and naturalized Europeans. . . .”) The law, which
was still in effect in the 1930s, announced that colonial authorities would
distribute tracts of land free of charge to the heads of large families with
sufficient resources to settle in North Africa.54
The advertisement added that arable land would be sold at a fixed
price to wealthier individuals and families, and that it could be financed in
several different ways. Purchasers had to agree to twenty years of residency
in North Africa, and pledge to farm the land for the duration of their stay.
Promoters obviously wanted to ensure that migrants remain in North Af-
rica and contribute to an agriculturally based, demographic and economic
resurgence of French Algeria.
In order to help emigrating French families adapt to conditions in
North Africa as productive farmers, the General Government offered fur
ther assistance. An instructional pamphlet for settlers announced that the
“Institut agricole d’Algérie” organized “stages agricoles” or “agricultural
workshops” for those having recently purchased land. New setders were
instructed on the composition of Algerian soil, and the special techniques
necessary to cultivate it. The advertisement also assured prospective settlers
that hard work would lead to bountiful harvests.
The colonial efforts to (re)make French Algeria through agricultural
incentives was transcribed by the French setder, essayist and agriculturist
Marcel Florenchie.55 Owner of a large estate, Florenchie deeply regretted
the gradual disappearance of French families and farms from the Algerian
countryside. In his writings, he described not so much the abandonment
of Algerian territory altogether, but rather a rural exodus to coastal cities
that threatened the future of French sovereignty in North Africa. Accord
ing to Florenchie, the reinstallation of French farmers on North African
soil and the adoption of modern agricultural techniques might assist in the
establishment of French communities. By stimulating both the French and
Algerian economies, it might help to preserve French Algeria.
Colonial administrators and organizations issued frequent public state
ments during the 1930s and 1940s arguing that migration to Algeria from
metropolitan France indeed had to resume. The very future of French Al
geria, they maintained, depended on the reinforced presence of “authentic”
French men and women in North Africa, as opposed to French subjects or
even naturalized citizens. Such concerns were perhaps greatest after 1945, a
period of intensified nationalist activity in France, North Africa, and in
deed throughout the colonial world. During this time, tensions about
whether or not Algeria could remain French (and to what degree) came to
a head.
For one postwar organization, the Association pour le rayonnement
français en Afrique (A.R.F.A.) or Association for French Cultural Develop
ment in Africa, revitalized French presence in Algeria became an important
cause. It emphatically supported the consolidation of French Algeria.
Founded in October 1944 in Algiers, the A.R.F.A. voiced its desire to rees
tablish and cultivate French influence throughout “la France africaine.”
Following the Sétif incidents of May 1945, it became particularly vigilant
in its efforts to preserve French (North) Africa. Eugène Simon served as
president of the organization and was an ardent supporter of sustained
32 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1 9 3 0-1954
colonial activity in North Africa. He submitted numerous essays to that
effect in association newsletters. Whoever shared Simons belief that Alge
ria, as well as other parts of the French Empire, should be French was
encouraged to join the A.R.F.A. Only French citizens, however, could be
come full-fledged members of the association. Honorary membership could
be granted to those who had not yet attained citizenship rights, but had
otherwise demonstrated sympathy toward France.
In 1947, the A.R.F.A. published a brochure detailing many of its
policies. Its goals were summed up succinctly:
[. . .] En un mot faire en sorte que dans les territoires d’Afrique, un nombre
grandissant d’hommes se sentent français, pensent français et parlent français.56
[. . . In a word, do what is necessary to ensure that in African territories a
growing number of people feel French, think French and speak French.]
What would France be without Africa, Association writers asked, and indeed
Africa without France? Just as Alsace, Brittany, and Provence were French, so
should “French Africa,” a concept dear to the A.R.F.A., be secure in its
Frenchness. European troops from North Africa had come to Frances aid in
the Second World War, a newsletter insisted. Policymakers and legislators in
France should in turn assist Africa, notably Algeria, in its efforts to become
more French. This was vital at a time when Frenchness appeared threatened.
The A.R.EA. listed the ways in which Frenchness could best be pro
moted in the colonial world.57 To begin, French could be made the official
language of all of “la France africaine.” The association made frequent refer
ence to the importance of the French language as a means of unifying French
Algeria, a view shared by colonial pedagogues.58 The A.R.EA. recommended
that new French departmental configurations, complementing the existing
three, be organized around the cities of Bône, Tizi-ouzou, Aumale, Tlemcen,
and Tiaret. This would revitalize expanses of Algerian territory by reinforcing
administrative infrastructure and lending support to the French population.
The Association suggested that primary and secondary schools for both
girls and boys be built in greater number, and universities established at
Oran and Bone, due to overcrowding at the Algiers campus.59 Substantive
changes should be made in the teaching materials used in Algerian schools.
The A.R.F.A. stated that the history of North Africa should necessarily be
taught concurrently with French history. It recommended that “la littérature
franco-africaine,” as distinct from “la littérature française métropolitaine,”
receive more attention in language and reading classes in Algeria.
Lastly, A.R.RA. spokespersons submitted that each year on June 14,
“une fête nationale franco-africaine” (“a Franco-African national festival”)
should be celebrated in commemoration of the arrival of French forces on
North African shores. Measures such as these would
Etablir entre la France d’Europe et la France d’Afrique un courant réciproque
d’idées, de personnes, d’amitiés, quel beau programme pour des hommes
attachés à la grandeur de leur patrie.60
[Establish between the France of Europe and the France of Africa a recipro
cal current of ideas, persons, and friendships. What a program for men at
tached to the grandeur of their homeland.]
French identity as described in the publications of the A.R.F.A. involved
European populations exclusively. There is no mention of the reform mea
sures that attempted to recognize Muslim rights to Frenchness.
In 1947, as debate intensified over the Statute for Algeria on both
sides of the Mediterranean Sea, publications issued by the A.R.FA contin
ued to express pervasive French concerns in postwar Algeria. They are par
ticularly evocative of the discussion taking place on the future of French
Algeria. A.R.F.A. newsletters requested that the flow of people from the
Métropole to North Africa increase. Trained French individuals were needed,
the organization stated, to head agricultural, industrial, commercial, and
administrative posts. In a 1949 editorial, Eugène Simon maintained that
“Parçir [en Algérie] c’est vivre.” (“To settle [in Algeria] is to live”). He lob
bied for renewed French migration to North Africa, which would allow
French Algeria to prosper. “[...] L’Afrique française a besoin d’hommes, et
elle a de la place pour les recevoir,” Simon insisted61 (“. . . French Africa is
in need of men, and she has room to receive them”). He provided further
detail in a subsequent article entitled “Un recensement” (“A Census Re
port”), in which he confirmed the need for French settlement to Algeria
based on 1948 data.62 The shifts in Algerian demographics—rising indig
enous birth rates and decreasing European rates— generated anxiety for
those who shared the concerns of the A.R.F.A.63 The staunch setder advo
cate and Algerian Governor-General Marcel Naegelen addressed his con
cerns about the declining French population in a public statement issued
in 1948. He confirmed the need for resumed emigration.64
Literature distributed by organizations such as the A.R.F.A. listed the
various associations that regrouped emigrants from the métropole by re
gion of origin. As organizing bodies of French persons residing in Algeria,
they helped to draw attention to French concerns. In April 1949, the
A.R.F.A. tallied nineteen French “sociétés régionales” or associations, in
cluding the Enfants de TArdêche, Les Gars du Berry, Les Enfants de la Drôme,
La Parisienne, Les Provençaux dAlger, L'Amicale des Francs-Comtois, La
Bretagne, L'Association Champenoise, and Les Enfants de TAveyron.6* It sug
gested that each could do more individually and collectively to stimulate
French influence. At the very least, each group might provide a place where
the descendants of French settlers could interact comfortably, organize events
serving to further generate a sense of community, and help recent emi
grants unfamiliar with North African life to adapt.
French Algeria at the Half-Century Mark
A comprehensive investigation carried out in the early 1950s addressed the

state of French settlements in colonial Algeria at the mid-century mark. In
accordance with the wishes of the governing authorities, local representa
tives from European-dominated towns and villages all over Algeria pre
pared statements on the social, political, economic, and demographic is
sues feeing their communities. The offices of the colonial administration
compiled the individual testimonies into a lengthy study of colonial Alge
rian society.66 Could European settlements continue to function as bul
warks of French influence in North Africa despite shrinking populations?
In esssece, could colonial order be maintained? Concern about the French
population in North Africa had reached a crescendo. This sentiment is
clearly transcribed in the documents. According to some of the reports, the
disturbance at Sétif in 1945 had not been erased from the memory of Eu
ropean groups. Small, isolated pockets of settler communities appeared in
creasingly vulnerable.
The most pressing concerns of the mayors and administrators who
filed reports related to dwindling French settlements in the Algerian coun
tryside, and to rapidly increasing numbers of Arabs and Berbers. People
were fleeing rural areas in alarming numbers, they claimed, for Algerian
cities and even for metropolitan France. Between 1930 and 1950, the French
or European population of places such as Bir-Rabalou, Aboutville, Maillot,
Bertville, Hoche, Masqueray, and Stéphane Gsell had dropped by more
than fifty percent. At the same time, the Muslim population of a commune
mixte such asTakitount tripled.67 Local leaders claimed that merchants and
artisans could no longer remain in rural areas and successfully run their
businesses; survival necessitated a move to the city. With farmers leaving
the land and shopkeepers taking their affairs elsewhere, there seemed to be
L*Algérie française: An Imagined Country? 35
little upon which to establish settler communities. French Algeria was be
coming less French, and even more confined to strictly urban areas.
Several local authorities, from towns such as Kellerman, Gallieni,
Guelma, Guellaat-Bou-Sba, and La Meskiana, strongly encouraged French
policymakers to promote the emigration of settlers from France, in still
more efforts to revitalize French presence.68They contended that the French
government should facilitate such movement by providing allocations for
migrating families. Banks could provide special funds for new settlers, guar
anteed by the French administration. Algerian community leaders suggested
that aggressive advertising was necessary, and should be implemented im
mediately, in order to encourage emigration. They added that if local con
ditions were improved, if life were made easier for settlers, people would
have assurances about relocating and would be less inclined to leave after
their arrival.69 Modern conveniences, such as accessible drinking water and
electricity, had to be made available, particularly in rural areas where condi
tions were still inadequate. This would make more of colonial Algeria simi
lar to France in ways that people could appreciate in the context of their
everyday lives.
Local officials suggested how policy reform might counter the rapidly
rising population of Arabs and Berbers, generally perceived as being detri
mental to French authority.70 Mortality rates had been drastically lowered
for indigenous populations, as a result of French improvements in public
hygiene, and a significant demographic leap had ensued. In their reports,
town representatives questioned how they would feed the growing indig
enous population, how they would contend with the increased joblessness,
misery, and political agitation that supposedly resulted. One can only won
der if conferring citizenship on those requesting it was considered as a means
of helping to address these problems.
An official from Cassaigne noted that policymakers might discuss
implementing a measure of forced birth control within the Muslim popu
lation to stifle rising birth rates.71 Another suggested means of curtailing
indigenous reproductive patterns was by subjecting marriage to the French
civil code.72 This would outlaw polygamy and prevent men from having
numerous children with multiple wives. Algerian civil servants feared the
rapidly growing indigenous population because most Arabs and Berbers
reportedly remained untouched by French influence. Local administrators
were unconvinced of their capacity to adopt French cultural practices.
This appeared particularly true in more remote villages such as Clauzel,
where the European was considered a hostile and foreign presence, referred
to by Arab peasants as “le Roumi.”73 Muslims who appropriated Western
culture and became naturalized were known as “M’tournis” or “turncoats.”
Other villagers shunned them, which hindered any generalized desire to
assimilate. Colonial authorities indicate in their reports that most Euro
pean settlers regarded Islam as an obstacle to assimilation. In certain com
munes such as l’Alma, Agoulmine, and Fort-National however, officials
noted that more and more Muslims disregarded Islamic tradition by adopting
modes of Western dress and custom.74 There was clearly no consensus on
the assimilation of indigenous groups.
Increased access to colonial schools, some stated, might help to en
courage the francisation of Arabs and Berbers. In Blida, officials observed
that indigenous groups demanded greater access to schools and instruc
tion. In places such as Cassaigne, community leaders agreed that civic in
struction was particularly important.75 Others were not convinced of the
necessity of such instruction, and maintained that it contributed to the
proliferation of subversive ideas.76 Representatives from Tizi-ouzou and
Orléansville stated that educating more Arab and Berber women might
help to curb potentially threatening indigenous birth rates.77 As less pro
lific, maternal authority figures in the domestic sphere, French-educated
women could reportedly be a persuasive influence. They served, local lead
ers believed, as ambassadors of Western civilization and culture.
More than one hundred years of French presence in Algeria contributed to
an administrative and cultural transformation of the country. While this
evolution was celebrated with great pomp and circumstance during the
Centennial of French presence in 1930, later reports by local authorities
suggested that Algeria was not as French as it could be, nor as French as
some official texts and declarations alleged. Metropolitan and colonial
spokespeople voiced doubts about the Frenchness of the country’s dispar
ate populations. Certain groups appeared at best superficially French and
at worst unassimilable—both the French subjects of Arab-Berber descent
and naturalized European settlers. The francisation of Arabs and Berbers
appeared particularly problematic, to both administrators and European
citizens, as a result of perceived cultural differences and the subsequent
resistance to collective naturalization reform.
Prevailing doubts about the Frenchness of French Algeria undermined
official declarations of assimilation, aimed at both settler and indigenous
populations. Many supporters of French Algeria agreed that only a greater
population of metropolitan settlers could effectively reinforce French in
fluence in North Africa. Opinion varied considerably on just how French
Muslims and persons of Jewish, Italian, or Spanish descent could become,
and whether they could in fact contribute to the preservation of French
Algeria. Yet it appeared unlikely that enough metropolitan French would
ever settle in North Africa to satisfy demand. Some “foreigners” had to be
encouraged to become naturalized and to gain recognition as members of
the French colonial community, despite the suspicion that they aroused.
Notes
1. Armand Megglé, LAlgérie terresfrançaises (Paris: Société française d’éditions, 1931),

13. All French to English translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own.
2. The English translations of these titles, respectively, are North African France*, In
Algeria with France; Algeria, Daughter o f France*, Algerian France*, and Our Child Algeria.
They were written by Lucien Deslinières, Edmond Gojon, André Foucault, Jules Correard,
and Jean Vignaud.
3. These terms are taken from an essay by Louis Pasquier-Bronde entitled La Petite
Patrie algérienne dans le coeur de la grande patrie française. The author was the deputy mayor
of Algiers; the essay was probably written in the 1930s. See also Jean Mélia, Dans la Patrie
française, la patrie algérienne (Alger: La Maison des livres, 1952).
4. René Maunier, Coutumes algériennes (Paris: Editions Domat-Montchrestien, 1935), 168.
5. For a concise, recent appraisal of Algeria’s colonial past, see Benjamin Stora’s Histoire
de VAlgérie coloniale, 1830-1954 (Paris: La Découverte, 1991). Charles Robert-Ageron has
also written a classic study of colonial Algeria, Histoire de VAlgérie contemporaine, vol. 2
(Paris: PUF, 1979).
6. Stora, Histoire de VAlgérie coloniale, 17-21.
7. Archives d’outre-mer (hereafter AOM), 10 H 90, “Pourcentage des Européens par
rapport à la population totale,” Départements d’Alger, d’Oran et de Constantine (recensement
1936). The population ofMers-el-Kebir was 84.3% European. Algiers and Oran had 66.4%
and 74% European populations respectively.
8. Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics o f Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago:
U. of Chicago Press, 1991).
9. In M aking Algeria French: Colonialism in Bone, 1870-1920 (New York: Cam
bridge UP, 1990), David Prochaska tallies the names of French military officials whose
names appeared on Algerian streets and monuments. Prochaska and Charles-Robert Ageron
among others assert that the naming of colonial sites served to indicate the establishment of
French presence.
10. See for instance Théophile Gautiers Voyage pittoresque en Algérie (Paris, 1845),
and Eugène Fromentin s Une Année dans le Sahel (Paris: Plon, 1898).
IL Léon Archimbaud, La Plus Grande France (Paris: Hachette, 1928).
12. See Maurice Ricord, Au Service de VEmpire, 1939—1945 (Paris: Editions coloniales
et métropolitaines, 1946).
13. Gabriel Audisio, Jeunesse de la Méditerranée (Paris: Gallimard, 1935), 15.
14. Jean Mélia, La France et VAlgérie (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1919).
15. Ferdinand Duchêne, “France-Algérie: La petite patrie et la grande,” Bulletin de la
société de géographie et de VAfrique du Nord, 3ème trimestre, n° 103 (1925): 228. The 1930
novel of this French-born writer, Mouna, cachir et couscouss, was an official selection of
Centennial sponsors.
16. See Le Livre d ’or du Centenaire de l’A lgérie française (ouvrage honoré d’une
souscription du commissariat général du centenaire de l’Algérie) (Alger: Fontana, 1931).
17. This is explored in greater detail in chapter 4.
18. For additional information on the colonial exposition, see Herman Lebovics,
True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992).
19. Gustave Mercier, Le Centenaire de l’A lgériefrançaise (Programme), numéro spécial
de la ‘Presse Nord-Africaine,’ 10 décembre 1929, pp. 3-5.
20. Virginie Hériot, La Seconde France (impressions sur les fêtes du centenaire) (Paris:
L’Imprimerie artistique de l’ouest, 1931).
21. Gustave Mercier, Le Centenaire de l’A lgérie française, 10.
22. Ibid., 8.
23. Ibid.
24. L’H umanité, 30 avril 1930: “La célébration du centenaire, c’est la glorification de
l’exploitation cynique des masses laborieuses par les sociétés financières et industrielles aux
gros profits et aux gros dividendes [...] Le parti communiste dénonce avec force la célébration
du centenaire de l’occupation de l’Algérie comme une odieuse opération impérialiste” (“The
centennial celebration is the glorification of the cynical exploitation of the working classes
by profit-driven financial and industrial companies. . . . The communist party forcefully
denounces the centennial celebration of the occupation of Algeria as an odious imperialist
operation”).
25. Victor Spielmann, En Algérie: Le Centenaire au point de vue indigène (Alger:
Editions du ‘Trait d’union,’ 1930).
26. For more information on the counter-exposition, see chapter 3 of Panivong
Norindr’s Phantasmatic Indochina: French Colonial Ideology in Architecture, Film and Litera
ture (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1996).
27. Ferhat Abbas, De La Colonie vers la province: Le jeune algérien (Paris: Editions de
la jeune parque, 1931), 8.
28. See Jean Mélia, Le Centenaire de la conquête de l’Algérie et les réformes indigènes
(Paris: Ligue française en faveur des indigènes musulmans d’Algérie, 1929), 26.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Gouvernement général de l’Algérie, Direction des services économiques, Statistique
comparée des recensements quinquennaux de la population algérienne en 1936 et en 1931,
p. 12.
- 32. Ann L. Stoler juxtaposes “inclusionary impulses” and “exclusionary practices” in
her chapter, “Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural
Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia,” in Tensions o f Empire: Colonial Cultures in
a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1997), 198-237.
33. Stora, Histoire de l ’Algérie coloniale, 39.
34. See section on Algerian Jews in chapter 5.
35. Alain Lardillier, Le Peuplementfrançais en Algérie de 1830 à 1900: Les raisons de
son échec (Versailles: Editions de l’Atlanthrope, 1992), 48.
36. Gouvernement général de l’Algérie, Direction des services économique, Statistiques
comparées des recensements quinquennaux de la population algérienne en 1936 et en 1931.
37. See figures in Lardillier, Le Peuplementfrançais en Algérie, 93.
38. Charles-Robert Ageron, L'Algérie des Français (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1993),
103.
39. Ibid.
40. LéonTabah, “La Population algérienne: Croissance, niveau de vie, investissement/’
Population (INED), n° 3 (juillet-septembre 1956): 429-60. The European birth rate was
far lower than that of the Muslim population, and the French rate was the lowest of these.
41. Gouvernement général de l'Algérie, Direction générale des finances, Résultats
statistiques du dénombrement de la population effectué le 31 octobre 1954, p. 3.
42. See Benjamin Stora’s Ils venaient d'Algérie: L'immigration algérienne en France»
1912-1992 (Paris: Fayard, 1992). 57,000 Muslims were injured and 25,000 died in com
bat between 1914 and 1919.
43. See the works by Emir Khaled, an early activist for indigenous rights and grand
son of Arab leader Abd el-Kader: Réflexions sur le rapprochement franco-arabe en Algérie
(Alger: Imprimerie Gojosso, 1913); and La Situation des musulmans d'Algérie (Alger: Trait
d’union, 1924).
44. See Claude Lazard, L'Accession des indigènes algériens h la citoyenneté française
(Paris: Librairie technique et économique, 1938), 47; and René Gantois, L'Accession des
indigènes algériens à la qualité de citoyen français (Alger: Imprimerie “la Typo-Litho,” 1928).
45. See classic study, Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial
Theory» 1890-1914 (New York: Columbia UP, 1961).
46. For a summary of this episode in colonial Algerian history, see Stora, Histoire de
l'Algérie coloniale» 81-84.
47. See for instance, Michael Kettle, De Gaulle and Algeria» 1940-1960: From Mers
el-Kebir to the Algiers Barricade (London: Quartet, 1993).
48. Aimé Bonnefin et Max Marchand, Histoire de France et d'Algérie (Paris: Hachette,
1953), 118.
49. See Radouane Ainad Tabet, Le Mouvement du 8 mai 1945 en Algérie (Alger:
Office des publications universitaires, 1977); Manfred Halpern, “The Algerian Uprising of
1945,” M iddle EastJournal 2, 2 (April 1948); Mahfoud Kaddache, Il y a 30 ans. . . le 8 mai
1945 (Paris: Editions du centenaire, 1975); Charles-Robert Ageron, “Les Troubles du Nord-
constantinois en mai 1945: Une tentative insurrectionnelle?” Vingtième Siècle» octobre 1984,
n° 4.
50. For a detailed account of the 1934 events, see chapter 5.
51. This is Eugen Webers argument. See his Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modern
ization o f Rural France» 1870-1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1977).
52. Paul Despiques, Jean Garoby, Le Chefd'Oeuvre colonial de la France: L'Algérie»
Gouvernement général de l’Algérie— Commissariat général du centenaire de l’Algérie, 1930.
53. Ibid., 47.
54. Twenty thousand francs was the amount considered necessary to establish one
self in Algeria.
55. Marcel Florenchie, a transplanted Frenchman from Corrèze, had firmly estab
lished himself in colonial Algerian society. He was elected to political office and played a
role in Algerian administrative afïàirs. He wrote a series of memoirs entitled Terre algérienne
(Alger: Baconnier, 1934), Terrefrançaise (Alger: Baconnier, 1946), and Eux et nous (Alger:
Baconnier, 1951).
56. Collection A.R.F.A., L'Association pour le rayonnementfrançais en Afrique (Alger:
Imprimerie Agius-La typo d’art, 1947).
57. See A.R.F.A. “Voeux émis à rassemblée générale du T l avril 1947.”
58. Eugène Simons essay, Afriquefrançaise et languefrançaise, published by the A.R.F.A.
in 1946, is particularly interested in the impact of French language on assimilation in North
Africa.
59. The University of Algiers was established in 1909. Guy Pervillé, Les Etudiants
algériens de l universitéfrançaise, 1880-1962 (Paris: CNRS, 1984).
60. Collection A.R.F.A., 5.
61. Circulaire. . . de IA.R.EA., n° 21, janvier-février 1949.
62. Circulaire. . . de 1’A .R.EA., n° 22, mars-avril 1949.
63. Ibid. According to the figures that Simon cites, the European population had
risen from 872,000 to 1,036,000 over the last twenty-two years, but proportionally, it had
dropped from 14.37% of the total population to 11.95%
64. Ibid.
65. The address and president of each association were listed to facilitate contact
with interested persons.
66. AOM, 8 X 353, “L’Algérie du demi-siècle vue par les autorités locales,”
Gouvernement Général de l’Algérie. Intended to provide “une vue d’ensemble de l’Algérie,”
they give an indication of present conditions and future actions that might be taken. Most
of the reports were completed in 1953 and 1954.
67. Ibid., 65.
68. Ibid., 68-69.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid., 56.
72. Ibid., 57.
73. This Arabic word referred, somewhat pejoratively, to Christians and was in fact a
reference to the Romans who had inhabited North Africa for centuries.
74. AOM, 8 X 353, p. 43.
75. Ibid., 94.
76. Local officials described increased politicization among Muslim youth, agitation
detrimental to France’s position in North Africa. Nationalist organizations such as the Parti
du peuple algérien (PPA), Union démocratique du Manifeste algérien (UDMA), Mouvement
pour la triomphe des libertés démocratiques (MTLD), and the Parti communiste algérien (PCA)
reportedly attracted the attention of young people.
77. AOM, 8X 353, p. 57.
2
COLONIAL SCHOOLS AND THE
TRANSMISSION OP PRENCH CULTURE
School children in metropolitan France and throughout the French colonial

world recited their common Gallic heritage, beginning with oft-noted “Nos
ancêtres les Gaulois” (“Our ancestors the Gauls”). A highly centralized French
educational system, providing identical instruction and using identical text
books, facilitated the transmission of French ideas and culture throughout all
of la plus grande France. French identity, according to universalist republican
thought, was not determined by race, religion, or place of birth, despite whim
sical references to common Gallic heritage. One became French through a
cultural transformation. French identity was therefore accessible, theoretically,
to both settler and indigenous populations in colonial Algeria. School children
throughout the French-speaking world read in their history textbooks,
Vous êtes tous de bons petits Français; vous aimez tous votre patrie. [. . .]
Vous avez dès aujourd’hui à remplir un devoir envers la France: c’est de la
bien connaître pour la bien servir.1
[You are all good French children; you all love your homeland.... Starting
today you have a duty to fulfill regarding France: That is to better know your
French homeland in order to serve it well.]
If Algeria was France, as French authorities and supporters of colo
nialism proclaimed in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and if indigenous and
41
settler populations were indeed French, colonial schools could be effective
promoters of such sentiment. Algerian primary schools constituted a privi
leged space where the Frenchness of Europeans, Jews, and small numbers
of Muslims could be encouraged. School instruction was conducted al
most entirely in French in these institutions, for the greater part of the
colonial period. Schools in colonial Algeria, however, could only target the
francisation of a tiny portion of the country’s total population. The vast
majority of the country’s most populous group, Algerian Muslims, had no
access to education of any kind.
Free, secular, and obligatory schooling in France had succeeded in
making peasants more French by the end of the “long” nineteenth cen
tury.2 This chapter explores the role of Algerian schools in the attempt to
orchestrate this same process of assimilation. It examines the ideology, cur
ricula, and materials in these institutions, using as a principal resource a
corpus of primary school textbooks written for colonial Algerian schools.31
maintain that these school texts served to instill in European settler and
indigenous children a notion of Frenchness. They sought to produce a
sense of attachment toward France, and for indigenous youth particularly,
acceptance of the colonial order. Colonial school materials are curiously
ambivalent documents, I contend, because they make claims about the
universality of Frenchness while simultaneously conveying the idea that
some groups are more assimilable than others. In The Colonial Unconscious,
Elizabeth Ezra astutely points out that “imperial rhetoric infuses the lan
guage of cultural difference.”4
A portion of the primary school literature used in colonial Algeria,
again, was specific to the North African context. It existed in addition to
the metropolitan materials found throughout the French colonial world.
The publication of specialized textbooks provided an adapted medium in
which to transmit French culture—more effectively, their authors claimed—
beyond the boundaries of the “Hexagon.” Customized French language,
reading, and history textbooks offered a course of study geared toward Al
gerian populations and their unique relationship to France. Their content
reveals a great deal about the kinds of information colonial administrators,
educators, and teachers aimed to disseminate to Algerian populations.5
French Schools, Citizenry, and National Identify
The connection between French school programs and the development of

French national sentiment has been well documented by scholars. Histo-
Colonial Schools and the Transmission o f French Culture 43
ries of the French educational system, such as the seminal work by Antoine
Prost, demonstrate the assimilating objectives of post-revolutionary, state-
run schools.6 The production of a French national consciousness may in
deed have been one of the main objectives of primary schools of the Third
Republic. According to one contemporary scholar, French sentiment de
veloped in the classroom could perhaps transcend existing differences:
La morale républicaine doit [.. .] développer un fonds commun d’idées, de
sentiments et de représentations qui puisse assurer l’existence d’une
communauté nationale oublieuse des distinctions de classe et de religion.7
[Republican doctrine must... develop a common basis of ideas, sentiments,
and representations which will be able to ensure the existence of a national
community without regard for class and religious differences.]
This conception of an inclusive republican4morale” was especially compel
ling in a heterogeneous colonial country. Algerian populations otherwise
set apart by social, economic, and cultural differences might be encouraged
to rally around a French identity made accessible to them. Colonial educa
tors were guided by such ideas when designing materials for Algerian popu
lations.
Throughout the Third Republic, politicians and educators debated
the link between school instruction, personal responsibility, and national
unity. The French educational system came under fire in the late nine
teenth century after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Politi
cians blamed French schools and teachers in particular for the national
disaster.8 Prussian teachers had supposedly succeeded in generating a sense
of patriotism and loyalty in Prussian youth, while their French counter
parts had failed to produce citizens equally prepared to defend their coun
try.9 Hence the dismal outcome for France on the battlefield. The defeat of
1871 was that of the French educational system and of French schoolteachers
as much as the military, literature of the late nineteenth century suggested.
The educational reforms enacted by Jules Ferry ten years later were
heavily influenced by such debate. In the aftermath of the defeat, educators
published primary school textbooks that advocated a strong sense of citi
zenry. For the next several decades, pedagogues generated French scholastic
materials with the intent to confront the challenge of an inevitable clash
with Germany. A series of moral and civic instruction textbooks appeared
during this period that insisted on the responsibility of the individual to
greater society:
L'objectif essentiel de l'instruction morale et civique—placée en tête des
programmes de l'école primaire par les élites républicaines—apparaît
clairement: encourager et affermir au profit de l'État-nation un sentiment de
loyauté et d'engagement civiques.10
[The essential objective of moral and civic instruction—placed at the head
of primary school programs by republican elites—-is apparently clear: to en
courage and affirm a sense of loyalty and civic engagement for the benefit of
the Nation-State.]
A very similar philosophy can be found in the textbooks that were written
and used in Algeria in the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth cen
turies.
One of the most widely used French textbooks of the Third Republic
was G. Brunos Le Tour de la France par deux enfants.11 The protagonists of
Brunos story, Julien and André, travel through France, discovering for them
selves the richness and variety of the country. They come to identify more
concretely with specific regions and ultimately the French nation as a re
sult. To know France is indeed to love it, Bruno suggests in her preface.
One can only wonder what colonial fantasies might have been produced,
for hundreds of thousands of French children, by a tour of the colonies as
well, and of Algeria in particular. The interests of Greater France might
have been well served. The colonies are briefly mentioned at the end of the
childrens voyage, primarily as sources of demographic replenishment for a
depleted French population.12
In their travels around France, Julien and André are confronted with
the consequences of the 1871 defeat—destroyed villages and factories in
the lost provinces of Alsace-Lorraine where they had lived. They are in
formed of what they, as French citizens, must prevent from reoccurring. In
perhaps the most compelling episode of the story, the two children promise
their dying father to reaffirm their Frenchness and to remain within France s
remapped borders.13 Their actions provide an example of French patrio
tism to school children.
Reminders of the 1871 defeat in school literature suggest that educa
tors believed that French national consciousness had been underdeveloped.
Textbooks such as Le Tour de la France par deux enfants prescribed how it
might be regenerated. Other texts such as Tu seras soldat (“You will be a
soldier,” 1888) and La Question d'Alsace dans une âme dAlsacien (“The
question of Alsace in an Alsatian soul,” 1891) by Ernest Lavisse actively
sought to inspire the formation of “scholastic batallions.” These were le
gions of pupils prepared to defend their country, and who Lavisse and oth
ers believed were all too absent in the past.14They would presumably pre
vent a reenactment of the humiliation of 1871. Lavisse emphasized aware
ness of this troubling past and of history in general, in order to ensure
future prosperity. His historical surveys influenced a generation of French
school children, not only in France but in the colonies as well.15
Knowledge of the history of the French colonies was considered an
important subject of learning for school children. Educators and school
materials sought to cultivate a greater understanding of the geography of
all of France, which included the colonial territories that made up Greater
France. Some ardent colonialists suggested that the French departments in
Algeria could compensate for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-
Prussian war. French nationalist Paul Déroulède disagreed. He retorted that
it was similar to being offered a stranger in exchange for the loss of a family
member: “J’ai perdu deux soeurs, et vous m’offrez vingt domestiques!”16 (“I
lost two sisters and you offer me twenty servants!”) Those on the political
Right in France had long objected to French colonial efforts because they
supposedly drained the country of its youthful energy and productive forces,
T or et le sang de la France.” These vital forces were being wasted in the
colonial periphery, according to conservative critics, when they could be
contributing to metropolitan French life.
By the early part of the twentieth century, the French political Right
had become more supportive of colonial activity. At this same time, the
patriotic fervor of French school literature decreased. The most used texts
were no longer as overtly militaristic, and echoed the pacifist mood follow
ing the First World War.17 Despite their more subdued patriotism, educa
tors and politicians continued to regard school programs as important gal-
vanizers of French sentiment.
Colonial Algerian schools perhaps no longer attempted to form the
“scholastic batallions” of the early Third Republic, but republican ideology
certainly continued to promote social cohesion and the development of a
colonial sense of Frenchness. Algerian primary school textbooks helped to
introduce heterogeneous groups of young people to hitherto unknown as
pects of France and French culture. This was a first and often an alienating
introduction to the métropole and a predetermined relationship to it. In
January 1939, an article in an educational bulletin claimed that for
trop longtemps, les milieux coloniaux sont demeurés isolés dans leurs lointains
horizons. Il faut, à l’école et au lycée, faire pénétrer l’image, l’idée de la France
toute entière. Les programmes le demandent, notre intérêt l’exige, notre
jeunesse l’attend.18
[For too long, colonial areas have remained isolated in their distant hori
zons. It is necessary in primary and secondary schools to disseminate the
image, the very idea of France. School curricula demand it, our interest re
quires it, our youth expects it.]
By encouraging the propagation of Frenchness in the colonies, schools could
perhaps consolidate la plus grande France to which politicians and ideo
logues referred. Colonial populations would be properly oriented on the
path toward French identity.
Education in Colonial Algeria
In March 1882, French lawmakers declared primary school education free,

obligatory, and secular for young children in France. These educational
reforms, known as the Ferry Laws, also applied to the Algerian depart
ments of Constantine, Oran, and Algiers. Communes de plein exercice, ad
ministered as metropolitan French communes, by law had to provide in
struction to both European and indigenous populations.19Schools had been
built and instruction given in colonial Algeria well before the implementa
tion of the Ferry Laws, but legislation pertaining uniquely to colonial Alge
rian schools was not put into place until later.20 In October 1892, reform
specific to the instruction of Algeria’s indigenous populations passed into
law.21 Special schools were built for Arab and Berber children, and educa
tors ascribed these indigenous schools with a vocational or agricultural focus.
Their intent was to offer practical knowledge to a population whose
members would take their places as workers and peasants. Encouraging the
intellectual development of Africans would be like giving sweets to a child:
-they might taste good but would ruin his digestion.22 Algerian school lit
erature contains images of Muslim skilled and non-skilled laborers. They
worked on farms; carried water; and sold fruits, vegetables, and clothes on
city streets. Textbook passages introduced school children to indigenous
artisans: Ali the jeweler, Ahmed the barber, Sliman the basketmaker, and
Mohammed and Ali the cobblers.23 “Il n y a pas de sot métier” (“There is
no stupid trade”), exclaimed another textbook.24 Skeptics of colonial edu
cation asserted that any type of instruction that encouraged aspirations
that lay outside the realms of labor or artisanry would be inappropriate and
detrimental to French interests.25 Colonial schools, they believed, should
teach local populations what they should do, not what they should know.26
A more rigorous, conceptually oriented education might only destabilize
an indigenous population presumed to be culturally distinct and destined
for assigned roles in colonial society.
As in France, where separate school tracks existed for peasant/work-
ing classes and the bourgeoisie, leading toward different degrees and social
standing, two educational paths developed in colonial Algeria.27 Most Arab
and Berber children instructed within the French school system attended
the so-called “indigenous schools,” which emphasized rudimentary skills
and training. European children were not barred from these institutions,
but most received instruction elsewhere. Those who did attend such schools
were often the children of European settlers living in isolated areas. Schools
in urban centers, on the other hand, generally catered to the European
settler population, although not exclusively. Members of the Muslim elite
sometimes sent their own children to these “European” schools, whose pro
grams closely mirrored those of metropolitan France.
The two-tiered system of colonial instruction remained intact until
1949, when a substantive reform measure was passed. On February 13,
1949, indigenous and European school tracks fused, creating common class
rooms for all Algerian school children. The change was followed by the
publication of a series of textbooks with a new perspective on pedagogy in the
colonial world. For the first time in French Algeria, indigenous and settler
children were encouraged to study an identical set of materials together.
Seated at the same desks and educated in the same fashion, Muslims and
Europeans would become French, authorities thought, and be more in
clined to live harmoniously in Algeria. Educators believed that this mea
sure would facilitate increased contact between settler and indigenous groups.
Until the 1949 reform, there had been few changes in the organiza
tion of colonial instruction. The Vichy government had temporarily al
tered the republican educational model, essentially attempting to undo the
“damage” that had been done in the “Godless” French public school. Al
though Vichy ideologues reoriented school instruction and published a set
of textbooks that transmitted their philosophy, the changes were not en
during.28 In 1944, after Vichy had been discredited, colonial officials an
nounced plans to build 20,000 new schools in Algeria that would eventu
ally provide instruction for one million children.29The desire for such reform
arose out of growing confidence about the outcome of the Second World
War and the continued incorporation of the colonies into Greater France.
After the war, however, Algerian school children no longer necessar
ily received instruction exclusively in French. The administrative changes
implemented under the Statute for Algeria of 1947 granted the Arabic lan
guage official status in Algeria, along with French, and it could henceforth
be used in school instruction.
While Algerias primary schools, particularly those catering to a Eu
ropean clientele, were similar in many respects to metropolitan schools,
educators believed that local conditions and extremely diverse populations
necessitated certain adaptations. In 1865, a normal school specializing in
the training of Algerian teachers opened at Bouzaréah near Algiers.30 Fu
ture teachers of European or Muslim origin attended this institution before
engaging in their careers in the field. In addition to their pedagogic train
ing, they were given instruction on the local conditions in which they would
find themselves. This preparation included study of the populations they
would encounter, the languages spoken by particular groups, the cultural
specificity of each, and how best to teach them.31 Such attention helped to
prepare primary school teachers for the particular challenges of North Afri
can instruction. Like other teachers of the French Third Republic of whom
so much was expected, North African instructors were endowed with a
parental, almost messianic mission. Anointed as substitute fathers by the
colonial administration,32 they were to instill in their pupils a sense of
Frenchness. Aimé Dupuy, former director for the normal school, described
the part his own institution played in this mission. “A Bouzaréa,” he noted,
“nous faisons de la France.”33 [“At Bouzaréah, we create France.”]
Only a very small percentage of the indigenous Muslim population
attended colonial schools, in either indigenous or European tracks. In 1936,
8.9% of school age Arab and Berber children were in schools, 10.6% in
1949, and 15.4% in 1954.34 Some sources indicate that colonial peda
gogues focused efforts on educating Berber populations in particular. Much
has been written about the “Kabyle myth,” which supposedly legitimized
one code of conduct for the “more assimilable” Berbers and another for
Arabs. Kabyles, like hardworking peasants from Auverge in central France
to whom they were sometime compared, could, some believed, be gradu
ally brought closer to French cultural norms.35
Approximately ninety percent of Algerian-born descendants of Span
iards, Maltese, Italians, and metropolitan French were attending colonial
schools by the early twentieth century. This rate of settler instruction was
considered an encouraging statistic by French authorities. Many hoped to
have these groups assimilate into the French population as soon as possible.
Up until the late nineteenth century, a small number of Spanish-
language schools had served the settler population from Spain, but since
these schools were not supported by the colonial administration, they
folded.36 For indigenous pupils, Muslim teachers provided religious instruc
tion in conjunction with and sometimes outside of the French colonial
school system. Talebs, instructors trained in Islamic law, led Arab and Berber
children in study, emphasizing memorization from the Koran. Médersas or
Arabic universities provided advanced study for Muslims who had already
received rudimentary instruction in primary schools.37 Catholic clergy op
erated congregational schools in small numbers in colonial Algeria, and
Judaic school instruction also existed.38
Until the beginning of the twentieth century, Arab and Berber fami
lies who were able to send their children to French schools often chose not
to do so. Muslim parents did not want their children to have to bear the
social scorn of being labeled M*tournist turncoats or traitors to their reli
gion, by attending French schools. It was not until after the First World
War that Muslims became less suspicious of these institutions. Only then
did Arab and Berber families see any potential benefits— economic, social,
and political— of French instruction. The accounts of former teachers il
lustrate some reasons why Arab and Berber parents began to allow their
youngsters to participate in colonial schools.39 Indigenous families were
especially hesitant to send daughters off to school, yet were more likely to
have them educated if the local teacher were a woman. Literacy was ex
tremely limited among Muslim girls in colonial Algeria—approximately
one percent of the school-age female population in 1900. Still, educators
and administrators claimed to prioritize instruction for girls.40They would
eventually become mothers and could supposedly counterbalance the im
pact of Islam by passing French cultural norms on to their children.41
Throughout the colonial period, setder opposition limited the level of
Muslim participation in colonial schools. Indigenous instruction, in the eyes
of skeptics, threatened the delicate colonial balance. It provided cultural capital
to “dubiously” French persons who might one day compete for influence in
colonial society. An education might instill in indigenous youth a desire to
contest colonial rule and establish an independent Algeria. Indigenous schools
were sometimes built in remote areas of the Algerian countryside in order to
circumvent such European opposition.42 Arab and Berber intellectuals argued
after independence that French schools produced indigenous “déclassés” or
“roodess persons” who were unable to find their place in colonial society.43
They asserted that youths left schools less grounded than when they had ar
rived. These young people, “dépersonnalisés” or fractured from their school
experiences according to Algerian nationalists, were left adrift in colonial society.
French Language Instruction
The teaching of the French language constituted the focal point of the
colonial education system. If populations living in colonial Algeria could
speak French, some thought, they would have traveled half the distance
toward French identity, attaining “half French” status.44 They would begin
to think and feel French by mastering the language of Descartes, becoming
progressively assimilated as their fluency increased. Colonial writings ech
oed belief in the transformative powers of French. Substantive change would
occur, for instance, as Algerian Jews abandoned their maternal tongue and
learned French:
Le jargon judéo-arabe ou judéo-espagnol, parlé en Orient et dans le Nord
africain, maintient le Juif dans un état social inférieur. Du jour où il parla le
français, il se sentit un autre homme, il prit conscience de sa valeur et put se
croire un Occidental et, plus encore, un peu un Français.45
[The Judeo-Arabic tongue, or Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), spoken in the Orient
and in North Africa, keeps the Jew in a socially inferior state. Yet from the
day he first spoke French, he felt himself to be another person; he became
conscious of his worth and was able to consider himself an Occidental, and
still more, a bit French.]
The sooner all colonial populations spoke and read French, the sooner
these diverse groups of people would begin to identify in some way with
France. Colonial educators targeted settlers from neighboring Mediterra
nean countries, as well as indigenous populations, for French language ac
quisition. In 1937, essayist René Lespès contended that
si nos sujets musulmans méritent sans contredit une sollicitude toute
particulière, il y a d’autre part parmi les Européens toute une population
étrangère d’Espagnols, d’Italiens, de Maltais, de futurs naturalisés, qu’il
importe d’initier, dès l’enfance, à la culture et à l’esprit de notre civilisation.46
[If our Muslim subjects particularly merit our attention, there is additionally
among the Europeans a large foreign population of Spaniards, Italians, and
Maltese, future naturalized persons, whom it is important to initiate from
birth to the culture and spirit of our civilization.]
Frantz Fanon wrote that in speaking a foreign language, one simultaneously
appropriates a culture.47 Almost all indigenous and European settler chil
dren who attended colonial Algerian schools were provided with a specifi
cally French set of cultural tools.
Teaching French language in the colonies could not simply duplicate
the methods of language instruction used in metropolitan France, colonial
pedagogues believed. As early as 1910, specialized French textbooks used
in colonial Algeria explained why a different approach was needed.48 For
children who spoke Spanish, Kabyle, or Judeo-Aurabic at home, French had
to be taught as a second language. Educators insisted on its exclusive use in
classrooms.49 In this way, Algerian pupils would be taught to associate words
and physical objects with French meanings: “On montre un objet, on en
dit le nom, on fait faire une action et on prononce le verbe qui rexprime,>50
(“They are shown an object, told its name, an action is demonstrated and
the verb that expresses it pronounced”). Colonial authorities hoped that
French would thereby emerge as a natural and instinctive form of commu
nication, perhaps even taking the place of maternal tongues.
Just as regional dialects in public school classrooms of the French
provinces had been shunned, usage of Arabic or Berber in colonial schools
was long forbidden.51 French schools performed an internal colonization
of sorts by introducing peasant children to the French language and com
bating their local tongues.52 The teachers who taught language in colonial
Algerian schools declared, not without some measure of pride, that their
efforts to introduce indigenous populations to French had been successful.
Arabs and Berbers, particularly those of privileged social status, increas
ingly used French. They had supposedly taken a big step toward the assimi
lation of French culture.
Within the body of primary school literature used in colonial Algeria,
French language, grammar, and reading textbooks were most prominent.
The authors of one such text claimed:
Notre but sera atteint si nous réussissons à donner à nos petits Nord-Africains
le goût de la lecture et si nous aidons efficacement les maîtres dans la tâche si
délicate quest renseignement de la langue française.53
[Our goal will be attained if we succeed in giving to our North African school
children a taste for reading and if we effectively help teachers in the delicate
task of teaching the French language.]
Colonial educators, persons familiar with North African conditions and
populations, claimed that metropolitan language texts were not particu
larly suited to Algerian students of European or indigenous origin.54
Aucun des livres destinés au cours préparatoire ne fait à la vie locale, si
particulière dans ce pays-ci, la place qui doit lui revenir. Notre livre a pour
but essentiel de combler cette lacune.55
[None of the books destined for the first grade grants local life the place that
it deserves. Our book has the essential goal of filling that void.]
The authors of colonial language texts wanted to present French gram
mar and reading passages in ways that were familiar to Algerian groups.
The learning of a foreign language was already alienating enough without
added cultural ambiguity. Adapted reading texts, they declared, should,
[...] Présente à l’élève des scènes familières prises dans la réalité nord-africaine.
L’enfant s y reconnaît, il y reconnaît aussi les êtres et les choses qui font partie
de sa vie.”56
[... Present to the student familiar scenes taken from North African reality.
The child will see both himself as well as the persons and things that make
up his life.]
Educators were quick to mention that this was not meant to limit local
populations in their development, but to encourage it. “C ’est par
1’observation attentive de ce qui l’entoure que l’enfant libère les forces latentes
de son esprit.”57 (“It is through the attentive observation of what surrounds
the child that he frees the latent forces of his spirit”).
The most common images found in French exercises were related to
North African flora and fauna. School children read about birds, fish, wild
and domestic animals, the weather, climatic conditions, and other natural
phenomena. They learned about important sites and activities in their area:
the village, school, farm work, and trades. Lessons were organized under
such headings as “Un Souk,” “Un Couple de fellahs,” and “Matin dans le
bled”58 (“An indigenous market,” “A couple of peasants,” “Morning in the
[Algerian] countryside”). This rural or traditional Algerian context was
perhaps as familiar to school children of Italian, French, or Spanish descent
as it was to Arabs and Berbers. Lessons presented an abbreviated history of
successful European setdement along the coast and interior of Algeria. Titles
such as “Fondation du village de Pasteur en Algérie” (“Founding of the
village of Pasteur in Algeria”) and “Colons sablonneux” (“Dusty settlers”)
captured this history, providing a written account of the European emi
grant adventure.59
Educators aimed to stimulate Algerian youth,
Piquer leur curiosité et faire naître l’intérêt en évitant de jeter d’un seul coup
ces jeunes esprits au milieu de sujets trop étrangers à leurs habitudes, mais
aussi les familiariser peu à peu avec les sources de la culture occidentale.60
[To whet their curiosity and generate interest by not throwing youngsters
suddenly into a milieu foreign to their habits, but familiarize them little by
little with the sources of Western culture.]
Reading passages, grammatical exercises, and composition questions were
often taken from colonial Algerian novels. Excerpts by setder authors such as
Louis Bertrand, Ferdinand Duchêne, and Isabelle Eberhardt illustrated proper
usage of French, while introducing school children to colonial Algerian litera
ture. Passages of well-known French authors—Emile Zola, Honoré de Balzac,
Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier—were also read, especially when their novels
described traditional French ways of life or North African settings.
While placing Algerian school children in as familiar a setting as pos
sible, reading passages were also meant to foster a particular moral code:
Ici, rhistoriette, tout en contribuant à exercer l’enfant au langage, doit produire
sur lui une impression forte et servir à éclairer son jugement moral.61
[Here the story, while helping to exercise the child’s language skills, should
also produce in him a strong impression and serve to enlighten his moral
judgment.]
Early social scientists such as Emile Durkheim had discussed the impor
tance of shaping morality in the classroom, particularly through civic in
struction.62 If republican schools were to help integrate individuals into a
cohesive French society, a shared notion of moral conduct would contrib
ute to the establishment of social order. Durkheims work had a significant
impact on the republican ideology that was communicated through schools
and school materials. Language textbooks used in Algeria, and indeed in
other parts of the French colonial world, contained numerous anecdotal
messages stressing particular codes of conduct.63 As there were no civic
instruction texts designed specifically for Algerian primary school children,
French language texts served as substitutes.
Lessons on French social practices were especially evident in litera
ture intended for Arab and Berber school children. These were the groups
that many educators considered furthest from the French social, moral,
and cultural norm. In explaining what was considered proper behavior and
what was not, school texts offered Muslim children an introduction to the
essentials of an institutionally defined French identity. Frenchness as it ap
peared in school literature was determined in part by the things one did
and did not do. Primary school lessons gave pupils a detailed explanation
on how they should behave if they were to be considered French. Topics
such as "Il ne faut pas être gourmand” ("One must not be a glutton”), "Il
faut avoir les dents propres” ("One must have clean teeth”), “Il ne faut pas
bavarder . . . il faut écouter le maître” (“One must not talk and must listen
to the teacher”), and “Il ne faut jamais manquer la classe” (“One must
never miss class”) provided an indication of what teachers expected of indig
enous youth in their journey toward inclusion in French society.64 Frenchness
required work, and was all the more worthy of esteem as a result. Organized
French society, whether in metropolitan France or colonial Algeria, depended
on the suppression of individual desires, on moderation and self-control.
Such "essential conditions of civic sociability” help to promote the com
mon good and to create a larger social order from its individual parts.65
Language texts illustrated through word and image how youngsters
might dress, attend to personal hygiene, and even eat their breakfast, if
they aspired to Frenchness. Civilized (i.e. French) persons bathed, were
well groomed, courteous, punctual, and ate properly. In one vignette, a
French mouse mentions to a less refined creature, “mon cher, nous, les gens
de la ville, nous ne mangeons pas comme vous. Chacun a son assiette, sa
cuillère, son couteau”66 ("my dear fellow, we people of the city do not eat
like you. Each of us has his dish, his spoon, his knife”). Another textbook
pictured an Arab youth dunking a piece of bread into his bowl of café au
lait.67 Such images were intended to illustrate how indigenous populations
had already assimilated elements of French culture.
Similar socializing practices are evoked in classic French childrens litera
ture, such as the popular stories written by the Comtesse de Ségur.68 Her young
heroes and heroines conveyed (and continue to convey) proper French or bour
geois conduct to generations of children in France and other French-speaking
countries. A former teacher in the colonial Algerian school system noted how
Arab girls identified in many ways with Sophie and other young protagonists
of the Comtesse de Ségur.69 Like nineteenth-century childrens stories, colonial
textbooks illustrated how one could assimilate moral and social codes, and
thereby acquire the qualities necessary to gain entry into French society.
Greater French History
While colonial educators emphasized French language instruction in colo

nial schools in Algeria, in both European and indigenous institutions, the
study of French history closely followed in importance. History had always
been an integral part of a republican French curriculum, as educator Ernest
Lavisse had intended. Historical inquiry among school children, the au
thors of one text claimed, “contribuera à faire aimer, à travers l’histoire de
notre pays, notre pays même”70 (“will contribute to fostering love, through
the study of our history, of our country itself”). Some educators considered
the teaching of history as especially vital to colonial populations. Given
their distance from France, and the ambiguous nature of French identity in
North Africa, historical knowledge could provide the kinds of cultural
references that would make Frenchness more meaningful to Algerian
groups.
The teaching of French history at the primary school level in Algeria
was both similar to and distinct from instruction in France. Algerian school
teachers often used the very same textbooks as their French counterparts.71
Most metropolitan history texts focused on the study of pre-revolutionary
France. They consisted of broad surveys tracing French history from
Vercingétorix to Louis-Philippe, passing chronologically by the Gauls,
Merovingians, Carolingians, Capetians, Valois, and Bourbons. The exploits
of important figures such as Vercingétorix, Charlemagne, Saint Louis, Jeanne
d’Arc, Henri IV, and Louis XTV received special note in many of these
manuals. Each embodied an aspect of idealized and immortalized
Frenchness. Muslim and European writers frequently described their iden
tification with such historical figures. Growing up in colonial Algeria, they
aspired to emulate the characters that they discovered in school.72
The authors of metropolitan history textbooks located “real France”
in an ancient, conciliatory past, not within the more “agitated” era that
followed. France s revolutionary actors and events are dryly and succinctly
described in most primary school history books. The emphasis on the pre
revolutionary period drew particular attention to the pomp and protocol
of the French monarchy. The rise of great cities, cathedrals, and palaces,
particularly under the reign of Louis XTV, emerged as symbols of French
might. France had reached a certain cultural apogee by the eighteenth cen
tury, authors noted. At this moment in time, the French nation “[. . .]
occupe le premier rang dans le monde pour les arts, les lettres et les sci
ences”73 (“occupies the first rank in the world for the arts, letters, and sci-
ences ).
In addition to the standard history texts that were used, Algerian
school teachers had a set of specialized materials at their disposal, designed
to promote the historical study of Greater France, not metropolitan France
alone. Several such books appeared in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ac
cording to the school inspectors and pedagogues who wrote them, metro
politan materials were once again inappropriate for study on the African
shores of the Mediterranean Sea.74 Algerian primary schools and primary
school students required a specific Franco-Algerian approach to history.
With this idea in mind, colonial educators published dual histories of
both Algeria and France. Episodes of French history were printed on one
side of a page and similar episodes of Algerian history on the other.75They
formatted textbooks in this way so that French and Algerian history would
make more sense to schoolchildren. They emphasized the intersection of
French and Algerian trajectories.76 Franco-Algerian history could be trans
mitted most effectively to children, they argued, if French events clearly
coincided with events taking place in North Africa.77 Explicitly laid out,
side by side, the overlapping of these histories would become clear. Such a
dual presentation reinforced the notion that the life of each country was
intimately connected to that of the other. This legitimized the necessary
past, present, and future Frenchness of Algeria.
Algerian Governor General Marcel-Edmond Naegelen evoked such
sentiment in 1949. In simultaneously learning about both the histories of
France and Algeria, indigenous and settler school children
[. . .] aimeront davantage leur pays [Algeria] et la France, désormais
inséparables, unis pour les tâches de l’avenir comme ils Font été dans les joies
et les malheurs d’un siècle de vie commune.78
[. . . will love even more their country and France, henceforth inseparable,
united in the trials of the future as in the joys and sorrows of their century of
life together.]
Metropolitan pupils similarly studied the particularities of life in the colo
nies. The material gains of colonization were presented to French school
children as an important part of their own national or imperial history.
Beyond presenting a Franco-Algerian history to Algerian school chil
dren, some colonial textbooks attempted to shift the focus from the Euro
pean continent to North Africa. The authors of one book asked:
[...] Ne serait-il pas préférable de faire de l’Algérie un centre de perspective,
une porte ouverte sur la France et le monde [. . .]?79
[. . . Would it not be preferable to make Algeria a center of perspective, an
open door on France and the world . . . ?]
Algerian children needed to know more, officials argued, about the North
African world in which they lived, not just about the distant Métropole.
They should know about the individuals who were responsible for its cre
ation. They should know something of the history as well as the geographic
contours of Algeria. Once they knew more about their own country, they
could go on to the study of other subjects. Muslim nationalists who at
tended French schools complained that they had learned much about France,
but very little about Algeria. “Ignorant tout de son pays, l’Algérien apprend
par coeur les noms de tous les hameaux de Picardie et de Bretagne.”80
(“Knowing nothing about his country, the Algerian learns by heart the
names of all villages of Picardy and Brittany”). They contended that the
sole purpose of French instruction was to create model servants of France.
The simultaneous study of geography could contribute to a deeper
understanding of Algerian colonial realities. History and geography have
long combined to form a single discipline within the French educational
system. In the specialized textbooks used in colonial Algerian schools, stu
dents were introduced not only to the past, defining moments of French
and Algerian history, but also to the physical makeup of both countries.81
The contour, vegetation, and climate of the different parts of the French
colonial empire were examined and very often juxtaposed. Both educators
and politicians regretted that most settlers knew little if anything about the
vast expanses of territory lying outside their immediate locales. Drawing
the attention of children to the physical landscape of their imperial coun
try might stir in them an affinity, a colonial consciousness, as G. Bruno had
intended for national consciousness, in taking Julien, André and other school
children on a tour of France.82 Greater France would thus take on more
palpable meaning.
The juxtaposition of Algerian and French geographies, however, did
not always serve to join the métropole and colony in an imagined whole,
but rather to separate them. The authors of one text drew stark contrasts
between the geographic, demographic, and urban compositions of France
and Algeria. On the same page, fertile fields in France are compared to arid
North African spaces. Modern ports participating in French trade stand
out in comparison to the inactive and underdeveloped Algerian coast.83
Algeria and France appear quite dissimilar. The textbook states that they
have different climates (except for a thin strip along both coasts), distinct
vegetation and agricultural production, different mineral deposits and in
dustry, not to mention very different populations. One can only speculate
on the intentions of the authors. Images of French modernity juxtaposed
against Algerian “backwardness” would perhaps increase the esteem of lo
cal populations for France. They might develop a greater respect and ap
preciation for a visibly powerful and influential métropole. What clearly
emerges is the relationship of economic dependency tying Algeria to France.
Colonial educators were generally quite perceptive about the histori
cal and geographic information presented to children, for not all material
contributed to the incorporation of Algeria into Greater France, which
they clearly prioritized. One historical event which did promote inclusion
was Roman presence on either side of the Mediterranean Sea. The Roman
Empire had amassed parts of both the European continent and North Af
rica over the course of several hundred years. Under the influence of
Roman rule, “l’Afrique romaine” had allegedly become a reality. The
groups living in North Africa had assimilated Roman language, cul
ture, and religion. The proponents of “Roman” or “Latin Africa,” such
as novelist Louis Bertrand, asserted that European emigrants were de
scendants of this Roman tradition and heirs to it. Primary school lit
erature, however, evoked the fleeting nature of Roman influence in
North Africa:
[. . .] Loccupation romaine, pourtant si féconde et si belle, ne laissa d’autres

traces que des ruines; la langue latine ne fut plus parlée en Afrique du Nord;
le christianisme disparut.84
[. . . Roman occupation, so fertile and attractive, left no traces other than

ruins, the Latin language was no longer spoken in North Africa; Christianity
disappeared.]
While only vestiges remained, Roman influence, according to educators,

was far more beneficial than the subsequent Arabic invasions. “Sous la domi
nation arabe, l’Afrique du Nord ne connut pas la paix et l’ordre que les
Romains lui avaient assurés pendant cinq cents ans”85 (“Under Arab domi
nation, North Africa knew neither the peace nor the order that the Ro
mans had ensured it for five hundred years”).
A twentieth-century, transmediterranean event about which colonial
school children were informed was the participation of North African troops
in the Second World War. Colonial history textbooks noted how the “Army
of Africa” had helped to rid Europe of Nazi occupation. European and
indigenous soldiers took part in the military campaigns in southern France
and Italy. Algerian troops, colonial textbooks noted, served in the Second
Armored Division led by General Leclerc that stormed Paris and Strasbourg.
Illustrations highlighted the important role played by soldiers from the
colonies in the liberation of France.86 (See figure I.)
59° LEÇON LA GUERRE
◄ OBSERVONS ►
1. Le com bat de M onna Casale en Italie (1944).

Dam ces montagnes italiennes, des soldats de l'armée française d'Algérie se battent contre les Allemands.
En quelle saison ce combat se déroule-t-il? ^Comment les soldats algériens sont-ils üêtm? La bataille
est-elle acharnée? Les Français subissent-ils dei pertes? A quoi voyons-nous que cette montagne était
occupée par les Allemands avant l'attaque française?
2. Le débarquem ent allié en Provence (15 août 1944).

A quoi voyons-nous que nous sommes sur la côte provençale? Comment débarque-t-on les chars? les
hommes? De quel matériel les troupes françaises disposent-elles déjà pour lutter contre les Allemands?
Une attaque aérienne ennemie est-elle possible ? Décrivom un navire de débarquement. Les opérations
de débarquement se font-elles dans l'ordre et la discipline?
Figure 1. Illustrations from a school textbook. A. Bonnefm and M.
Marchard, Histoire de France et d A’ lgérie (Paris: Hachette, 1953), p. 118.
Used by permission.
60 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria» 1 9 3 0-1954
A Union of the Races?
The rudiments of French language, literature, history, and geography formed

the backbone of the colonial educational system. What was perhaps more
important, however, than the individual subjects presented to children were
the messages transmitted through them. The ideas articulated in primary
school literature are what colonial educators wanted Algerian Jews, Euro
peans, and Muslims to retain when they left the classroom. Historical events,
the names of towns and rivers in Normandy, and complicated grammatical
forms might be forgotten, but Algerian school children should remember and
perhaps even transmit the assimilationist ideology that educators conceived.
This constituted the foundation upon which the colonial regime rested.
One of the most pervasive messages evoked in primary school litera
ture of colonial Algeria was the idea of a “union of the races.” This notion
was particularly prevalent after 1949, when indigenous and settler school
tracks fused. A new set of school textbooks appeared after the reform that
encouraged collaboration between communities. Colonial officials recog
nized, certainly by the late 1940s, that cooperation between groups could
help to preserve French Algeria. A passage in one textbook declared:
[. ..] Ecoliers des villes, des villages, du bled, de la tribu, vous êtes tous assis
sur les mêmes bancs et penchés sur les mêmes livres [. . .]. Surtout, vous
apprenez à vous connaître et à vous aimer. C’est l’essentiel.87
[... School children from cities, towns, and the countryside, indigenous and
European, you are all seated at the same desks and studying the same texts. . . .
Most importantly, you are learning to know and to love one another. That is
essential.]
Schools, educators claimed, could function as vehicles of reconciliation and
reeducation. They might
[. . .] servir la même cause de compréhension mutuelle et de concorde entre
des hommes qui se coudoient journellement et qui gagneraient à se connaître
mieux et à s’apprécier équitablement.88
[. . . serve the same end of mutual comprehension and concord between
individuals who live together and who would profit from knowing each other
more and appreciating each other equally.]
Examples of racial union, both literal and figurative, were empha
sized in school literature. Textbook passages provided evidence of the “union
of the races,” some even before the fusion of indigenous and European
school tracks. In these segments, Muslim and European children coexist
happily, bound by a common pact of friendship. Françoise and Ourida,
two children described in one section, share experiences and adventures.89
Their camaraderie extends beyond the classroom and schoolyard. Ourida
visits the home of her European friend, a metaphor for the meeting of two
different worlds. Similarly, the friendship between Marcel and Sliman is
symbolic of a broader uniting of peoples.90 The two boys, despite their
differences, are at ease with one another, and harmoniously interact. They
exchange hats, Marcels European beret for Slimans traditional “chéchia,” blur
ring the two separate and often opposing cultures. Non-acceptance of others is
clearly denounced in scholastic materials. A character named Raphael, described
as “un méchant” or “bad seed” calls Sliman a “sale Arabe” (“dirty Arab”). Marcel
intercedes in a symbolic act, defending his friend and rejecting such hostility.91
Algerian primary school literature describes a world of tranquil coex
istence between Europeans and Muslims, where life is governed by mutual
understanding and respect. European knowledge of Arab and Berber cus
toms served as a means of encouraging this. School literature provided
European children with an introduction to Islamic religious practices and
celebrations such as Ramadan. It attempts to transcend cultural differences
through education and knowledge.92 Distinct traditions were often explained
in simplified (sometimes grossly simplified) terms. In one tale, school chil
dren are told why Arabs and Berbers do not drink wine: Legend claimed
that an Arab once drank wine and then engaged in improper acts.93
In similar fashion, the instruction given Arab and Berber children in
colonial schools represented a means of acquainting them with Western
thought and culture. Teachers and textbooks introduced indigenous pupils
to aspects of European life that were foreign. Indeed, one of the primary
purposes of colonial Algerian instruction was to make French language,
culture, and society more familiar to Muslims. It was never imagined that
educated Arabs and Berbers would assimilate to the point of religious con
version. Yet colonial schools provided a site where common ground be
tween indigenous and European populations could be found.94
France and French identity, as depicted in primary school literature,
were to represent a rallying point for Algerian school children of all ethnic
backgrounds. Educators insisted that since Algerian populations were all
subject to the same French authority, Muslims, Europeans, and Jews were
equally French. They ignored the differing citizenship status for indigenous
and settler populations. Passages inferred that cultural differences had dis
integrated and union had been achieved in the Algerian “melting pot.”
[. . .] Dans les villes, beaucoup [Muslims] ne se distinguaient plus des
Européens. Ils avaient le sentiment d’être les égaux des Algériens d’origine
européenne et aspiraient à participer à la vie publique.95
[. . . In cities, many no longer set themselves apart from Europeans. They
had the sense of being tjie equals of Algerians of European descent and as
pired to participate in public life.]
Arabs and Berbers had supposedly assimilated in the classroom as
well as on the battlefield. The reforms making French status more acces
sible to more categories of people within the Muslim population were con
ceived to reward this participation.96 Algerian Muslims, thus, “[. . .] ont le
droit de revendiquer avec fierté le titre de Français musulmans que la
législation nouvelle a rendu officiel”97 (“. . . have the right to proudly de
mand the title of French Muslim which the new legislation has rendered
official”). Colonial textbooks indicated that European settlers of non-French
descent, the offspring of Italian, Spanish, and Maltese migrants, had simi
larly become French. They had entered into the naturalized French popu
lation, assimilated through schooling and military service.
Les Français forment donc l’élément prépondérant des Européens. A leur
contact, les étrangers, en adoptant leur langue, leur culture et leurs lois,
acquièrent rapidement les caractères distinctifs de la mentalité française.98
[So the French make up the preponderant element of the European popula
tion. Through contact with them, and by adopting their language, culture,
and laws, foreigners rapidly acquire the distinctive traits of the French men
tality.]
This was certainly desired by colonial authorities, even if it was not entirely
true. Should any doubts have lingered about the Frenchness of these Medi
terranean groups, the authors of one textbook insisted that the European
population of Algeria spoke French and was very attached to the métropole.99
If colonial educators are to be believed, children of Jewish, Muslim,
and European descent all shared a common devotion to France. Textbook
lessons indeed emphasized the study of France and its colonial empire.100
The content of these passages suggested that all school children should pay
special homage to the cherished mire-patrie, the “mother-country.” The
young people whose stories are told demonstrate their French patriotism
by observing national holidays such as Bastille Day and singing “la
Marseillaise.” Marcel and his father for instance, two textbook characters,
attend the July 14 processions that are staged in honor of French revolu
tionary universalism. They witness the tribute paid to the indigenous sol
diers, Tirailleurs, Zouaves, and Spahis, who served in the French military
During this public ritual of patriotism, Marcel learns to be grateful for
French activity in North Africa. He hears the emotion with which Euro
pean and indigenous people celebrate this French national holiday. “[. . .]
Et Marcel applaudit comme les autres en criant de toutes ses forces: ‘Vive la
France!”101 (“And Marcel applauds with the others by shouting with all his
might, ‘Long live France!'")
Primary school literature informed pupils of indigenous and Euro
pean descent that they should come to know and love their native country,
Algeria, in addition to their “grande patrie,” France. Yet, as emphasized
throughout this study, the distinction between the country where one lived
and the “patrie” to which one was devoted was not always clear. From a
metropolitan standpoint, any sort of localized Algerian sentiment was to
be superseded by a broader French identity and an all-encompassing loy
alty to France.
Algériens [...], enfants des villes ou du bled, du Tell ou du Sud, au teint clair
ou bronzé, regardez la France toute proche malgré la mer. C’est là votre
patrie. Vous êtes tous des frères; traitez-vous en frères.102
[Algerians . . . » children of the city and the countryside, from the coastal
mountains or the south, of fair or dark complexion, look out at France so
near despite the sea. That is your homeland. You are all brothers. Treat each
other as brothers.]
In an accompanying illustration, three traditionally-clad Muslims gaze out
across the Mediterranean Sea at the distinct shape of the “Hexagon” on the
horizon. (See figure 2.) Indigenous and settler children are instructed:
Ayez pour votre génération la noble ambition d’intégrer dans la France, la
plus belle personne morale que le monde ait connue, tous les fils d’une Algérie
unie, prospère et forte.103
[Have for your generation the noble ambition of integrating into France, the
most beautiful moral entity that the world has known, all the sons of a united,
prosperous, and strong Algeria.]
The text and illustration convey many of the ambiguities of French colo
nial Algeria: It was French yet not French, exotic yet familiar, near yet far.
Colonialists and educators may have envisioned Algeria and France as one,
but they could not ignore the expanse of the Mediterranean Sea. The Mus
lims they imagine in the textbook gaze across it longingly at France on the
horizon, which is represented, presumably, as a rising sun. For these same
individuals, as well as for others, this hexagon/sun could very well have
been setting. In another textbook image (see figure 3), Algerian children
are asked to imagine North Africa being enlightened and led by Marianne,
symbol of the French Republic.
Generally praiseworthy of France, the authors of colonial textbooks
were periodically critical. Some condemned “les hésitations et les erreurs”
of French colonial policy.104 The “reality” that North Africa was entirely
French was proof enough to pedagogues of the legitimacy, the appropriate
ness of French colonial efforts. “Le bloc africain français est devenu ainsi
une forte réalité”105 (“The French African continent has thus become a
solid reality”). By targeting children, the youth and future of colonial Alge
ria, school literature helped to perpetuate the belief that not just Algeria
but all of Africa had become French. France had become “Greater” by the
penetration of French civilization and culture into the North African coastal
region and indeed beyond.
Despite the arguments made to promote the union of the races within
Greater France, inconsistencies in this discourse existed. Primary school
literature indicated that settler and indigenous populations lived in differ
ent physical worlds separated by a vast cultural void. The content of scho
lastic materials expressed the colonial reality of ethnic segregation. Many of
the illustrations presented in these works describe rigid social and economic
barriers that hindered the desired union. They depict largely autonomous
spheres populated by the “colonized” and “colonizers.”
Algerian school children discovered what distinguished Europeans
from indigenous groups in their textbooks. Distinct language, dress, and
religious practices set the members of the two populations apart. “L’Ecolier
indigène” or “Indigenous pupil” described in one text appears visibly dif
ferent, in his or her traditional and often tattered attire, from the well-
groomed French pupil.106 Arabic school children were asked to describe
these differences in written exercises. The targeted end was perhaps inspira
tion to attain the elevated status of the French pupil.
Other cultural differences set indigenous children apart from settlers.
In school texts, traditional Muslim dwellings differ significantly from French-
style homes. Lessons point out the privileged status of European adults
whose knowledge, relative wealth, influence, and power distinguish them
Figures 2 and 3. Illustrations from a school textbook. H. Miraton, Notre

Livre (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1951), pp. 136-137. Used by permission.
from poorer, uneducated Muslims. Europeans appear as teachers, doctors,

and shop-owners who aid the indigenous population. Such differences place
young European boys in positions of authority vis-à-vis Arabic adults.
François, a ten year-old whose life is told in one book, can tell time while
“vieille Mounie” (“old Mounie”) cannot.107 The text informs school chil
dren that François does not tease Mounie and will eventually teach her to
tell time when he himself knows how more fully.
One can see the distance between European and indigenous worlds
through the very effort required to draw them together. An impoverished,
isolated existence, either in the countryside or city, placed Arabs and Berbers
outside the well-defined spheres of European comfort. Contact between
the indigenous population and the urbane French world sometimes re
quired a lengthy trip. When Abdallah travels to Algiers from his rural dwell
ing, he discovers many foreign and surprising things— trains, buses, tram
ways, ships, department stores, and traditional French homes and gardens.108
Ali and Fatima make their way to the French urban landscape by bus, and
are also confronted with people and objects unlike those of their rural
sphere.109
The French world to which school texts provide children access, al
beit hesitantly, is one of modernity, of automobiles, ships, and airplanes.
France in school literature is technological innovation exemplified.110Planes
can transport Muslims from French-inspired Algerian cities to France it
self. In the time that it took indigenous children to travel from the oudying
countryside into the city, they might travel from Algiers to Paris. The dis
tance between Algiers and the remote North African countryside thus ap
pears greater than the distance between the French and Algerian capitals.
French advances seemed to close the gap between the two sides of the Medi
terranean Sea, rendering the métropole all the more accessible.
Educators thought that the French world should not appear menac
ing but rather helpful to Algerian children. Textbooks reminded them that
magnanimous French efforts had drastically altered indigenous life by mak
ing individuals less vulnerable to disease and suffering. Pupils read in one
text:
C’est la France qui envoie des médecins en pays indigènes, c’est elle aussi qui
fait construire les infirmeries et les hôpitaux où les malades vont se foire
soigner.111
[It is France that sends doctors to native countries, it is she that builds infir
maries and hospitals where the sick go to seek care.]
Such depictions encouraged people to think of France as a benevolent per
son or parent, the fabled “mother-country.” France provided “her children”
with the opportunity to go to school, to travel more efficiently, to work
and eat regularly, to communicate by telephone and by postal service.
The admiration that colonial schools sought to generate for France
and for the fruits of French activity in colonial Algeria may not have been
enough to encourage local populations to consider themselves French.
Pedagogic representations could not erase the reality of impediments to
French citizenship status in colonial society. Nor could they ease the social
tensions that arose in colonial society as a result, particularly after the Sec
ond World War.
Conclusion
Viewed through the prism of specialized textbooks, some conclusions can

be drawn about the colonial Algerian school system. Educators transmitted
knowledge of a particular sort deemed important in the colonial Algerian
setting. They expected French colonial schools to lead the push for a moral
conquest of Algeria, a pedagogic francisation of the country, after the mili
tary conquest had been achieved in the past century.112 Schools could per
haps generate a French cultural identity for those whom legislation never
recognized as French citizens. After 1949, when European and Muslim
school tracks formally combined, there were fewer distinctions made be
tween the instruction given each group.
The intention of Algeria’s indigenous schools, long the sole avenue of
instruction for Muslims, was to create an elite able to communicate and
travel between the European and indigenous spheres.113 Educators thought
that these products of the French educational system in North Africa could
serve as ambassadors of Frenchness in colonial society, simply by interact
ing with the various populations. By their example, they could perhaps
encourage more Arabs and Berbers to assimilate. Colonial schools served as
training grounds for a Muslim labor force in French industries. The
longstanding vocational focus of indigenous instruction supports the goal
of the development of Muslim industrial and agricultural labor. The subse
quent migration of Algerian workers to the métropole in the 1940s, 1950s,
and 1960s has been well documented.114
In indigenous or mixed primary schools however, fewer than twenty
percent of Arab and Berber children attendance by the mid-twentieth cen
tury. The impact of school instruction was therefore limited. While it is
difficult to ascertain how widely used were the specialized Algerian text
books examined in this chapter, educators clearly thought it necessary to
develop a special curriculum for the Algerian school population. In order
to promote francisation outside of France, in an Islamic country colonized
by emigrants of varied descent, they aimed to educate groups in ways that
were advantageous to the French colonial regime.
Muslim intellectuals who wrote about their experiences in colonial
primary schools often described them positively. A lifelong relationship
with French language and culture had been initiated. Yet they insisted that
they could not profit from their education and take their rightful place as
recognized French citizens in colonial Algerian society. Many of those edu
cated in the French school system became involved in the nationalist struggle,
ultimately fulfilling the prophecy of those who had opposed indigenous
instruction for this very reason.
Notes
1. Claude Augé and Maxime Petit, Premier Livre d'histoire de France (Paris: Librairie
Larousse, 1926), préface.
2. This is Eugen Weber’s argument in Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization o f
Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 1977). The extent to which
they had been assimilated is however debatable.
3. My analysis does not address the instruction given in other places of learning such
as Koranic schools.
4. Elizabeth Ezra, The Colonial Unconscious: Race and Culture in Interwar France
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2000), 131.
5. See L’Amicale des anciens instituteurs et instructeurs d’Algérie et le cercle
algérianiste, 1830-1962, Des Enseignants d ’Algérie se souviennent... de ce qu’y fu t l'enseignement
primaire (Toulouse: Editions Privât, 1981). Colonial educators believed that French schools
and materials provided indigenous and European youth with a distinctly French framework
with which to speak, think, and reason.
6. Antoine Prost, Histoire de l’enseignementfrançais, 1800-1965 (Paris: PUF, 1968).
7. Yves Déloye, Ecole et citoyenneté: L'individualisme républicain de Jules Ferry à Vichy:
Controverse (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1994), 14.
8. See Mona Ozouf’s L'Ecole, VEglise et la République (Paris: Armand Colin, 1963), as
well as more recently, La République des instituteurs by Jacques and Mona Ozouf (Paris:
Gallimard, 1993).
9. Claude Digeon, La Crise allemande de la pensée française (Paris: PUF, 1959).
10. Déloye, Ecole et citoyenneté, 25.
11. G. Bruno, Le Tour de la France par deux enfants (Paris: Librairie classique Eugène
Belin, 1877).
12. Ibid., 314-15.
13. Ibid., 10.
14. Ernest Lavisse expressed his convictions concerning French education and pa
triotism in Questions d'enseignement national (Paris: Armand Colin, 1885).
15. Pierre Nora, “Ernest Lavisse, l’instituteur de la République,” in Les Lieux de
mémoire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1984).
16. Raoul Girardet, Vidée coloniale en France, 1871—1962 (Paris: La Table ronde,
1972), 63.
17. Jacques et Mona Ozouf, “Le Thème du patriotisme dans les manuels primaires,”
Le Mouvement social (octobre-décembre 1964): 3-32. See also Barnett Singer, “From Patri
ots to Pacifists: The French Primary School Teachers, 1880—1914,”Journal o f Contemporary
History 12 (1977): 413-34.
18. Information d ’Outre-Mer, n° 1, janvier 1939, p. 1.
19. This was implemented in February 1883. See L’Amicale des anciens instituteurs,
Des Enseignants d'Algérie se souviennent, 133.
20. For more information, see Yvonne Turin, Affrontements culturels dans Âlgérie
coloniale: Ecoles, médecines, religion, 1830—1880 (Paris: Maspero, 1971).
21. Antoine Léon, Colonisation, enseignement, et éducation (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991),
166—67.
22. Elsa M. Harik and Donald Schilling, The Politics o f Education in Colonial Algeria
and Kenya (Athens, Ohio: Center for International Studies, 1984), 60.
23. C. Dumas, Pour Raconter les 50 Images et histoires sans paroles (Paris: Librairie
classique Fernand Nathan, 1910), 42-43.
24. A. Davesne, Mamadou et Bineta lisent et écrivent couramment (Paris: Librairie
ISTRA, 1935), 84.
25. For an example of such skepticism, see Jean Paillard, Faut-il Faire de Âlgérie un
dominion! (Paris: Fernand Sorlot, 1939).
26. Harik and Schilling, The Politics o f Education in Colonial Algeria and Kenya, 25.
27. See Prost, Colonisation, enseignement et éducation, 155.
28. See Déloye, Ecole et citoyenneté, for discussion of Vichy reform of the republican
educational program.
29. AOM, 10 H 90 (15), “Historique de l’enseignement primaire, 1830-1946.”
30. See Aimé Dupuy, Bouzaréa: Histoire illustrée des écoles normales d'instituteurs d'Alger-
Bouzaréa (Alger: Fontana, 1938). See also Fanny Colonna, Instituteurs algériens, 1883-
1939 (Paris: FNSP, 1975).
31. Edmond Besnard, “La Préparation des maîtres à la carrière coloniale: L’école
Jules Ferry,” La Revue du Pacifique 1, 2 (1931): 66-70.
32. Nineteenth-century education reform claimed: “Vous êtes l’auxiliaire et, à certains
égards, le suppléant du père de famille. [...]” (“You are the auxiliary and, in certain respects,
the replacement for the family father. . . .”). Citation taken from L’Amicale des anciens
instituteurs, Des Enseignants d'Algérie se souviennent, 136.
33. Dupuy, Bouzaréa, 73.
34. Statistics vary slightly depending on the source. See L’Amicale des anciens
instituteurs, Des Enseignants d'Algérie se souviennent, 101.
35. See Fanny Colonna, “Educating Conformity in Colonial Algeria,” Tensions o f
Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1997), 347.
See also Patricia Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping Prejudice and Race in ColonialAlge
ria (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995).
36. Juan Bta. Vilar, Les Espanoles de laArgelia francesa (1830-1914) (Madrid: Centro
de Estudios Histdricos, 1989), 314.
37. See Guy Pervillé, Les Etudiants algériens de l'universitéfrançaise, 1880-1962 (Paris:
CNRS, 1984). In Médersas, one could study law, Eastern literature, or Islamic theology.
These schools formed an Arabized elite.
38. These religiously affilitated schools were few in number in comparison to schools
run by the French colonial administration.
39. See Claude Olivier, Institutrice en Algérie (Paris: Julliard, 1958), as well as the
memoirs of former teachers Jacques Gohier and Josette Sutra, Instructeur en Algérie (Rodez:
Editions Subervie, 1966), and Algérie mon amour: Constantine, 1920-1962 (Mézilles: Edi
tions de l’Atlanthrope, 1979), respectively.
40. L’Amicale des anciens instituteurs, Des Enseignants d ’Algérie se souviennes, 96.
41. The need to educate indigenous women is discussed in administrative reports.
The male Muslim elite supposedly required suitable spouses. See AOM, 10 H 90 (15),
“Historique de renseignement primaire, 1830-1946.”
42. Harik and Schilling, The Politics o f Education in Colonial Algeria and Kenya, 10.
43. See for instance A. Mazouni, Culture et enseignement en Algérie et au Maghreb
(Paris: Maspero, 1969).
44. Such was the philosophy of educators at the normal schools at Bouzaréah.
45. Bulletin d ’enseignement public au Maroc, n° 83 (1927): 8. Citation taken from
Léon, Colonisation, Enseignement et Education, 59.
46. René Lespès, Pour Comprendre Âlgérie. Ouvrage publié sous les auspices du
Gouvernement de l'Algérie (Alger: V. Heintz, 1937), 187.
47. Fanon wrote “Parler une langue, c'est assumer un monde, une culture,” in Peau
noire, masques blancs (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952), 30.
48. P. Bernard, F. Redon, and Ch. Dumas, La Lecture et la languefrançaise, published
in 1910.
49. See R Frété and R. Magne, Leçons de langage (Rabat: Ecole du livre, 1932), 4.
50. L’Amicale des anciens instituteurs, Des Enseignants dAlgérie se souviennent, 135.
51. Arabic did not receive status as an official language of Algeria until 1947.
52. This is the assertion of Eugen Weber, author of Peasants into Frenchmen: The
Modernization o f Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Standford UP, 1977). See also Mary
MacDonald s ‘We are not FrenchV Language, Culture and Identity in Britanny (London:
Roudedge, 1989), which alludes to the preservation of regional modes of communication.
53. P. Bourgeois and L. Basset, Bonjour, Ali!Bonjour, Fatima! (Paris: Fernand Nathan,
1949), préface.
54. The names of Ch. Dumas (primary inspector at Algiers), H. Miraton (also an
inspector of primary schools in Algiers), and M. Marchand (chief of services for the depart
ment of primary education in Algeria) appear on numerous textbooks published for the
Algerian school population.
55. F. Chauvet and Cestac, Bébé, Simone et Marcel (Alger: Ancienne Maison Bastide-
Jourdain, 1949), 1-2.
56. Ibid.
57. A. Davesne, Mamadou et Bineta lisent et écrivent couramment (Paris: Librairie
ISTRA, 1935), 4.
58. J. Audurier and F. Gotteland, Au Seuil des lettres (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1953).
59. P. Bernard, F. Redon, and Ch. Dumas, La Lecture et la langue française (Paris:
Librairie Delagrave, 1910). This was designed especially for schools serving European popu
lations in North Africa.
60. Audurier and Gotteland, Au Seuil des lettres, 8.
61. Ch. Dumas, Pour Raconter les 50 Images et histoires sans paroles, 2. Intended for
instruction in Algeria, Tunisia, and other Muslim countries.
Colonial Schoob and the Transmission o f French Culture 71
62. See in particular, Emile Durkheim, L'Education morale (Paris: Quadrige/PUF,
1963).
63. A French language text destined for West African schools conveys similar codes
of morality. See Davesne, Mamadou et Bineta lisent et écrivent couramment.
64. Frété and Magne, Leçons de langage, lessons 93, 97, 98, 102, respectively.
6$. Yves Déloye refers to “conditions essentielles de la sociabilité civique.” Déloye,
Ecole et citoyenneté, 96-97.
66. Bourgeois and Basset, Bonjour Ali! Bonjour Fatima!, ?>6—?>7.
67. Ibid.
68. See classics such as Les Malheurs de Sophie and Les Petites Filles modèles.
69. Josette Sutra, Algérie mon amour: Constantine 1920-1962, 136.
70. L. Lecat and A. Locqueneux, L'Histoire de France par Limage et le récit (Paris:
Librairie Delalain, 1945), 1.
71. In addition to the Lecat and Locqueneux textbook cited above, see Premier Livre
d'histoire de France by Cl. Augé and M. Petit (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1926). This metro
politan primary school history text was reportedly used in colonial Algeria.
72. Novelist Emmanuel Roblès, author of the autobiographical essay Jeunes Saisons
(Alger: Baconnier, 1961), described on pp. 75—77 this desire among the children of Spanish
setders such as himself.
73. A. Bonnefin and M. Marchand, Histoire de France et d'Algérie (Paris: Hachette,
1953), 75.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.
76. M. Sémidéi, “De l’Empire à la décolonisation à travers les manuels scolaires
français,” Revue française de science politique 16 (1966): 56-86.
77. Joëlle Hureau argues that the histories of the two countries became linked defini
tively after the expedition of 1830, an often overlooked fact in her opinion. See her La
Mémoire des Pieds-Noirs (Paris: O. Orban, 1987).
78. Words of Algerian Governor General Marcel-Edmond Naegelen in preface of
LAlgérie: Histoire et géographie byE. Colin, P. Damville, and J. Guillemin (Alger: Baconnier,
1949), 5.
79. M. Marchand and A. Fontaine, Regards de l'Algérie sur la France, l'Union françabe
et le monde (Oran: Fouque, 1958), 4.
80. “Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques” in Algérie (MTLD),
Réalités algériennes, 1953, p. 71.
81. See primary school textbooks such as E. Colin, P. Damville, and J. Guillemin,
L'Algérie: Histoire et géographie. Algerian geography was sometimes the sole focus of school
textbooks.
82. See Bruno, Le Tour de la France par deux enfants.
83. See Marchand and Fontaine, Regards de l'Algérie sur la France, 47, 52.
84. Colin, Damville, and Guillemin, L'Algérie: Hbtoire et géographie, 47.
85. Ibid.
86. Bonnefin and Marchand, Histoire de France et d'Algérie, 118.
87. Colin, Damville, and Guillemin, L'Algérie: Histoire et géographie, 135.
88. H. Miraton, Notre Livre (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1951), préface.
89. Ibid., 26-27. Lesson eleven, entitled “Les deux amies,” describes the friendship
of Ourida and Françoise.
72 The Politics o f Frenchness in Cobn ial Algeria, 193 0 -1 9 5 4
90. Chauvet and Cestac, Bébé, Simone et Marcel, 38-39. Lesson sixteen is entitled
“Marcel et Sliman.”
91. Ibid., 40—41.
92. Ibid., 70-71.
93. Ibid. See lesson 21, “Un conte arabe.”
94. This is the thesis of Fanny Colonna, in Instituteurs algériens, 1833—1939 (Paris:
FNSP, 1975).
95. Colin, Damville, and Guillemin, UAlgérie: Histoire et géographie, 121-22.
96. There is no mention of the strong opposition to reform in Colin, Damville, and
Guillemins book.
97. Colin, Damville, and Guillemin, UAlgérie: Histoire et géographie, 128.
98. Ibid., 128.
99. Marchand and Fontaine, Regards de l’A lgérie sur la France: L’Union française et le
monde, 126.
100. Davesne, Mamadou et Bineta lisent et écrivent couramment, 163-66. See lessons
ninety-seven and ninety-eight, entitled “La France” and “La France et ses colonies.”
101. Chauvet and Cestac, Bébé, Simone et Marcel, 82-83. See lesson 38, “La revue.”
102. Miraton, Notre Livre, 136-37. The title of lesson sixty-four is “Mon pays, ma
patrie.”
103. Ibid.
104. Colin, Damville, and Guillemin, L’Algérie: Histoire et géographie, 82.
105. Ibid., 104.
106. See illustration in Dumas, Pour Raconter les 50 Images et histoires sans paroles, 4.
107. Miraton, Notre Livre, 12-13. See lesson four, entided “La Pendule.”
108. Ibid., 20. See lesson eight, “Le voyage à Alger.” The French world is not always
particularly welcoming to Abdallah. He is reminded that the traditional domain of his
family is more receptive to him. A passage reads: “Le pays où l’on vit auprès de ses parents
est toujours le plus beau” (“The country where one lives near his family is always the most
beautiful”).
109. See Bourgeois and Basset, Bonjour Ali! Bonjour Fatima!, 112.
110. Ibid.
111. Dumas, Pour Raconter les 50 Images et histoires sans paroles, 56-57.
112. This is an argument made by Antoine Léon in his Colonisation, Enseignement et
Education, 19.
113. Fanny Colonna, among others, has made this assertion.
114. Benjamin Stora, Ils venaient d ’Algérie: L’immigration algérienne en France, 1912-
1992 (Paris: Fayard, 1992).
J
THE COLONIAL PRESS AND THE
CONSTRUCTION OP GREATER
PRANCE
“L’Algérie officielle vit à l’heure française,” (“Official Algeria lives on French

time”), wrote Daniel Leconte.1The cadence of daily life, the routine and ritu
als of elite social groups, and the administration of parts of the country emu
lated the metropolitan model. The French-language press of colonial Algeria,
which I examine in the next two chapters, offers evidence of a colonial society
acutely attuned to French life. Its daily and weekly articles provide insight into
the concerns of the indigenous and settler populations in French North
Africa. Local newspapers, perhaps more than administrative reports or lit
erature, record the habitual occurrences of a particular society or culture.
The next two chapters begin with the premise that newspapers in
form their readers of who they are and define the boundaries of the local
and national space that they inhabit. They represent geographic and ideo
logical maps of sorts, charting the evolution of thought. For the literate,
they both articulate and shape the consciousness with which the world is
viewed, a nation conceived, and a culture constructed.2 From its very be
ginnings, I contend, the French-language Algerian press helped to formu
late the idea that Algeria was a region of France, distant yet ultimately
similar to those closer to the metropolitan center. After the departmental
ization of Algeria in 1848 and the emergence of inexpensive, widely circu
lating newspapers later in the century, the press could be an effective tool
73
for propagating the notion of an extended French territory. It served to
bridge the gap that separated the Algerian part of France from the Euro
pean core. As the European population grew in colonial Algeria, and after
an 1881 law provided greater freedom for the press, the audience and influ
ence of French-language newspapers increased.3
The local press articulated, for instance, among many other things,
the reality of Algerian dependence on metropolitan aid. Each of Algeria’s
daily newspapers listed the material needs that tied settler and indigenous
populations to France.4The accounts of common experiences, shared diffi
culties, and linked destinies demonstrated how European and Muslim groups
were affected by and participated in the formative moments that shaped a
French nation and national identity.
The colonial Algerian press constituted, I suggest, an important educa
tional tool, not unlike primary school texts, reflecting local sentiment as well as
producing ideas about France and Frenchness. The press informed local popu
lations about events taking place on the northern shores of the Mediterranean
Sea, in the French capital. In so doing, the French-language Algerian press
participated in the formation of French men and women. Moreover, for people
from metropolitan France who may have read Algerian newspapers, their con
tent demonstrated that colonial populations were interested in and affected by
French phenomena. In quite curious fashion, the Algerian press encouraged
both the development of French sensibilities in some readers, while also peri
odically informing other groups of their estrangement from the m&e-patrie.
This is its particularity. Whether journalists expressed admiration for France or
pronounced condemnation, local newspapers circulated ideas that placed the
Franco-Algerian union/fracture at the center of discussion in colonial society.
Colonial Algeria had two distinct French-language presses that re
flected two dissimilarly perceived realities. They reveal shifts in the way in
which settler and indigenous groups perceived their relationship to France
and to French identity. The “colonial” or “European” press catered to emi
grants of diverse backgrounds who had settled in large towns and cities.
Publications such as La Dépêche algérienne, LEcho d ’Oran, La Dépêche de
Constantine, and Alger-Républicain served the country’s three major cities.
Each participated in the development of the notion of Greater France. The
indigenous press examined in the following chapter, including La Voix des
humbles, La Voix indigène, La Défense, and Egalité, served a slightly differ
ent role. These newspapers expressed the urban Arab-Berber perspective on
Frenchness and the future of the Franco-Algerian union. Journalists at each
of the papers tended to conceptualize the relationship between colony and
métropole differently, although their ideas periodically converged.
The Colonial Press and the Construction o f Greater France 75
In order to comprehend a colonial reality oriented heavily toward the
métropole, I examine prominent newspapers during several periods of cri
sis or mutation, when ideas about France were most likely to be topics of
discussion and circulating. Political, social, or economic change in France
was almost certain to have some echo in Algeria, and for this reason, what
transpired in the métropole mattered to individuals in Algeria. Joëlle Hureau
argues that colonial Algerian life, specifically that of European settler soci
ety, was a reflection of existing conditions in France.5 Social agitation, po
litical currents, national celebrations, or cultural events that emerged in
France quickly crossed the Mediterranean Sea and resurfaced in Algeria.
Algerian newspapers transcribed this phenomenon. They served as a means
of facilitating communication between métropole and colony, sometimes
drawing them together and occasionally dividing them. At critical mo
ments, France truly constituted the mère-patrie toward which Algerian jour
nalists channeled their attention.
Such Franco-Algerian moments were recorded systematically in news
papers, creating a calendar of reproduced French life in colonial society. I
examine these documents for expressions of French sentiment during na
tional holidays for example, such as July 14 (Bastille Day) and November
11 (Armistice Day). Their commemoration in colonial Algeria helped to
generate a sense of Frenchness on southern shores of the Mediterranean
Sea.6
The reporting of national sporting results allowed French emigrant
populations in colonial Algeria to preserve regional affiliations. Official
visits by prominent French officials, such as the President of the Republic,
triggered commentary on the francisation of Algeria and its various popula
tions. An event such as the 1930 Centennial celebration of French pres
ence in North Africa set the stage for a lengthy Algerian discussion on
France and Frenchness. Similarly, the advent of the liberal French Popular
Front government in 1936 and its proposed naturalization reform project
generated heated discussion on assimilation and the preservation of French
Algeria. Intense debate continued a decade later with the creation of the
French Union and the Statute for Algeria.
The World Wars, more than any other event recorded in the colonial
and indigenous press, fused colony and métropole. Perhaps at no other
times did their futures seem so necessarily intertwined. The service of Eu
ropean and indigenous troops in both wars, and the establishment of the
Free France movement in Algiers in 1942, was a testimony to the interde
pendent Franco-Algerian relationship. This rapport received considerable
attention in the colonial press. I focus primarily on the beginning and end
of the Second World War in this chapter, examining the declarations of
French sentiment in Algerian newspapers inspired by the events of Sep
tember 3, 1939, and May 8, 1945.
A History of the French Press in Colonial Algeria
Daily Algerian newspapers, which first appeared in print in the mid-nine

teenth century, connected Algeria’s settler population to French culture and
society in the métropole. They represented one of the lifelines that fused
the various parts of Greater France and blurred the distinction between
colony and métropole. Many of the newsworthy events presented in this
“local” Algerian press were not strictly local, but rather “imperial.” Alge
rian papers transmitted news of France to peoples far removed from its
shores. For settlers of Spanish, Italian, and French descent, some of whom
had never set foot on the European continent, this press described a largely
unknown country. If one assumes that France could become increasingly
less foreign as it was discovered through the press, settler populations in
colonial Algeria might also identify more with Frenchness the longer they
remained there. The printed word indeed helped to redefine the meaning
of the nation as one no longer restricted to one particular geographic body
or group of people.7
Organized originally under the auspices of the French army and colo
nial administration, newspapers in colonial Algeria had a lengthy history.
French-language papers predominated throughout virtually all of the colo
nial period, but a small Arabic press, closely scrutinized by French authori
ties, did exist. Many newspapers, particularly those printed from the mid
nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, had bilingual editions in French
and Arabic.8The French armed services, for instance, had its papers trans
lated into Arabic in order to reach a greater number of indigenous persons.
Other presses existed on a much smaller scale: A tiny Italian-language press
developed in eastern Algeria, where many Sicilian and Neapolitan emi
grants had settled, but it had largely disappeared by 1900.9 Spanish news
papers, supported by a larger emigrant population, managed to survive a
little longer in western Algeria, into the early 1930s.10
The advent of the Second World War brought about a radical shift in
the French newsprint media. Many newspapers, on both sides of the Medi
terranean Sea, did not resume circulation after the conflict. The collabora
tion of certain newspapers and journalists with the Vichy government
sparked a purge of the French press and ultimately its regeneration. Politi
cians in postwar France inaugurated “a new press,” reborn and theoretically
cleansed of complicity with the enemy.11
The modern, mass-circulated French press, combining word and image
in an esthetically pleasing way, developed in colonial Algeria as it did, more
rapidly, in France. As newspapers emerged and became more accessible to
an increasingly literate populace, they affected more and more persons
throughout the French colonial world. The ever-increasing presence of
photographs and sensationalized titles, used to stimulate reader interest,
could be found in newspapers on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea. The
press had become an important disseminator (or more accurately perhaps
manipulator) of information in French society. By the late nineteenth cen
tury for instance, an image of Africa had taken shape in Europe, due in part to
metropolitan newspapers.12 News of events taking place in parts of West and
North Africa reached French homes in ways that had not been possible before
the development of a high circulation, relatively inexpensive press. Similarly,
for people living in North Africa, daily Algerian newspapers provided numer
ous and sometimes contradictory descriptions of French society and culture.
Colonial Algerian newspapers did not circulate as widely as metro
politan newspapers. They were read in far fewer numbers generally than Le
Petit Parisien, for instance, which sold one million copies daily in France in
the early twentieth century. In an era of growing mass communication, the
metropolitan and colonial press became powerful tools of political parties
and governments. The modern state s use of the press to dispense and con
trol information was essential in an increasingly global struggle for domi
nance.13 Over the course of the twentieth century, the competing claims
for influence in North Africa intensified. The content of Algerian newspa
pers reveals some of the forces vying with France for authority in colonial
North Africa.
The very day that French forces landed in North Africa, at Sidi-Ferruch
near Algiers on June 14, 1830, LEstafette d'Alger appeared, a short-lived
paper intended for the French regiments stationed there.14 More than one
hundred thirty years later, on June 18,1965, the communist-affiliated
Républicain, last of the colonial newspapers still in circulation, printed its
final edition.15 Between these two dates, dozens of papers appeared, some
lasting decades, others disappearing more rapidly, a few emerging under a
new name after a first launching. According to a tally made in 1936, the
French-language press in Algerian towns and cities included 13 daily news
papers, 70 weeklies, and a host of socially and culturally oriented publica
tions printed monthly.16
UEcho d'Oran was the oldest and arguably the most influential of the
newspapers read in colonial Algeria. Founded in 1844, this daily of the
moderate right reached an audience of approximately 80,000 readers by
1936 and 93,500 two years later.17 It was reportedly the most widely read
of the colonial newspapers. In 1952, on each cover, the paper claimed to
have the highest circulation, and sales in North Africa.18Approximately ten
years later, Algerian independence brought about the demise of the country’s
first modern newspaper.
La Dépêche algérienne, founded in 1885, was another of colonial
Algeria’s oldest established daily newspapers. It had a slightly smaller circu
lation level, but a political philosophy similar to that of UEcho d'Oran. By
the early twentieth century, between 50,000 and 70,000 papers were sold
daily.19 The conservatism of La Dépêche algérienne, which became more
pronounced with the advent of the Popular Front, would eventually lead to
its folding. Unlike other daily newspapers in Algeria, it did not survive the
purge of the postwar period. It succumbed in 1946, penalized for its sup
port of the Vichy regime. A successor emerged three years later, La Dépêche
quotidienne dAlgérie, but its circulation never attained past heights.
After the end of the Second World War, former subscribers to La Dépêche
algérienne began buying UEcho d'Alger, its principal competitor. UEcho d'Alger
had first appeared on newsstands in March 1912. Politically, it was situated in
the center. The daily upheld a French republican tradition in the 1920s and
1930s, promoted notably by the radical senator and editor Jacques Duroux.
When Alain de Sérigny took over as editor-in-chief in 1941, the newspaper
adopted a more conservative stance. Sérigny was decorated by Marshall Philippe
Pétain during the Second World War, but managed to salvage UEcho d'Alger
from a fate similar to that of La Dépêche algérienne. At that time, the paper
sold approximately 20,000 copies a day.20Throughout the postwar period,
articles in UEcho d'Alger testily articulated the tension that permeated Alge
rian society. Editorialist F. Beuscher, a frequent contributor, conveyed the
somber mood of the period. A little over a decade after the Second World
War, in the midst of armed conflict, UEcho d'Alger disappeared from print.
Newspapers outside Algiers or Oran, in the eastern part of Algeria,
did not reach as wide an audience. Journals such as La Dépêche de
Constantine, founded in 1908, and La Dépêche de l'Est, launched in Bone
in 1883, attained daily circulation levels of 40,000 and 10,000 copies re
spectively.21 Each had moderate political tendencies, and served as primary
sources of information in the region.
In comparison to other French-language newspapers in colonial Al
geria, Alger-Républicain stood apart in its orientation and worldview. Its
editors believed it to be the only paper neither connected to the colonial
regime nor co-opted by it. Alger-Républicain developed out of the élan gen
erated among the political Left by the coalition Popular Front government.
In the fall of 1938, a defining editorial declared: “Son programme politique
sera strictement celui du Rassemblement populaire, dont tous les partis et
organisations ont participé à sa fondation”22 (“Its political agenda will be
strictly that of the Popular Front, which all acting parties and affiliates have
helped found”). The paper had direct but not always acknowledged ties to
the French Communist Party, particularly after the Second World War.
Alger-Républicains most prominent journalist was the Algerian-born
writer Albert Camus. Camus contributed numerous editorials, often of an
investigative sort, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, before becoming edi
tor-in-chief of the French Resistance newspaper Combat. Many other no
table figures of European, Jewish, and indigenous origin wrote articles ap
pearing in the papers columns.23 Although Alger-Républicain printed far
fewer copies than its competitors in the interwar period, during the few
years that it survived after Algerian independence, it reached a daily circu
lation of approximately 100,000, which represented the largest readership
in the Maghreb.24
Politically, there were clear demarcations among the various Algerian
newspapers. The ideological leanings of each give some indication of who
might have read them. Readership of these publications was certainly pre
dominately European. The vast majority of the Arab-Berber population
was illiterate and unable to read French or Arabic newspapers. Charles-
Robert Ageron contends that the only colonial newspaper read with any
regularity by the educated Muslim elite was Alger-Républicain.15 The pres
ence of indigenous journalists on the staff appears to have created the con
text for this support, as well as a noted weekly column entitled “La ques
tion indigène”26 (“The native question”).
Algeria on French Time
From its inception, the colonial press directed the attention of its readers
toward metropolitan horizons. It contributed to the formation of an ex
tended French consciousness so desired by colonial officials. The topics of
articles assumed some level of familiarity with the primary subject, France,
but also served to generate greater knowledge. Articles appearing in local
newspapers engaged Algerian readers in a discussion of significant events
that were taking place in Paris. They offered a North African interpretation
80 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria , 193 0 -1 9 5 4
of metropolitan life and provided a constant reminder to Algerian popula
tions of the importance of French support. Local authorities never lost
sight of the Franco-Algerian relationship of dependence, and this central
fact reverberates through the columns of the colonial press.
French news adorned the front cover and first few pages of the Alge
rian press. As in the metropolitan press, national events were covered first,
followed by local and regional news. Editors relegated strictly Algerian af
fairs to peripheral daily columns with titles such as “Chronique des
départements algériens” (“Column of the Algerian departments”) and “A
travers Alger” (“Around Algiers”). The metropolitan focus of Algerian news
papers derives clearly from the nature of the colonial relationship between
Algeria and France. The steadiness of the Algerian gaze on distant France,
which varied in intensity over the colonial period, conveys a great deal
about this union.
By paying less attention to local affairs, particularly those concerning
indigenous populations, the Algerian press contributed to the settlers' in
ability to comprehend what was closest to them. Algeria's interior and its
populations remained a mystery to most of the settler population. Only
occasionally did newspapers feature articles on subjects outside of Euro
pean realms. When such articles did appear in the press, they often served
to stimulate interest in tourism among settlers. The southern Algerian ter
ritories, for instance, were promoted as an exotic site for exploration. Alger-
Républicains Albert Camus took an unusual interest in indigenous exist
ence in North Africa. In June 1939, Camus published a series of reports on
life in Kabylia, a mountainous region in the eastern coastal area.27 He at
tempted to call attention to the material problems faced by Muslim popu
lations. In response, La Dépêche algérienne featured a series of articles on
Kabylia that very same summer.28
1930, year of the Centennial of French presence in North Africa,
provided multiple opportunities for the Algerian press to discuss French
events, encourage interest in France, and perhaps even promote a sense of
greater colonial connectedness for readers. During that entire Centennial
summer, daily newspapers reported on French sentiment expressed on both
sides of the Mediterranean Sea. Regular columns in LEcho cTOran such as
“Heures de Paris” (“Paris time”) provided a steady stream of social, politi
cal, and cultural commentary on France.29 La Dépêche algérienne offered
intimate glimpses into French daily life. A photograph and brief text pub
lished each day during the month of June described a different aspect of
metropolitan life. Readers discovered how they could tour distant France
in modern vehicles and witness for themselves French “merveilles” (“mar
vels”), thanks to technological innovation.30 An article presented a brief,
illustrated history of Frances most prominent and impressive churches.31
Another story was devoted specifically to “Notre-Dame de Paris illuminée.”32
These articles drew attention to the shared culture that bound settler
populations to distant France and to a greater French community. Travel
between métropole and colony was particularly newsworthy in the Alge
rian press. Trips by well-known French personalities to Algeria, or excur
sions made by European school children to the métropole were frequently
reported in the press.33 Excursions organized for Arab and Berber school
children also received special note.34 An advertisement appearing in LEcho
d'Alger, “Pour partir en France” (“In departing for France”), instructed its
readers how to dress when traveling in the métropole so that they might
not appear entirely out of fashion.35 A photo and description of “la mode à
Auteuil” (“Fashion at the Auteuil racetrack”) gave others a sense of the
current styles in Frances wealthier classes.36
It is, above all perhaps, the recounting of trivial events, the attention
given to minute detail, to the mundane activities of metropolitan French
people, that illustrate the relevance of French life to colonial Algerian popu
lations. In addition to the stories on French political and economic life,
photos and articles frequently provided information on the weather in
France. La Dépêche de Constantine reported on the intensity of “La chaleur
à Paris” (“The Heat in Paris”).37 Reports of Parisian populations escaping
the scorching temperatures by bathing in the Seine made headlines.38 Ex
ceptional summer temperatures climatically (and symbolically) joined the
métropole and Algeria.
Other parts of the printed page drew attention to the Franco-Alge-
rian bond. Photographs from France brought French events before the very
eyes of European settler readers. Endorsements and advertisements sug
gested the accessibility of quality products from the métropole.39 Colonial
populations clearly relied on French manufacturers and imports. Announce
ments for upcoming performances of French films, plays, and orchestras in
Algerian towns kept local populations informed of French cultural activi
ties. Entire columns were devoted to the arts.40 Daily radio programs on
life in the métropole provided further evidence of Franco-Algerian rap
prochement.41
Algeria and France very often appeared synonymous in the colonial
press, identical pillars of laplus grande France. Yet in very subtle ways, news
papers also conveyed the idea that the three French départements of North
Africa had a distinct character due to their geography and diverse popula
tions. Readers were reminded of the unique relationship between the two.
France appeared close, bur oh so far from Algerian space and conscious
ness. A front-page comic strip of travelers returning from the métropole
emphasized the distance separating the two parts of France: “Mauvais gars,
j'parie qu'tu n'm'as rien rapporté d'la capitale?” a woman comments to one
of the travelers. “Si [. . .],” he responds, “la grippe! [. . .]”42 (“You naughty
boy, I bet you didn't bring me back anything from the capital?”— ”But I
did . . . the flu! . . .”). Colder seasonal temperatures in this instance reflect
France's distance from Algeria.
Algerian newspapers even transmitted news about curious or unusual
French events. The discussion of petty crimes, sordid deaths, and the sight
ing of flying saucers in metropolitan towns perhaps rendered aspects of
French national life more concrete to settler groups. One can assume that
these kinds of events made headlines because editors believed that settler
communities had some interest in such things. For the colonial readership,
a greater sense of participation in a shared French culture and identity per
haps crystallized around these stories.
Celebrating France
More than any other occasion, French national holidays provided the op
portunity for Algerian newspapers to discuss the French sentiment that
existed within settler populations. The simultaneous celebration of a par
ticular event, both in France and the colonies, created a means of witness
ing how two geographically separate lands constituted one conceptually at
crucial moments, fused by a common thread of Frenchness. French na
tional holidays represented annual, repeated opportunities to affirm colo
nial Algerian ties to French identity. In fact, Algerian sub-prefects, mayors,
and municipal officials received word from their departmental prefects that
they should organize festivities to generate such sentiment. The Prefect of
Constantine claimed, for instance, in celebration of the anniversary of the
Armistice: “Les édifices publics devront être pavoisés aux couleurs
nationales,”43 (“public buildings should be decorated with the national col
ors”). Cultural historians have shown how such celebrations can be read as
collective expressions of identity.44
July 14, “la fête nationale,” was the most profusely described of French
national holidays in the Algerian press. Each newspaper reported in detail
on Bastille Day events. Long after it had passed each year, the local press
continued to report on the festive and symbolic nature of the holiday. A
July 14, 1936, article in LEcho d ’Oran is exemplary; it acknowledged the
patriotism of the entire Algerian population: “Le pays tout entier a célébré
hier la fête nationale, avec ferveur et dignité par d’immenses manifesta
tions”45 (“The entire country celebrated the national holiday yesterday, with
fervor and dignity in immense gatherings”). Each year, La Dépêche de
Constantine listed the events planned in eastern Algeria to commemorate
the end of the Ancien Regime: marching bands, parading military regi
ments and war veterans, concerts given by indigenous military bands, the
singing of “la Marseillaise,” public dances, and meetings of French regional
associations from Alsace and Champagne.46 Bastille Day, organized with
the idea of paying homage to the birth of modern France, thus gave rise to
fervent demonstrations of French patriotism in colonial Algeria.
Newspaper articles pointed out that it was not just European settlers
who cheered and joined parades. Indigenous groups also acknowledged
their Frenchness by participating in these events, according to the colonial
press.47 For persons of Kabyle, Spanish, or French descent, some of whom
had served in the French army in one or both of the World Wars, annual
parades provided an occasion to be recognized for their service and to reaf
firm their loyalty to France. Although marching veterans’ groups certainly
drew much attention, all people could display their French sentiment on
such a festive day.
On July 14 and during the days that immediately followed, local
newspapers devoted many of their reports to detailed descriptions of fes
tivities taking place in the French capital. A Dépêche de Constantine cover
in 1934 claimed that “la France entière a célébré avec un enthousiasme
patriotique la fête nationale”48 (“all of France celebrated the national holi
day with patriotic fervor”). Accompanying photos showed Parisians danc
ing in the streets and filling the squares of the French capital with joyful
zeal.49 Thus, the press affirmed that French and colonial populations par
ticipated in the same identity-shaping rituals. Such claims are certainly re
flective of the French colonial imagination.
The Algerian press did not limit its reporting on the impact of July
14 to the realm of Greater France, but also reported on Bastille Day cel
ebrations the world over. According to brief reports from the Associated
Press, officials in Berlin, Rome, New York, and Moscow organized festivi
ties to pay respect to the symbolic freeing of Man, testifying to the univer-
salism of the French ideal of liberté\ égalité, fraternité.™
By and large, national celebrations such as Bastille Day transcended
political differences in colonial society, yet on a few occasions, dissension
disturbed the unifying mood of the event. Press coverage in July 1936, for
instance, noted the demonstrations held in opposition to the governing
Popular Front. Journalists writing in 1947 for Alger-Républicain, in a cli
mate increasingly agitated by the Cold War, contended that July 14 still
did not symbolize equality for all populations in Algeria. Editorialist Michel
Rouzé exclaimed, “Quatorze juillet! Mais les Algériens ont encore leur Bastille
à abattre”51 (“The fourteenth of July! But Algerians still have their Bastille
to topple”). Similar assertions were often made in the indigenous press.
The commemoration of Armistice Day on November 11, marking
the end of the First World War, provided another occasion for homage to a
collective French past. Algerian newspapers paid tribute to those who had
defended the French nation between 1914 and 1918, and noted the im
portance of this holiday in France as well as in Algeria. “Treize ans après”
(“Thirteen years after”), noted an article in LEcho d'Oran in 1931, “Paris a
célébré Panniversaire de Tarmistice avec la même ferveur que les années
précédentes”52 (“Paris celebrated the anniversary of the Armistice with the
same enthusiasm as in past years”). Alger-Républicain reported in 1938 that
“la France entière a fêté hier le 20e anniversaire de PArmistice”53 (“All of
France [Greater France] celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Armistice”).
This commemorative holiday represented a particularly special occasion
on which to honor the acts of individuals who had fallen in the service of
France.
Other French holidays were celebrated, but most received less atten
tion than Bastille and Armistice Days. Many of them had more overtly
political or religious overtones. All of them, celebrated simultaneously on
both sides of the Mediterranean Sea, inspired great fervor according to
article headlines. Algerian journalists regularly acknowledged the memory
of French patriot Joan of Arc.54 In May 1937, the cover of LEcho dAlger
read “Hommage à la sainte de la patrie. La France et l’Algérie ont célébré
avec ferveur la fête de Jeanne d’Arc”55 (“Homage to the patron saint of the
motherland. France and Algeria celebrated with fervor Joan of Arc day”).
Labor Day, celebrated on May 1, was often the subject of commentary in
the colonial press. It frequently received more attention in a left-wing news
paper such as Alger-Républicain. Newspapers also noted how Assumption
Day, August 15, was spent at the seaside in both Algeria and France.56
The Faces of France in the Colonial Press
When the columns of Algerian newspapers focused attention on France,

when they acknowledged a French national holiday for instance, Algeria
may very well have appeared French to readers. Yet occasions arose in which
there seems to have been some wavering of opinion about France and
Frenchness. Such fluctuation is evocative of the dependent yet not always
consensual nature of the colonial Franco-Algerian relationship. In the late
1890s, during the upheaval caused by the Dreyfus Affair, anti-Semites in
Algeria threatened to separate from a France they perceived as under Jewish
control. Similar hostility toward France and French identity again appeared
in the early twentieth century. French conservatives on both sides of the
Mediterranean Sea condemned the moral decay that reportedly plagued
metropolitan France.57 They denounced the bourgeois politicians of the
Republic, “la gueuse” or “beggar-lady” in pejorative terms, whom they con
sidered responsible for Frances plummeting fall.
French-on-French hostilities, “les guerres franco-françaises” as Stanley
Hoffmann has called them, were thus expressed beyond the geographical
boundaries of the métropole.58They took on local meaning in the columns
of the colonial Algerian press. Articles in Algerian newspapers, from the
conservative positions expressed in La Dépêche algérienne to left-wing ideas
voiced in Alger-Républicain, illustrate the diversity of viewpoints within the
settler population. They circulated distinct and sometimes opposing per
ceptions of France in the colonial Algerian sphere.
The reproduction of French society in North Africa was one of the
most prevalent themes in colonial newspapers. In a 1920 LEcho d A’ lger
column, Jean Mélia asserted, “Non, l’Algérie nest pas une colonie; c’est la
France elle-même”59 (“No, Algeria is not a colony, its France itself”). This
sentiment was certainly shared in many circles. In 1930, the congenial
mood of the Centennial celebration reiterated the consensual perspective
on Frenchness in colonial Algeria. La Dépêche algérienne emphasized Algeria’s
status not as a colony but as French national space.60 The article claimed
that North Africa had once been physically attached to the European con
tinent thousands of years ago, but had separated through geological shift
ing. Despite the separation, the two allegedly remained much the same.
Algeria was a part of a more broadly conceived notion of France. It was
Frances new frontier. “Le nouveau monde de la France commence ici”
(“The new world of France begins here”), a concluding report noted.61
Frances prestige, vitality, and general welfare seemed to rest firmly on its
continued presence in North Africa.
A journalist from La Dépêche algérienne wrote in 1934:
Notre sang, notre coeur, nos pensées appartiennent à la France et si la mer
nous sépare, Taffection filiale et le loyalisme irréductible nous unissent, c’est
notre orgueil et c’est notre devoir.62
[Our blood, our heart, our thoughts are with France, and if the sea separates
us, binding affection and indomitable loyalty unites us; this is our pride and
our duty.]
The author entided his editorial suggestively “L'Algérie veut rester ‘l'Algérie’”
(“Algeria wants to remain Algeria”). In other words, by remaining Algeria,
the country remained French. He rejected any sort of special status for Algeria
that would render it distinct from any other French department or region:
Un ministère de l’Algérie est inconstitutionnel, au même titre quun Ministère
de la Gascogne ou de la Bretagne, et ces provinces françaises n'accepteraient
pas plus que l'Algérie d’être distinguées et séparées de la Mère-Patrie, même
par une étiquette de portefeuille.63
[An Algerian ministry is unconstitutional, in the same way that a ministry of
Gascony or Brittany would be, and furthermore these French provinces would
not accept that Algeria be set apart and separated from the Mother-Country,
even if only in name.]
A few weeks later, another Dépêche algérienne report made similar claims:
“L'Algérie, ce n’est pas la France d'outre-mer, c'est la France tout court”64
(“Algeria is not overseas France, it is quite simply France”).
Despite such clear declarations of Frenchness in the local press, jour
nalists noted the unique character of a country that was officially French,
but that retained its own specificity. In 1931, editorialist F. Beuscher voiced
such sentiment in a series of essays entitled “L'Algérie vivra”65 (“Algeria will
survive”). Beuscher's writings offered a response to an essay published that
same year by former Algerian Governor General Maurice Viollette entided
LAlgérie vivra-t-elle?"6 According to Beuscher, Algeria would live and in
deed prosper despite the doubt expressed by Viollette. Algeria would forge
ahead because it had been shaped in the image of France, and its inhabit
ants (some of them at least) in the image of the French. In constructing a
French society beyond hexagonal France, naturalization laws targeted those
populations that French officials deemed most assimilable. Beuscher saw
no reason to apologize for it, defending the assimilation of Jews and Euro
peans and the exclusion of Muslims:
La France, pays à faible natalité, dut s'agréger des apports étrangers susceptibles
d’être absorbés moralement dans un laps de temps déterminé, et recruter sur
place d’autres éléments aspirant à se détacher d’une masse à laquelle il
importait de faire contrepoids.67
[France, a country with a low birth rate, had to grow from the addition of
foreign populations likely to be culturally absorbed in a short period of time,
and had to recruit on the ground from groups hoping to detach themselves
from the masses it was necessary to counterbalance.]
He added,
[. . .] Il n’est pas de doute que notre rôle civilisateur consiste non pas à nous
assimiler à eux mais à nous les assimiler. [. ..] On ne fait pas un hectolitre de
vin avec quatre-vingt-dix litres d’eau. Et pas d’avantage une société de six
millions de Français avec cinq millions d’indigènes.68
[ . . . There is no doubt that our civilizing role consists not of assimilating
ourselves with them but for us to assimilate them .. .. One hundred liters of
wine are not made with ninety liters of water. And likewise, a community of
six million French is not made of five million natives.]
F. Beuscher further commented on the fragile and complex makeup
of French colonial Algeria in the winter of 1934. After the February 6
events pitting right-wing against left-wing forces in the streets of Paris de
stabilized political life, and similar agitation had manifested itself in colo
nial North Africa, Beuscher entitled a front-page essay “ATTENTION”
(“Watch out!”).69 Algeria had attained legal status as a part of France, yet
was
[. . .] Tout de même un pays que peuplent six millions d’habitants dont
moins d’un sixième est attaché à la patrie par des traditions et des aspirations
ancestrales”70
[... Nonetheless a country populated by six million inhabitants of which
less than a sixth is linked to France by ancestral traditions and aspira
tions.]
This reflection is part and parcel of the ongoing colonial conversation on
Franco-Algerian assimilation and fusion. Beuschers article attempted to
arouse the concern of metropolitan authorities who would in turn respond
to these circumstances.
By the summer of 1936, French-against-French conflicts over the
Popular Front and its policies had surfaced in North Africa. Conservative
journalists writing for La Dépêche algérienne no longer claimed that Algeria
was France. They bitterly opposed the definition of France and Frenchness
articulated by Popular Front officials. During the 1936 Bastille Day cel
ebrations, an editorial signed by the staff at La Dépêche algérienne stated:
Cette journée du 14 juillet, naguère toute imprégnée de fraternelle allégresse,
nous ne devons plus souffrir quelle serve à dresser deux France, Tune contre
l’autre71
[We must no longer tolerate that July 14, formerly imbued with fraternal
joy, serve to distinguish two Frances, one against the other.]
A concluding remark contended, “Notre union et notre courage auront

raison des partisans et referont une France où tous les Français sont égaux—
et maîtres chez eux!”72 (“Our unity and our courage will prevail over parti
san conflict and will remake one France where all French are equal— and
masters of their domain!”)
Journalists writing for La Dépêche algérienne insisted that the Popular
Front government was anti-republican, non-representative of the French
people and nation, and should actively be opposed. One writer claimed
that “barrer la route au Front dit populaire, c’est le devoir des Républicains”73
(“barring the road to the so-called Popular Front is the duty of republi
cans”). Others published a tract urging the inhabitants of Algiers to prevent
the Popular Front from coming to power: “Votez contre le Front révolutionnaire
dit populaire”’74 (“Vote against the so-called popular’ revolutionary Front”).
Similar declarations denounced the “Front Juif dit populaire,”’ (“Jewish so-
called popular’ Front”). The anti-Semitic Dépêche algérienne denounced an
alleged Jewish threat to France and French interests. Accompanying articles
advocated support for right-wing political organizadons such as the Croix de
feu and Parti socialfrançais, which were implicated in the and-republican Pari
sian street violence of the 1930s and later supported the Vichy regime.75
Throughout the year 1936, La Dépêche algérienne criticized the sup
port lent the Popular Front by its Algiers rival, LEcho d A’ lger. The moder
ate republican tradition of L’Echo dAlger had continued, distinguishing it
from its more right-wing counterpart.76 Two years later, the communist-
affiliated Alger-Républicain was launched in the wake of the Popular Front
coalition. La Dépêche algérienne continued to express its anti-Popular Front
and strongly anti-Communist position throughout the spring and summer
of 1936. By the first months of 1937, it had placed itself firmly in opposi
tion to the Blum-Viollette naturalization project, which proposed render
ing French citizenship more accessible to Muslim elites. “Ce que veut la
masse musulmane, ce n’est pas voter, c’est manger!” (“What the Muslim
masses want is not to vote but to eat!”) insisted one journalist.77 Another
claimed that indigenous populations were neither enchanted by nor even
desirous of seeing the Viollette project passed.78
The reactionary stance of La Dépêche algérienne comes further into
focus in its praise of right-wing leaders and their policies. At the onset of
the Spanish Civil War in 1936, editorialist René Johannet proclaimed:
[. . .] Je ne cacherai pas mon admiration pour les chefs qui se sont levés les
armes à la main contre le communisme. Ils ont pris leurs responsabilités.”79
[... I will not hide my admiration for the leaders who have risen up militar
ily against communism. They have assumed their responsibilities.]
Other journalists commended the Italian campaign in Ethiopia as a sign of
vigor and strength. One referred to Mussolini’s entry into Addis-Ababa as
“Une date historique” (“An historic date”), “Une victoire pour la civilisation”
(“A victory for civilization”).80Dépêche journalists even paid tribute to Adolph
Hitler, as his power in Germany increased during the 1930s. “Hitler sait ce
qu’il veut” (“Hitler knows what he wants”), one headline read.81 Another
later commemorated the forty-seventh birthday of the German chancel
lor.82Journalists working {oi Alger-Républicain referred to the conservative
daily as “la Dépêche hitlérienne.”
In the fell of 1936, journalists at La Dépêche algérienne devoted a
series of nine articles to troubling Franco-Algerian relations.83 In the first
segment of this series, an article stated, TAlgérie, c’est la France [.. .] mais
l’Algérie avant tout et par-dessus tout, c’est encore l’Algérie.” (“Algeria is
France . . . but Algeria first and foremost is still Algeria”). Here the defini
tion of Algeria is no longer so clearly synonymous with France. A detailed
report expressed several degrees of alienation within setder society. Some
groups were no longer particularly satisfied with the nature of the Franco-
Algerian relationship, nor unreservedly supportive of France. La plus grande
France did not appear as solidly grounded in 1936, on either side of the
Mediterranean Sea. Ten years later, in a climate of world war, opinion would
change dramatically.
Greater France in Wartime
No single event in the quarter century examined in this study generated

more fervent manifestations of French patriotism in colonial Algeria than
90 The. Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 19 3 0 -1 9 5 4
did the Second World War. When rumor of war intensified in the autumn
of 1939, and when conflict began in early September, colonial newspapers
were unambiguous in their support of the nascent French war effort. In all
daily newspapers, journalists wrote solemn yet spirited declarations of French
determination in the face of opposition. Wherever the French flag flew,
they said, people throughout the empire resolutely stood prepared to de
fend the métropole:
Personne ne doutait de cette unanimité dans l’amour de la Patrie, de ce vrai
courage devant les graves événements qui allaient survenir, de ce calme de
tous les Français dont les coeurs ont battu à l’unisson en ces graves et lourdes
journées84
[No one had any doubts about the unanimity of the love of the French
homeland, of the real courage before grave events which were going to take
place, of the calm of all French whose hearts beat in unison in these heavy,
troubling days.]
Representatives of France in colonial Algeria certainly hoped this would be
the case. Conflict on the horizon temporarily resolved one of their great
concerns, that of settler and indigenous loyalty to France. Quibbling be
tween colonial and metropolitan officials seemed to vanish in wartime.
France and colony stood firm and bound together. Journalists attempted to
promote a unified front by asserting that settler and indigenous popula
tions shared common overriding interests. A 1939 essay in LEcho d'Oran
declared:
Français, Françaises, Musulmans, Musulmanes d’Algérie, notre grande et
belle Patrie, si tendrement aimée, n’a, elle, jamais su ce qu’était la honte et le
déshonneur. Tous ses enfants sont aujourd’hui solidaires, unis fraternellement,
coude à coude, conscients de leur devoir dicté par l’idéal de la justice et de la
liberté à sauver. [. . .]85
[French men and women! Muslim men and women of Algeria! Our grand
and noble French homeland, so tenderly loved, has never known shame nor
dishonor. All her children are today united fraternally, hand in hand, con
scious of their duty dictated by the ideal of justice and liberty. . . .]
European newspaper columns insisted that all populations voluntarily helped
to defend French interests and to preserve the universalist ideals that were
associated with France. Constantines daily announced,
La Mère-Patrie retrouve une fois de plus l’amour et le patriotisme de ses
enfants d’Algérie, unis sans distinction, dans la même volonté inflexible de
défendre l’Honneur français et la liberté.86
[The Mother-Country finds once again the love and loyalty of its Algerian
children, united without distinction, in the same unflinching desire to de
fend French honor and liberty.]
This was one of the rare occasions in which the colonial press turned its
attention to indigenous affairs. Arab and Berber journalists criticized La
Dépêche algérienne, TEcho d ’Oran, and others for their lack of interest in
indigenous issues except during such periods of crisis.
Each of the Algerian papers printed a communication first broadcast
over the radio by Governor General Georges Le Beau on September 4,
1939.87 Le Beau noted the participation of settler and indigenous popula
tions in the war effort and asserted their contribution to the preservation of
the French empire. Ensuing articles analyzed the meaning of such a con
solidating act. Many reports paid attention to Arab and Berber support.
Several applauded the loyalty previously demonstrated by Muslim troops
during the First World War.88 LEcho d A’ lger s F. Beuscher commended the
participation of Arabs and Berbers in the 1939-1945 conflict in an essay
entitled “L’Islam dans la guerre’89 (“Islam in the war”).
In the early stages of the Second World War, and particularly follow
ing the 1940 armistice, colonial authorities lent their support to Marshall
Philippe Pétain and the Vichy regime. Algeria, like all parts of unoccupied
Greater France, was administered from Vichy. Some settler populations
followed Pétain s leadership well into the early 1940s, in some cases until
the liberation of Paris in 1944. La Dépêche algérienne, as mentioned previ
ously, adopted a particularly overt “Vichyiste” position, and as a result was
suppressed after the war.
After five years of conflict, the end of the Second World War pro
duced an outpouring of French sentiment in the colonial press. May 8,
1945, signaled the capitulation of the German army and French (and Al
lied) victory in the war. It seemed to annul the preceding defeat and occu
pation of France. Colonial newspaper articles conveyed a sense of joy and
relief shared by people throughout Greater France. On its May 8 cover,
LEcho d A’ lger printed in boldface: “L’Allemagne est vaincue!” “Le monde
est libre!” “C’est fini!” and “Vive la France!” (“Germany is defeated!” “The
world is free!” “It’s over!” and “Long live France!”). The entire front page
was adorned in patriotic colors of the flag—Blue, white, and red.
92 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 193 0-1954
Constantines daily newspaper recorded the euphoria expressed by local
populations after the announcement of the end of the war.90 It reported
that “LA GUERRE EST GAGNEE!” (“The war is won”).
Journalists suggested that a renewed faith in France had emerged,
erasing the humiliation of the 1940 armistice. They wrote of Frances read
mittance into the league of world powers. In a series of spring 1945 edito
rials, Alger-Républicains Michel Rouzé declared the emergence of “la France
nouvelle” (“the New France”) which had fully recovered from past infirmi
ties. “Le destin de FAlgérie est lié à celui de la France nouvelle” (“The
destiny of Algeria is linked to that of the New France”), Rouzé wrote.91 In
later essays, he proclaimed the union of “l’Algérie avec la France nouvelle”92
(“Algeria with the New France”). He continued in another piece, “l’Algérie fait
partie de la République”93 (“Algeria is a part of the Republic”). Such commen
tary reaffirmed Algerian des to France, des that had come unbound during the
Popular Front era and that remained so before and even during the war. A
victorious, resurrected France, however, regained the esteem of Algerian popu
lations; it could reclaim its place among European powers. Métropole and
colony could again be favorably conceived as la plus grande France.
The role of General Charles de Gaulle in the Second World War and
in Franco-Algerian affairs at this time is well known. June 18, 1940, is
synonymous with de Gaulle’s radio appeal, “L’Appel,” in which he declared
that France had only lost a battle and not the war. The commemoration of
this proclamation reminded Algerian populations that the city of Algiers
had been the capital of the Free France movement, la France libre, during
the war, and that individuals had played a role in the liberating of the
country from German occupiers. For one or two years after the end of the
war, even a left-wing newspaper such as Alger-Républicain paid its respects
to the audacious appeal of the General.94 By 1947 however, De Gaulle had
gone from wartime hero to villain, ridiculed in the columns of the commu
nist daily at the onset of the Cold War.
The end of the war overshadowed the disturbing events that began
that same spring in Sétif and in neighboring towns. Violent confrontation
between settlers and indigenous groups broke out, which over the course of
the following weeks resulted in thousands of deaths, imprisonment for thou
sands more, and an increase in hostility between groups. The unrest was
not immediately reported in newspapers. Even in the Constantine press,
near the epicenter of the disturbances, relatively little was initially made of
the conflict.95 By late May and June of that year however, in the midst of
celebrations of French renewal, metropolitan and Algerian journalists voiced
a growing concern about Algeria’s future within the French union.
In response to the troubling events, journalists insisted on the loyalty
of European and Muslim populations. According to one article, “tous les
éléments sains de la population (Européens et Musulmans) se sont opposés
aux émeutiers” (“all of the upstanding elements of the population, Euro
pean and Muslim, opposed the rioters”).96 To emphasize the predominant
theme of reprieve from war associated with May 8, 1945, and to minimize
the ramifications of the insurrection that followed, writers at La Dépêche de
Constantine maintained that “les Musulmans de Paris se sont associés aux
fêtes de la victoire”97 (“Muslims of Paris took part in the victory celebra
tions”). Journalists denounced the emerging nationalism that had become
manifest during the violence. Newspaper headlines insisted on the severity
with which the French penal system punished those involved in the vio
lence.98 In an editorial series entitled “Problèmes algériens,” La Dépêche
algérienne voiced the concerns of many segments of the European settler
population:
La France ne doit pas se laisser détourner. [. . .] On ne redonnera confiance
aux colons, qu’en assainissant l’atmosphère d’insécurité dans laquelle ils
travaillent et produisent. [. . .]"
[France should not let itself be turned off the right path-----It will not regain
the confidence of settlers until it takes care of the atmosphere of insecurity in
which they work and produce. . ..]
Nor should it be permitted, the article continued, that the authority of
France be questioned or even doubted.
Writing from the opposite side of the Mediterranean Sea as an edito
rialist at the French newspaper Combat, Albert Camus addressed the causes
and effects of the Sétif incidents.100 In a revealing piece of testimony, illus
trating his concern for justice within the framework of the French Repub
lic, Camus noted,
Devant les actes de répression que nous venons d’exercer en Afrique du Nord,
je tiens à dire que le temps des impérialismes occidentaux est passé.101
[Considering the repressive acts that we have performed in North Africa, I
must state that the hour of western imperialism has passed.]
Camus was certainly a very astute, if at times conflicted, interpreter of the
colonial Algerian scenario. His comments reveal a deep understanding of
its underlying forces.
Both of the events associated with May 8, 1945— German capitula
tion and strife between settler and indigenous populations in Algeria—
contributed to renewed awareness of settler dependency on French sup
port. A sense of (re)connectedness to the métropole emerged from esteem
for a rejuvenated France and from fear of an indigenous uprising. F. Beuscher
summed up postwar European concerns in four editorials published in early
June 1945 titled “Défendons la France nord-Africaine”102 (“Defend French
North Africa”). Beuscher concluded his analysis with an alarming assess
ment of the situation. “Pour l’Afrique du Nord,” he claimed, Vest l’heure
du gendarme” (“For North Africa, it is the police hour”). He insisted that
the leaders of “the New France” demonstrate their firm commitment to
defending French sovereignty in North Africa because the future of French
Algeria hung in the balance.
From the final throes of the Second World War until the beginning of the
Algerian War in 1954, the columns of colonial newspapers articulated a
malaise in colonial society and a growing divide between metropolitan and
North African viewpoints of Algeria’s future. Debate over the Statute for
Algeria in 1947 illustrated the level of disagreement about the Franco-Al-
gerian union.103 Essays appearing in La Dépêche de Constantine were pre
dominantly in favor of the proposal.104 L’Echo d A’ lger, however, expressed
hostility toward the Statute for Algeria. One journalist asserted that “une
majorité métropolitaine a dicté sa loi à l’Algérie” (“a French majority has
dictated its law to Algeria”), conveying feelings of resentment about French
intervention in Algerian affairs.105 Although newspapers expressed the
prickliness of their relations with France, the uncertainty of the future and
the obvious need of French assistance did not allow hostile positions to
ward France to be openly voiced for very long. Journalists at Alger-
Républicain, consumed by this time by the Cold War climate and the inter
nationalist agenda, wondered if Algeria’s future lay not in the hands of the
French, but in those of invading American forces.106 In a bipolar world,
French sovereignty over Algeria perhaps meant very little indeed. If France
remained predominant in North Africa, it was perhaps only in title.
The emergence of nationalist activity throughout the area called into
question the legitimacy of French colonial rule. French-language newspa
pers conveyed the anxiety of settler populations caused by violent confron
tation in the early 1950s in neighboring Morocco and Tunisia.107 Many
were concerned that such agitation could spread to the French departments
of Algeria. Journalists called for a more visible French presence in North
Africa to prevent the spread of the “nationalist infection.” At the first sign
of an Algerian insurrection on November 1, 1954, known afterwards as
“Toussaint rouge” or “Bloody All-Saints Day,” disputes with French offi
cials were forgotten. Algerian newspapers as well as the metropolitan press
declared in no uncertain terms that Algeria was French and quite deter
mined to remain so.
An Algerian Tour de France
Less alarming reports in the colonial Algerian press also focused attention
on the development of French sentiment in North Africa. The recounting
of French sporting events, as mentioned previously, often drew local popu
lations to metropolitan affairs. Daily newspapers provided a summary of
scores and league standings from France. A sporting event of the magni
tude of the Tour de France drew heightened attention to France during the
month of July each year. First organized in 1903, the annual cycling mara
thon generated considerable commentary in the Algerian press. No other
sport placed French geography, society, and culture as intensely in the pub
lic eye for such an extended period. Newspapers from Bone to Oran, from
widely read papers such as LEcho d'Alger to the tiniest of local publications,
provided a daily source of information about racers, the course, and their
progression through France. Colonial newspapers not only informed cy
cling enthusiasts about the race but also provided various kinds of informa
tion about the mfre-patrie.
Daily reports described the metropolitan regions through which the
cyclists passed during the Tour. They featured photographs and maps indi
cating the names of towns in Brittany and Burgundy included in the cir
cuit. They introduced Algerian readers to Alsacian traditions and Provençal
products and culture. For an audience living outside the borders of metro
politan France, the Tour gave more manifest and vivid meaning to the con
cept of Greater France. Algerian readers sped vicariously with racers through
the various regions incorporated into each years Tour. Towns in the French
provinces as well as the capital became less distant, less removed from the
consciousness of settler populations.
Large maps of France appeared in Algerian newspapers just before
the beginning of each race.108The thirty-third Tour, run from July 10 through
July 30, 1939, inspired several different sketches of the métropole. The
reports and illustrations appearing that year informed readers that from the
Parisian starting place, cyclists traveled west to Caen and Brest, descended
due south along the Atlantic coast and inland to Pau, traversed the Pyrénées
and skirted the Mediterranean coast. They then headed north through the
Alps to Annecy, ending with a series of laps by Dijon and Troyes and a final
sprint to Paris. This particular Tour de France was truly a tour of France.
Only the Northeastern corner of the country had been bypassed.109 For
cycling aficionados and the general public, it provided a wealth of informa
tion about the race and the area that it covered.
Coverage of the following Tour by La Dépêche de Constantine, held after
the war in 1947, provided even more in-depth information on the cultural
and geographic map of metropolitan France.110 Between June 25 and July
18 of that year, an illustration of each successive lap of the race appeared on
the cover, marking out the towns, industries, and cultural landmarks of the
covered regions. For three weeks, almost every day, a different part of France
was described in detail, bringing into view images of specific areas. (See
figure 4.) Journalists offered readers a daily diet of French regional culture.
Coverage of the Tour de France helped to fill a school-generated map of
metropolitan French departments with colorful detail.
While the Tour de France transported the métropole to Algerian shores
annually, French explorations of Algeria also appeared in the columns of
the colonial press. The attention paid to colonial Algeria by France was
particularly intense during the visit of French President of the Republic
Gaston Doumergue to Algeria in May 1930. One of only two visits to
Algeria by a French head of state between 1930 and 1950, this rare event
received considerable coverage in local newspapers. It provided an occasion
for the colonial press to emphasize the fervor of local sympathies and to
laud Algerias connection to France. Such visits acknowledged the interest
that metropolitan officials, particularly the French President, harbored for
the overseas departments.
On May 4, 1930, President Doumergue arrived in Algiers for a week
long stay as a climatic ending to the Centennial celebration. Editorialist E
Beuscher acknowledged the symbolic nature of this visit: “C’est [. . .] la
Mère-patrie tout entière qui se penche affectueusement sur un de ses plus
jeunes enfants”111 (“It is . . . the whole mother-country that affectionately
hovers over one of its youngest children”). Indigenous and settler groups
were reportedly moved by the recognition of Algerias ties to France, which
this official gesture conveyed. A photograph showed indigenous leaders
attending one of the official ceremonies for the French president.112 How
could French politicians who supported colonial initiatives not be proud of
their creation, a Dépêche algérienne journalist added. He described Gaston
Doumergue as “avocat de la plus grande France” (“advocate of Greater
Aujourd’hui: CARCASSONNE-LUCHON (253 km)
CtikcaMomz ,
u.cf><so 1
Aujourd’hui : S A 1 N T -B R IE U C -C A E N (235 km.)
Aujourd'hui commence
le 34" Tonr de Fran ce cycliste
Les 100 concurrents s’affronteront pour la T étape
-------- sur la distance PARIS-LILLE (236 km.) --------
Figure 4. Tour de France maps in the Algerian press. Taken from La Dépêche
de Constantine, 25 juin 1947, 11 juillet 1947, 19 juillet 1947.
98 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria* 1 9 3 0-1954
France”) and setder populations as “[. . .] la jeunesse de la France et son
espoir”113 (“... the youth of France and its hope”). Doumergues visit to the
Algerian capital as well as to numerous other cities was applauded through
out his stay.114
Almost twenty years passed before another French president visited
Algeria. The circumstances of this later visit were quite different. Unlike
the previous presidential trip, which had taken place in the midst of a Cen
tennial celebration, the official visit organized at the end of May 1949 for
French president Vincent Auriol sought to reassure colonial officials and
setder populations who were concerned about the future. European setder
groups had become more anxious about their security and about growing
nationalist sentiment in colonial Algeria after the Sétif incidents in May
1945.
Upon his arrival in Algiers, President Auriol attempted to allay con
cerns by conveying metropolitan awareness of colonial issues. “Alger, je
vous apporte non seulement le salut mais le merci de la France” (“Algiers, I
bring you not only the salutations but the thanks of France”), he said.115
Auriol proclaimed the sanctity of the Franco-Algerian union by bestowing
on the Algerian capital the Croix de Guerre, an honorary symbol. This com
memorated the important role that Algiers had played during the Second
World War. In celebration of the event, L'Echo d'Alger owner and editorial
ist Alain de Sérigny entitled a column “L’Algérie, chance de la France”116
(“Algeria, the future of France”). He drew attention to Algerian contribu
tions to the French civilizing mission and to Algerian aid in the Second
World War. Now, it was Algeria that found itself in need of assistance,
assistance that Sérigny fully expected. He claimed that Vincent Auriols
visit testified to “France” having heard and understood Algerian concerns.
Like Gaston Doumergue twenty years earlier, Vincent Auriol spent a
week touring Algerian cities, presenting awards to local representatives and
receiving praise from indigenous and settler populations. The mayor of
Bone accepted on behalf of the city the Croix de guerre from the French
president.117A day later in Constantine, Auriol obtained a pledge of loyalty
from indigenous representatives.118 On June 3, 300,000 residents of west
ern Algeria reportedly welcomed the president. “Oran a donné son coeur à
la France, avec toute son exubérance” (“Oran gave its heart to France, with
all of its exuberance”), the local paper reported.119 Individuals living out
side of major cities, who felt most vulnerable to attack from indigenous
groups, may not have been entirely reassured by Auriols visit. By this time,
the tension between Europeans and Muslims had grown, increasingly de
stabilizing life in colonial Algeria.
The views expressed in the colonial Algerian press undermine the notion of
a single definition of France among European settlers in North Africa. The
Algerian perception of France was politicized and depended to a large ex
tent on the particular mood and circumstances of a given period. In 1936,
right-wing journalists would not have contended that Algeria was France.
If it were France, it was not the one that had voted the Popular Front into
power. Just three years later, at the onset of the Second World War, virtually
all colonial newspapers suggested that Algeria and France were one and the
same. Journalists implored metropolitan French officials at this moment to
take notice of the deep bonds that ensured Algerian support of France.
Consensual French sentiment was again proclaimed on May 8, 1945, in
the midst of jubilant victory celebrations. Yet in the years that followed the
war, the press served notice of the divide that separated Algeria from France,
a philosophical void that seemed to increase the distance set by geography.
It transcribed several Algerian perceptions of France, some negative, others
more celebratory.
Apart from fleeting moments when declarations of Frenchness and
homage to France appeared in virtually all colonial newspapers, rarely was
there any agreement on the extent to which French sentiment had been
produced in Algeria. The colonial Algerian press contains a great deal of
information about this unique and often clouded colonial relationship. It
evokes many of the complexities of this union. Algeria was simultaneously
a distant colony and a part of France. France in the colonial Algerian imagi
nation was near and far, familiar and exotic, magnanimous and intrusive.
Local newspapers served as mouthpieces of Algerian Frenchness, yet their
fervor depended considerably on changing conditions.
Albert Camus, once again, captured the ambiguous nature of the co
lonial Franco-Algerian relationship in his journalistic writings. As a French
citizen and native of Algeria, Camus wondered if he could expose some of
the indigenous problems that he witnessed with a clear conscience, with
out jeopardizing the future of French influence in North Africa. In a June
1939 editorial, he wrote,
Il paraît que c’est, aujourd’hui, faire acte de mauvais Français que de révéler
la misère d’un pays français. Je dois dire qu’il est difficile aujourd’hui de
savoir comment être un bon Français.120
[Today, it seems that to reveal the misery of a French country is to be a bad

Frenchman. I must say that it is difficult at present to know how to be a
good Frenchman.]
100 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1930-1954
By expressing interest in France and French affairs, Algerian journal
ists such as Camus announced to their readers that French issues were im
portant and that they had good reason to be concerned with what went on
beyond North African shores. Daily columns served to remind them that
France, as well as Greater France, mattered. Reporting regularly on French
events provided a way of reminding politicians in metropolitan France that
Algerian populations were implicated in and never disinterested by French
social, political, economic, and cultural events. The relationship between
métropole and colony was certainly never static. Colonial Algerian news
papers reveal in fascinating detail the subtle currents that undermined the
connection of Algerian groups to France and to French identity. On both
shores of the Mediterranean Sea, people shared a common yet ever-chang
ing sense of Frenchness.
Notes
I. Daniel Leconte, Les Pieds Noirs: Histoire etportrait d'une communauté (Paris: Seuil,
1980), 132.
2 .1 refer here to the power of print capitalism described by Benedict Anderson in his
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread o f Nationalism (New York: Verso,
1983).
3. The freedom of expression law passed in 1881 allowed the press to play a much
larger social role in France. Jean-Denis Bredin argues that an unencumbered, mass-pro
duced press turned a military incident into TAfFaire,” the "Dreyfus Affair,” that is. See
Bredin, L'Affaire (Paris: Julliard, 1983).
4. In 1947, for instance, La Dépêche algérienne, L'Echo d'Oran, and other newspapers
frequendy publicized the requests made by local politicians for greater metropolitan aid in
meeting Algeria's postwar needs.
5. Joëlle Hureau, La Mémoire des Pieds-Noirs (Paris: O. Orban, 1987).
6. For a seminal work on memory and commemoration, see Pierre Nora, Les Lieux
de mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).
7. See Anderson, Imagined Communities, 14.
8. Zahir Ihaddaden, Histoire de la presse indigène: Des origines jusquen 1930 (Alger:
ENAL, 1983), tableau n° 1.
9. Lega italiano, a newspaper printed in Italian for the settler community in Bone,
could be found in 1896-1897.
10. Newspapers such as El Correo and La Amena espaüola, for instance, were printed
entirely in Spanish. They are examined in more detail in chapter 6.
II. Claude Bellanger, Histoire générale de la pressefrançaise, 1940-1958 (Paris: PUF,
1975).
12. William H. Schneider, An Empire for the Masses: The French Popular Image o f
Africa, 1870-1900 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982).
13. Thomas C. August, The Selling o f the Empire: British and French Propaganda,
1890-1940, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983.
14. Christiane Souriau-Hoebrechts, La Presse maghrébine (Paris: Editions du CNRS,
1969), 68.
15. This was the only French newspaper reported to have survived Algerian indepen
dence. See Boualem Khalfa, Henri Alleg, and Abdelhamid Benzine, La Grande Aventure
d ’Alger-Républicain” (Paris: Editions Messidor, 1987).
16. Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, vol. 2 (Paris: PUF,
1979), 377. Algiers had five dailies, Oran had five as well, and Constantive had three.
Ageron and others commit small sections of their books to Algerian newspapers, but there
is no comprehensive text devoted to specifically to them. More general studies seem to have
been written about the “indigenous” press.
17. Ibid.
18. L'Echo d'Oran's heading read “le plus fort tirage et la plus forte vente de l’Afrique
du Nord” (“the strongest printing and sales of North Africa”).
19. Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 377.
20. Sérigny himself writes that L'Echo d'Alger published 18,000 daily editions in the
early 1940s. See Sérignys Echos d'Alger (Paris: Presses de la cité, 1972).
21. Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 377.
22. Alger-Républicain, 6 octobre 1938.
23. This list includes among others Henri Alleg, Kateb Yacine, and Mohammed
Dib.
24. Khalfa, Alleg, and Benzine, La Grande Aventure d ,nAlger-Républicain, " 28.
25. See Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 377.
26. Alger-Républicain headlines encouraged Muslims to buy the newspaper. In the
third issue of the nascent paper, dated 8 octobre 1938, an article announced, “Musulmans,
unissez-vous autour d’Alger-Républicain” (“Muslims, unite around Alger-Républicain”). In
1947, Boualam Khalfa became editor-in-chief of the newspaper, the first Algerian to hold
such a position.
27. Under the general heading of “Misère en Kabylie,” Camus contributed 11 re
ports between June 5 and June 15, 1939.
28. See the series of articles entitled “Kabylie 1939,” in La Dépêche algérienne, 8-17
juin 1939.
29. L'Echo d'Oran, 18 juillet 1936.
30. La Dépêche algérienne, 16 juin 1930.
33. L'Echo d'Oran, 27 juin 1947.
34. See article entitled “Ecoliers algériens en France,” Alger-Républicain, 7 juillet
1939.
35. L'Echo d'Alger, 18 juillet 1931.
36. La Dépêche algérienne, TJ juin 1930.
37. La Dépêche de Constantine, 13 juillet 1934.
38. L'Echo d'Alger, 26 juillet 1931.
39. See, for instance, La Dépêche algérienne, 15 juin 1930.
40. See “Littérature et Beaux-Arts,” La Dépêche algérienne, 19 mai 1930.
41. May 1945 advertisements in Alger-Républicain noted the offerings of “Radio-
France” which aired in Algeria. Local populations could listen to such programs as “Les
Propos Parisiens” or at 8:30 in the evening, “Lumière de France.”
42. UEcho d'Alger, 14 septembre 1931.
43. See letter sent out from the Prefecture in Constantine on November 6, 1928.
AOM, B 3 502.
44. Among numerous works, see Lynn Hunt’s The New Cultural History (Berkeley:
U. of California Press, 1987), and Mona Ozouf’s La Fête révolutionnaire, 1789-1799 (Paris:
Gallimard, 1976).
46. All of this information is noted in the “A travers Constantine” section of the July
14 edition.
47. We will see in the following chapter that journalists at the indigenous press de
scribed Muslim participation in July 14 festivities differently.
48. La Dépêche de Constantine, 15 juillet 1934.
49. La Dépêche de Constantine, 16, 17 juillet 1934.
51 .Alger-Républicain, 13-14 juillet 1947.
52. L'Echo d'Oran, 12 novembre 1931.
53. Alger-Républicain, 12 novembre 1938.
54. See, for instance, l'Echo d'Alger, 7 mai 1931.
55. L'Echo d'Alger, 10 mai 1937.
56. See l'Echo d'Oran, 16 août 1952.
57. See Herman Lebovics, True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900-1945
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992).
58. Stanley Hoffmann, Decline or Renewal: France since the 1930s (New York: Viking
Press, 1972).
59. L'Echo d'Alger, 9 janvier 1920.
60. See article entitled “Ce qu’il faut savoir sur nos relations avec la France,” 1 avril
1930.
61. Ibid.
62. La Dépêche algérienne, 13 janvier 1934.
63. Ibid.
64. La Dépêche algérienne, 2 février 1934.
65. The first of these essays appeared in L'Echo d'Alger on August 30, 1931.
66. Maurice Viollette, L'Algérie vivra-t-elle? Notes d'un ancien gouverneur général (Paris:
F. Alcan, 1931). In English translation, W ill Algeria Survive? Notes o f a former Governor
General.
67. Quote taken from the fourth part of Beuscher’s “L’Algérie vivra” series, L'Echo
d'Alger, 13 September 1931.
68. Ibid.
69. See February 14, 1934, edition of L'Echo d'Alger.
70. Ibid.
71. La Dépêche algérienne, 15 juillet 1936.
72. Ibid.
73. La Dépêche algérienne, 23 avril 1936.
75. A 7 avril 1936 headline in La Dépêche algérienne read, “Pour et par le peuple les
Croix de feu précisent leurs buts en matière politique” (“For and by the people, the Croix de
feu articulate their political goals”).
76. It was not until after the Second World War that L’Echo d ’A lger became more
vociferously right-wing.
77. The Blum-Viollette proposal would have provided approximately 25,000 Mus
lims with citizenship rights, including the right to vote. La Dépêche algérienne strongly
opposed this measure. See article entitled ‘‘POUR NE PAS PERDRE L'ALGERIE” (“In
order not to lose Algeria”), 15 avril 1937.
80. La Dépêche algérienne, 6, 7 mai 1936
82. See Dépêche article entitled “L'anniversaire du chancelier Hider” in the 23 avril
1936 issue.
83. These articles were published between the 12 and 20 septembre, 1936 under the
tide of “Que se passe-t-il en Afrique du Nord?”
84. La Dépêche algérienne, 2 septembre 1939.
85. LEcho d ’Oran, 4 septembre 1939.
86. La Dépêche de Constantine, 2 septembre 1939.
87. The Governor Generals statement was broadcast on Radio-Alger at 8:00 PM. It
was later translated into Kabyle and Arabic and retransmitted.
88. See for instance LEcho d ’O ran, 2 septembre 1939.
89. LEcho d ’Alger, 6 septembre 1939.
90. La Dépêche de Constantine, 8 mai 1945.
91. Alger-Républicain, 17 mai 1945.
94. See the 18 juin 1945 issue of Alger-Républicain in which Michel Rouzé explored
the “Cinq ans” since de Gaulle’s historic call.
95. On 10 mai 1945, La Dépêche de Constantine printed very brief and sketchy
reports on what had occured at Sétif.
96. See LEcho d ’Alger, 12 mai 1945.
97. La Dépêche de Constantine, 10 mai 1945.
98. “Les manifestants de Blida sont sévèrement condamnés” (“the Blida protestors
have been severely punished”), reported the 26 mai 1945 issue of La Dépêche algérienne.
100. See the series of editorials signed by Camus in Combat dated 12, 15, 16, 18,
20-21, 23 mai.
101. Combat, 23 mai 1945.
102. See 7, 8, 10-11, and 12 juin editions oÏ L’Echo d ’Alger;
103. The statute proposed several reforms in postwar Algeria, including the develop
ment of an Algerian assembly, the reorganization of departments, and the designation of
Arabic as an official language of the country.
104. La Dépêche de Constantine, 16-23 juillet 1947.
10$. LEcho d ’Alger, 2 septembre 1947.
106. See Alger-Républicain article entitled "L'Algérie sera-t-elle une colonie
américaine?” (“Will Algeria become an American colony?”) 6 février 1948.
107. See LEcho d ’Oran, for instance, in 1951-52.
108. LEcho d ’Alger, 2 juillet 1931.
109. Alger-Républicain, 14 juillet 1939.
110. The 24 juin 1947 issue of La Dépêche de Constantine provided a full-page map
detailing the course of the thirty-fourth Tour.
111. LEcho dAlger, 4 mai 1930. See article by Beuscher entitled “Au drapeau.”
112. LEcho d ’Alger, 6 mai 1930.
113. See the editorial entitled “Notre hommage” (“Our homage”) in La Dépêche
algérienne, 4 mai 1930.
114. La Dépêche de Constantine welcomed the French president to eastern Algeria on
May 7, 1930.
115. LEcho dAlger, 28-29 mai 1949.
116. Ibid.
117. LEcho dAlger, 1 juin 1949.
118. On June 2 1949, LEcho dAlger headlines read: “Gage précis de l’entente franco-
musulmane. Le délirant accueil de Constantine a ému aux larmes le président de la
République” (“A precise sign of the Franco-Muslim concord. The fervent welcome from
Constantine moved the President of the Republic to tears”).
119. See LEcho d ’Alger, 3 juin 1949.
120. Alger-Républicain, 15 juin 1939.
AN INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVE ON
FRANCE AND FRENCHNESS
In some of the very same municipalities where settler-oriented newspapers

proliferated, the Algerian, “indigenous” press, an altogether distinct me
dium, translated another North African reality. It evoked the fiction of
Algérie française for some Arab and Berber intellectuals, and expressed a
wide range of sentiment during the colonial period. Written and edited in
French, this press circulated primarily among members of the Muslim elite.
Newspapers such as La Voix indigène, La Défense, La Voix des humbles, and
Egalité expressed the hopes and aspirations of the so-called évolués, Arabs
and Berbers who had been educated in the French school system. “Evolved”
journalists were observers and often critics of a colonial society that did not
confer citizenship status on all its inhabitants. I will argue that their writing
demonstrates how they subscribed to both indigenous and French norms
in colonial Algeria.
From its origins in the twentieth century, journalists writing for the
indigenous press examined the ways in which privileged social groups had
assimilated French cultural practices and how the Muslim population in
general could become more assimilated. Many prominent figures within
the indigenous elite, persons such as R. Zenati, Ferhat Abbas, and Dr.
Bendjelloul, worked as newspaper editors and became actively involved in
the movement for reform.1 In their writings, they proposed ways in which
105
Arabs and Berbers might attain official French status. Indigenous newspa
pers provided a forum in which journalists expressed the desire to be both
culturally and legally French. The quest for citizenship was almost univer
sal among the Muslim elite in the early twentieth century. Indigenous jour
nalists clearly targeted metropolitan French officials and policymakers as
intended readers.
In this chapter, I study the ideological evolution of the Arab and
Berber elite over the last quarter century of colonial rule, as transcribed in
French-language, indigenous newspapers. The degree to which Muslims
identified with Frenchness, the extent to which they described themselves
as French, depended on a variety of factors which will be examined below.
Cautiously supportive of assimilation, naturalization, and citizenship for
all Muslims, Arab and Berber journalists sought to clarify the ambiguous
nature of their French identity in the colonial world. Toward the end of
French rule in Algeria, as hope for reform faded, indigenous journalists
began to articulate a new mode of conceptualizing identity. This move
ment was led notably by Ferhat Abbas and his team of journalists writing
for Egalité’ Inspired by the Manifeste du peuple algérien, a political mani
festo written by Abbas in 1943,2 the paper voiced increasingly clear de
mands for change in the colonial relationship linking France and Algeria.
Activists such as Ferhat Abbas, who had undergone ideological transforma
tions, spoke of the crystallization of an Algerian national consciousness in
the late 1940s and early 1950s.
An Overview of the Indigenous Press
The Algerian indigenous press consisted of a small group of newspapers

edited by Muslims who had gone through the French educational and ad
ministrative system in North Africa. These newspapers constituted a politi
cized press in the sense that naturalization reform for indigenous popula
tions was the primary objective.3 While their purpose was to promulgate
reform for Muslims in colonial Algeria, their success in influencing opin
ion and promoting change is much less clear. As we will see, most of these
newspapers had very limited circulation. They remained accessible to a
select few within the indigenous population, even toward the end of the
French colonial period, due to high Arab and Berber illiteracy rates.4
None of the indigenous newspapers disseminated information with
the regularity of the colonial press. One of the reported “failures” of this
press in fact was its inability to produce a daily edition.5 Most papers were
An Indigenous Perspective on France and Frenchness 107
published weekly and had approximately four pages of text. They were
beset with a number of difficulties— paper shortages and severely limited
resources for example-—which reduced length and circulation. One of the
exceptions, La Voix des humbles, had many more pages of text, but was
published monthly. Indigenous newspapers also “failed,” according to con
temporary critics, because they tended to reflect opinion too closely tied to
that of the colonial administration. Post-independence interpretations of
these newspapers are skeptical of the assimilationist declarations of Arab
and Berber journalists during the colonial period.
The weekly and monthly editions of the indigenous press offered
analyses of particular issues rather than commentary on daily events. French
political, social, and cultural life did not predominate in this press as it did
in colonial newspapers read by European populations; Algeria was the focal
point, not the métropole. The French context that mattered most to mem
bers of the Arab and Berber elite was the colonial North African one. O f
course France was a subject of interest to a French-educated elite in Algeria,
but primarily as an ideological point of reference.
Within the columns of the indigenous press, journalists grappled with
many issues of import in the Franco-Algerian context. Many of the pub
lished articles dealt with the Axab-Berber struggle under colonial rule. A
prevalent theme in much of this writing is the belief that Islamic practices
did not prevent indigenous peoples from assimilating. Arabs and Berbers
wanted to become French, without giving up their Muslim identity, and
they could perfectly well do so, journalists maintained. These writers, vir
tually all male, paid attention to the assimilation of Algerian women in
colonial society.6 Many supported the same access to French education and
culture for women as for men. Some journalists described the situation in
other parts of the French colonial world, particularly when tensions arose
in such places as Madagascar in 1947 and Morocco and Tunisia in the early
1950s. They criticized their European counterparts, writing for papers such
as L’Echo d A’ lger and La Dépêche algérienne, for their lack of interest in Arab
and Berber affairs, except during such periods of conflict.7
A significant portion of the indigenous press was devoted to reviews
of literary texts in which colonial Algerian society was discussed. Critics
analyzed at considerable length novels and essays by both European and
indigenous authors. Reviewed works included those by authors Marie
Bugéja, Albert Truphémus, Ferdinand Duchêne, and Hassan. Indigenous
journalists assessed these works not stricdy for their literary value, but for
their depiction of issues of concern within the Muslim population. What
mattered was the disclosure of the difficulties faced by Arabs and Berbers in
colonial Algeria. The works mentioned and praised most often were those
that illustrated the efforts of the Muslim elite to overcome such obstacles.
Editors clearly hoped to stimulate greater freedoms for people in French
colonial Algeria.
In their reviews, journalists implied that such works of literature could
foster change by informing people about real conditions. The fiction of
novelist Marie Bugéja was cited several times in indigenous newspapers for
establishing lines of communication between indigenous and European
populations.8 Visions dAlgérie, a book published by Bugéja in 1935, re
ceived praise for promoting the inclusion of Arabs and Berbers in an ex
tended French community.9 Albert Truphémus’ LHotel Sersou (1930) re
ceived a glowing review in La Voix des humbles. A reader called it the most
honest exploration of life in the Algerian countryside.10 Ferhat, instituteur
indigène (1935), another novel by Truphémus, received accolades for its
accurate depiction of the tribulations and triumphs of a Muslim teacher.11
Reviews of political essays also appeared in the columns of the indigenous
press. The former Governor General of Algeria, Maurice Viollette, favor
ably reviewed S. Fads 1935 text, LAlgérie sous Tégide de la France.n A re
viewer at La Voix indigene praised Hassans 1938 study of the Muslim elite
and colonial Algerian social structure entitled Comment Périra LAlgérie
française. 13 The authors ideas concurred with those of the newspaper to
which he periodically contributed articles.
Arab and Berber book reviewers were sometimes severe in their as
sessments of works, particularly colonial novels. These were books written
by European authors describing settler society in vivid detail.14 Mouna,
cachir et couscouss ( 1930) by Ferdinand Duchêne, for instance, did not meet
the approval of reviewers.15 The book was criticized for its sketchy depic
tions of the indigenous population. One reader disagreed with Duchênes
contention that Arabs and Berbers did not want to be considered French.
He countered that they were not allowed to be French in colonial society.
In a follow-up review, a journalist claimed that Duchênes depictions of
indigenous women were especially unrealistic and derogatory.16
Newspapers intended for indigenous populations had been written
in Arabic since the mid-nineteenth century. They were often simply trans
lations of military newsletters intended to disseminate particular kinds of
information. From its very beginnings in the early twentieth century, the
politicized indigenous press was almost exclusively written in French. Sev
eral early French-language newspapers in colonial Algeria served as experi
mental models for this developing press and for its French-educated direc
tors. LTslam, published in Bone beginning in 1909, was the first
French-language newspaper to be headed by an indigenous editor.17 Other
early indigenous newspapers included Le Musulman and L'Etendard algérien.
By the year 1914 and the advent of the First World War, censorship limited
the content and circulation of this early indigenous press. None of these
newspapers reemerged after the end of hostilities.
Just after the First World War, indigenous journalists undertook a
more ambitious project. L'Ikdam appeared, directed by Emir Khaled, one
of the first Algerian nationalists and grandson of Abd el-Kader.18Taking its
inspiration from the Young Algerians, a movement created in 1912 by
French-educated Arabs and Berbers, this paper defined itself as defender
and mouthpiece of the indigenous, French Muslim population.19 It was
printed in French with the exception of two concluding pages in Arabic.
The weekly publication reached a maximum circulation of 3,000 newspa
pers sold. Despite the efforts of its journalists, L'Ikdam folded four years
after its creation.20 Still, the paper had set a precedent: French was the
preferred mode of communication for indigenous journalists by this time.21
Fewer newspapers in the 1930s had bilingual French-Arabic editions than
at the turn of the century; many more were printed exclusively in French.
The next generation of indigenous newspapers circulated for a longer
period of time than had L'Ikdam. In the 1920s, two influential papers ap
peared, each voicing the concerns of the Muslim elite—La Voix des humbles
and La Voix indigène. They lasted into the 1930s and beyond, the former
permanently silenced by the events of the Second World War, and the lat
ter reemerging after the war under a new title and format. La Voix des
humbles began publication in the spring of 1922.22 The paper was pub
lished monthly in Oran and claimed to be completely independent of po
litical affiliation.23 Journalists at the paper promoted tolerance and frater
nity among Algeria's different groups. The papers director, S. Faci, was a
retired schoolteacher and a product of the normal school at Bouzaréah. His
own background and philosophy are reflected in the newspaper, as are those
of many members of the indigenous elite.
As a mouthpiece of the association of indigenous schoolteachers, La
Voix des humbles focused its concerns on the experiences of teachers in Al
gerian schools, as well as on pedagogic reform. During its seventeen-year
existence, the opinions of many influential figures, both indigenous and
European, appeared in the paper. Jean Mélia, Ferhat Abbas, Maurice
Viollette, and the Berber poet Jean Amrouche, among others, all made
contributions. Despite the participation of these prominent individuals,
sales peaked at around 3,000.24 In the summer of 1939, the editorial staff
announced that the paper would not appear in July and August, allowing
journalists to take time off. The beginning of the war rendered this tempo
rary hiatus permanent.
On June 13, 1929, the first issue of La Voix indigène was published.
Referred to as a defender of indigenous rights and the Franco-Muslim
union,25 this weekly newspaper reflected fairly closely the viewpoints of its
director, R. Zenati, another prominent member of the Arab-Berber elite.
(See figure 5.) A writer of fiction as well as social critic, Zenati published an
editorial almost every week during the initial phase of the newspaper, from
1929 until 1941. La Voix indigène appeared less and less frequendy as the
Second World War escalated, disappearing almost altogether by 1942. It
reemerged four years later as La Voix libre with a newly formatted and col
ored edition, and renewed aspirations in postwar society. R. Zenati contin
ued to publish editorials during this second phase of the newspaper, until
his death and the papers final edition in 1952.
In the pre-and postwar period, Zenati commented on any number of
issues affecting the lives of Muslims in colonial Algerian society: poverty,
illiteracy, voting rights, and citizenship. Zenati and other journalists at the
paper tended to support a process of reform by which Arabs and Berbers
would assimilate gradually over time. Like La Voix des humbles, La Voix
indigène provided a forum for a variety of political activists and intellectu
als who had an interest in such indigenous affairs. Approximately 1,000
papers were sold weekly.
In the 1930s, another pair of indigenous newspapers appeared on
Algerian newsstands. In January 1934, La Défense began publication.26
Printed every Friday in Algiers and directed by Lamine Lamoudi, this jour
nal claimed to represent the concerns of Algerians who identified as Mus
lims. Its religious and philosophical bent was shaped by the traditional
Uléma group, led by the Cheikh Ben Badis.27 The Ulémas articulated the
desire for indigenous populations to freely practice their religion in colo
nial Algeria. Articles in La Défense advocated the unencumbered develop
ment of Arabic and an Islamic identity in French colonial space.28 Such
positions contrasted with the more secular viewpoints of other elite groups
yet did not prevent journalists at La Défense from taking assimilationist
positions that were similar to those expressed at other newspapers. The
paper managed to create a small but influential following during its short
existence between 1934 and 1939.29
A year after La Défense appeared, another indigenous newspaper was
launched in the eastern city of Constantine. LEntente franco-musulmane
began circulation in 1935, and as its title indicated, adopted a very similar
philosophy to that of other papers. It embodied the aspirations and con-
INDIGENE
DÉPÔT LIÎOAt
ABONNEMENTS Journal dod’union Franco-M usulmane

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Première An ..ce - N ' 14 c» ------ (*^--------------------------------------------- 5 '-----------V~~‘ ^— ’ j —> Jeudi 1 1 Septembre 1919
— LA PROPRIETE INDIGÈNE
(aui/r)
POUR LA FRANCE marade fronçai*, des mêmes avoir
logea «les lois aoclnlei on vtguonr.
Alors qu'en Alÿérîo Tonvrlcr euro-
pé«n esr ansri bien payé qu'on
Franc?, votre davantage dans certai
LE MAITRE ET SES ÉLÈVES

IMctsoo* Ut caractères des sciemment, systématiquement les nes brancher, l’ouvrier indigène est
terrains arch et dértwnlron* qu'il btsoln! de <î millions d'iiiJIVidut «acriflé et traité 00 paria.
n’y avait aucune uécetsité de pour ne songer qu i cens; de Quo le» employeurs algérien»
l ’occuper de ce genre de proprlé- quelques cculaîue* de favorisés s'il» désirant gartler les Indigènes
Uinatltutsur. — !!•** cliwa enfant?. chéri* anz la Francs
té attendu qu’elle était parfaite* du Sort. le# traitent avec Wnvelllançq, en
Adoroi-la do tout cœur,
nient léglpmcntéc par les tradi Nom avon» le ihvmr J r faire Aimri te h DM do l eepérani.T, les fut*oni bénéficier don avanlagcn
tion* cl régir par la l.ol «muni icmuiquct la contradiction d’ un Chcrcht* &devenir Meilleur?. que tool notre travailleur européen
man? pareil *y<lème. de faire observer N’écontra pa« les manvnU bergers joolt, A ravoir 1 assurances contre
Chaque membre de la tribu, la tentative de mettre t’ Admlnts Qui vous poussîul &la révolta. le» accidents, te chômage, la mala
aVons-nout dit, avait droit à la (rat tou dans l'alternative d’etre IV ceo perrannagra Insensés, die, ctlsss de secours, allocation»
Jo ulm nce des surperftclct qu’ il parjure ou Ja déplaire a.»*.' Puis-
rant* du jour. Nous aVous confi
Di'lonmoz Non vils la tél.« pottr chargea de lamlllc, habitations
était eu metme de mettre eu va Kt regardez ta nol-lo Franco, et cantines oovnm a.
leur. l.e droit de premier occu* ance. car le bon sens ne prend
|antals scs droilt en Frence et le
Ce Itorcrau de la tolérance. Qu» le gouvernement de son cô
pant consacrait celle ]utnance té onvre de» écoles professionnel
de la terre tant qu’il pouVall con peuple qui a libéré le monde ne
i Las élèves — Nous n’avon3 qu'une patrie, maître. les dans chaque ccnlre Important
tinuer & la cultiver et il la Ir-int- peut pas manquer ses engage C’est la Franco, c’osl bien la vôtre, Lfndlgène eyant nn métle? nlra
meltail dam le* mém o condi ments vu à Vis d’un autre que le t?» liât haros ci tons lenra amis pa» ailleurs. Sur place I) trouvera
tion* à (et héritier* rnîte* en li Destin a placé tous ta lot. Cerne Pont pour nous «le grands ennemis. de* salaires suffisants. L'exode en
gue directe et même parfol* eu qui. aujourd'hui, semblent tra Nous la rhCrlrrms toujours Mon France tst wwntifMoment compo
ligne collatérale. Le* détenteur! vailler pour l ’Inlcrét national par flans jamais lui demander rien. te de personnes ran* professions
de» parcelle* ne pouvaient opé la marotte de la mise en valeur Uni? qu'elle continue A non5 Ineliufre bien déterminées. Toutes autnb
rer *ur cet terre* aucun contrat, du sol algérien, contrarient eu Qifetle aldo l'Araho Adétruire, meures, celle du travail obllgatoh
ut de Vente, ut d'échange Impli résilie le bon renom de la Fran Superftltlons cl préjugés. ro, enireaotrer, émU’e par rfofroamt
quant le titre de propriétaire». ce cl compromettent l’avenir de Alors lotir, jeunes cl Agée, Zéoatl, .seraient contraire» au»
S ’ il* mourraient tans héritier* leur Pairie. Saurons tnnnrlr pour son drapean principe humanitaires de ta F ri ne»
m ât», leur* lot* rouiraient dan» Pour les brsulns d'une cause, l'mtr son lrlcolnre draprnu. Et en terminant, nous faisons
la communauté ; s'ils laissaient un prélenJ que le» terrain* arch oppeM nos «mis d'outre mer, do
Ici champs kn fnclic* i’ll* let ounitltuenfun rujcl de ûucm Je L'tujrtHuie IVave, bravo, me* cJicrovenlanli. veiller & eo quo ne soit pa9 porté al-
Figure 5. The indigenous Algerian press. La Voix indigne, 12 septembre 1929.

112 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1930-1954
cerns of the évolués, assimilated Muslims. Its journalists and editorial board
hoped to establish a more coherent definition of Frenchness in colonial
society, one that rendered niill and void the distinction between subjects
and citizens. Dr. Bendjelloul, a political spokesperson within the Muslim
elite, charted the direction of the paper. Mohammed-el-Aziz Kessous man-
aged its daily operation. Like La Défense, publication of LEntente folded at
the outbreak of war in 1939.
One of the very last indigenous newspapers to emerge in North Af
rica, yet one of the most influential, was Egalité— la République algérienne?^
Egalité was a product of the “spirit” of the French Résistance movement,
which had provided the inspiration for newspapers such as Combat in the
early 1940s. Although first published in 1944 while war continued in Eu
rope, a distinctly postwar ethos differentiated Egalité from the earlier in
digenous newspapers.31 Its hyphenated title suggests the subtle but real ways
in which the attitudes of the Muslim elite were beginning to change at this
time. Calling for equality between men, races and peoples,32 journalists
writing for Egalité used terminology that was significantly different from
that of their predecessors. They envisaged Egalité as an independent weekly
newspaper that defended Algerian interests.33 Infused with the philosophy
of the Manifeste du peuple algérien, journalists attempted to draw attention
to the desire of Muslims for recognition as Algerians.
What further distinguished Egalité from other indigenous papers was
the commercial success and influence it attained. 30,000 newspapers were
printed daily at its apex in 1944-45, and this figure could arguably have
reached 100,000 if paper had not been in scant supply after the war. While
articulating a new conception of Algeria and colonial Algerian identity, the
team of journalists at Egalité did not encourage the severing of all ties with
France, their “pays spirituel” (“spiritual homeland”). A French cultural iden
tity had been too strongly ingrained for such a clean break to be advocated.
Expressions of Frenchness
“Pour révolution des indigènes par la culture française” (“For the evolution
of Muslims through French culture”). This phrase was inscribed on each
cover of La Voix des humbles. It summarized not only the philosophy of this
particular newspaper, but also that of the indigenous press in general.
Throughout the colonial period, newspapers published articles suggesting
that members of the indigenous elite wanted to become French, and had
already, in many cases, assimilated French cultural identity. Yet most Arabs
and Berbers were French subjects and not accorded the same privileges and
duties as citizens. Indigenous journalists often qualified their assertions of
Frenchness, depicting the advantages of assimilation among the Muslim
elite more and sometimes less fervently at different times.
In the first issue of La Voix indigène in 1929, director R. Zenati wrote
an editorial that stated in boldface: “L’Algérie doit devenir française”34 (“Al
geria must become French”). In other words, it had not yet done so, which
contradicted the discourse of school programs and the rhetoric of colonial
authorities. Zenati called for substantive reforms for Algeria’s Arab and Berber
population. He insisted that he was not a proponent of assimilation, but
rather of “social evolution.” In the reformed colonial society that he de
scribed, indigenous populations would gain materially and culturally. In
the short term, the Algerian Muslim would continue to differ somewhat in
tradition from European settlers, but these differences would gradually fade
over time, as regional distinctions arguably had in France. Zenati com
pared the path of Algerian Arabs and Berbers to that of “Bretons” and
“Provençaux” in France who had assimilated. Algeria and its inhabitants
would follow a similar progression, and would take their place within a
regional French framework. Zenati concluded,
L’Algérie sera habitée par des Français de sentiments et d’aspirations
identiques. Qu’est-ce qui sépare aujourd’hui l’Indigène de l’Européen? De
simples préjugés.35
[Algeria will be inhabited by French persons of identical feelings and aspira
tions. What separates native Algerians from Europeans today? Simple preju
dice.]
One of the most commonly expressed objectives in the indigenous

press was eradicating biases and bridging the real and imagined distance
that separated European and indigenous populations. This could be initi
ated, writers suggested, through education, political reform, and a little
good will. Increased contact between the two communities could contrib
ute to this process. Mixed marriages provided an intimate and concrete
form of collaboration. Journalists writing for the indigenous press often
supported the union of persons of different races and religions. In just its
second edition in 1929, a contributor to La Voix indigène suggested that
mixed marriages were a sign of evolution in attitude.36 Another journalist
writing for La Voix des humbles was unambiguously supportive of them,
but* ambivalence was probably the more common sentiment.37 Many in
digenous writers voiced concerns about the religious status of Muslims
married to French Christians, and that of any children produced from such
unions.
In a discourse not unlike that of multicultural advocates in France
today, journalists writing for the colonial indigenous press insisted that
Muslims could both assimilate socially and retain distinctive traits, that
their religious differences did not prevent the process. Virtually all of the
newspapers formed a consensus on this point: A naturalized Arab or Berber
continued to be Muslim while assuming all rights and duties of being French.
Islamic identity did not in any way negate ones capacity to become French.
The indigenous elite placed its confidence in an assimilationist tradition
that would purportedly accommodate individuals who desired the oppor
tunity to become French.
In many indigenous newspapers thus, and especially in La Voix
indigène, articles on “la naturalisation” and “la francisation” predominated.38
A journalist at La Voix des humbles summed up sentiment widely held:
Elevés par la culture française, et nés dans un pays où nous servons la France,
nous désirons être Français. Certes, nous le sommes déjà, et c’est bien notre
fierté. Mais nous voulons l’être davantage39
[Having been nurtured by French culture, and having been born in a coun
try where we serve France, we want to be French. Clearly, we are already, and
we are proud of that. But we want to be more French.]
Segments of the Arab and Berber elite were sufficiently French to express
indignation at the linguistic slight of being addressed informally as “tu” (
the informal you) by European settlers in Algeria.40
In a commemorative essay published in January 1939, marking the
one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the French Revolution, a Voix des humbles
journalist noted the patriotism of the Muslim elite: “[. . .] La majorité des
patriotes, de ceux qui pensent français et se dévouent pour la France, ce
sont les Arabo-Berbères”41 (“. . . The majority of patriotic people, those
who think French and are devoted to France, are Arab-Berber persons”).
The editorial staff at La Voix indigène reiterated the devotion of the Muslim
elite toward the métropole:
Avons-nous besoin de répéter que nous aimons la France et que nous ne
consentirons jamais à faire ou à laisser faire quoi que ce soit qui puisse nuire
à son prestige dans notre pays.42
[Do we need to repeat that we love France and that we will never consent to
doing or allow to be done the slightest thing that might spoil its prestige in
our country.]
Journalists writing for La Défense voiced similar support for assimila
tion. Although firmly committed to the rights of indigenous Algerians to
assume their Islamic identity and Arabic language, journalists advocated a
communion of French citizenship and Muslim identity for indigenous Al
gerians. They argued that Muslim and French were not mutually exclusive
states of being, that assimilated Arabs and Berbers did not relinquish Islam
in becoming French. They hoped to erect a bridge of sorts between Islam
and Frenchness.43 Défense writers denounced the French subject status of
most Algerian Muslims. In an opening editorial in 1934, the staff stated that
“nous sommes des Français sans l’être, des Français incomplets ou, comme
l’ont dit certains de nos amis, des Français de seconde zone”’44 (“We are French
without being so entirely, incomplete French persons, or as some of our friends
claim, second-class French”). Journalists at La Défense also indicated in their
columns their particularity as French Muslims: “N’étant pas des Français ‘comme
les autres’ nous avons nécessairement des intérêts distincts, des revendications
et des aspirations distinctes”45 (“Not being French ‘like the others,’ we nec
essarily have distinct interests, demands, and aspirations”).
Articles published in La Défense gave no indication that newspaper writ
ers, or readers, were concerned with being labeled “M’tournis” within their
own communities. “M’tournis” was the term used by Arabs and Berbers (and
sometimes Europeans) to refer to persons who had become naturalized. Mus
lim novelists referred to its generally pejorative connotations in colonial soci
ety, stigmatizing those who had allegedly turned their back on Islam.46In 1933,
a monthly newspaper entided Le M ’toumi began publication and sought to
discuss the problems faced by naturalized Arabs and Berbers. The first issue of
this short-lived paper appeared in June. Like its counterparts, it claimed to
promote Arab-Berber interests and the union of the races in colonial Algeria.47
The very title of the paper was an attempt to defuse or to nullify the
negative connotations that the term M ’tourni attributed to French Mus
lims. The journal editor, Joseph Zentar, himself a naturalized Berber, con
tended that indigenous populations should be free from social constraints
to become Frenchmen. He wrote,
M’tournis constituent, en réalité et positivement, les éléments intellectuels et
moraux les meilleurs, les plus civilisés, les plus francisés. [. . .] J’ose même
affirmer qu’ils sont francisés intégralement, autant que quiconque.48
[M’tournis truly and positively represent the best intellectual and moral as
pects, the most civilized, the most French. ... I would even go so far to say
that they are as French as anyone else.]
Zentar went one considerable step further than Défense journalists as well
as those writing for other indigenous newspapers. He supported the con
version of Arabs and Berbers to Christianity, as he himself had done.
Zentar and his associates, representing a minority of an already tiny
Arab and Berber elite, lauded the bravery of Muslim and non-Muslim
“M ’tournis,” “pris entre l’enclume et le marteau” (“caught between a rock
and a hard place”). They accorded respect to individuals who continued to
practice as Muslims, yet the paper specifically targeted people who had
converted to Christianity. Quotes from the Bible, reports on the activities
of the local clergy in Algeria, and book reviews of spiritual texts fill the
columns o( Le M ’tourni. Expressly Catholic, newspaper writers proclaimed
an openness toward other faiths.49 Perhaps most importantly, the M ’toumi
(both the newspaper and individuals) sought to confront Muslim fanati
cism. According to the editorial staff, “[. . .] le M ’tourni sera le meilleur
trait d’union entre deux grandes Races”50 (“. . . The M 'toumi will be the
best link between the two great races”).
Statements of assimilated Frenchness in the indigenous press were tem
pered by periodic warnings that Arab and Berber populations had grown
weary of the ambivalence and hostility to their status in colonial society. S.
Faci, director of La Voix des humbles, claimed that despite assertions made
about successful assimilation, the French-educated elite was certainly not
universally regarded as French. An article appearing in the August 15,1930,
issue stated that Algerian Muslims were nominally French yet the indi
vidual “[. . .] nest Français que pour la peine et jamais pour l’honneur”51
(“. . . is French only in adversity and never for the glory”). Colonial rheto
ric alluded to the Frenchness attained by Muslims when support for France
was necessary, during war for instance, but not at other times. An editorial
asked why “[. . .] les indigènes, même les plus instruits, sont-ils considérés
comme indésirables par les Européens”52 (“. . . indigenous persons, even
the most educated, are considered undesirable by Europeans”). Muslim
elites, especially, represented a threat to European dominance in Algeria.
Articles in the indigenous press suggest that some Muslims turned
their attentions toward Arab nationalist movements in the East as a result
of settler opposition. Others expressed the need for metropolitan French
intervention in North Africa. Journalists directed periodic appeals to French
officials in order that they intervene in colonial affairs. The Arab and Berber
elite often made clear distinctions between the ‘authentic” French of France
and the “dubiously” French settlers of Algeria. R. Zenati wrote an editorial
in 1934 “aux bons Français” (“To the truly French”), addressing metropoli
tan officials directly in hopes of stimulating action.53 A contributor to La
Défense similarly sought to attract the attention of people outside of colo
nial Algerian circles in 1936, by making an “appel au peuple de France”54
(“An appeal to the people of France”).
Although members of the Arab and Berber elite voiced a sense of
French cultural identity in the columns of the indigenous press, they in
sisted that assimilation did not carry over to the overwhelming majority of
the population. As a result, Muslim elites stated that French Ageria was a
misnomer. In 1936, La Défense published a number of related essays by the
Muslim intellectual Ferhat Abbas. In these writings, Abbas contended that
Ageria could not be French without due recognition of Arabs as French:
“Sans Emancipation des indigènes, il n’y a pas dAlgérie française durable”
(“Without the emancipation of the indigenous population, there will be
no enduring French Ageria”). Abbas’ words were taken from an essay en
titled “En marge du nationalisme. La France c’est moi!”55 (“On the fringes
of nationalism. I am France!”). He probably regretted uttering “la France
c’est moi” as well as other comments made in the 1930s, for his critics
often referred to them. Abbas declared that he could find no evidence of an
Agerian nation in the annals of history. He claimed to have searched an
cient texts, cemeteries, and memory in vain. In the absence of any recog
nizable Agerian identity, Abbas struggled to make French citizenship rights
more attainable during the 1930s.
In a 1936 article in La Défense, a paper known more for its religious
bent than its intellectual curiosity, Ferhat Abbas further criticized the no
tion of “French Ageria:”
On a usé et abusé de la terminologie l'Algérie terre française parce qu’une
faible majorité de colons et de fonctionnaires européens se réclament, pour
exploiter l’indigène, du sabre de la France. Et on se leurre lorsqu’on parle du
prolongem ent de la France avant même que les six millions d’Aabo-berbères
n’aient été acquis en profondeur à la civilisation française.56
[The term French Algeria has been used and abused because a small popula
tion of European settlers and civil servants demand, in order to better ex
ploit the indigenous population, French military intervention. One is mis
taken when one hears of an extension o f France before the six million Mus
lims have become permanently acquainted with French civilization.]
Abbas issued a warning about the precariousness of a French Algeria
supported primarily by naturalized settlers of foreign descent. To Abbas,
the future of a country which denied the majority of its population citizen
ship rights was jeopardized. '
Construire, comme on le fait jusqu’ici, une Algérie française avec des éléments
d’importation cest construire sur du sable mouvant. Que l’humanité indigène
trouve l’occasion de bouger, et l’édifice s’écroule comme un château de cartes.57
[To construct, as has been done until now, a French Algeria with imported
elements, is to construct on quicksand. If the indigenous masses find the
occasion to move, the entire structure will come crashing down like a house
of cards.]
Ferhat Abbas was clearly critical of French Algeria and of the status of
Muslims within colonial society, yet “assimilationists” like him drew the ire
of Algerian nationalists for their positions. In an attempt to answer critics
who accused him of catering to the colonial administration, Abbas noted,
“je n ai pas oublié que je ne suis pas Français, mais sujet français”58 (“I have
not forgotten that I am not French but rather a French subject”).
R. Zenati echoed very similar kinds of concerns in an April 1936
editorial entitled “Pour une politique française en Algérie” (“For a French
policy in Algeria”). Zenati remarked:
[...] Les Français venus pour faire de l’Algérie le prolongement de la Métropole
n’ont pas encore songé à la franciser. Tout concourt, dans leur administra
tion, non à la franciser, non à la conserver dans le cadre islamique, mais à en
faire une entité hybride [. . .] qui ne soit ni chair, ni poisson.59
[. . . The French who came to Algeria to facilitate the extension of the
métropole have not yet thought of making it French. Everything contrib
utes, in their administration, not to making it French, not to conserving it in
the Islamic tradition, but making it a hybrid entity. . . neither fish nor foul.]
This commentary conveyed clear doubts about the make-up of French Al
geria. Earlier Zenati writings, however, had suggested that Algeria was a
French region no different from any other. Zenati s shifting views are repre
sentative of those of the indigenous elite in general, collectively desirous of
French citizenship, but never convinced it would ever come to pass. The
country appeared to be an ambivalent body as a result, neither fully French
nor Algerian. R. Zenati, in one of his weekly editorials, reiterated the de-
mand for an unambiguous policy regarding the assimilation of indigenous
peoples. He stated:
Les indigènes [. . .] auraient toutes les raisons de se détacher de la France et
de tourner leur regards vers d’autres horizons. Qu’a-t-on fait pour les attacher
à la France, pour créer chez eux un idéal démocratique, une “mentalité
française”? Rien ou à peu près rien. On semble avoir fait tout ce quil fallait
pour les faire replier sur eux-mêmes, pour les dérouter, les désaxer et les
rendre méfiants.60
[Indigenous peoples have every reason to distance themselves from France and
to turn their attention toward other horizons. What has been done to attach
them to France, to create in them a democratic ideal, a “French mentality”?
Nothing or almost nothing. It seems as if everything has been done to force
them to fall back on themselves, to mislead them, and make them suspicious.]
Articles appearing in La Défense expressed a similar point of view.
The religious leader Ben Badis announced in 1936,
Si la France veut des hommes libres, nous sommes des hommes libres et
nous serons avec elle. Mais si elle veut des esclaves, nous ne sommes pas des
esclaves et nous la laisserons seule.61
[If France desires free men, we are free men and we will stand with her. But
if she desires slaves, we are not slaves and will leave her be.]
Editors stated blundy in 1938, “il faut que TAlgérie évolue et elle évoluera.
[...] Cette évolution se fera par la France, pour la France, ou sans la France,
contre la France”62 (“Algeria must evolve and it will evolve. . . . This evolu
tion will be through France and for France, or without France and against
France”). In somewhat less foreboding terms, the editorial staff at LEntente
franco-musulmane laid out its position vis-à-vis France:
L’Entente [...] rendra hommage à l’oeuvre de la France, dont nous apprécions
plus que quiconque, les admirables réalisations, mais elle aura assez de fermeté
pour critiquer ce qui, dans cette oeuvre, sera contraire aux principes généreux,
que l’école française nous a elle-même inculqués.63
[The Entente . . . will render homage to the colonial activity of France,
whose great successes we appreciate more than anyone else, but it will also be
critical of the elements that are contrary to the inclusive principles that the
French school system inculcated in us.]
While criticizing French actions or lack thereof, journalists remained
loyal to the idea of coexisting within a French framework. Writers contrib
uting to La Défense thereby defended the legitimacy of their actions. One
insisted that the papers activity “[. . .] s’est toujours poursuivie et se
poursuivra dans le cadre des lois françaises, des institutions françaises, de la
souveraineté française”64 (“. . . has always functioned and will continue to
function in accordance with French laws, French institutions, and French
sovereignty”). Even if the language of La Défense were confrontational in
the eyes of colonial administrators, Arab and Berber journalists believed
that there was something inherently French about their pursuit of reform:
Si, c’est être antifrançais que de réclamer des droits français, des libertés
françaises, la justice française, eh bien! nous sommes des antifrançais et nous
le resterons jusqu’au jour oii pleine satisfaction nous sera accordée sur tous
les points de notre programme.65
[If it is anti-French to request French rights, French freedom, and French

justice, well then, we are anti-French and will remain so until we are ac
corded full satisfaction on every point in our platform.]
A La Voix indigène journalist described the wide spectrum of opinion

among French politicians in 1937 concerning the colonies, and the lack of
consensus about what should be promulgated in colonial Algerian society.
He listed the various and somewhat contradictory titles that applied to
Algeria.66 Since 1848, Algeria was legally “terre française” (“French terri
tory”), the writer noted, made up of three French départements. Yet it could
also be considered a French province, as the French General Bugeaud and
Ferhat Abbas had intended, or a “penitentiary” for the opponents of
Napoléon Ills coup d’état of 1851, or even a royaume arabe (“Arab king
dom”) envisioned by the emperor. The author insisted that the hour had
arrived when policy establishing one clearly defined status for Algeria be
put into place and real francisation encouraged.
At the very end of the year 1938, Jean Amrouche, a Berber author,
teacher and poet, began a lengthy series of articles in La Voix des humbles
entitled “L’idée de nation et l’Algérie”67 (“The Idea of Nation and Alge
ria”). The question that Amrouche explored in these essays was whether “a
French-Algerian nation” was indeed possible. He sought common ground
upon which the members of various races and religions could establish a
nation. He cited historical precedents, such as the First World War, during
which peoples of differing races, religions, and social classes worked toward
a common goal, and in so doing forged a national consciousness. Accord
ing to Amrouche, Arabs and Berbers wanted nothing more than to col
laborate with Europeans in the construction of “la France algérienne.” Jean
Amrouche believed that the genesis of such a nation could be kindled in
French colonial institutions, particularly in schools.
Commemoration and Identity
The celebration of French national holidays in the indigenous press pro

vided the impetus for a systematic discussion of Frenchness in colonial
Algeria. Holidays created a context in which the Muslim elite could ac
knowledge the official French status gained by a few, but also to point out
how much needed to be done in order to promote francisation generally.
Dates such as July 14 and November 11 constitute politicized moments in
which indigenous journalists often broached the subject of naturalization
reform. These dates clearly represented very different things for indigenous
journalists than for their European counterparts.
Bastille Day, for indigenous journalists, served as a pretext for a dis
cussion of the discrepancy between colonial life and egalitarian French ide
als evoked in schools. Their education had provided them with the intel
lectual means to criticize French policies in Algeria (as had the discrimination
that they faced in colonial society). Just before July 14 festivities in 1934,
the journal editor R. Zenati noted the oppression which still divided Alge
rian society into opposing camps in an essay entitled “La détresse des
indigènes algériens”68 (“The Misery of Indigenous Algerians”). Subsequendy,
he described a “war” being waged against Arab and Berber elites.69 In 1948,
Ferhat Abbas depicted the disparity between democratic notions and colo
nial realities for Muslims in the columns of Egalité. The “Bastille algérienne”
was still standing, he claimed. Abbas hoped that democratic forces on both
sides of the Mediterranean Sea might collaborate to tear down this edi
fice.70
The date commemorating the armistice and the end of the First World
War, November 11, was also analyzed in light of colonial realities, particu
larly in regard to the treatment of former soldiers. An article in La Défense
in 1936 noted the hypocrisy in celebrating such an event when Arab and
Berber veterans of the First World War lived in misery.71 “LArmistice nest
pas encore signé” (“The Armistice is not yet signed”), claimed a journalist
from Egalité in an article about continued discontent among indigenous
war veterans.72The difference in benefits accorded to veterans of European
and Arab-Berber descent, he argued, served to widen the gap between set
tler and indigenous populations.
Other dates were commemorated, reminding Arab and Berber read
ers of the difficulties experienced in a French colonial country. After the
end of the Second World War, May 8 was acknowledged by indigenous
journalists, not so much as the day marking the beginning of France s lib
eration from German occupation, but one of repression and suffering for
indigenous populations at Sétif in eastern Algeria. The violence that erupted
between Muslims and Europeans was solemnly commemorated each May.73
The legacy of “Sétif 1945” appeared more important to Arab-Berber memory
than German surrender. For future nationalists, this date would come to
represent the beginning of collective resistance to colonialism.
In addition to these commemorative moments, journalists writing
for the indigenous press had their own set of dates linked specifically to
North African space and time. June 14, the day French forces arrived in
Algeria in 1830, and July 5, 1830, the date of the fall of Algiers into French
control, represented periods of sorrow for indigenous populations: “Dou
loureux anniversaire: 14 juin 1830— débarquement de Sidi-Ferruch” (“A
Sad Anniversary: June 14, 1830— the landing at Sidi-Ferruch”), was noted
in LAlgérie libre, as was “5 juillet 1830— 5 juillet 1952: 122 ans de misère,
de terreur et de souffrance!”74 (“July 5, 1830—July 5, 1952: 122 years of
misery, terror, and pain”). Other dates, such as the birthday of nationalist
Messali Hadj or the anniversary of the prophet Mohammed, were of course
more celebratory.73
The Blum-Viollette Debate
Although Arab and Berber journalists generally agreed on the need for po
litical reform in colonial Algeria, namely the revision of citizenship law,
opinion about specific proposals varied. The Blum-Viollette project and
the debate it inspired in 1937 and 1938 reveal the subtle differences in
policy supported by the various indigenous organizations. The project, ini
tiated by the Popular Front government in 1936, had proposed extending
the status of French citizenship to more people. Because an elite would
continue to benefit from this measure, while the majority of the Arab and
Berber population would not, it presented significant moral problems to
journalists.
In 1937, journalists writing for La Voix des humbles, La Défense, and
La Voix indigene expressed similar viewpoints about this initiative which
A n Indigenous Perspective on France and Frenchness 123
would grant citizenship to approximately 25,000 individuals. They wrote
articles that were cautiously supportive of the Popular Front, a regime in
which many members of the Muslim elite had initially placed their hopes.
Articles in La Voix des humbles indicated that indigenous journalists and read
ers were for the Viollette proposal. Others claimed that Muslims would with
hold judgment until its passage into law and application in colonial society.76
Journalists addressed some of the criticism that had been voiced by
Europeans about the reform proposal. They asserted that promulgation of
the Blum-Viollette project would not result in a loss of status for settlers,
nor would it decrease French influence in North Africa. Writers gave assur
ances that members of the Muslim elite, newly recognized as French citi
zens in colonial society, would be French in spirit as well as in legal texts,
and loyal servants of France. Critics of the proposal, however, claimed that
it was a mere ploy to assuage a disgruntled indigenous population. Anti-
Semites insisted that French Prime Minister Léon Blum had initiated the
measure to gain the support of the frustrated Muslim elite. The team of
journalists at La Voix des humbles denied that the Blum-Viollette project
was in any way a palliative to soothe Arab and Berber hostility toward Jews,
collectively naturalized more than a half century earlier.77
The staff at La Défense pledged their support for the Blum-Viollette
proposal. Journalists there reemphasized that they sought access to French
citizenship status without having to relinquish Muslim identity. They in
sisted that naturalization was acceptable only on condition that individuals
could maintain their religious and cultural traditions. Such views were ex
pressed in articles printed in La Défense throughout 1937 and early 1938.
A February 1938 entry stated the paper s continued support of the Blum-
Viollette project and its rejection of what it called the Hitlerian project,
which drew a legal distinction between different races and oppressed those
designated as inferior.78
Similar views on the need for passage of the Blum-Viollette proposal
appeared in La Voix indigène, but there existed a greater disparity of opin
ion here than in other indigenous newspapers. In early 1937, some jour
nalists conveyed mild support for the proposal. Francisation had always
been one of the ideas discussed most frequently and favorably in La Voix
indigène, and the measure did propose making it obtainable for more elites.
A front-page statement noted:
Si f Algérie doit devenir un jour française, il faut éduquer ses habitants dans
le sens français et ne pas les éloigner de la France par des méthodes égoïstes
où prédomine Torgueil de race et le soin de privilèges.79
124 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria» 1 9 3 0-1954
[If Algeria is to become French one day, its inhabitants must be educated in
a French way and not detached from France by selfish methods in which the
pride of race and the preservation of privileges predominate.]
Editorials written by R. Zenati asserted that the desires of the Arab
and Berber peoples were accurately expressed in the Blum-Viollette pro
posal, even if it failed to address the concerns of all social classes. There
remained several different ways of being French in colonial Algerian soci
ety, which some Muslim elites rejected. “Il n y a pas trente-six façons d’etre
français” (“There are not 36 ways of being French”), Zenati stated.80 He
reiterated the belief that Islam should not be considered an impediment to
the assimilation of indigenous populations, just as Judaism had not been a
barrier to the collective naturalization of Jews.
The tone of the articles written in La Voix indigène began to change
toward the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938. The newspaper pub
lished essays that expressed diminishing support of the Blum-Viollette
project. Many were now critical of the measure. A February 1938 com
mentary insisted that “la proposition Blum-Viollette est injuste, peu
démocratique, antifrançaise dans son essence”81 (“The Blum-Viollette pro
posai is unjust, undemocratic, and anti-French in its essence”). It created a
false sense of Frenchness, a fleeting or “ephemeral citizenship” for a fortu
nate few, and would not resolve the second-class status of the Arab and
Berber population in general. The author noted that although those who
benefited from the reform measure could vote as citizens, they were still
subject to discrimination within the colonial system. The next month, a
headline addressed “le projet Viollette ou la farce qui continue”82 (“The
Viollette project, or the farce goes on”). Zenati and others clearly became
disillusioned with the proposal and with its capacity to bring about change.
Even among political supporters, enthusiasm for its passage waned; conse-
quendy, the Blum-Viollette project was never ratified. The debate on French
citizenship in colonial Algeria, however, did not end at that juncture.
An Indigenous "Sacred Union"
In 1939, as war with Germany threatened to materialize and then became

a reality, a noticeable change in perspective appeared in the assertions of
the indigenous press. Journalists who had been critical at times of Arab and
Berber assimilation now voiced an ardent, unequivocal sense of Frenchness.
Attachment to France was expressed unambiguously in a climate of prepa
ration for war, echoing the mood of the past when France began to mobi
lize for the First World War. In the pieces published at this time, when
conflict with Hitler s encroaching forces was no longer avoidable, Arab and
Berber journalists spoke of an indigenous Union sacrée (“Sacred Union”) in
defense of France.
A full year before France was drawn into war, indigenous journalists
addressed the conditions under which Muslim support of France would be
possible. “Pour une France forte,” declared headlines in La Défense, “[. . .]
la mobilisation morale doit précéder la mobilisation militaire”83 (“For a
strong France, . . . moral mobilization must proceed military mobiliza
tion”). The slow process of implementing reform did not prevent some
journalists from enthusiastically claiming to be “avec la France, toujours et
malgré tout!”84 (“with France, always and despite everything!”). A journal
ist writing for La Voix indigène in 1938 recognized the sheer force repre
sented by the indigenous “French” of la plus grande France, but also noted
that they should be acknowledged as such in peacetime as well as during
war. “Il ne suffit pas d’attendre les crises pour clamer que l’Empire français
a cent millions d’habitants”85 (“It is not sufficient to wait for crises before
proclaiming that the French Empire has one hundred million inhabitants”).
Sixty percent of these persons held no protected rights as members of the
French nation.
By the fall of the next year, what had been uninspired and often cir
cumspect declarations of Frenchness became emphatic affirmations. Here
we witness a calculated transformation in the tenor of the indigenous press,
not entirely unlike that seen in colonial European newspapers at the same
time. On September 7, 1939, four days after the proclamation of war on
Germany by the French, the full cover of La Voix indigène brimmed with
exhortations to French patriotism. Such declarations were clearly intended
for Algerian Muslims as well as for metropolitan French readers, especially
those responsible for policy reform. Headlines noted in bold print: “Haut
les coeurs—L’Islam est avec la France— Debout l’empire—Le devoir de
chacun—Aux armes sans hésitation— Nous sommes Français”86 (“Heads
held high”— “Islam is with France”— “The Empire at attention”— “The
duty of everyone”— “To arms without hesitation”— “We are French”). A
series of essays explaining in detail the intended messages followed each of
the statements. They announced that it was the duty of Arabs and Berbers
to demonstrate their loyalty to France, to join the French military as a
solemn manifestation of their Frenchness. This was true, they argued, not
only for French citizens, whose civic duties bound them to service, but also
for the much greater numbers of French subjects.
R. Zenati spoke of a French and Algerian “Sacred Union’ in a Sep
tember 7, 1939, editorial of La Voix indigène. “La France est un grand pays”
(“France is a great country”), claimed the journalist and editor, who had
just returned from a trip to the métropole. Zenati described concrete ex
amples of social and political union that he had witnessed in France. Con
flicts were forgotten, he noted, and people of different perspectives came
together, fused by a common devotion to France. Sufficiendy impressed by
this to call it a “miracle,” Zenati argued that the European and indigenous
components of Algerian society should follow suit. He was now more con
vinced that France “[. . .] est un grand pays à qui tous les espoirs sont
permis”87 (“. . . is a great country in which we may have great hopes”).
Hassan, an essayist and periodic contributor to La Voix indigène,
authored the essay entitled “L’Islam est avec la France.” He noted that he
was happy to reaffirm the existence of truly French Muslims. Another jour
nalist echoing this same theme described the profound sense of loyalty to
France within the indigenous population. The author insisted that Arabs
and Berbers had been French in the best of times and that they would
continue to be in the worst of times. He reminded readers that Muslims
had already served France in the “Great War” and that in 1939, they would
help to restore France to its rightful place as a leader in Europe:
Nous sommes français, et en tant que Français, notre devoir sacré est de
combattre les prétentions intolérables de ceux qui érigent effrontément la
force brutale en système d’oppression. La France qui a éduqué le monde se
devait de s’élever contre l’agression injustifiée de la malheureuse Pologne.
Soyons à ses côtés dans la belle mission quelle s’est imposée de défendre les
opprimés.88
[We are French, and as Frenchmen, our sacred duty is to combat the intoler
able intentions of those who shamelessly turn brutal force into a system of
oppression. France, who educated the world, must rise up against the unjus
tified aggression against afflicted Poland. Let us be with France in this noble
mission that she has taken upon herself to defend the oppressed.]
Did indigenous intellectuals truly believe this? Or was it a calculated
statement? Such sentiment certainly echoes the republican school discourse
of French patriotism, disseminated in textbooks throughout Greater France.
French schools had indeed produced a zealous sense of Frenchness for some.
Some indigenous and European pupils of the colonial school system de
duced that to be French was synonymous with the denunciation of oppres
sion. The discourse of liberté, égalité, fraternité was powerful indeed, even if
purely imaginary in the colonial setting. The destiny of France and its di
verse populations seemed interwoven with the universal struggle against
injustice wherever it existed. As members of an extended French family,
Arabs and Berbers could thus not rightfully affirm their French identity if
they did not participate in the war effort.
In the early stages of the war, articles in the indigenous press indi
cated further reasons why Arabs and Berbers should serve in the French
army. Although Algerian Muslims had been conscripted into military duty
in wartime, voluntary participation was eagerly solicited.89 Newspaper ar
ticles pointed out that though service was optional, it was certainly in the
best interests of Arabs and Berbers to enlist. If France were defeated, where
would this leave the indigenous population? And if they did not contribute
to an eventual Allied victory, what future awaited them in French colonial
Algeria? An article in La Voix indigène entitled “Hitler et les Musulmans”
argued that Arabs and Berbers would suffer under the rule of the German
leader.90 Sections of Mein Kampfwere published in indigenous newspa
pers, segments that demonstrated Hitler s indifference or outright hostility
toward Arab and Berber populations. An article in December 1939 warned
Algerian Muslims to be wary of German attempts to sway them.91 If for no
other reason than that Muslims were better off under French sovereignty
than they would be under German rule, they should support the French
war effort by joining the army.
These were practical, utilitarian incentives for loyalty to France. In
digenous populations reportedly had much to gain from their solidarity. R.
Zenati suggested that Muslim participation in the French military was good
“pour la France et pour nous”92 (“for France and for us”). War allowed the
Muslim elite as well as other social strata among the Arab-Berber popula
tion to demonstrate their Frenchness. According to press reports, this aid
would surely lead to the eventual triumph of France. It would also serve as
a bargaining chip in postwar discussions about reform and the acquisition
of French citizenship. Citizenship status had always been a kind of com
modity in colonial society for which one negociated, proposing services in
return for expected compensation. This was true after the First World War,
when indigenous participation led to the reform proposals of 1919, and
after the second as well. In one of his frequent addresses, Zenati insisted,
Après la victoire, nous nous comprendrons mieux avec les Français, toutes
les nuages disparaîtront, les bonnes volontés qui surgiront de part et cTautre
sauront réaliser une situation où chacun trouvera son compte et ainsi, nous
. aurons travaillé pour la France et pour nous.93
[After the victory, we will get along better with the French, all haziness will
disappear, the good will that emerges on both sides will promote the devel
opment of a context in which everyone will find his due and thus, we will
have worked for France and for ourselves.]
The "Sacred Union” of which Zenati spoke was thus not disinterested.
France would win the war and Arabs and Berbers would gain the rights to
French citizenship status in the process.
R. Zenati and other journalists continued to call attention to the
need for Arabs and Berbers to take up arms in defense of French interests in
the early 1940s. They did not seem concerned by the experience of the
First World War, after which reform attempts failed, due to settler hostility
and political pressure.94 "Debout tous, pour la France” (“Everyone on their
feet, for France”), announced an article calling directly for greater Muslim
mobilisation.95 R. Zenati declared that Algeria was a part of France, and
that the indigenous population would indeed demonstrate its loyalty dur
ing the war. Zenati had once again, pragmatically, altered his attitude to
reflect the current circumstances. He insisted in March 1940 that TAlgérie
n est plus une colonie” ("Algeria is no longer a colony”), but had been cre
ated in the very image of France.96 His words echoed those of colonial
advocates mentioned in preceding chapters, who insisted in their writings
that Algeria was France and that French Algeria was a reality.
The wartime proclamations made by R. Zenati and other journalists
emerged in the specific context of the unfolding drama. They anxiously
awaited change in the postwar world, but became increasingly pessimistic
about reform. Muslim attitudes began to shift just a few years after the end
of hostilities.
In the years immediately following the Second World War, few indigenous
newspapers were still in existence. La Défense, La Voix des humbles, and
LEntente franco-musulman no longer circulated. Only La Voix indigène re
mained in print in 1946, albeit in a different format and newly titled as La
Voix libre. Another indigenous paper was launched at this time, one that
would come to play a more substantial role in voicing indigenous opinion
than perhaps any other paper—Egalité. It was led by editor-in-chief Ferhat
Abbas and began circulation in September 1944. Both Egalité and La Voix
libre continued to articulate Muslim desires for collective assimilation and
described the many obstacles that hindered this process. Arabs and Berbers
who had fought in the war had not received the citizenship status that R.
Zenati and others had struggled to attain. Newspaper articles expressed
increasing disenchantment with French identity in the postwar colonial
world, while simultaneously conveying hopes for change that had not been
entirely dashed.
Two of the most debated issues after the war in the indigenous press
were the French Union and the Statute for Algeria. The first defined a
French colonial commonwealth in legal terms, while the latter established
a number of innovations in Algerian administration.97 Each attempted to
redefine and consolidate the various parts of Greater France, most notably
the special link between colonial Algeria and the métropole. Neither of
these initiatives seemed to foster much enthusiasm among the indigenous
elite. A report published in La Voix libre addressed what journalists called
“la tourmente sur FAlgérie” (“The furor over Algeria”) generated by these
proposals.98They wondered if they should alter their aspirations in light of
hesitant proposals and stark colonial realities. The school-produced notion
of Frenchness, the foundation of an assimilated French cultural identity,
was threatened by diminishing faith in political reform.
R. Zenati had initially expressed mild support of the reforms associ
ated with the French Union. An extended French body politic had been
defined in the legal texts of the Fourth Republic, and transmitted French
status to all persons within colonial boundaries. The law of May 7, 1946,
redefined Frenchness in the colonial world. It created a rather ambiguously
conceived “imperial French identity” which included indigenous popula
tions. Yet attitudes had begun to shift among the indigenous elite. Zenati
wondered in 1946 whether “l’assimilation a-t-elle vraiment fait faillite?”99
(“Has assimilation really failed?”) That same year in the columns of Egalité,
Ferhat Abbas expressed decreasing optimism about the French Union, as
did other journalists, many of whom conveyed dissatisfaction with the
project.100A French Union would be viable only, articles noted the follow
ing year, if Algeria were a respected partner within an egalitarian French
commonwealth.101 “L’Union française se réalisera avec des peuples libres [.
..] ou ne sera pas!” (“The French Union will develop with free peoples . ..
or it will not develop at all!”) a writer claimed.102
In 1950, a front-page editorial by Abbas claimed that “quand le
colonialisme veut cacher son nom il se fait appeller ‘Union française’”103
(“When colonialism wants to mask its identity, it calls itself the French
Union”). He maintained that “[. . .] l’Union française actuelle continue
l’Empire. On a changé de nom et on a gardé la chose” (“. . . The present
French Union is a continuation of the Empire. They have changed the
name, but much remains the same”). Another article suggested that the
reforms established a “[. . .] pseudo-assimilation qui fait des Algériens
musulmans des pseudo-Français de troisième zone”104 (“ . . . pseudo-as
similation which makes Algerian Muslims third-class pseudo-French”).
The Statute for Algeria of 1947 did not fare any better in the estima
tion of Ferhat Abbas and writers at Egalité. In 1952, journalists assessed the
statute five years after its creation, concluding that few of its stated goals
had been attained.105The territoires du sud and communes mixtes of Algeria,
sparsely populated rural areas administered differendy from French depart
ments, were supposed to have been absorbed into the existing three depart
mental configuradons. The Arabic language and Islamic religion were to have
been respected and allowed to develop fully. None of these changes had report
edly come about. R. Zenati referred to the Statute for Algeria as yet another in
a series of failed reform attempts.106 Continued “peur de l’indigène” (“fear of
the nadve”) prevented real change from taking place, he concluded.
Disillusionment with regard to both the French Union and Statute
for Algeria created doubts within elite indigenous groups about French
colonial rule. Algerian journalists conveyed the uncertainty that permeated
privileged social classes in the mid-to late 1940s. They described a hesita
tion to turn from France, but concluded that this might indeed be neces
sary. “Est-ce trop tard?” (“Is it too late?”) R. Zenati asked in his weekly
editorial in 1951.107 The idea that the indigenous elite might be forced to
give up its support for French sovereignty was something that Zenati and
his team of journalists, long yet wary supporters of assimilation, regretted.
A March 1952 editorial was simply and evocatively entitled, “Douleur”108
(“Sorrow”). Two years previously, in an attempt to discredit the colonial
system, Zenati described “les fossoyeurs de l’Empire français”109 (“The grave
diggers of the French Empire”). Ever the pragmatic, still refusing to frilly
reject French-Algerian union, Zenati added that “rien n est perdu”110 (“noth
ing is lost”). The ambivalence of the Muslim elite, torn between their Alge
rian country and their French “patrie,” can thus be read in their own words.
For Arab and Berber intellectuals whose adolescent and adult lives had
been anchored in French culture, who had spent two decades attempting
to make assimilation a reality for others, total disengagement from French
identity was difficult indeed.
Egalité and the Algerian Republic
Altered perceptions of the colonial relationship to France were perhaps most

clearly articulated by Ferhat Abbas, from the editors desk at Egalité. His
personal trajectory over the course of the 1930s and 1940s is reflective of
the shifts in attitude within the Muslim elite in general. In 1931, in a series
of essays entitled De la Colonie vers la province: Le jeune Algérien, Abbas
argued that Algeria was French and should take its rightful place among
other French provinces.111 Fifteen years later in his role as journalist, Abbas
revised his view, stating that Algeria was not French but Algerian. At vari
ous times in between, Abbas and other indigenous journalists fluctuated
from one position to the other, between the seemingly opposed camps of
assimilation and autonomy.
As early as 1930, Arab and Berber intellectuals began to discuss
amongst themselves the formation of an Algerian nation and identity. The
creation of a ‘peuple algérien” (“ an Algerian people”), one that included
settler and indigenous populations, was entirely possible, R. Zenati stated.
L’indigène débarrassé de toutes les entraves entrera résolument dans le creuset
algérien [...] et fournira un contingent de plus en plus important à la forma
tion de ce peuple d’avenir.112
[The native stripped of all fetters will enter resolutely into the Algerian melt
ing-pot . . . and will provide an increasingly important component to this
people of the future.]
Yet Arabs and Berbers were recognized neither as French citizens nor ex
pressly as Algerian in colonial society. Several proposals were put forth in
the indigenous press in the 1940s, proposals that declared persons of all
races and religions Algerian. A 1951 article in La Voix libre noted the pos
sibility and indeed the necessity for the creation of a multiracial Algerian
people.113
Ferhat Abbas continued exploring the notion of an Algerian nation
and identity at Egalités founding in 1944, a little over a decade after claim
ing that they did not exist. In the transitional postwar climate, Abbas con
tended, “il faut en finir avec les conceptions du passé”114 (“the conceptions
of the past must be completely abandoned”). That is to say, all references to
French Algeria had to be abandoned. He announced that TAlgérie est
terre Africaine”115 (“Algeria is African territory”). Aziz Kessous, Egalités new
editor-in-chief in fall 1944, declared that within this newly defined African
space, “la communauté algérienne accueillera fraternellement tous les
Algériens”116 (“the Algerian community will fraternally welcome all Algeri
ans”). Between its natural and adopted sons, there would be no distinction.
Abbas believed that these new conceptions of an Algerian land and people
in no way equated a definitive break with France. Such ideas were “ni contre
la France ni contre nous-même” (“neither hostile to France nor to us”), he
claimed.117 French culture was still embraced by indigenous journalists.
“Tout reste possible avec le vrai peuple de France” (“All is possible with the
true people of France”), an article contended.118 What was anathema was
the notion of “l’Afrique latine” (“Latin Africa”) articulated notably by nov
elist Louis Bertrand.119 Ferhat Abbas rejected this literary development on
the basis of its lack of indigenous voices and the exaggeration of European
influence.
By the beginning of 1948, the articles published in Egalité were be
coming increasingly insistent in their demand that the adjective “Algerian”
define all characterizations of indigenous people and places. Abbas marked
the fifth anniversary of the Algerian peoples manifesto, the Manifeste du
peuple algérien, in February 1948 with a focused exploration of the term
“nation” in colonial Algeria. He claimed that certain segments of the Euro
pean population, speaking in the name of the “Nation française,” denied
others the opportunity to imagine the “Nation algérienne.”120 The indig
enous population would no longer accept this, Abbas claimed. They would
not be prevented from adhering to one of the principles of the Manifeste—
Algerian self-determination—or from lending support to the establishment
of a social and democratic Algerian Republic.
On February 27, 1948, Egalité officially incorporated the phrase “la
République algérienne” into its title, giving new direction to its team of
journalists. A declaration announced,
Lorgane central du Manifeste du peuple algérien affirme ainsi le principe de
l’égalité des peuples, des hommes et des races, qui ne saurait recevoir ici son
application que dans le cadre de la République algérienne.121
[The official newspaper of the Manifest of the Algerian People affirms the
principle of the equality of peoples, men, and races, which cannot be imple
mented under any other circumstances than the Algerian Republic.]
Journalists hoped that a change in name for the newspaper would inaugurate
Une ère nouvelle qui verra les Algériens de toutes les origines s’unir
fraternellement sur un pied de stricte égalité, pour oeuvrer en commun dans
la paix sociale et le respect de leurs traditions mutuelles.122
[A new era that will see Algerians of all origins uniting fraternally on equal
footing, working collectively in peace and in respect of their different tradi
tions.]
The “Algerian Republic” that journalists described was modeled on
the France that they had read about, idealized, and often visited as students
and adult travelers. They understood France to be inhabited by Frenchmen
of varying backgrounds and traditions, recognized unconditionally as French
by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. It was in this way
that they conceived the future composition of Algeria and “Algerianness.”
In the articles that followed the February 1948 change, Ferhat Abbas
and other writers discussed this new Algerian Republic. There was no longer
any question of Algeria being connected territorially to France. Abbas had
again abandoned his previous assimilationist beliefs. He argued,
L’Algérie a toujours été et demeure une entité politique et sociale
profondément différente de la France. Elle hest pas plus un département
métropolitain qu’une province française. C’est un pays à part, qui requiert
des institutions à part.123
[Algeria has always been and remains a political and social entity profoundly
different from France. It is no more a metropolitan department than a French
province. It is a distinct country that requires distinct institutions.]
In an ensuing article, he insisted that “l’Algérie n est pas l’Alsace!”124 (“Algeria is
not Alsace!”) No longer was the destiny of Algeria similar to that of any metro
politan French province. Ferhat Abbas asserted that the Mediterranean Sea
constituted an abyss cutting the European continent off from the northern
coast of Africa. The separation was not only geographic but also cultural.
Algerians of identical status would populate the Republic conceptual
ized by Ferhat Abbas, not differentiated categories of French persons. Abbas
rejected the colonial situation in which he and others found themselves. “Nous
nous refusons, quant à nous, de demeurer des sans patrie,’ des hors-la-loi dans
notre propre pays”125 (“As for us, we refuse to remain stateless,’ outlaws in our
own country”). He criticized the ambiguous assimilation of Muslims in colo
nial Algerian society, their “pseudo-French citizenship.”126 Ferhat Abbas and
the journalists working for Egalité in the 1950s proposed the establishment of
Algerian citizenship for all populations. Abbas insisted,
[. . .] Nous voulons être des citoyens algériens libres dans une Algérie libre.
Nous éprouvons autant de fierté à être citoyen algérien qu’un Français peut
en éprouver à être citoyen français.127
[. . . We want to be free Algerian citizens in a free Algeria. We feel as much
pride in being Algerian citizens as a French person can feel being a French
citizen.]
He rejected the dominant status of European settlers in colonial society,
who could be regarded as both French and Algerian. Such discussion of
Algerian citizenship during the colonial period was audacious, given the
country’s explicitly French ties.
Throughout the early 1950s, Ferhat Abbas continued to formulate
his interpretation of a new Algerian country and population.128 Algerians
of all races and religions working together could create a truly Algerian
community.129 As a result of the exaggerated differences alienating groups
in colonial society, the image of France had suffered in the eyes of the
Muslim elite. Abbas described “la France victime de sa politique coloniale
et anti-sociale”130 (“France, victim of its colonial and anti-social policy”).
Despite this shift in perspective, Abbas could never definitively abandon
his “patrie spirituelle.” An Algerian Republic would not sever all ties with
France. Historian Benjamin Stora correctly notes in his biography of the
Muslim intellectual, “Ferhat Abbas va ainsi évoluer progressivement de
l’assimilationisme au fédéralisme”131 (“Ferhat Abbas would progressively
evolve from assimilationism to federalism”). Struggling to achieve a more
autonomous status for their country, Ferhat Abbas and other members of
the Muslim elite believed that they upheld the lofty ideals of their egalitar
ian French education. Yet for French thought and influence to continue to
be respected, authorities had to realign colonial initiatives with the French
democratic tradition.
Conclusion
Algeria’s indigenous press never reached large numbers of Arab and Berber
peoples. It was never published more regularly than at weekly intervals and
did not seek to provide the kinds of information transmitted in colonial
newspapers destined for settler groups. Its goals of collective political re
form for indigenous populations were not met. Despite these shortcom
ings, indigenous journalists leave a fascinating record of the evolution of
Muslim sentiment in colonial Algeria.
The history of the politicized indigenous press in Algeria is intimately
tied to the long-lasting desires of the Muslim elite for assimilation, the
recognition of French citizenship status, and the establishment of a truly
French Algeria. Ultimately disillusioned by the lack of naturalization re
form in colonial society, indigenous journalists initiated a new debate on
Algerian identity. They articulated an inclusive Algerian nationalism, be
fore an Islamic “Algerian nation” was forged in armed conflict with French
troops.132 The autonomous Algerian Republic advocated by journalists at
Egalité in the late 1940s and early 1950s incorporated Europeans, Jews,
and Muslims into its body as citizens. Its discourse of inclusion is quite
original, but such a republic could never come to fruition under colonial
rule. It could only exist at the expense of Algérie française.
Notes
1. See the recent biography of Ferhat Abbas by Benjamin Stora and Zakya Daoud,
Ferhat Abbas: Une utopie algérienne (Paris: Denoël, 1995), for current research on the indig
enous intelligentsia.
2. The Manifeste was one of the very first public declarations suggesting that Arabs
and Berbers were Algerian first and foremost.
3. Charles-Robert Ageron, “Regards sur la presse politique musulmane dans l’Algérie
française,” Cahiers de l’Institut d ’histoire de la presse et de lopinion, pp. 37-87.
4. Certain newspapers were allegedly read aloud in cafés in order to convey informa
tion to those who could not read.
5. For more on these failures, see Zahir Ihaddaden, Histoire de la presse indigène en
Algérie: Des origines jusqu en 1930 (Alger: EN AL, 1983), 44.
6. See for example La Voix des humbles, 22 mai 1930, and La Voix indigène, 16 juillet
1937.
7. Muslim journalists pointed out what they considered to be misperceptions or
maliciousness in the French colonial press.
8. See article in the August 1935 issue of La Voix des humbles entitled “Mme Bugéja
à l’honneur,” as well as a tribute in La Défense, 17 juillet 1938.
9. La Voix des humbles, 15 janvier 1930.
10. La Voix des humbles, 15 mai 1930.
11 .L a Voix des humbles, juin 1935.
12. La Voix des humbles, mars 1936.
13. La Voix indigène, 28 avril 1938.
14. See chapter six.
15. See the lengthy commentary entided “Réflexions d’un lecteur” in La Voix des
humbles, 15 août 1930.
16. La Voix des humbles, 15 septembre 1930.
17. Christiane Souriau-Hoebrechts, La Presse maghrébine (Paris: Editions du CNRS,
1969), 74.
18. See Emir Khaled’s thoughts in his own words in La Situation des musulmans
d ’A lgérie (Alger: Trait d’union, 1924).
19. Its heading read: “L’Organe de défense des intérêts des Indigènes et des Musulmans
Français d’Algérie” (“The Mouthpiece of Indigenous and French Muslim Interests in Alge
ria.”)
20. Another paper appeared in its place, entitled Attakaddoum, which continued
circulation until 1931.
21. Ageron, “Regards sur la presse politique musulmane.”
22. The first issue of La Voix des humbles appeared in May 1922.
23. A sub-heading read "Loin des partis, loin des dogmes” ("Independent of parties,
independent of dogma”).
24. Ageron, "Regards sur la presse politique musulmane.”
25. The papers title read "Organe d’union Franco-musulmane et de défense des
intérêts des Indigènes.” (“Mouthpiece of Franco-Muslim union and defense of indigenous
interests”).
26. The first issue appeared on 26 janvier 1934
27. See Ali Merad, Le Réformisme musulman en Algérie de 1925 à 1940 (Paris: Mou
ton, 1967).
28. In the opening issue, an editorial criticized the hostility with which the Arabic-
language press was met.
29. Ageron, "Regards sur la presse politique musulmane.”.
30. “La République algérienne” was added to Egalité’s title in 1948.
31. The first issue of Egalité appeared on September 15, 1944.
32. The papers motto was “Egalité des hommes— égalité des races— égalité des
peuples” ("Equality of men— equality of the races— equality of all people.”)
33. On its masthead, Egalité was entitled a "hebdomadaire indépendant de défense
des intérêts Algériens” (“independent weekly for the defense of Algerian interests.”)
34. La Voix indigène, 13 juin 1929.
35. Ibid.
36. La Voix indigène, 20 juin 1929.
37. See article entitled "Ménages mixtes” by Chérif Benhabylès in La Voix des humbles,
juin 1935.
38. See related articles in La Voix indigène dated 14 novembre 1929, 21 janvier
1937,4 mars 1937, 11 mars 1937. Assimilationist newspapers such as La Voix indigène later
drew criticism for such positions.
39. See article entitled "Le Malaise algérien” in La Voix des humbles, avril 1935.
40. 22 mai 1930 issue of La Voix indigène.
41. In the janvier-février 1939 issue of La Voix des humbles, see article by Caliban
entitled “1789-1939.”
42. La Voix indigène, 25 janvier 1934.
43. See also articles by Maurice Viollette published in the juin-juillet 1926 issue of
La Voix des humbles entitled “Les M’tournis ou Musulmans naturalisés français.”
44. La Défense, 26 janvier 1934.
45. Ibid.
46. See works by Mohammed Dib and Mouloud Mammeri, for instance.
47. Le M ’toum is cover heading declared it a “revue mensuelle de défense indigène et
d’Union des races” (“a monthly journal of indigenous defense and union of the races.”)
48. Le M ’tourni, juin 1933.
49. Le M ’tourni, octobre 1933.
50. Le M ’toumi, juin 1933.
51. La Voix des humbles, 15 août 1930.
52. La Voix des humbles, 15 octobre 1930.
53. La Voix indigène, 8 novembre 1934.
54. La Défense, 3 juillet 1936. The article addressed the “[. . .] généreux Peuple de
France, à ses représentants au Parlement, à tous les honnêtes gens, le Peuple musulman
algérien adresse un appel désespéré pour qu il soit mis un terme à sa lamentable situation ’
(“. . . generous people of France, her representatives in parliament, all honest persons, the
Algerian Muslim people issue a desperate appeal to put an end to its lamentable situation”).
55. La Défense, 28 février 1936.
56. La Défense, 8 mai 1936.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. La Voix indigène, 2 avril 1936.
60. Ibid. "Pour une politique française en Algérie II” appeared in the following issue,
9 avril 1936.
61. La Défense, 1 octobre 1936.
63. This citation appeared in the very first issue of LEntentefranco-musulmane, dated
29 août 1935.
65. Ibid.
67. See four-part series of reports begun in the novembre-décembre 1938 issue of La
Voix des humbles, with continuing articles in janvier-février, mars and avril-juin 1939.
68. La Voix indigène, 12 juillet 1934.
69. La Voix indigène, 19 juillet, 2 août 1934.
70. See editorial by Ferhat Abbas entitled ‘T 4 juillet 1948: Pouquoi la ‘Bastille
algérienne’ est toujours debout,” Egalité, 16 juillet 1948.
71. See article entitled “I l novembre,” in La Défense, 20 novembre 1936.
72. Egalité— la République algérienne, 26 novembre 1948.
73. See commemorative May 8 articles in Egalité after 1945.
74. See LAlgérie libre, 15 juin 1952 and 20 juillet 1952 respectively. LAlgérie libre
was the newsletter of the indigenous political organization, Mouvementpour le triomphe des
libertés démocratiques (MTLD).
75. See article entitled “ 1.424e anniversaire de la naissance du prophète Mohammed,”
in LAlgérie libre, 1 décembre 1952.
76. See editorial entitled “Nous attendons” (“We are waiting”), in La Voix des humbles,
avril 1937.
77. La Voix des humbles, mai 1937.
78. See “Pour le projet Viollette et contre le projet Hitler,” in La Défense, 23 février
1938.
80. See articles by Zenati entided “La francisation,” in La Voix indigène, 4, 11 mars
1937.
81. See article entided “Le Projet Viollette,” in La Voix indigène, 11 février 1938.
82. La Voix indigène, 3 mars 1938.
83. La Défense, 7 septembre 1938.
84. La Défense, 21 décembre 1938.
85. See articled entided “Cent millions” in La Voix des humbles, novembre-décembre
1938.
86. La Voix indigène, 7 septembre 1939.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid.
89. See Benjamin Stora, Ils venaient d'Algérie: L'immigration algérienne en France,
1912-1992 (Paris: Fayard, 1992).
90. La Voix indigène, 14 septembre 1939.
91. See “Attention à la propagande allemande,” in La Voix indigène, 14 décembre
1939.
92. La Voix indigène, 4 décembre 1939.
93. Ibid.
94. See chapter 2 for details on the “loi Jonnard” proposed in 1919.
97. Refer to chapter 1 for more information.
98. See 20 février 1946 issue of La Voix libre, as well as the 1 mars 1946 issue.
99. La Voix libre, 30 août 1946.
100. Egalité—la République algérienne, TJ septembre 1946.
101. Egalité—la République algérienne, 3 janvier 1947.
102. Egalité— la République algérienne, 10 avril 1947.
103. Egalilé— la République algérienne, 20 janvier 1950.
104. Ibid.
105. See article in Egalité t ntided “Cinq ans de statut de l’Algérie. Promesses françaises
et réalités algériennes,” 3 octobre 1952.
106. See “Le Statut de l’Algérie” in La Voix libre, 7 avril 1947.
107. La Voix libre, 16 mai 1951.
108. La Voix libre, 20 mars 1952
109. La Voix libre, 31 mars 1950.
110. La Voix libre, 11 avril 1952.
111. Ferhat Abbas, De la Cobnie vers la province: Lejeune Algérien (Paris: Editions de
la jeune parque, 1931).
112. See article entitled TAlgérianisme,” in La Voix indigène, 2 octobre 1930.
113. See article entitled “Un Peuple algérien est-il possible,” in La Voix libre, 1 juin
1951.
114. Egalité—la République algérienne, 22 septembre 1944.
115. Egalité—b République algérienne, 29 septembre 1944.
116. Egalité—la République algérienne, 20 octobre 1944.
117. Egalité—la République algérienne, 20 avril 1945.
118. Egalité—la République algérienne, 18 octobre 1946.
119. See chapters 1 and 6.
120. Egalité— la République algérienne, 6 février 1948.
121. Egalité—b République algérienne, 27 février 1948.
122. Ibid.
123. Ibid.
124. Egalité— b République algérienne, 5 mars 1948.
125. Ibid.
126. Egalité—b République algérienne, 17 février 1950.
127. Ibid.
128. See “LAlgérie ne serajamais autre chose qu’une terre algérienne,” (“Algeria will never be
anything other than Algerian”), in Egalité—b République algérienne, 15 décembre 1950.
A n Indigenous Perspective on France and Frenchness 139
129. “La formation de la ‘communauté algérienne’ précipitera la fin du régime colo
nial” (“The formation of the ‘Algerian community’ will signal the end of the colonial re
gime”), stated Ferhat Abbas in a 17 avril 1953 Egalité editorial.
130. Egalité— la République algérienne, 29 mai 1953.
131. Benjamin Stora and Zakya Daoud, Ferhat Abbas, une utopie algérienne (Paris:
Denoël, 1995), 89.
132. An Algerian national consciousness allegedly took shape during the violent
struggle for independence. See Georges A. Kelly, “Prospects of an Algerian Algeria,”A Quar
terly Journal o f World Affairs (Spring 1962): 311-25.
s
A COLONIAL SCALE OP FRENCHNESS
A brochure written in the early 1950s stated that almost ten million French
people lived in Algeria, of whom nine-tenths were “French Muslims” and
one-tenth French citizens of European extraction.1The document insists
on a common degree of French sentiment, consolidated by common expe
riences in Algerian society. Muslims and Europeans, it notes, were born in
the same hospitals, received the same medical treatment, frequented the
same schools, learned trades and worked together in the same industries,
shopped at the same stores, used the same means of transportation, played
and lived together, sometimes even in the same buildings. Through these
shared activities, indigenous and European populations had reportedly be
come “equally” French. Such assertions echoed what many sources in the
1930s, 1940s, and 1950s attempted to communicate: All persons living in
French colonial Algeria were French. They more accurately translate, I would
contend, colonial mythologies of Frenchness.
Official statements such as this one tended to downplay the cultural
disparity that existed between setder and indigenous groups. They ignored the
legal distinction between citizens and subjects, emphasizing instead a fuzzy,
general sense of French identity shared by all. They did not acknowledge pre
served Arab, Jewish, and non-French European traditions in colonial Algeria.
Despite their assimilationist intendons, many colonial documents could not
140
A Colonial Scale o f Frenchness 141
fully mask lingering differences existing between “French” groups in Algeria.
Evidence of difference periodically contradicted the official veneer of sameness.
The novels, political essays, and administrative reports examined in this chap
ter convey varying levels of French sentiment, sentiment at times in opposition
to the French colonial status quo. Differing attitudes toward Frenchness ap
peared in colonial newspapers that addressed the specific concerns of indig
enous and settler groups. Even in school literature, where all populations could
supposedly attain the same French cultural identity, distinctions rose to the
fore. What such documents evoke, I argue, is a disordered French colonial
context in which competing, fluctuating identities flourished. Notions of
French identity in colonial Algeria were slippery—tied to official means of
recognition (citizenship)—yet also linked to perceptions based on ethnic,
cultural, socioeconomic, and gender constraints.
The next two chapters address the complexities of identity in French
colonial Algeria, the ambiguities of being French, Algerian, and/or other.
They examine an assortment of written documents for traces of French
sentiment among Muslim, Jewish, and European groups in Algeria. Colo
nial Algerian texts depict a distinct hierarchy among the “French” in Alge
ria of the mid-twentieth century. They indicate that non-French sensibili
ties developed within certain population segments. Anti-French sentiment
developed in part as a result of heightened colonial frustrations and strati
fication and was closely monitored by local authorities. The only group
above suspicion were the descendants of persons from metropolitan France—
transplanted “Bretons,” “Alsacians,” and “Provençaux”—who embodied
“undisputed” Frenchness in the colonial world.
Muslims into Frenchmen?
In the 1930s, census reports indicate that naturalized Muslims numbered

less than ten thousand in colonial Algeria. 5,836 were listed as French citi
zens in 1931 and 7,817 in 1936, a tiny percentage of the total indigenous
population.2 Most-AIgerian Arabs-and Berbers were disenfranchised colo
nial subjects, a status that was becoming increasingly unacceptable to mem
bers of the Muslim elite. Some insisted that there be one way for all groups
in colonial Algeria to be French— as citizens with identical responsibilities
and privileges. Members of the indigenous elite expressed a collective de
sire for citizenship, yet differed considerably in their own French cultural
identity. This was reflected individually in their choice of dress, in the lan
guage spoken, and perhaps in the choice of a life partner.
S. Faci, a naturalized member of the Muslim elite introduced earlier,
stated that a cultural transformation had taken place among French-edu
cated Arabs and Berbers.3 He noted that not only had the members of
privileged classes become French in thought and appearance, but the ma
jority of Arabs and Berbers desired French nationality. Faci described a
growing rift between naturalized French setders and the Muslim elite, many
of whom aspired to citizenship status. French administrators had to make
French citizenship rights accessible to more people in order to reflect the
completed cultural transformation, Faci believed. The indigenous essayist
Hassan concurred. “Ce n est q u ainsi qu’ils peuvent nous attirer à eux,
conquérir nos coeurs, et nous communiquer la flamme ardente du génie de
leur race”4 (“It is only thus that they can entice us, conquer our hearts, and
pass on to us the ardent flame of their race”). If French officials facilitated
access to French institutions and made citizenship attainable to more people,
he did not doubt that Muslims would become patriotic Frenchmen:
Bien dirigés, éduqués rationnellement, ils deviendraient nécessairement de
bons Français et si, sous la poussée des événements, ils devaient arriver à la
conception nationaliste, ils seraient des nationalistes français.5
[Well led, educated rationally, they would necessarily become good French
men, and if, driven by circumstances, they were to arrive at a nationalist
perspective, they would become French nationalists.]
Ferhat Abbas, the journal editor and political activist, devoted much
of his early work to denouncing the continued disparity between French
subjects and citizens. He and other Muslim leaders expressed dissatisfac
tion with the “second-class” French status that they held. Whether declared
French subjects, “French Muslims,” or even “special French,” none of these
terms reflected the lull citizenship status that they desired. The journalist and
part-time novelist R. Zenati criticized the colonial divide maintained between
Muslims and setders, French subjects and citizens. In his 1945 novel Bou-el-
Nouar, lejeune Algérien, the young Algerian pupil Bou-el-Nouar learns of this
colonial distinction. His teacher proclaims sadly:
On parlera malheureusement pendant longtemps encore dans ce pays, de
Français et d’indigènes, mais le devoir de tous les bons Français, qu’ils soient
chrétiens ou musulmans est de travailler à faire disparaître tout ce qui jusqu’ici,
a maintenu les deux éléments loin l’un de l’autre. Il faut qu’il n’y ait plus que
des Français ne s’habillant pas momentanément de la même façon, mais
destinés à se fondre dans le même peuple, synthétisant ainsi les caractères de
ceux qui ont fait de ce pays un joyau magnifique.6
[Unfortunately in this country, the distinction between French and natives
will continue to be made for a long time, but the duty of all good French
men, whether Christian or Muslim, is to work toward the disappearance of
all that has until now separated the two. There must be only Frenchmen in
Algeria, temporarily dressing differently, but destined to fuse into a single
people, synthesizing the traits of those who have made this country into a
magnificent jewel.]
The predominant theme throughout Zenati s novel is bridging the divide
that separated Europeans from indigenous groups in colonial Algeria.
In La Grande Maison, contemporary Algerian novelist Mohammed
Dib explores the foreignness of France and Frenchness for pupils in an
Algerian classroom at the mid-century point.7 To his young protagonist
Omar, France is merely an abstract notion, an entity that he knew to be
significant, but that lay beyond his immediate horizon. In a captivating
passage, Dib creates a sense of intrigue and drama similar to that of Alphonse
Daudet s La Dernière Classe} The backdrop is the village school where Omars
teacher begins a lesson with a discussion of the word “patrie.” He asks the
class about its meaning, which sets Omar s mind adrift:
La France, capitale Paris. Il savait ça. Les Français qu’on aperçoit en ville,
viennent de ce pays. Pour y aller ou en revenir, il faut traverser la mer, pren
dre le bateau. [. . .] La mer: la mer Méditerranée. Jamais vu la mer, ni un
bateau. Mais il sait: une très grande étendue d’eau salée et une sorte de planche
flottante. La France, un dessin en plusieurs couleurs. Comment ce pays si
lointain est-il sa mère? Sa mère est à la maison, cest Aïni; il hen a pas deux.
Aïni n’est pas la France. Rien de commun. Omar venait de surprendre un
mensonge. Patrie ou pas patrie, la France n’était pas sa mère.9
[France, capital Paris. He knew that. The French that you see in town come
from this country. To go there or return, you have to cross the sea, take a
ship... . The sea, the Mediterranean Sea. Never seen the sea, nor a ship. But
he knows: a great expanse of salt water, a kind of floating board. France, a
drawing in several colors. How is this distant country his mother? His mother
is at home, she’s Aïni; he doesn’t have two. Nothing of the sort. Omar has
just understood a lie. Homeland or not, France is not his mother.
Omar had never seen the Mediterranean Sea, which colonial enthusi
asts invested with such unifying powers. The French Mediterranean, in their
collective imaginations, connected all of Greater France. Omar is confused
by the mer-mère comparison and its underlying colonial relationship. He
does not understand the concept of a figurative mother {mère or mère-
patrie) made possible by a nurturing sea (mer). In the narrative, Omars
mind slowly focuses back on the classroom and his teacher continues the
discussion of the word “patrie.” Switching genders, he states that “patrie”
refers to the fatherland, to the homeland where ones ancestry goes back
several generations. It must be defended at all costs, he explains. Then,
with emotion he cannot conceal, Omar’s teacher whispers, “ce n est pas vrai
si on vous dit que la France est votre patrie”10 (“It is not true if you are told
that France is your homeland”). He utters this statement in Arabic, a lan
guage he normally forbade his students to speak.
The essayist Hassan asserted that Algerian Muslims, while perhaps
potential French nationalists, were certainly not as supportive of mother/
father France as officials often claimed:
Si Ton croit que nous sommes complètement formés, que nous sommes,
comme on le prétend, façonnés à l’image des Français parce que nous savons
nous exprimer, assez malhabilement d’ailleurs, dans la langue de Racine, on
se trompe singulièrement.11
[If people believe that we are completely assimilated, that we are, as is often
stated, shaped in the image of the French because we can express ourselves,
rather clumsily, in the language of Racine, they are very much mistaken.]
He recognized the pressures and influences that could turn Muslim atten
tion away from France. R. Zenati concurred and in a poignant political
essay observed that “[. . .] les Musulmans ne détacheront leurs regards de
TOrient que lorsqu’ils seront français d’une façon intégrale”12 (“Muslims
will not detach their gaze from the Orient until they are wholly French”).
This could be implemented by transforming Muslim subjects into citizens,
as European foreigners had been naturalized. Zenati added, “sans cela,
l’Algérie ne sera jamais le prolongement de la France et il n’y aura pas
d’Algérie française”13 (“Without that, Algeria will never be an extension of
France, and there will be no French Algeria”). As we have seen, the same
point was made in the indigenous press.
While its virtues were praised rhetorically by French authorities, as
similation remained closely guarded locally. Algeria should be French, they
believed, but perhaps not too French. The collective naturalization of the
Muslim population, for instance, might jeopardize the stability of the colo
nial system. Archival sources note the attraction of the “Arab Nation” for a
Muslim elite opposed to continued colonial subjugation.14Authorities con
ceded that “orientalization” sometimes proved to be more appealing than
“occidentalization” or francisation.15 What they failed to realize was that
A Colonial Scale of Frenchness 145
unmet expectations and the stringency of the naturalization procedure
pushed indigenous elites in this very direction.
Obstacles to Arabs and Berbers becoming French citizens lay not just
with French policymakers, but existed within indigenous communities
themselves. Muslims who became naturalized were ostracized by their neigh
bors and family members.16 Fewer members of the Arab and Berber elite
may have desired official French status as a result of the resulting social
disdain. In the Zenati novel Bou-el-nouar, le jeune Algérien, Boudiaf, the
traditional father of the protagonist, objects to his son attending French
school and assimilating too much Western culture. He does not want his
son to forget his Islamic identity by entering into the world of “Rounds,”
an Arabic term mentioned earlier referring to Christians or Romans. By
doing so, Bou would become a “M ’tourni.”
Well into the 1940s and 1950s, indigenous novelists continued to
express the ambiguous sense of Frenchness felt by many members of the
indigenous elite. Doubts regarding their sense of identification with France
continued to be reflected in the myriad reports and analyses carried out
under the auspices of the colonial administration. Any expression of cul
tural difference tended to be suspect, particularly in a colonial context in
which French sentiment seemed to ebb and flow with the tide of circum
stance. Authorized reports indicated that every effort was made by the French
colonial state in order to ensure that Muslim populations support French
actions and consider themselves French. The administration had a number
of tools at its disposal with which to promote French influence, including
the press, brochures, radio, film, and political tracts. These were to be used
to foster the notion that the indigenous populations of Algeria were indeed
part of the greater French community.17 Moreover, the successful transmis
sion of French identity to colonial populations depended in part on the
prestige of France in the colonial world. Officials and institutions had to
collaborate to foster the desired French sentiment and to counter the ef
forts of other nations to proselytize. Administrators even suggested that the
Arabic language be used as a vehicle to promote French influence in North
Africa.18
The results of these efforts were mixed. According to some reports,
attempts to sensitize the Arab and Berber population had produced a psy
chological transformation during preparations preceding the Second World
War: One report stated, “La mobilisation et rentrée en guerre de la France
ont produit sur Tesprit des indigènes de toute l'Afrique du Nord un choc
psychologique extrêmement favorable à notre pays [. . .]”19 (“The prépara-
tion and entry of France into the war produced in natives a psychological
shock extremely favorable to our country . . .”). Another declared,
Le zèle de la masse indigène et d’une grande partie des élites au cours des
opérations de mobilisation atteste, par comparaison avec 1914, les progrès
considérables réalisés en profondeur par l'influence française.20
[The zeal of the indigenous masses and of a large percentage of the elite
during recruitment efforts are testimony to the deep inroads made by French
influence since 1914.]
These statements once again echo assessments made in the indigenous press
about Arabs, Berbers, and the “Sacred Union.”21
As the Second World War continued, the actions of hostile nadons served
to discredit French influence and authority in colonial Algeria. French defeat
in 1940 was perhaps the single greatest blow to French presdge in the colonial
world. An administrative report completed after the 1940 armistice compared
the efficacy of propaganda efforts organized by the competing European pow
ers.22 Germany and Italy were persistent in their attempts to influence Algeria’s
indigenous populations while France, comparatively, lagged in its proselytiz
ing efforts. As a result, Arab and Berber elites who had appeared enthusiastic
about defending France in 1939—40 were no longer so patriotic.23 Advances
made by the Allied forces and the establishment of a French provisional gov
ernment in Algiers in 1942 contributed to a shift in attitude.
A number of colonial works of literature explore the wartime struggle
between nations for influence in North Africa. Several indigenous novels
written in the 1950s describe the Second World War experience and exam
ine the relationship between Muslims, France, and Frenchness.24They some
times contradict the assertions made in administrative reports or the press.
Fictitious Arab and Berber soldiers go off to war uncertain of their mission
and of their responsibilities toward France. Arezki, the principal character
in Le Sommeil du juste by Mouloud Mammeri, expresses his envy of Euro
pean soldiers for whom the war, he assumes, has logic and makes sense.25
He himself has no real understanding of why he is fighting.
The war obliged the inhabitants of North Africa, often far behind the
front, to think more concretely of the world around them. In Mammeri s
La Colline oubliée, isolated villagers learn about the war, as well as about
people, places, and events removed from their traditional lives:
Chez ces paysannes qui navaient jamais été plus loin qu’Aourir, le village à
coté, pour qui même la colline d’Icheriden était un monde éloigné, la guerre
avec tous ses noms de pays nouveaux, était devenue une merveilleuse histoire.26
[For these peasant women who had never been further than the neighboring
village of Aourir, for whom even the Icheriden hillside was a distant world,
the war, with all its names of new countries, had become a marvelous story.]
Mouloud Mammeri conveys £ wavering of opinion and even indif

ference among the characters he described: “Valait-il mieux la guerre ou la
paix?” (“Which is preferable war or peace?”), one of them asks. “Fallaic-il
souhaiter la victoire de ceux-ci ou de ceux-là? Qu allait-il sortir pour nous
[Muslims] de tout cela?”27 (“For whom should one wish victory? What
would be the outcome of all this for us?”). One man responds that Muslims
should support France for without Frances aid there would be no doctors,
roads, or schools in Algeria. Another counters that he was born thirty years
ago, and that “France” has been in a state of war against him personally
ever since. Why should he concern himself with other peoples conflicts
when no one had come to his assistance?28
German propaganda efforts directed toward indigenous populations
encouraged dissatisfaction with French rule.29Tracts attempted to win them
over by denouncing the conditions in which Arabs and Berbers lived in
colonial Algeria. They promised material and moral reform for Muslims
after the war, and denounced Jewish activities in order to provoke hostili
ties. Propaganda transmitted via radio broadcasts similarly attempted to
gain indigenous support at the expense of other nations.30 According to
French intelligence, such efforts had succeeded in striking a chord within
certain segments of indigenous society, neutralizing French attempts to
sensitize Muslims. One report indicated that “tout d’abord, le dogme de
l’invincibilité allemande s’était implanté fortement dans l’esprit des élites
et des masses”31 (“First of all, the dogma of German invincibility had im
planted itself in the psyche of the indigenous masses and the elite”). Debili
tating cracks first appeared in the French colonial edifice during the Sec
ond World War, exacerbated by growing hostilities, political maneuvering,
and conflict. Such rifts would only widen afterwards.
Arab and Berber journalists had attempted to put their readers on
guard against German efforts to influence them, citing segments of Mein
Kampf&nà claiming that Nazi rule would apply severe restrictions to Mus
lims.32 Other members of the indigenous elite were not persuaded that
German sovereignty would necessarily be a worse evil than French colonial
rule. The characters in Mohammed Dibs Llncendie do not support Ger
man dominance, but they reject the French. “Ils n’ont pas voulu voir en
nous des égaux,” one character laments33 (“They refused to see us as equals”).
Dib describes an oppressive colonial society in the 1940s that tarnished the
image of France for Arabs and Berbers:
N’est-ce pas au nom de la France que se commettent les pires vilenies
provoquées sur notre sol? N’est-ce pas au nom de la France qu’on exproprie
et qu’on vole; au nom de la France qu’on'emprisonne; au nom de la France
qu’on affame, au nom de la France qu’on assassine? Le nom de la Fr^ce a
accompagné trop de vilaines besognes. [...] Que nous importe, à nous, que
ce pays soit grand et glorieux!34
[Is it not in the name of France that the worst crimes are committed on our
soil? Is it not in the name of France that people are robbed and dispossessed
of their land; in the name of France that people are imprisoned; in the name
of France that people starve and are assassinated? The name of France is
linked to too many horrendous acts. . . . What does it matter to us if this
country is enshrined in glory!]
Dib, whose politics placed him close to the Algerian Communist Party,
translated the hostility that had arisen as a result of perceived injustices.
The relationships that the characters established with France and French
sentiment fluctuated greatly as a result, and reflected the uncertainty that
existed concerning the status of Arabs and Berbers in colonial society.
"Le Juif est-il français? " 35
Administrators and interested observers pondered over the francisation of

another North African population, Algerian Jews, who had lived in North
Africa for close to two thousand years. Some groups had intermingled with
Berbers over the centuries, blending into the indigenous population.36Jews
expelled from Spain and Portugal settled in North Africa in the sixteenth
century. By the mid-nineteenth century, the several thousand Jews living
within the borders of French Algeria were officially recognized by the colo
nial administration. The Sénatus-Consulte of 1865 declared the French sub
ject status of Algerian Jews. Similar to the Arab and Berber elite in colonial
society, Jews could choose to become French citizens if they agreed to be
governed by French civil law. Very few became citizens at this time.
Five years later, the Crémieux decree of 1870 established French citi
zenship collectively for Algerias approximately 35,000 Jews. This act of
naturalization thrust Jewish groups into a different official category in co
lonial society. To paraphrase the terminology used by Albert Memmi, Alge
rian Jews had been transformed into citizens of “colonizers” and were no
longer counted among the indigenous “colonized” masses.37 This transfor
mation could be read in official tallies of the Algerian population. The first
post-Crémieux decree census was conducted in 1872, and included Alge
rian Jews in the total number of French citizens.38 Although henceforth
legally French, the imposed French status of Algerian Jews placed them
somewhere between “foreign* Muslims and naturalized European settlers
on the French colonial map.39 Anti-Semites cast aspersions on their “pur
ported” Frenchness, not just in the colonies but in France as well.
Within the naturalized Jewish population, French cultural practices
varied greatly depending on social and economic standing. Poorer families
tended to observe traditions amassed over the centuries in North Africa,
often sharing customs with their Arab and Berber neighbors.40They inhab
ited the same neighborhoods, adopted similar modes of dress, and even
spoke a common, hybrid language—Judéo-arabe. Wealthier Jews, particu
larly in urban areas, had become more assimilated. Their children were sent
to French schools and contributed to the francisation of future generations.
According to one Jewish testimony, after God there was France. “Chaque
père de famille enseignait à ses enfants l’amour de la France”41 (“Every fa
ther taught the love of France to his children”).
By the 1930s, Algerian Jews had been French citizens for over a half-
century. Although their French status was officially established, it remained
ambiguous to skeptics. For Jean Paillard, a writer, social critic, and anti-
Semite, interwar Algerian society remained openly hostile to Jews. He ob
served that in 1938, Algeria was anti-Jewish, and that both Europeans and
Muslims rejected the presence of Jews.42 Paillard argued that colonial per
ceptions of Jews were inconsistent with their legal status, and that non-
Jews considered the assimilation of Algerian Jews as a fait (;>z)accompli.
Several nineteenth-and twentieth-century sources suggest that French citi
zenship had been granted too quickly to Jews. A solemn oath similar to
that uttered during the French revolutionary period should perhaps have
been a requisite for citizenship, critics stated.43 Algerian anti-Jewish senti
ment had arisen in virulent fashion at the end of the nineteenth century.
The Dreyfus Affair, which of course generated great social and political
upheaval in metropolitan France, produced equally dramatic events in Al
geria.44 Anti-Semites organized mass rallies, newspapers spewed violent
rhetoric, and Jewish citizens became targets for hooligans. Activists such as
Edouard Drumont, author of the best-selling anti-Jewish book La France
juive, received a hero’s welcome in Algiers in 1900. Four anti-Semitic rep
resentatives in Algeria were elected to political office in the midst of “The
Affair.”
To an unapologetic anti-Semite like Jean Paillard, such sentiment had
not disappeared by the midpoint of the twentieth century. Hostility to
ward Jews continued to be fanned by a number of social and economic
factors. The economic slump of the 1930s inspired a new generation to
vilify Jews in colonial Algeria; it denounced Jewish financial power and
influence. Some questioned whether Jews had ever assimilated or truly be
come French culturally after their collective naturalization.45They suggested
that such a transformation could not happen, that the “Frenchness” exhib
ited by naturalized Jews was nothing but a deceptive veneer. The French
essayist and anti-Semite Achille Baubier commented, “[. . .] Ils restaient et
sont restés encore aujourd’hui d’ailleurs, toujours eux-mêmes,”46 (“... They
had remained and remain still today singularly themselves”). Jean Paillard
noted,
Grâce à la citoyenneté française, l'infidèle méprisé,—et pour tout dire
l'Etranger—devenait du jour au lendemain l'égal du colonisateur,:47
[Thanks to French citizenship, the reviled infidel—the Foreigner for all in
tents and purposes—had suddenly become the equal of the colonizer.]
From Paillards perspective, the naturalization of Algerian Jews confused
the boundaries that existed between the French and “others.” Naturaliza
tion artificially rendered French persons who were emphatically not French,
and thereby destabilized the colonial order.
In some of the literature set in colonial Algeria, characters make de
rogatory references to Jews. Novelists depicted Jews as dirty, nomadic char
acters who appeared anything but French. In Louis Bertrand s end-of-the-
nineteenth-century novel, Le Sang des races, European youths chase Jews
through the streets of Algiers to the cry of “A mort les Juifs!”48 (“Death to
Jews!”) Characters of Spanish descent such as Pascualète le Borrégo com
ment “sale race! [. . .] si seulement on pourrait les tuer tous! leur faire ôter
leur or à ces boules de graisse!”49 (“vile race! . . . If only we could kill them
all! Take the gold from these balls of fat!”) In his early twentieth-century
novel Les Colons, Robert Randau depicted an urban Jewish quarter and its
inhabitants as infected vermin. He described “les rues enjuivées,”50 (“the
Jew-infested streets”) of homogeneous ghettos which stank of fried food.
Jewish decay is juxtaposed with Spanish and Italian vitality in the novel.
Literature written by those sympathetic to Algerian Jews also described
a level of deprivation that characterized particular Jewish communities. Elissa
Rhafs and Maximilienne Heller fictionalized traditional Jewish lives and
families, endogamous enclaves that appeared culturally set apart from the
French. Within the socioeconomic classes described in Rhaïs LesJuifs ou la
fille d ’Eléazar and Hellers La Mer rouge, Jewish communities are virtually
untouched by French presence.51 Cut off from colonial society dominated
by Europeans, the Algerian Jews of colonial novels cultivate their own tra
ditions. Homogeneity was preserved by the rarity of intermarriage between
Jews and other groups: “Les Israélites se marient entre eux parce qu’ils sont
dans leur race comme des oiseaux dans la même volière,” states one charac
ter of La Mer rougê2 (“The Israelites marry amongst themselves because
they are like birds of the same feather”). As noted earlier, there seemed to
be greater proximity between Jews and Arabs than between Jews and the
French. Colonial texts often lumped the Islamic and Judaic populations
together, considering each equally and sometimes pejoratively “native.” What
set these two groups apart in colonial society, however, was collective French
citizenship, automatic for Algerian Jews and non-existent for Muslims.
Many aspects of the cultural diversity of the Algerian Jewish popula
tion were expressed in a specialized, French-language press created in the
first half of the twentieth century. Publications such as Bulletin de lafédération
des sociétésjuives dAlgérie (1934), UAppel{1947), and Messages dlsrael (1946)
appeared at this time. In Bulletin de la fédération des sociétésjuives d'Algérie,
a free monthly newsletter, Jewish elites articulated the desire for freedom of
cultural and religious expression and for acceptance as members of the French
community. The Bulletins writers aspired to give voice to all perspectives within
the Algerian Jewish community. They insisted that there was no single mono
lithic tendency among Jews, and sought to examine the range of social, moral,
and intellectual issues affecting them. The publication provided services to
families and individuals in the Algerian capital. It listed the places where they
could obtain instruction in Hebrew, receive religious instruction, have chil
dren circumcised, buy Kosher goods, make burial plans in accordance to
Jewish law, and obtain information about the creation of a Jewish state.
Such cultural practices emphasized Jewish specificity, but writers also
insisted on the appropriated French sentiment and loyalties of Jewish popu
lations. In a 1934 issue of the Bulletin, an article entitled “Légende à détruire”
(“Myth to erase”) asserted that Jews had become progressively more assimi
lated since the Crémieux decree of 1870.53 It argued that being Jewish did
not deter individuals from fulfilling French civic responsibilities, and sought
to dispel the myth that Jews could not carry out their military obligations
and become soldiers.54The article designated a particular military officer—
colonel Edmond Mayer—as representative of the Jewish community as a
whole. He was T exemple vivant du civisme le plus fort.” (“the living ex
ample of the strongest sense of civic duty”). Mayer reportedly stood as
proof that Jews assumed their responsibilities as French citizens.
In the 1930s, organizations such as La Libre parole, which had been active
in anti-Jewish campaigns in France, bolstered support for their cause in
Algeria. Supporters and activists posted political tracts on the walls of Oran
denouncing Jews as the “anti-France/’ Jews, they claimed, pledged alle
giance to no nation, and were accountable only to their Jewishness and to
the role that Jerusalem would play in creating a ‘universal Jewish union.”
Libre parole propaganda dated December 13, 1936, suggested that citizens
should attend organizational meetings, “si, en un mot, vous en avez assez
d’être les citoyens taillables et corvéables à la merci de la République Juive
du saigneur Léon Blum”55 (“if in a word you’ve had enough of being de
fenseless subjects at the mercy of the Jewish Republic of the blood-sucker
Léon Blum”). Hostility toward the French Popular Front and toward Jews
was a common denominator for this disgrunded right-wing group.
The belief that Jews plotted a veritable seizure of Algerian sites of
political and economic power consumed writers who contributed to Libre
parole literature. A 1937 brochure denounced the activities of Jews in the
capital of Algiers, or “Algérusalem.”56The document recounts Algerian his
tory from the “Jewish perspective,” as told by a rabbi to his son. Algerian
history, the rabbi reveals, is a reflection of Jewish wile triumphing over
“goy” blindness and stupidity: “Pendant que les goym se battent ils ne pensent
pas à nous et nous les dépossédons bien plus facilement de leurs biens et
leurs femmes!”57 (“While gentiles fight amongst themselves, they do not
think of us and we can more easily strip them of their goods and their
women!”) The stranglehold Jews held over Algerian affairs was supposedly
widespread. Not only had Algeria fallen into the hands of “ruthless” Jews,
but all of North Africa was in their control.58
Amitiés latines, an Algerian-based reactionary group, formed as a re
sult of the prevalence of anti-Jewish sentiment. Assembling roughly 3,000
people in the late 1930s, it favored suppression of the Jewish vote and the
reclassification of Jews as foreigners in colonial Algerian society, several
years before the Vichy government actually implemented this.59 Associa
tion members accused Jews of voting collectively and exercising dispropor-
tional power and influence; they denounced “Jewish electoral might.” The
mayor of Oran in 1938, the conservative priest Lambert, played an impor
tant role in the foundation of Amitiés latines and in its political orienta
tion.60 Under its auspices, Lambert attempted to assemble an anti-Jewish
coalition between Europeans and Muslims. He and other spokespeople for
Amitiés latines insisted that settler and indigenous populations shared a
common hatred of Jews. He helped to create several Muslim sections within
the organization, in which Arabs and Berbers “pourraient se défendre contre
leurs ennemis les Israélites”61 (‘could defend themselves against their en
emies the Jews”).
Anti-Jewish activity reached its peak in Oran and in Constantine in
the late 1930s. Jews constituted one-fifth and one-fourth of the French
populations of these two cities, respectively.62 Official studies highlighted
the number of Jewish residents, but demographics may have had little to
do with the development of anti-Jewish sentiment. In Oran, two daily news
papers, Le Petit Oranais and Oran-Matin, were openly supportive of Amitiés
latines and of anti-Jewish rhetoric in general. Constantine did not have
such a well-established, anti-Semitic press. Support for Amitiés latines in
these two cities and elsewhere appears to have been limited but vocal. Lib
eral-minded persons in Oran, with the help of sympathetic journalists,
opposed Lambert and his organization.63 By the late 1930s, it had lost
much of its momentum.
Skepticism about the assimilation of Algerian Jews continued to be
pervasive however, and was recorded in the offices of the colonial adminis
tration. Jewish activities were monitored, as were those of virtually every
other “foreign” or non-French indigenous and settler group. Officials con
ducted studies on specific Jewish communities, such as the one at Miliana,
100 kilometers south of Algiers.64 Relations between Jews and other groups
were of particular interest to colonial administrators. Any situation that
could potentially cause friction between them was closely observed.
The Miliana study noted that the very small number of marriages
between Algerian Jews and European settlers did little to encourage social
cohesion and harmony. Administrative reports suggested that a latent state
of animosity toward Jews existed among neighboring Arabs and Berbers,
which sometimes manifested itself in violent fashion.65 Antagonism was
clearly stoked by the distinction drawn between them in colonial legisla
tion: no Crémieux decree granted French citizenship status to Arabs and
Berbers, and jealousies frequently arose as a result.
Several incidents were the likely consequence of Judeo-Arabic hostil
ity in colonial Algeria. In 1871, Abd el-Kader led a Muslim insurrection
against French forces, resulting perhaps from dissatisfaction over the natu
ralization of Algerian Jews the previous year.66 Sixty years later in
Constantine, a series of violent incidents between Arabs and Jews inspired
prolonged debate about the state of their relations. According to informa
tion sent to the French Department of the Interior by Algeria's Governor
General, an Algerian Jew by the name of Elie Kalifa began to quarrel with
a group of Muslims while returning home drunk on August 3, 1934.67
Kalifa supposedly made disparaging remarks about the Islamic faith, which
infuriated the group of Arabs. They gathered on Constantines central square
and threw rocks at the homes of Jewish residents. Some of these residents
responded by attacking the Arabs. It was two days later, on August 5, that
Arab-Jewish conflict escalated. Once again on the city’s central square, fights
broke out. Shots were reportedly fired by Jews at Muslims, two of whom
were injured. An angry crowd of four to five hundred Arabs descended into
Constantines Jewish quarter, pillaging shops and killing residents.68 More
violent incidents followed in the region between August 6 and 8, resulting
in the death of 25 Jews and 3 Muslims. The events were publicized widely,
with large graphic photos appearing on the cover of the local paper, La
Dépêche de Constantine.69 The paper’s primary concern, not unlike the co
lonial administrations, was identifying the problem and restoring order.
Following the events, leaders from Jewish and Muslim associations
insisted that the violence was not the result of animosity. Writers working
for the Bulletin de la fédération des sociétés juives d'Algérie blamed Algeria’s
anti-Semitic press, “une presse de boue et de sang, vivant de scandales et de
ragots, incapable d’une idée généreuse. [. . .]”70 (“a press slinging mud and
blood, living off scandal and innuendo, incapable of any sort of generos
ity. . They condemned the hostility of French settlers who vilified them:
“Voici les Français authentiques, qui par leur campagne de violence ont
voulu cette horrible chose”71 (“Here are the authentic French persons, who
through their violent campaign brought on this horrible thing”). Tracts
placed throughout Constantine in the days following the events by sup
porters of peace encouraged Jews and Muslims to reconcile and collectively
combat injustice in colonial society.
At the midpoint of the twentieth century, what stood perhaps as the
most daunting obstacle to reconciliation between Algerian Muslims and
Jews was the creation of the state of Israel. As early as the 1920s and 1930s,
Muslim journalists began to discuss the potentially adverse effects in North
Africa of a Jewish state. Their interventions warned Jewish leaders that
support for such a development would seriously jeopardize Arab-Jewish
relations in Algeria due to sympathy for displaced Palestinians.72 Journal
ists writing for the Jewish press responded by insisting that the state of
Israel would on the contrary create binding ties between Jews and Mus
lims. Zionists attempted to generate support among Algerian Jews for the
construction of an Israeli homeland. This in turn led French officials to
closely monitor their activities. Classified bulletins noted the activities of
Zionists as well as members of the Muslim elite who sided with the Arab
cause in Palestine.
New Jewish newspapers appeared in colonial Algeria, inspired by Zi
onist ideology. L’Appel, a Jewish newspaper founded in 1947 in Algiers,
broached the subject of a Jewish state with enthusiasm. In the fourth issue
of the bi-monthly publication, a feature article proclaimed MI1 nous faut un
état juif”73 (“We need a Jewish state”). An illustration pictured a Jewish and
an Arabic man throwing an Englishman out of Palestine. (See figure 6.)
The intended message was clear. Both Jews and Arabs would benefit
in a newly independent state free of colonial domination:
Le rapprochement, puis l’Union Judéo-Arabe sont une nécessité, et pour
l’Etat Juif et pour les Etats Arabes du Moyen Orient.74
[Rapprochement, and thus eventual Judeo-Arabic union, is a necessity, for
the Jewish state and for the Arab states of the Middle East.]
Messages d ’Israël, another paper launched before the 1948 founding
of the state of Israel, expressed the relevance of the Zionist ideal for Alge
rian Jews.75 In the opening issue of the bi-monthly, editors declared that
“Messages d ’Israël sera donc un organe de diffusion et de défense de l’idéal
sioniste” {“Messages d ’Israël will be an informative newsletter and defender
of the Zionist ideal”). Its creators saw no reason why Jews and Arabs could
not collaborate in Israel. A persecuted people themselves, they claimed,
Jews could not and would not oppress another.76The Muslim elite did not
appear convinced. Political tracts issued by indigenous Algerian organiza
tions warned Jews that Algeria would soon be independent and that they
should consider their actions in this light.
A group called Jeunesse sioniste de Bone (“Zionist Youth of Bone”)
sought to mobilize the support of the Jewish population in eastern Algeria
in late 1940s.77 In Constantine, Zionists distributed a weekly publication
entided Journal d ’Israël Despite these measures to encourage interest in the
foundation of a Jewish homeland, Algerian Jews were reported to have
refrained from displaying too much enthusiasm. They feared acts of vio
lence perpetuated in the name of Egyptian nationalism to the east, and
opted for discretion.78 Some individuals and families were indeed inspired
to emigrate and aid in populating the land that Zionists hoped would be
come a Jewish state.
Another local organization, the Fédération sioniste algérienne, coordi
nated the movement of Algerian Jews between North Africa and Pales
tine.79 According to the statutes of this association, Algerian Jews leaving
UN ETAT JUIF ?
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Figure 6. The Jewish press of colonial Algeria. L’Appel, 1er octobre 1947
for Palestine had to comply with several regulations: They had to sign a
document stating that they would not seek asylum in Algeria if they were
dissatisfied with their move to Palestine. Emigrants also declared in writing
that they would not expect French protection in the event of problems.80
Departure was not to be blindly encouraged, Jewish leaders believed, be
cause the well-being of the remaining Jewish population in Algeria would
be jeopardized. A reduced Jewish population might be vulnerable in a pre
dominantly Muslim country.81
Algerian nationalist groups expressed their strong dissatisfaction with
the division of Palestine. If Jewish organizations in Algeria contributed
materially to the creation of the state of Israel, as Muslim leaders believed,
Arabs and Berbers had to organize their own personnel and resources to
combat the spread of Zionism.82 Rumor circulated about the establishment
of a center of recruitment to coordinate Algerian participation in an “Arab
army” that was forming. In January 1948, two individuals were arrested
and prevented from reaching Egypt, where they had hoped to join an army
that was preparing to fight in Palestine.83 Politicized indigenous Algerian
associations such as the Parti du peuple algérien (PPA) and the Mouvement
pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques (MTLD) organized boycotts of
Jewish-owned businesses. They discouraged people from going to a par
ticular movie theater and condemned those who continued to work in a
factory run by Jews. Muslim women working as chambermaids in Jewish
households in Batna were reported to have left their employers.84 Propa
ganda produced by the PPA ordered Jews to leave Algeria within five months
or suffer death.85 According to such materials, Arab and Berber hatred of
Jews was widespread in the late 1940s. As a result, and in hopes of preserv
ing the peace, an administrator in Biskra felt compelled to state the follow
ing:
Les Juifs d’Algérie n’étaient pas des Sionistes et quils tenaient à rester Algériens
au même titre que les indigènes de ce pays.86
[The Jews of Algeria were not Zionists and strongly wished to remain Alge
rian just as other indigenous population of this country.]
Although critical of Zionism, Muslim journalists hoped to prevent
the spread of violence. They asserted that hostile segments within the set-
der population were attempting to sow seeds of division among Jews and
Muslims in postwar Algeria. It is curious to note that after such hostile
rhetoric, the actual founding of Israel in 1948 did not produce the antici
pated Arab-Jewish conflict in North Africa. Intelligence reports maintained
that Algerian Muslims feared that the new Jewish state would be recog
nized by Arab countries, but that elites had lost interest in what was tran
spiring.87 According to the saijie source, Algerian Jews were pleased about
the establishment of a Jewish state.
Well before the founding of Israel, French anti-Semitic legislation passed by
the Vichy government in 1940 had put an end to seventy years of citizenship
status for Agerian Jews.88In October 1940, Vichy officials revoked the Crémieux
decree of 1870. Just a few years later it was reinstated by General Charles de
Gaulle, but damage had been done to Jewish perceptions of a broad, inclusive
notion of French identity. In some circles in colonial Ageria, Jews had never
been considered truly French. The continued observation of Jewish activities
by representatives of the colonial state reveals pervasive concerns about the
assimilation of a culturally distinct group in Agerian society.
Jewish sentiment in Ageria regarding France and Frenchness was far
from consensual. After the violence at Constantine in August 1934, a Jew
ish journalist wrote “[...] la France est terre de liberté; et nous Juifs Français
nous Taimons passionnément, ce pays libéral”89 (“. . . France is the land of
liberty, and we French Jews passionately love this liberal country”). An
other Jewish writer claimed:
Juifs Nords-Africains, Français de coeur et de droit, nous demandons à la
France, notre pays, de prendre en main Torganisation de sa propre sécurité.90
[North African Jews, French at heart and in the eyes of the law, we demand
that France, our country, assume control of its own security.]
Six years later after the nullification of the Crémieux decree, small groups
of radicalized Jews called irrédentistes supported a realignment of the Jewish
population with their Aab-Berber brethren. French officials could no longer
be trusted, after having betrayed Agerian Jews and revoked their French
citizenship. The irrédentistes proposed establishing an Aab-Jewish country
that would lie outside the boundaries of French influence.91 Such views
remained largely peripheral, and because of the continued expression of
anti-Jewish sentiment in colonial Ageria, many Jews looked more and more
toward France for protection and moral leadership, particularly in the post-
Second World War period.
Just after the war, Jean-Paul Sartre contended that Jews maintained
two contrasting images of France, “real” and “legal,” which allowed their
faith in an idyllic nation to remain intact despite periodic acts of hostility
carried out in its name.92 In this way, Frenchness as epitomized by the
ideals of liberté\ égalité, fraternité remained untainted by the exclusionary
practices of the Vichy regime, which deprived Jews of civil rights. Still,
anti-Jewish doctrine and activities in colonial Algeria did lead some Jews to
settle in “la terre retrouvée,” Israel. Following Algerian independence in
1962, the great majority of Algerian Jews, approximately 115,000 indi
viduals, “repatriated” to France and continued to live there as assimilated
yet not always integrated French people.93 Like other displaced former “co
lons” or Pieds Noirs, adaptation to life in the mère-patrie was often far from
easy.
"Les Néo-Français"
The anti-Semite and keen observer of colonial Agerian society, Jean Paillard,
did not limit his hostility to Jews. Paillard was also suspicious of other
“foreign” presences in North Africa. He noted in 1939,
[...] On a pu calculer en tenant compte des indices de natalité et de mortalité
que le nombre de fils d'étrangers et de naturalisés s'accroit presque trois fois
plus vite que celui des Français! Cet état de choses fait que ce que les statistiques
algériennes dénomment population française ne l'est, de plus en plus, que de
nom.94
[... We have been able to calculate, through birth and mortality figures, that
the number of children of both foreign and naturalized groups is growing
almost three times faster than that of the French! This state of affairs means
that what Agerian statistical data refer to as the French population, is in
creasingly French only in name.]
Jean Paillard was referring specifically to the presence of Europeans of non-
French descent in colonial Ageria. The families of many such populations
settled in North Africa before the French arrived in 1830, and often in
greater numbers. Seeking fortune, reprieve from famine or asylum, mi
grants from every corner of the Mediterranean basin settled in North Af
rica, bringing with them a variety of cultural traditions.
There were small groups of people from several different countries in
colonial Ageria—from as far away as Belgium, Germany, Greece, and Swit
zerland in fact. A Turkish population had long been established in North
Africa, ever since the creation of an outpost of the Ottoman Empire in the
sixteenth century. Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centu
ries, large concentrations of migrants arrived from the coastal regions of
Italy, Spain, and Malta, making up the majority of the European setder
population.
Italian migrants had begun a tradition of fishing in Algerian waters at
ports along the eastern coast.9*Emigrating from Naples or Sicily, they popu
lated Algerian towns such as Chiffalo, carrying with them their regional
dialect and culture. Italian settlers to Algeria worked as masons in other
developing towns and cities.96 One of Algeria’s Italian communities even
had its own press, Lega italiana, which circulated at the end of the nine
teenth century. According to the 1936 census, a total of 21,000 Italian
nationals resided in Algeria, along with many more setders of Italian descent.
Larger numbers of Spaniards migrated back and forth across the
Mediterranean Sea, working as seasonal laborers on farms.97 For individu
als from Andalusia or the islands off the coast of Spain, migration fluctu
ated according to the demand for labor. Spanish peasants who worked in
Algeria became known as “Escargots” because of the large baskets they of
ten carried on their backs. Many persons of Spanish descent settled perma
nently in the western portion of the country, near Oran, closest to Spanish
ports. One of the best known of these setders was Albert Camus. The 1936
census indicates that 92,000 Spanish nationals were living in colonial Algeria.
Their numbers were great enough to preserve a distinct cultural identity.
In late nineteenth-century reports, administrators wondered if this
foreign presence posed a threat to French sovereignty in Algeria. It was not
until just before the turn of the century that French settlers in colonial
Algeria outnumbered foreigners.98 The 1889 naturalization law had been
intended to shift the balance of the European setder population and absorb
foreign elements into the French colonial population. Following this legis
lation, the children of non-French European settlers were granted auto
matic French citizenship. They could preserve their nationality of birth or
ancestry, but only through initiatives undertaken individually.99 Far fewer
migrants from the Mediterranean basin were counted as foreigners in offi
cial tallies after 1889. Local opinion nonetheless continued to view natu
ralized groups as superficially French. Origin tended to outweigh natural
ization as far as colonial interpretations of Frenchness were concerned.
Social scientists and politicians on both sides of the Mediterranean
Sea raised alarms about the predominant non-French component of the
European population at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth cen
turies. They labeled it le péril étranger, the foreign threat. The work of
Victor Démontés, a demographer who studied the Algerian population,
was devoted largely to this phenomenon.100 He argued that European mi
grants who became naturalized shared no real affinities with the French
and often depicted them in disparaging ways. He described Maltese settlers
in particularly negative terms, portraying them as savage, sordid, and little
sought after as mates.101 Spaniards did not fare any better in Démontés*
account; he depicted them as temperamental, brutal, fanatical, and half-
African because of their Arabic ancestry. Démontés maintained that Span
iards and other European settlers in French Algeria should have been asked
to provide some visible sign of assimilation before being given citizenship
rights. In his estimation, the naturalization law of 1889 had been prema
turely passed. He foresaw problems, particularly in communities and towns
where Andalusian settlers predominated: “[. . .] N ’est-il pas à craindre que
[. . .] le peuple algérien devienne plus espagnol que français?”102 (“ . . . Is it
not to be feared th a t. . . the Algerian people become more Spanish than
French?”) In these places, “Spanishness” threatened to supersede
“Frenchness.”
Victor Démontés* assertions echo colonial circumspection concern
ing assimilated Frenchness. Essayist and social critic Achille Baubier in
sisted that European settlers from the southern Mediterranean basin were
essentially different. They had “[. . .] ni la même mentalité, ni les même
conceptions, ni les mêmes théories [.. .]**103 (“. .. neither the same mental
ity, conceptions, or theories . . .”) as the French, he wrote. Baubier labeled
foreign emigrants the néo-Français> a pejorative epithet found frequently in
colonial literature. The term appears to have become known to demogra
phers and administrators. It made its way into colonial discourse and into
the reports and official studies of colonial Algeria’s different groups.
The French historian Pierre Nora, who taught in an Algerian second
ary school in 1961-62, recalled the currency of the term néo-français. In a
memoir from the period, Nora expressed his skepticism regarding the
francisation of European settler populations. He called these groups a
“communauté française ambiguë” (“an ambiguous French community”)
made up of vagabonds from the Mediterranean region.104 He argued that
people fleeing troubled pasts and unmet aspirations sought rebirth in North
Africa as French citizens. Nora noted that emigrants of Spanish, Italian,
and Maltese descent maintained distinct cultural differences and could never
become truly French. Consequently he proclaimed, “[. . .] l’Algérie n*est
pas, ne sera jamais la France**105 (“.. .Algeria is not and never will be France”).
Pierre Nora was not the only skeptic concerning the assimilation of
non-French European settlers. Some members of the Arab and Berber elite
refused to acknowledge the “Frenchness” of Spanish and Italian emigrants.
162 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria» 1 9 3 0 -1 9 5 4
Personally offended by the recognition of French citizenship for European
emigrants, Ferhat Abbas delivered a scathing commentary. He claimed that
naturalized Europeans had never become French; they remained nio-
Français.
[. . .] Entre la France et nous, quelqu’un vint se placer. Ce quelqu’un c’est
l’Espagnol, c’est le Napolitain, c’est le Juif, c’est le Maltais. C’est toute cette
société algérienne formée d’un monde venu de tous les coins de la terre pour
vivre d’une vie facile. Ce sont ces gens qui ont édifié des fortunes colossales
et qui parlent ici en maîtres. Ce quelqu’un, c’est toute cette colonie de néo-
Français qui n’étaient ni à Sidi-Ferruch, ni à la Macta, qui ne sont pas morts
de fièvre dans la plaine de la Mitidja, qui n’ont versé leur sang nulle part et
qui, au milieu de leur privilèges, nous accablent de leur mépris et de leur
haine.106
[. . . Someone has come between France and us. This someone is the Span
iard, the Neapolitan; it is the Jew, the Maltese. It is the entire emigrant com
munity, made up of persons from all corners of the world and come to Alge
ria to live an easy life. These are people who have built colossal fortunes and
who speak here as masters. They make up the entire colony of neo-French
who were neither at Sidi-Ferruch nor the Macta, who did not die of fever in
the swamps of the Mitidja, who did not shed their blood, and who, amidst
their wealth and privileges, deride us with their disgust and their hatred.]
Ferhat Abbas’ indignation is a direct result of colonial conflict and jealou
sies. The anger stirred by colonial inequalities triggered exaggerated state
ments about the wealth and influence of European settler groups, some of
whom were destitute. Many had in fact participated in the early phases of
colonization. Abbas felt justified in referring to naturalized Algerian Jews
as néo-Français, but some “Neos” of Spanish and Italian descent disparag
ingly placed Jews below themselves on the colonial scale of assimilated
Frenchness.
Bachaga Boualam, author of several essays whose titles reflected his
deeply felt French sentiment, was appalled that emigrants from the Medi
terranean area benefited from "undeserved” French citizenship while his
own legitimate claim to such status went unheeded. He referred to natural
ized groups as "français de papier,” (“paper French”).
Grâce à un certificat, acheté à vingt sous, des Grecs, des Maltais, des Espagnols
ont pu se dire Français dès leur arrivée, avoir des droits de Français, droits
qui nous étaient refusés.107
[Thanks to a certificate, bought for twenty sous, Greeks, Maltese, Spaniards,
were able to claim upon their arrival French rights, rights that were denied
us.]
Boualams thoughts illustrate the extent to which the various groups living
in colonial Algeria vied among themselves for French citizenship and iden
tity.
Despite their collective naturalization, many European settler groups
continued to live as they had in their countries of origin well into the
twentieth century. Some lived almost entirely sheltered from French influ
ence. The sub rosa and sometimes defiant non-French cultural, linguistic,
and religious practices of Mediterranean settlers stand out in colonial lit
erature. Paul Achards novel L’H omme de mer (1931) describes characters
whose cultural specificity remained intact in colonial Algeria.108 The soci
ety Achard depicted was populated by strikingly non-French people: bois
terous, loud-speaking northern Italian laborers from Piedmont; hot-tem
pered, virile Spanish coal workers from Valencia and Sevilla; “shifty” sailors
and fishermen from the southern Italian port of Naples; and “swarthy”
shop-keepers from Malta. The author plays with numerous stereotypes in
his prose. Defined not only by the region of their country of birth, but by
their profession, members of each group appear in distinctive attire.
Ferdinand Duchênes 1930 novel Mouna, cachir et couscouss also conveys
the cultural specificity of the European, Jewish, and Islamic populations.109
The very title of the novel sets these categories apart by their non-French
culinary traditions. In figures 7 and 8, we see caricatural representations of
the highly diverse colonial Algerian population. While inhabiting the same
general geographic space, they established separate, distinct enclaves.
In many of these colonial novels, groups of European settlers inhabit
such homogeneous locales. Authors describe the perpetuation of Spanish
and Italian culture, which remain virtually untouched by French presence.
Such is the case for one individual in Lucienne Favre s Bab-el-Oued (1926).
This Spanish emigrant
[...] est complètement réfractaire aux influences étrangères [French]. Il con
tinue de se coiffer, de parler, de vivre comme au pays. Il souhaite repartir dès
qu’il aura Targent nécessaire.110
[. . . is completely resistant to French influence. He continues to comb his
hair, to speak, and live as in his native country. He hopes to return to his
country as soon as he has enough money.]
Figure 7. Caricature of a heterogeneous European settler population. From

Paul Achard, Salaouetches (Alger: Editions Baconnier, 1941), p. 14.
Figure 8. Caricature of a heterogeneous European settler population. From

Paul Achard, Salaouetches (Alger: Editions Baconnier, 1941), p. 38.
Bab-el-Oued, the poor, Spanish quarter of colonial Algiers, became a veri
table Spanish fortress for Andalusian settlers. Outside this tightly-knit com
munity,
[. . .] c’est l’aventure en pays ennemi, dans un labyrinthe inconnu où Ton
rencontre des gens en costumes singuliers [. . .] Juifs [. . .] Arabes [...]; où
l’on entend résonner des langages incompréhensibles.111
[... one adventures into enemy territory, into a foreign labyrinth, where one
meets people in bizarre clothing . . . Jews . . . Arabs . . . where one hears the
sound of strange, incomprehensible languages.]
Cities such as the Algerian capital appeared subdivided into autono
mous sections, separating not just Algerian Muslims and Jews from set-
ders, but the setders amongst themselves. Algiers had quite distinct Span
ish, Italian, Jewish, Arabic, and French quarters.112These quarters themselves
were often divided by socioeconomic status. Most European emigrants may
have shared French citizenship, but some close communities (particularly
Spanish ones) remained impenetrable to French culture well into the early
twentieth century.
A Spanish-language press in Algeria transcribed the cultural specificity de
scribed in novels and essays. These newspapers are colorful remnants of
Spanish culture in French colonial Algeria. Although independent Spanish
schools had been forced to close after French intervention in North Africa,
several Spanish newspapers lasted well into the twentieth century. In 1880,
the Correo espanol began publication in the city of Oran, providing infor
mation to the numerous emigrants of Spanish descent. Some forty-five
years later, the paper changed titles, becoming El Correo de Espana, and
continued printing until 1931. After the paper s demise, another daily news
paper, El Correo, took its place in March 1931, although it did not remain
in print for very long. La Antena espanola, founded in 1928, served the
Spanish-speaking population in Algiers. (See figure 9.) The paper later be
came a bilingual publication with numerous articles printed in French. It
folded in 1936.113
According to their editors, the purpose of Spanish newspapers was to
help emigrants maintain ties with ancestral Spain. They promoted the pres
ervation of Spanish cultural identity in colonial Algeria, consciously per
petuating Spanish sentiment, and undermining French influence in the
process. In the very first issue of El Correo in March 1931, an editorial
M [ p r e f e c t ::.-.,-
E S V A N q IA
tlTE M k TU H A 'A E TfS •BE Pel^TES

ANTES « REVISTA ESPAROLA » (Fundadn en el nno 1924)
M. Ga»ton DOUM ERGUE

Présidente de ta Rejmtdiea F ranee sa
« La A ntena Etpanola » p reten ta >u m i» retpetuosa bienvenida

al iluptre Jefe de Estado de la noble Nacion Francesa.
Ano III. — N0 48. Precio del num éro: 1.75 fr*. 30 A bril 1 9 3 a
Figure 9: Spanish newspaper in French colonial Algeria. La Antena espanola,

30 abril 1930.
asserted that the newspaper came into being " ... with the conviction that
Spaniards should be none other than Spaniards, and that it [the paper]
should vigorously combat all. that could possibly foster disunion.”114 Span
ish identity in a country ruled by France was qualified in gentler terms by a
later statement: “Such is the theme of our publication: All for Spain and for
Spaniards in utmost respect for French hospitality.”115
Before El Correos appearance on newsstands, the Prefect of the Oran
department informed the General Governor of Algeria of its existence and
promised further reports.116 He noted Üiat the new paper would serve as
the official mouthpiece of the Spanish population in Oran. His memo in
cluded a description of the journalists and editors of El Correo and of their
relations with the colonial administration, which were generally cordial. In
a later report however, sent to Algiers on March 27,1931, less than a month
after the launching of the Spanish-language paper, the Prefect detected ten
sions. His file included the French translation of an article, which accord
ing to him indicated “. . . la nouvelle direction de ce quotidien étranger et
qui consiste à critiquer l’oeuvre de la France en Algérie,”117 (“. . . the new
direction of this foreign newspaper, which consists of criticizing the work
of France in Algeria”). The Prefects sources were particularly suspicious of
the sentiments of editor Ernesto Gimenez, who claimed that settlers of
Spanish descent in Algeria should feel no national sentiment other than
Spanish. Not long afterwards, in May 1931, the Prefect informed the Gen
eral Governor of El Correos suspension.
Journalists writing for La Antena espanola, expressed a similar desire
to serve the interests of la Patria in North Africa (as opposed to la Patrie).
They envisioned their publication as,
an instrument in tune with the unlimited, worrisome scope of current events
and capable of recognizing the most imperceptible palpitations of Spanish
life; a vigilant mouthpiece echoing and propagating word of that life to the
farthest reaches where the Spanish spirit lives, where time, tradition, or
blood have perpetuated memory of Spain, an echo of love or a bit of sympa
thy.118
Editors at El Correo de Espana similarly claimed to represent “nuestra amada
patria” (“our cherished Spanish homeland”) in Algeria, one clearly detached
from the French mère-patrie that colonial officials hoped to endear to set
tler and indigenous populations.119
Each of Algeria’s Spanish-language newspapers stated the need for
more access to Spanish culture. La Antena espanola in particular was de-
voted to kindling interest in Spanish literature, arts, and sport. An article
appearing in El Correo de Espaha suggested the creation of a “house of
Spain” to facilitate the preservation of Spanish culture in Algeria.120A luxury
steamship, “el vapor de primera clase,” offered passage back to Malaga for
individuals and families.121 Many of the publications included photographs
of Spanish cities, churches, cultural events, and prominent figures, and in
very real ways served to foster sensibilities that rivaled French national and
cultural identity in North Africa.
What is perhaps most significant about this press is that for more
than fifty years, Orans settler population of Spanish descent had its own
daily newspaper. By comparison, the indigenous Algerian press edited by
the Arab-Berber elite circulated at weekly and monthly intervals. The Correo
espanol provided the Oran community with a regular source of informa
tion in Spanish, transmitting news to individuals and families who had
relocated from the Iberian Peninsula to North Africa. It informed emi
grants of social, economic, political, and cultural life in the country they
had left. The Correo espanol also served the specific settler concerns of west
ern Algeria, noting marriages, deaths, political and social gatherings, and
other local events. Like other Spanish-language newspapers, it promoted
attendance at Spanish film projections, announced programs broadcast by
Spanish radio in Algeria, and carried advertisements for Spanish-made
products.
A variety of distinct practices and traditions were cultivated among
such settlers, as illustrated by media depictions, but shared experiences in
French colonial Algeria had also served to foster the development of French
sentiment. Some scholars suggest that the experience of the First World
War, for instance, had produced a sense of French identity for many Euro
pean settlers in Algeria. Common service and sacrifice in the interests of
the French nation had contributed to a sense of identification with the
French and with Greater France. As we saw in chapter 2, passage through
the French school system and the increased use of French language had set
a cultural transformation in motion for many individuals. The appearance
of French first names in settler communities constituted a visible sign of
francisation. Although families of Spanish and Italian descent had certainly
adapted to life in a French colonial country, it seems clear that cultural
differences remained.
The Spanish distinction, as expressed in literature and in the press,
appeared unmistakably in studies and reports conducted by the colonial
administration. The “foreign threat” that non-French European settlers in
colonial Algeria posed continued to resurface periodically, according to these
sources, particularly when French interests conflicted with those of other
nations. Officials wondered whether there was any correlation between
French citizenship and French identity for naturalized settlers in colonial
Algeria. In the event of war, they asked, would these adopted Frenchmen
indeed side with France? Could the “mother-country” depend on her
adopted sons? Specialists of Spanish migration to Algeria note that several
thousand settlers preferred to return to Spain in 1914 rather than serve in
the French army during “la Grande Guerre.”122
As noted, some administrative reports asserted that cultural differ
ences among the European settler population had disappeared and French
loyalties cultivated. According to one, “neo” and “native” French in the
Oran area were now indistinguishable.123The two had fused, and the total
French population outnumbered the Spanish five to one. Mixed marriages
between Spaniards and French had helped to dissolve cultural differences.124
Activities considered to be typically Spanish, such as bull fighting, were no
longer common in Algeria and fewer people spoke Castillian or a Spanish
regional dialect. The “foreign threat” appears to have dissipated somewhat
by 1950. Only ten years earlier, a study of the Spanish setder population
had determined that 350,000 people in the Oran area used Spanish as their
primary means of communication and were essentially Spanish.125
French colonialism in a very heterogeneous North African country
thrust together numerous populations and sensibilities, creating even more
complex affinities. Throughout the colonial period, the culture of origin
served to differentiate, to set apart “real” and “phony” French people in
Algeria, regardless of citizenship status. The classifying marker “neo” circu
lated freely in colonial society, differentiating between unequally French
communities.
In January 1939, Simon Canovas, a naturalized Spaniard from Sidi-
Bel-Abbès in the western corner of Algeria near Oran, addressed an emo
tional letter to the French President of the Republic Albert Lebrun. In this
letter, he argued that settlers of Spanish descent had proven their loyalty to
France.126 Canovas cited the war memorial in Oran, engraved with numer
ous Spanish surnames, as proof. The kind of moral union produced in
wartime needed to be maintained in peacetime Canovas asserted, but a
proposed reform threatened instead to undo the bonds of Frenchness. In
his appeal to the president, Canovas complained of a May 2, 1938, decree,
which would deport settlers of Spanish origin implicated in judicial affairs.
He asked that amnesty be granted to the individuals threatened by the
decree.127 Those particularly concerned were emigrants who had been in
Algeria for thirty or forty years but had never become French citizens. Their
North African-born children were automatically granted French citizen
ship, but they deliberately or by oversight had retained Spanish nationality.
As foreign nationals in Algeria at a time when administrators closely scru
tinized settler reaction to the Spanish Civil War, they were suspect.
Deportation for not having filled out the proper papers, Canovas
argued, could prove cosdy. The sons of the expelled would not be particu
larly disposed to support or defend a country that had treated their fathers
in such a way.128Articles appearing in the French colonial press at that time
called into question the treatment of setders in Algeria. An article pub
lished in the politically moderate Echo d'Oran asked if deporting individu
als was the thanks that French officials accorded them for their efforts in
populating and colonizing Algeria.129 “Serions-nous devenus les champi
ons d’une bureaucratie exsangue et inhumaine?” (“Have we become the
champions of a lifeless, inhuman bureaucracy?”) it asked. The author cited
the suicide of a seventy-year-old Italian man whose papers were not in
order and who took his life rather than risk being forced to leave Algeria.
The mayor of Sidi-Bel-Abbès was reported to have taken up' the question
of expulsion of non-naturalized Spaniards with French parliamentarians
during a trip to Paris.130While there were several publicized cases of depor
tation during the Spanish Civil War, it did not became a systematic process.
Civil war between Spanish Republicans and Franquists in 1936 fo
cused great attention on the emotional and political ties of setders to Alge
ria. Reports indicated that the war did not leave people in Oran indiffer
ent. Those who had maintained Spanish citizenship were the most affected
by the events in Spain.131 Over the course of the war, Franquists and Re
publicans sought refuge in Algeria, much to the displeasure of local popu
lations and colonial authorities.132 An article appearing in the conservative
newspaper La Dépêche algérienne in 1939 expressed misgivings toward all
Spanish emigrants, including refugees.133 Their arrival, according to the
writer, generated political, moral, and budgetary concerns that warranted
suspicion. It seemed unclear whether these populations would place loyal
ties to adoptive France over ancestral ties to Spain.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War, colonial authorities feared that
Franco s claim about the historic rights of Spain to the western portion of
Algeria might reflect the sentiments of Spanish-descended settlers. Franquist
propaganda asserted:
L’Espagne commence aux Pyrénées et finit à l’Atlas. L’Oranie, notre Alsace-
Lorraine, ne constitue pas seulement pour nous un rappel des gloires passées,
elle représente une réalité, très vivante de la colonisation espagnole.134
[Spain begins in the Pyrénées and ends in North Africa's Atlas Mountains.
The Oran region, our Alsace-Lorraine, does not only represent for us a re
minder of past glories, it represents a living reality of Spanish colonization.]
Such sources alluded not to an adjoining French sea, but to the existence of
a Spanish Mediterranean, descending southward from the Iberian penin
sula toward North African shores. In July 1940, Spanish radio (“Radio
Melilla”) broadcasts over Algerian airwaves proclaimed the reality of “Greater
Spain,” extending from the Franco-Spanish border to the mountains on
the Algerian coast. “Mort de l’empire français, création de l’empire espagnol,”
tracts reiterated.135 (“Death to the French empire, creation of the Spanish
empire”).
Spanish consuls in Algeria were reported to be heading the Franquist
propaganda effort. They positioned themselves to profit from the void that
an inevitable French defeat in the Second World War would leave.136 Some
expected that French rule in Algeria would soon lose its legitimacy, and
that settlers of Spanish descent would naturally fall back into the fold.
Franquists in Oran founded an organization called thzAuxilio social, which
was covertly tied to Spanish nationalist efforts. At an Auxilio function in
October 1941, the consul of Spain at Oran, named Toca, proclaimed,
[...] UOranie sera à nous. Le drapeau de Castille sera planté sur les bords du
Chéliff. Les vrais Français auront tôt fait de reprendre le bateau [. . .]137
[... The Oran region will be ours. The Castillian flag will be planted on the
outskirts of Chéliff. The true French will quickly board returning ships ...]
Still more declarations claimed that settlers of Spanish descent had
never developed any sort of French sentiment while in Algeria; they re
mained Spanish. Franquist efforts in colonial Algeria had even supposedly
had an impact on metropolitan settlers.138 Colonial officials found French
property owners susceptible to Spanish proselytizing because they did not
want to jeopardize their acquisitions in coming years. Convinced that French
sovereignty in North Africa was rapidly coming to an end, settlers pre
ferred Spanish to German rule.
French authorities were clearly worried. O f particular concern to them
was rumor of a plebiscite being organized to allow the inhabitants of west
ern Algeria to decide for themselves whether or not they desired Spanish
intervention in North Africa.139According to reports, the idea of a referen
dum on the future sovereignty of western Algeria apparently grew in popu
larity after the armistice in June 1940. Reacting to what were considered
hostile measures, French colonial officials cited the need for a “counter
plebiscite” and for counter-propaganda.140There is no evidence to confirm
that these rumors of a referendum ever materialized into political action.
The Spanish consuls alleged to have encouraged such ideas were expelled.
One administrator concluded that as long as France was able to con
serve a strong, positive image in the colonial world, any dramatic shift in
loyalties on the part of the Spanish-descended population was unlikely. He
issued a word of caution however:
Mais si, par contre, la France, humiliée par le vainqueur, délibérément écartée
des délibérations futures, était menacée d’être dépouillée de ses possessions
d’outre-mer, un ralliement massif à l’Espagne de cette même population, à
laquelle se joindraient ceux pour qui les intérêts matériels l’emportent sur le
culte de la Patrie, deviendrait possible. La propagande nocive qui s’exerce
depuis Tarmisuce produirait alors ses dangereux effets.141
[But if on the other hand, France, humiliated by the defeat, forcefully re
moved from future deliberations, were threatened with confiscation of its
colonial possessions, a massive rallying behind Spain would be possible for
this population, assembling those for whom material interests are more impor
tant than the question of Homeland (la Patrie). The harmful propaganda circu
lating since the Armistice would produce its intended dangerous effects.]
One Hundred Percent French
Although the Spanish population was clearly the most worrisome of setder
groups to officials in colonial Algeria, due to its size and preserved cultural
identity, the Italian setder community was also closely observed. A memo
dated July 13, 1939, from the French ministry of justice to the Governor
General of Algeria referred to the ambiguous identity of Italian emigrants
who had become naturalized French citizens. Officials apparently ques
tioned the motivation driving requests for citizenship:
Il paraît indispensable d’éviter que des étrangers puissent acquérir notre
nationalité uniquement dans le but de servir leurs intérêts matériels et de
faciliter l’exercice de leur activité sur notre territoire lorsque celle-ci est au
service de leur pays d’origine.142
[It seems necessary to prevent foreigners from being able to acquire our na
tionality for the sole purpose of serving their material interests and facilitât-
ing the exercise of their activities on our land when this benefits their own
country of origin.]
The report referred specifically to prominent Italian industrial merchants
who had requested French nationality, but whose ties to Italian national
interests in a context of growing hostility generated suspicion.143
There was one settler group in colonial Algeria for whom French
citizenship and identity appeared synonymous, and whose loyalties often
went unquestioned: the descendants of individuals who had emigrated from
metropolitan France. The identity of settlers from French towns and prov
inces certainly attracted the least circumspection from authorities. They
were the esteemed French models to which all other groups were com
pared, often unfavorably. As we will see in the following chapter, suspicion
of the colonial administration might also have been warranted with regard
to this group, whose attachment to France had sometimes grown fragile
over the course of time in North Africa.
Neither Italian or Spanish, Muslim, or Jewish writers disputed the
Frenchness “par excellence” embodied by persons who had crossed the
Mediterranean Sea from France. Arab and Berber writers contrasted the
“authentic” Frenchness of metropolitan settlers with the “neo-Frenchness”
of European emigrants of foreign descent.144 As noted, colonial authorities
expressed little concern about the metropolitan French in colonial Algeria;
what did concern them was their underrepresentation. The fate of French
Algeria seemed to be jeopardized by the dearth of the only unequivocally
French in the colonial world, the “Français de souche.”
Metropolitan Frenchness in North Africa was rendered all the more
distinct by its relatively limited presence. In 1948, French citizens (native
and naturalized) numbered just 870,000 in a total Algerian population of
8.700.000, 7,600,000 of whom were “French Muslims” (i.e., subjects).145
The 1936 census indicated a native and naturalized French population of
819.000. 146 No exact figures were provided for Algeria’s native French, or
“Français de souche,” in this census, because colonial rhetoric claimed that
all differences between the French of colonial society had disappeared.
Relatively little has been written about the provincial French migrants
who traveled to North Africa.147 They arrived in small numbers, and in
many instances remained very briefly. In the nineteenth and twentieth cen
turies, supporters of French colonial expansion had attempted to encour
age French persons from rural regions to settle in North Africa, but their
efforts proved to be unsuccessful.148 The proponents of colonial activity
looked to metropolitan French communities as bulwarks of French influ
ence in North Africa. Several different associations in Algeria assembled
emigrants from the métropole. Regional practices and traditions that might
have been regarded with contempt or derision in France held a positive,
folkloric French connotation in colonial Algeria. Maintaining French re
gional culture provided a means of promoting the vitality of French senti
ment in Greater France.
The Alsacian contingent in colonial Algeria drew the attention of
various proponents of colonial activity. Perceived as somewhat particular or
even foreign in France, Alsacians in North Africa, for advocates of Greater
France, exhibited a more expressly and reassuringly French aura. Although
relatively small in number, they had supposedly done as much as any group
in re-creating French communities and preserving regional French culture
outside of metropolitan France. There were roughly 5,000 Alsacians in
Algeria in 1936.149 According to Aimé Dupuy, a student of Alsacian emi
gration, more of them would have come if measures facilitating their in
stallation had been put into place. The French population did not benefit
as it might have from a traditionally “prolific” Alsacian contingent.
Migration from Alsace-Lorraine to North Africa had begun in ear
nest in 1871, when the two provinces were lost in the Franco-Prussian war.
Approximately 20,000 Alsacians made the trip across the Mediterranean
Sea, but many died or returned to France, finding conditions in Algeria too
severe. Adaptation to life in Algeria was made difficult by the switch from
factory work in northeastern France to agricultural activity in North Af
rica. Those who remained, despite the difficulties of adaptation, established
towns, such as Fort-National near Algiers, populated almost entirely by
fellow Alsacians.
For many of the same reasons, French setders from Brittany could
also bolster French influence in Algeria by maintaining and passing on
regional traditions.150 Bretons had eked out a living along the North Afri
can coast, working primarily as fishermen, ever since French sovereignty
was established in the nineteenth century. Approximately three to four thou
sand lived in and around Algiers by the late 1940s. They maintained at
least one regional association, “La Bretagne,” which contributed to the pres
ervation of French culture.
In his memoirs, Emmanuel Roblès, a novelist and “neo” of Spanish
descent, recalled the distinction made between authentic Frenchmen from
Alsace or Brittany, referred to as “les cent pour cent” (“one hundred per
cent French”) and the more diluted variants of Spanish or Italian descent,
the “fifty percent French.”151 Roblès claimed that he and others hoped to
emulate the truly French men and women that they encountered in colo-
niai society, especially those read about in school textbooks. “Fifty percenters”
wanted to prove that they were worthy understudies for such authentic
French figures as Joan of Arc and Napoléon Bonaparte.152 But they were
never able to measure up. When Roblès himself was called a “fifty percenter”
by people supposedly more French than he, he retorted that they had only
to return to France. They could not claim Algeria as their own as he and
other pioneering “neos” could.
Metropolitan Frenchness in Algeria seemed all the more authentic, or
French, when juxtaposed with Spanish or Arabic cultures described in co
lonial literature. Set apart from other traditions, true Frenchness in the
colonial world was defined by prestige and stature, power and influence.
Professor Martin, a fictitious figure created by novelist Robert Randau in
1936, represents a person of distinguished French character who appears a
breed apart from the surrounding “neo” and indigenous populations.153
His public displays of Frenchness, epitomized by distinctive dress and grace
ful mannerisms, are certainly a sign of class difference. They constitute
performances of identity, according to cultural critics. These performances
are all the more effective in the colonial setting where Frenchness stood out
starkly against an indigenous backdrop.154 Such expressions of Frenchness
were racialized, exhibited most “purely” or explicitly by isolated white per
sons among the “natives.” The assimilated indigenous school teacher of
Algerian novels, such as Mohammed Dibs Mr. Hassan, exemplifies
Frenchness to Arab and Berber youth, but cannot duplicate the inveterate
French culture and mores so effortlessly embodied by Mr. Martin.155 As
Homi Bhabha writes, the assimilated native attains a nearly but not quite
identical position to recognized metropolitan models of cultural or na
tional identity.156
Easily noted in men such as Professor Martin, French culture and
identity were perhaps even more apparent in white women in colonial Al
geria. Few in number yet highly visible, French female characters stand out
in colonial literature. They are elevated to a privileged social standing by
perceived grace, distinguished dress, and proper language. Novelist Mouloud
Feraoun described transplanted French women who almost naturally rise
to positions of authority in an indigenous village. White skin and a supe
rior economic status enable them to assume these roles. Fictional French
women are plagued, however, by bodily frailties. They can be grossly de
formed by the merciless North African sun, and are obliged to lead pro
tected lives as a result. Village women comment amongst themselves how French
women will be blackened, and thus physically diminished, in Algeria.157
A man or womans Frenchness could be acknowledged in North Af
rica even if it had not been in France. This is true of Marie, the French wife
of a Kabyle worker in Feraouns 1954 novel La Terre et le sang. She had been
at the bottom of the social ladder in France, unseen, unappreciated, and
clearly un-French, but in Algeria,
D’un seul coup, elle trouve un monde où on la hisse au premier rang, à la
première place. [. . .] Ses robes de petite bonne lui paraissent somptueuses,
son mobilier, son ‘home’ vus sous un angle nouveau sont tous dignes d'être
admirés. Cela lui donne une certaine assurance qui inspire le respect.158
[Suddenly, she finds herself in a world where she is lifted to the top___Her
poor servants dresses appeared sumptuous, her furniture, her home seen
under a new angle all worthy of being admired. This gives her a certain
confidence that inspires respect.]
In colonial society, she can reinvent herself, beguile others, pass for French.
She performs her Frenchness to a largely uncultivated or ignorant audi
ence. Villagers imagine her former life in France to have been one of opu
lence. “Elle nest pas Française pour rien” (“Shes not French for nothing”),
comments a local woman.159Because of her assumed French superiority, villag
ers are certain that she had imposed herself on her unsuspecung husband.
Because of their elevated status, French women appear unattainable,
and perhaps all the more desirable, to members of the Muslim elite as well
as to European néo-Français, both of whom occupy positions considerably
lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Social scientists conclude that Franco-
Muslim couples were particularly rare; there were 170 mixed marriages in
1953 in all of North Africa.160This context is reproduced in colonial litera
ture. In Albert Truphémus’ 1935 novel Ferhat, instituteur indigene, a French
woman that the protagonist Ferhat has been courting coldly rejects him.161
Alvarez, a settler of Spanish origin from Robert Randaus Les Colons, dis
covers French women to also be beyond his reach: “Il redoute, lui, espagnol
d'origine, d’être pour cette Française un objet secret de dérision”162 (“A
native Spaniard, he fears he is a secret object of derision for this French
woman”). The Spanish-descended protagonist of Louis Bertrands Le Sang
des races, Ramon, is surprised at one point to find himself in a relationship
with Thérèse, another French woman of colonial society. He had assumed
that her Frenchness and corresponding status rendered her altogether un
attainable.
Colonial Algerian literature reveals that while the French were re
vered for their influence and authority in colonial society, particularly by
those “less French,” metropolitan men and women were also maligned for
perceived frailties. The “hardy” immigrants of Spanish and Italian descent,
as well as the “toughened” figures of Arab and Berber novels, ridicule the
perceived weakness and effeminacy of French men. Compared to “virile”
Spaniards who procreate with abandon, “dans la force de leur chair et la
beauté de leur sang”163 (“with the force of their flesh and the beauty of their
blood”), the French clearly pale. Louis Bertrand described them as “[. . .]
des hommes qui n’ont pas de sang!”164 (“... men with no balls!”). Bertrands
prose is rife with essentialist, Mediterranean traits of strength and vigor.
As men lacking in vitality or women too delicate to withstand the
harsh Algerian climate, the French seemed deficient in terms of the rugged
characteristics exhibited by other European settler populations. Emmanuel
Roblès recounts how young “neos” intimidate “authentic” French boys in
colonial Algeria simply by threatening to get their clothes dirty.165 Such
perceived shortcomings were relative, however. A French man, states the
young heroine Ascencion in Lucienne Favres Bab-el-oued, is appreciated
by women for his amiability, gentleness, consideration, moderate consump
tion of alcohol, cleanliness, and production of fewer babies.166 As a pro
spective spouse for modern women, he rates much higher than the
stereotypically passionate settler of Spanish origin.
Conclusion
What resonates in the documents examined in this chapter is the central

question of culture, identity, and patrie for all concerned in colonial Alge
ria. Officials certainly hoped that France had become a familiar and famil
ial “home” or homeland to Muslims, Jews, and transplanted Europeans,
despite their physical distance from its center, Paris. They hoped that these
groups had become French, in varying degrees. Some sense of French iden
tity had clearly been generated for them, as we see recorded in an assort
ment of texts. The Frenchness of indigenous and settler populations varied
considerably among men and women, within different social classes, and
from generation to generation. French sentiment tended to develop over
time and through contact with French culture; it was certainly not fixed.
Several terms are employed in colonial texts to emphasize the singu
larity of an authentic but feeble French identity, in comparison to the vari
ants of “lesser” Frenchness. Actual and fictitious settlers of non-French de-
scent mock metropolitan men and women, referring to them pejoratively
as “Patos” or “Francaouis.”167 It is perceived weakness that marks their au
thenticity. Persons of Spanish descent speak condescendingly of “true”
Frenchmen as “Gavatchos.”168 The term “Mariquita,” also used in refer
ence to French persons by “neos,” conveys still more notions of weakness
and effeminacy.169 Settlers of the southern Mediterranean region browned
by the Algerian sun refer to recently arrived, pink-skinned French men and
women in colonial Algeria as “Rose-beef.” Persons from the French capital
to the North are singled out and given the label “les Gros becs.”170
Frenchness was thus highly subjective in colonial Algeria, a matter of
opinion debated, violendy sometimes, amongst rival populations. The vary
ing degrees of French identity accorded to specific groups helped to create
a rigidly hierarchical social map. Social and cultural borders were seldom
crossed. Colonial society as a whole was organized from top to bottom by
those who had visibly attained a French national and cultural identity, fol
lowed by those who had not. The more assimilated or “francisé” one be
came, the more elevated ones colonial status tended to be, despite the nega
tive connotations. In a separate category altogether were those excluded
from all contact with French institutions. Nine-tenths of the country’s popu
lation, the majority of the Arab and Berber population, cannot be included
in any colonial scale of Frenchness. They were not French citizens and had
no access to French culture.
Some indigenous elites denounced the weighted stakes of the French
colonial game altogether, rejecting French identity, but many Muslims, Jews,
and European settlers actively sought recognition as French people in colo
nial Algeria.171They struggled to attain more explicit ties to Frenchness, for
themselves and collectively. French identity in North Africa represented a
battlefield that produced jealousies, rivalry, and conflict between unequally
French groups. Contradictory in its definition, it helped to weave the very
social fabric of colonial Algerian society.
Notes
1. The brochure, an official publication put out by the colonial administration, is

entitled “Algérie: ici vivent côte à côte 9.500.000 Français dont 8.400.000 Français
musulmans et 1.100.000 Français d’origines européennes.”
2. These figures are based on a total indigenous population of 7,000,000.
Gouvernementgénéral de l ’Algérie, Direction générale desfinances, Services de statistique générale,
Résultats statistiques du dénombrement de la population effectué le 31 octobre 1954.
180 The Politics o f Frenchness in C obnial Algeria, 193 0 -1 9 5 4
3. S. Fad, L'Algérie sous l'égide de b France contre b féodalité algérienne (Toulouse:
Imprimerie régionale, 1936).
4. Hassan, Comment Périra lAlgérie française (Constantine: Editions Attali, 1938),
134.
3. Ibid., 140.
6. R. et A. Zenati, Bou-el-Nouar, lejeune Algérien (Alger: La Maison des livres, 1945),
71.
7. Mohammed Dib, La Grande Maison (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952).
8. Daudet described an emotional last class given by a French teacher in Alsace
before Prussians assumed control of the province in 1871.
9. Dib, La Grande Maison, 20-21.
10. Ibid.
11. Hassan, Comment périra VAlgérie française, 135.
12. R. Zenati, Le Problème algérien vu par un indigène (Paris: Publications du comité
de l'Afrique française, 1938), 45.
13. Ibid., 180.
14. AOM, 8 X 328, “Note sur l’évolution politique et sociale des Pays Arabes,”
octobre 1930-octobre 1931. The Arab nation described in these reporcs was allegedly uni
fied by the Arabic language. The argument is made that while the western notion of nation
is defined by precise geographic, ethnic, linguistic, political, and economic boundaries, the
eastern idea is more nebulous, crossing numerous geographic and cultural borders.
15. AOM, 10 H 88 (19), “L’Année indigène algérienne 1937, vue du département
d’Alger.
16. See chapter 4 for more on the “M ’tournis.”
17. Archives nationales (hereafter AN), F 60 707. Taken from a report dated 5
décembre 1938, “Note concernant l’organisation d’une contre-propagande en Afrique du
Nord.”
18. Ibid.
19. AN, F 60 819. “Bulletin d’information sur la situation politique en Afrique du
Nord. Théâtre d’opérations de l’Afrique du Nord, Etat Major, Bureau politique,” 14
septembre 1939.
20. AN, F 60 819, “Bulletin d’information,” 18 septembre 1939.
21. See chapter 5.
22. AN, F 60 707. Included in one report is a table comparing Italian, German,
French, and English propaganda efforts.
23. AN, F 60 819, “Etat de l’opinion musulmane en Afrique du Nord,” 8 mars
1943.
24. For an account of the indigenous experience in the French military, see Ben
jamin Stora, Ils venaient dAlgerie: L'immigration algérienne en France, 1912-1992 (Paris:
Fayard, 1992).
25. Mouloud Mammeri, Le Sommeil du juste, (Paris: Plon, 1955), 160.
26. Mouloud Mammeri, La Colline oubliée (Paris: Plon, 1952), 30.
27. Mammeri, Le Sommeil du juste, 8.
28. Ibid., 77.
29. AN, F 60 819, Service des renseignements généraux. “L’Action allemande parmi
les Nord-Africains,” 6 février 1942.
30. AN, F 60 819.
31. Ibid.
32. See for instance article in 22 février 1940 issue of VEntente franco-musulman
entitled “Le Nazisme et l’Islam.” See chapter 4 on the indigenous press.
33. Mohammed Dib, L'Incendie (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1954), 91.
34. Ibid., 92.
35. “Is the Jew French?” This is the title of a pamphlet by Henry Tubiana published
most likely in the 1930s.
36. For an excellent general history of the Algerian Jewish population, see Richard
Ayoun and Bernard Cohen, LesJuifs d'Algérie (Paris: Lattès, 1982), as well as Joëlle Allouche-
Benayoun and Doris Bensimon, Juifi dAlgérie: Hier et aujourd'hui: Mémoires et identités
(Toulouse: Editions Privât, 1989).
37. Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé précédé du portrait du colonisateur (Paris:
Buchet/Chastel, 1957). Memmi, of Jewish descent, grew up in Tunisia.
38. Gouvernement général de l’Algérie, Services de statistiques générales, Résultats
statistiques du dénombrement de la population effectué le 31 octobre 1954.
39. Elizabeth Friedman, Cobnialism and After: An Algerian Jewish Community (South
Hadley, MA: Bergen and Garvey, 1988), 25.
40. Joëlle Bahloul, La Maison de mémoire: Ethnologie dune demeure judéo-arabe en
Algérie (î93 7 -J961) (Paris: Editions Métailié, 1992), 152.
41. Allouche-Benayoun and Bensimon, Juifi d'Algérie, 175.
42. Jean Paillard, Faut-il Faire de Âlgérie un dominion? (Paris: Fernand Sorlot, 1939).
43. See M. Bohrer, Pour La Patrie: L'Algérie aux Français d'origine ou le véritable sens
de la question du décret Crémieux (Alger: Imprimerie Baldachino-Laronde-Viguier, 1898).
44. For more information on anti-Semitism in one specific area of Algeria, see
Geneviève Dermenjian, La Crise anti-juive oranaise, 1895-1905: L'Antisémitisme dans l'Algérie
coloniale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1986).
45. Henry Tubiana, Le J u if est-ilfrançais? Considérations sur l'état civil et politique des
Juifs algériens (Alger: Imprimerie Boujarel, n.d.). The author’s response to his rhetorical
question is no. He is nonetheless sympathetic to Jewish concerns.
46. Achille Baubier, Vive L'Algérie monsieur! (Alger: Baconnicr, 1928), 29. Baubier
describes a “naturalisation fictive” of Algerian Jews.
47. Paillard, Faut-il Faire de l'Algérie un dominion?, 32.
48. Louis Bertrand, Le Sang des races (Paris: Ollendorf, 1898). This novel was revised
in 1920. Bertrand mentioned in his preface that Algeria had not changed in the twenty
years since he had first published it.
49. Ibid., 25.
50. Randau, Les Colons (Paris: Albin Michel, 1926), 193-94.
51. Elissa Rhaïs, LesJuifi ou lafille d'Eléazar (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1921); Maximilienne
Heller, La Mer rouge (Paris: Grasset, 1923).
52. Heller, La M er rouge, 67. The author does note some socially scandalous unions
between Arabs and Jews.
53. Bulletin de la fédération des sociétésjuives d'Algérie, août-septembre 1934.
54. Anti-Semites used this myth to stigmatize Jews as non-French. Military service
was thought to be an integral part of French identity, particularly in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries.
55. AN, F60 707, “Propagande étrangère en Afrique du Nord, 1937. Requêtes—
1936-1939.”
56. La Libreparole, “Algérusalem—L’Algérie terre juive— Leçons d’histoire algérienne
d’un rabbin à son fils,” 1937.
57. Ibid., 64.
58. André Chaumet, Juifs et Américains: Rois de l’A frique du Nord (Paris: Editions du
C .E A , 1943).
59. AN, F60 723, Cabinet du gouverneur général de l’Algérie. “Situation politique
européenne de l’Algérie en 1938.”
60. For a literary account of anti-Semitism and the role o tAmitiés latines in Oran, see
Emmanuel Roblbs Jeunes Saisons (Alger: Baconnier, 1961).
61. AN, F60 723.
62. Anti-Semitism was allegedly less widespread in Algiers, where Jews accounted for
a tenth of the French population. AN, F60 723.
63. The weekly newspaper LUnion populaire, “organe officiel de l’union populaire
républicaine oranaise” (“official mouthpiece of the popular Oranese republican union”),
was hostile to Lambert and his ideology.
64. AOM, 8 X 448. André Piquet, Administrateur-adjoint de commune mixte, “La Colonie
israëlite de la région de Miliana et ses relations avec les autres éléments de la population.”
65. AN, F60 723.
66. Louis Forest, La Naturalisation des J u if algériens et l’insurrection de 1871, étude
historique (Paris: Société française d’imprimerie et de librairie, 1897).
67. AOM, 2 CAB 4. For a slightly different account, written at the moment of the
violence, see Eugène Vallet, Les Evénements de Constantine, 5 août 1934: Quelques docu
ments (Alger: Baconnier, 1935).
68. AOM, 2 CAB 4.
69. La Dépêche de Constantine, 9,10,11 août 1934.
70. Bulletin de la fédération des sociétésjuives dAlgérie, octobre 1934.
71. Ibid.
72. See article entitled “Le Sionisme en Algérie” in the March 20, 1930, issue of La
Voix indigène. It addressed potential Arab-Jewish conflict.
73. LAppel, 1 août 1947.
74. Ibid.
75. It first appeared on May 20, 1946.
76. Messages d ’Israël, 20 mai 1946.
77. Service historique de l’armée de terre (SHAT), “Rapport mensuel sur la moral
des populations, 25 février-25 mars 1947.”
78. European populations also reportedly feared the destabilization of Algerian soci
ety as a result of the events taking place in Palestine. SHAT, “Rapport mensuel du 25 août-
18 September 1947.”
79. AN, F 60 806. Information taken from a note addressed to M. le Général d’Armée
Catroux from Commissariat d’Etat aux affaires musulmanes. It calls attention to the depar
ture of Jews and the actions of the Fédération sioniste algérienne.
80. This file contains several documents signed by persons agreeing to the laws regu
lating departure. AN, F 60 806.
81. Ibid.
82. SHAT, “Bulletin décadaire de renseignement, 1-10 décembre 1947.”
83. SHAT, “Bulletin décadaire de renseignement, 21-31 janvier 1948.”
84. SHAT, “Bulletin bi-mensuel de renseignement, 16-31 mai 1948.”
85. SHAT, “Bulletin bi-mensuel de renseignement, 1-15 mars 1948.”
86. SHAT, “Bulletin bi-mensuel de renseignement, 1-15 juin 1948.”
87. SHAT, “Bulletin bi-mensuel de renseignement, 16-31 juillet 1948.”
88. See Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (New
York: Schocken Books, 1983).
89. Bulletin de la fédération des sociétésjuives d'Algérie, octobre 1934.
90. AN, F 60 806.
91. AN, F 60 806, “Bulletin de renseignements.” The irrédentiste group was report
edly furious over the abolition of the Crémieux decree and wanted to make both North
Africa and Palestine “des pays Judéo-musulmans.”
92. Jean-Paul Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive (Paris: Editions Morihien, 1946).
93. Elizabeth Friedman, Colonialism and After: An Algerian Jewish Community (Cam
bridge, MA: Bergin and Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1988), 119.
94. Paillard, Faut-il Faire de l'Algérie un dominion?, 54—55.
95. See Liana Priolis novel Antoine de Chijfalo (Alger: La Type-Litho, 1941) for a
description of Sicilian fishermen in the tiny eastern port of Chiffalo.
96. Gaston Loth's Le Peuplement italien en Algérie et en Tunisie (Paris: Colin, 1905) is
a dated but thorough study of Italian migration to Algeria. More recently, see Gérard Crespo,
Les Italiens en Algérie 1830-1960: Histoire et sociologie dune migration (Calvisson, France:
Editions J. Gandini, 1994).
97. Juan Bta. Vilar, Los Espaûoles en laArgeliafrancesa (1830-1914) (Madrid: Centro
de estudios historicos, 1989); Jean-Jacques Jordi, Les Espagnols en Oranie, 1830-1914
(Montpellier: Editions Africa nostra, 1986); Christian Flores, Le Voleur d'huile: L'Espagne
dans TOranie française (1830-1962) (Montpellier: Collection Français d'Afrique, 1988).
98. Alain Lardillier, Le Peuplementfrançais en Algérie de 1830 à 1900: Les raisons de
son échec (Versailles: Editions de l'Atlanthrope, 1992), 48.
99. See chapter 1.
100. Victor Démontés, Le Peuple algérien: Essais de démographie algérienne (Alger:
Imprimerie algérienne, 1906).
101. Ibid., 262.
102. Ibid., 473.
103. Baubier, Vive l'Algérie monsieur1., 157.
104. Pierre Nora, Les Français d'Algérie (Paris: Julliard, 1961). Nora is quite critical
of the settler population in Algeria.
105. Ibid., p. 134.
106. Ferhat Abbas, De La Colonie vers la province: Le jeune Algérien (Paris: Editions
de la jeune parque, 1931), 116.
107. Bachaga Boualam, Mon Pays la France (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1962),
94. See also L'Algérie sans la France (Paris: Editions France-Empire), 1964.
108. Paul Achard, L'Homme de mer (Paris: Editions de France, 1931).
109. Ferdinand Duchêne, Mouna, cachir et couscouss (Paris: Albin Michel, 1930).
110. Lucienne Favre, Bab-el-Oued (Paris: La Table ronde, 1946), 46. First published
in 1926.
111. Ibid., 17.
112. Division among the various groups from the European settler population is
described in Louis Bertrands novel Pépéte et Balthasar (Paris: Fayard, 1904).
113. La Antena espafiola reemerged in 1951 and circulated sporadically until 1961.
114. El Correo, 2 de marzo 1931 : KEl Correo nace con la profunda conviccion de que en
el extranjero ne debemos ser mas que Espanoles, y eludir el comentar, con espiritu partidista,
todo aquello que pueda ser motivo de desunion.” All Spanish translations are my own.
115 -E l Correo, 2 de marzo 1931: “Es tema de nuestro periodico: Todo por Espafia y
por los Espafioles dentro del mayor respeto a la Francia hospitalaria.”
116. See letter dated February 27, 1931, AOM, 2 CAB 1.
117. Ibid.
118. LaAntena espanola, 10 de mayo 1928: “Ser instrumento sensible, enhiesto en el
espacio iiimitado e inquieco de la actualidad, para recoger hasta las mis imperceptibles
palpitaciones de la vida espanola, y portavoz vigilante que les multiplique y las propague
hasta el mis apartado rincén en que aliente una vibracidn de nuestro espiritu, o el tiempo,
la tradicidn o la sangre hayan perpetuado un recuerdo de Espafia, un eco de amor, o un
rasgo de simpatia.”
119 .E l Correo de Espaha, 29 de julio 1925.
120. El Correo de Espafia, 24 de marzo 1930. The article is entitled “Hacia la creacion
de la casa de Espafia” (“Toward the creation of the house of Spain”).
121. E l Correo de Espafia, 7 de mayo 1930.
122. See Vilar, Les Espanoles en la Argelia francesa (1830-1914), 198.
123. AOM, 8 X 302. René Huertas, administrateur des services civils d’Algérie, “Les
Populations espagnoles et d’origine espagnole en Oranie, 20 février 1951.”
124. Ibid. The report lists 598 Spanish-French marriages in the Oran region.
125. AOM, 8 X 445. A confidential document entited “La question espagnole en
Algérie,” 19è région— Etat-major— 2è bureau, février 1942.
126. AN, F 60 733.
127. Ibid. Canovas ended his letter with the exclamation “Vive la France, vive
l’Espagne” (“Long live France, long live Spain”) and signed it “citoyen français d’origine
espagnole” (“French citizen of Spanish descent”).
128. AN, F 60 733.
129. See article entitled “Police des étrangers” by Maurice Maurin in LEcho d ’Oran,
28 janvier 1939.
130. Oran-Matin, 13 janvier 1939.
131. AOM, 8X 302.
132. See Jean Dejeux and D. H. Pageaux, Espagne et Algérie au XXe siècle: Contacts
culturels et création littéraire (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1985).
133. See article entitled “Les réfugiés espagnols en Algérie,” La Dépêche algérienne,
29 mars 1939.
134. AOM, 8 X 302.
135. AOM, 8X 445.
136. Ibid.
137. Ibid.
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.
140. Ibid.
141. Ibid.
142. AOM, 10 H 90 “Surveillance, étrangers, instructions.”
143. For more information, see previously cited work by Gérard Crespo, Les Italiens
en Algérie (1830—1960): Histoire et sociologie dune migration.
144. See, for example, the cited essays by Bachaga Boualam.
145. Gouvernement général de l’Algérie, Service de statistiques générales, Résultats
statistiques du dénombrement de la population effectué le 31 octobre 1954.
146. Gouvernement général de l’Algérie, Service central de statistiques, Statistique
comparée des recensements quinquennaux de la population algérienne en 1936 et en 1931.
147. For general information, see Charles-Robert Ageron, Les Français d'Algérie (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1993), 103-17.
148. See description of desired “colonies de peuplement” in Alain Lardilliers cited
demographic study, Le Peulement français en Algérie de 1830 à 1900\ as well as related
information in chapter 1.
149. Aimé Dupuy, “Chez les Alsaciens d’Algérie avec Georges Delahache,” from La
Vie en Alsace 1 (janvier 1936). More recently, see Fabienne Fischer, Alsaciens et Lorrains en
Algérie: Histoire d'une migration 1830-1914 (Nice: Editions J. Gandini, 1999).
150. AOM, 10 H 90 (19), “Les Bretons en Afrique du Nord,” rapport de Mr. Edmond
Boisecq au congrès de l’Union régionaliste bretonne à Brasparts (Finistère), 12 septembre
1948.
151. Roblès, Jeunes Saisons.
152. Ibid., 75.
153. Robert Randau, Le Professeur M artin, petit bourgeois d'Alger (Alger: Baconnier,
1936).
154. Paul Scott writes of the English being so much more English in Colonial India.
See chapter 1 o £After Empire by Michael Gorra (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1997).
155. See Mohammed Dib, La Grande Maison (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952).
156. Homi Bhabha, “O f Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Dis
course,” in Tensions o f Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Ann. L. Stoler and
Frederick Cooper, p. 153 (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1997).
157. Mouloud Feraoun, La Terre et le sang (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1954), 36.
158. Ibid., 45-46.
159. Ibid., 38.
160. See H. Marchand, C. Kehl, and P. Guiho, “Le Mariage mixte franco-musulman,”
Annales juridiques, politiques, économiques et sociales, n° 3-4 (spécial), 1er année (1955).
161. Albert Truphémus, Ferhat, instituteur indigène (Alger, 1935).
162. Randau, Les Colons, 111.
163. Bertrand, Le Sang des races, 40.
164. Ibid., 142.
165. Roblès, Jeunes saisons, 79.
166. Favre, Bab-el-oued, 11.
167. “Patos” literally means duck in Spanish and “Francaouis” is taken from the
Arabic for French.
168. The term can be found for example in Georges Galunaud’s (pseudonym),
Gavatcho: L'histoire d'un petit villageois d'Oranie (Alger: Imprimerie Barbry, 1956).
169. Examples can be found in Emmanuel Roblès’ Jeunes saisons.
170. According to Henri de Montherlant, Il y A Encore des Paradis: Images d'Alger,
1928-1931 (Alger: Soubiron, 1935).
171. Messali Hadj for instance, one of the founders of Algerian nationalism, de
clined any part of French identity.
6
ALOÉRÊANITÉt THE EMERGENCE OP
A COLONIAL IDENTITY
Marcel Florenchie, a transplanted Frenchman in Algeria and the author of

several colonial memoirs, entitled a 1932 essay Terre algérienne. Fourteen
years later, he published a sequel to his Algerian exploration called Terre
française} Why had Florenchie changed adjectives in his description of
colonial North Africa? What did he mean by calling Algeria “Algerian” only
to refer to it as “French” a little over a decade later? The answer, I submit,
lies in colonial Algeria’s curious, oscillating relationship with metropolitan
France. Colonial Algeria was both doggedly independent or distinct, and
fully dependent on French aid.
From the written sources explored in previous chapters, we have seen
that, as far as colonial advocates were concerned, Algeria had been made
French. It was shaped in the very image of France and nourished by an
expanding French colonial or “outre-mer” community. The Centennial
celebration of 1930 marked the culmination of Algériefrançaise, the apogee
of French imperialism worldwide. Increasingly secure in its identity and
future, individuals and small groups of people in colonial Algeria would
periodically discuss breaking free of the metropolitan support system, like
the proverbial adolescent asserting his or her independence. Critics claimed
that French Algeria had never truly been established on a solid foundation.
By the mid-to late 1940s moreover, French sovereignty seemed to be in
186
Algérianité: The Emergence o f a Colonial Identity 187
jeopardy. Settler communities appeared increasingly threatened by mili
tant proponents of an independent or Algerian Algeria. This led observers
such as Marcel Florenchie to insist that despite its distinctiveness, Algeria
remained steadfasdy French.
In this final chapter, I examine the development of a fleeting colonial
Algerian identity, one that clashed with declarations of French sentiment
and was even considered hazardous to French rule. This sensibility was yet
another manifestation of the “foreign threat” that colonial authorities could
never quite eradicate from North African shores. A defiant, pervasive sense
of algérianité ox “Algerianness” emerged not in Arab, Berber, or Jewish quar
ters, but within European settler groups, among individuals who had nei
ther retained strong ties to their ancestral countries nor forged strong links
to France. It held particular resonance for second-generation emigrants born
in North Africa. Algérianité was a proclamation of their imagined and
strongly felt identity, the recognition of a distinct colonial consciousness. It
was articulated in an assortment of novels and essays that authors pub
lished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Algerian senti
ment was sometimes expressed in the very same texts in which writers had
described French cultural identity. Simultaneous assertions of Frenchness
and Algerianness blur facile definitions and convey the extent to which
identity was ambiguous in French colonial North Africa.
The study of these expressions helps to better understand an Algerian
colonial context in which national and localized identities often collided.
Some of the “Algerians” described in colonial literature rejected France and
refused to identify with Frenchness. Novelists alluded to brewing Algerian
nationalist sentiment among segments of the settler population in the 1930s
and 1940s. These nationalists of European ancestry threatened to establish
an independent country, despite the fact that most settler groups were offi
cially recognized as French citizens in colonial Algeria.
Chroniclers of settler society in colonial Algeria include such promi
nent authors as Louis Bertrand, Robert Randau, and Emmanuel Roblès.2
Louis Bertrand was a particularly important figure. This native of the
Lorraine region in France and member of the French Academy had come
to Algeria in the late nineteenth century to teach in a secondary school.
Bertrand was so taken with the country and its population that he settled
there permanently, and colonial Algerian society provided the setting for a
great many of his novels.3 Bertrand and his cohorts organized literary circles
of Algerian novelists. They helped to establish a body of literature “by”
Algeria, that is written by persons born in North Africa, as opposed to one
“on” Algeria.4 Frequently referred to as les Algérianistes, these authors were
most influential during the first few decades of the twentieth century. They
paid tribute to the European setder experience in their works. Nineteenth-
century writings “on” Algeria had been dominated by travel literature by
itinerant Frenchmen.5 Louis Bertrand and his disciples, as the founding
fathers of the “colonial novel,” influenced a generation of younger writers
such as Lucienne Favre, Ferdinand Duchêne, and Paul Achard, many of
whom were born in North Africa. Writing in the algérianiste tradition, the
North African landscape and European settler society dominated their works.
A smaller number of recognized authors, including Albert Camus,
Gabriel Audisio, Jean Mélia, and Jean Pélégri, devoted much of their thought
and work to Algerian society, but wrote from a slightly different perspec
tive. These authors formed a group known as T école cTAlger or Algiers school.6
Unlike algérianiste authors, writers associated with the Algiers school were
less preoccupied with definitions of Algerian identity reserved solely for
European setders. They wrote instead from a broadly humanist perspec
tive. By the 1950s, Arab and Berber authors such as Kateb Yacine and
Mohammed Dib produced works in French which adhered to the école
d'Alger tradition, but they are not examined in detail here.7
Les Algériens
French novelists living in North Africa were often the first to take note of a
singularly Algerian sentiment. The metropolitan writer Ferdinand Duchêne
began an essay published in 1929 with an amusing anecdote about
Algerianness.8 He described a young Frenchman in 1900 who, after having
spent several years in Algeria, returned to the metropolitan region of his
birth with a wife of European descent. When greeted by his grandmother,
the young man introduces his bride as Algerian, which surprises the older
woman. She responds somewhat incredulously that her new daughter-in-
law appeared quite like other French women to her, and not particularly
Algerian.9 The French matriarch that Duchêne described found this asser
tion of Algerianness peculiar. The Algeria of her imagination was a distant
and foreign place, populated by strange, unfamiliar, darker-skinned groups.
Her Algeria was decidedly not populated by people ostensibly “French” in
appearance and manner.
In the same essay, Ferdinand Duchêne offered a suggestive definition
of colonial Algerian identity: “On peut être Algérien sans trop de difficultés,”
he remarked (“One can be Algerian without too much difficulty”).
Il suffit d'être né en Algérie de parents européens ou d'origine européenne,
ce qui est à la portée de toutes les chances, ou d'y être demeuré assez longtemps
pour s'imprégner de son atmosphère et de son humus.
[It is only necessary to be born in Algeria of European parentage, which is
quite possible indeed, or to have been there long enough to imbibe its atmo
sphere and nourishing soil.]
Duchêne concluded, “tel est le sens du mot ‘A lgérien dans la colonie:
Européen transplanté”10 (“such is the meaning of the word “Algerian” in
the colony: transplanted European”). Demographic studies of the Algerian
population from the turn of the twentieth century recorded similar defini
tions. Le Peuple algérien, published by Victor Démontés in 1906, described
the transformation of a disparate European settler population into a colo
nial “people.”11 Later works such as Pour Comprendre VAlgérie or VAlgérie
des anthropologues acknowledged the development of distinct characteris
tics among setder populations who had fused and generated a new sense of
identity.12
Examples of the algérianisation of European settlers appear frequently
in colonial literature. Titouss, a fictional settler in Paul Achards novel
L'Homme de mer (1931), speaks of his transformation from European to
Algerian on the North African coast.13 His parents had emigrated from the
neighboring island of Malta. The children of settlers such as Titouss at
tained French citizenship automatically, yet sometimes felt no emotional
attachment to France. When Titouss is asked about his family's identity, he
describes it as Algerian. When informed by interrogators (representatives
of the French colonial administration) that Algerian nationality does not
exist, Titouss is unimpressed.14 He is certain himself of the meaning of
Aigerianness. In Ferdinand Duchênes novel Mouna, cachir et couscouss
(1930), Pierre Sanchez, an emigrant of Spanish origin, also asserts his
Aigerianness when questioned about his identity: “[. . .] Pierre Sanchez
précise ce quil est:—Algérien”15 (“Pierre Sanchez specifies what he is: Alge
rian”). He had not assimilated French cultural identity nor did he retain
the Spanish national identity of his ancestors. Algeria is his home, his “patrie,”
while both Spain and France seem distant and foreign. Pierres indifference
to Spain is reinforced by a lengthy visit to the land of his ancestors. It
enables him to become more at ease with his native Algerian sense of self.
Cagayous, perhaps the most famous of all colonial Algerian literary
figures, describes himself and the rest of the European settler population as
Algerian. “Algériens nous sommes!” (“Algerians we are!”) he declares defi
antly. Cagayous is the creation of Musette, an Algerian-born author who
immortalized the adventures of his protagonist in a series of dime-store
novels written between 1895 and 1920.16 Cagayous resides in the working-
class Bab-el-Oued section of Algiers, and is representative of poor, often
illiterate migrants of European descent. Crude, violent, highly suspicious
of others, and openly anti-Semitic, Cagayous defends an exclusionary defi
nition of Algerian identity. (See figure 10.)
Arab and Berber populations were decidedly not Algerian in the sense
that Cagayous and European authors gave this term. The notion that any
one other than “transplanted Europeans” could be considered Algerian re
portedly gave rise to consternation or amusement in European circles in
North Africa:
Lorsqu'un journal de la métropole publie par exemple quà Puteaux, TAlgérien
Mohammed ben Hachemi a éventré la patronne d’un bar, tous les Algériens
d’Alger (mettons: les trois quarts pour éviter deux or trois protestations)
avancent une lippe puis ricanent. Pour eux, Mohammed n’est pas et ne doit
pas être un Algérien; c’est un indigène algérien.17
[When a metropolitan French newspaper publishes for example that in
Puteaux, the Algerian Mohammed ben Hachemi stabbed the owner of a bar,
all the Algerians of Algiers (or three quarters of the population to avoid
protest) frown then snicker. For them, Mohammed is not and must not be
an Algerian. He is an indigenous Algerian]
Similarly, Jews are excluded from the Algerian social category and relegated
to the ranks of indigenous Algerians. “Authentic” Algerians denied th a t,
“[. . .] Juda Levy, citoyen français pourtant (ce qu’eux-mêmes ne sont pas
tous), est un Algérien; ils disent en parlant de lui, le Juif”18 (“. .. Juda Levy,
a French citizen, which all of them are not, is an Algerian. In speaking of
him they say the Jew”). Cagayous claims that it is anti-Semitism that bound
the Algerian population and gave it an identity. In one of his adventurous
tales, he states in his distinct Algerian form of speech,
Si les Algériens y z’avaient pas gueulé à la cause de l’affaire Dreyfus, les Français
de France y s’arraient pensé que c’est tous des étrangers et des champoreaux,
moitié italiens, moitié espagnols qui sont ici.19
[If Algerians hadn’t raised hell over the Dreyfus Affair, the French of France
would’ve thought there were only foreigners here, half-Italian and half-Span
ish mongrels.]
Figure 10: Cagayous, the quintessential Algérien. From Gabriel Audisio,

Cagayous ses meilleures histoires (Paris: Gallimard, 1931), frontispiece. Used
by permission.
E. F. Gautier, a student of colonial Algerian society, asserted in 1930 that
the “anti-Jewish explosion” of the late nineteenth century gave birth to
Cagayous, the veritable archetype of Algerianness.20
The colonial definition of algérianité placed European emigrants at a
distance from indigenous groups such as Jews and Muslims, but also lo
cated France and Frenchness outside of the emergent Algerian conscience.
Asserting Algerianness was a conscious, brazen way for writers to distin
guish settler society and articulate a colonial identity It is important to
note that nowhere in colonial essays or novels of the 1930s, 1940s, and
1950s do algérianiste authors evoke the term Pied-Noir. It was not until
after Algerian independence in 1962, when most European settlers “repa
triated” to France, that they assumed the title that many still use.21
Not all European transplants in North Africa were Algerian to the
same extent. Some fictional characters, such as Cagayous, assume this colo
nial identity entirely, while others make no mention of it at all. What we
see in written texts from the colonial period is that the so-called néo-Français
from Spain and Italy may have been strongly inclined to consider them
selves Algerian, while French-born emigrants and their descendants identi
fied more easily with the métropole. Some colonial novels are set at a time
when administrators hoped that the naturalization of European immigrants
had generated a real sense of Frenchness. Lucienne Favre s 1926 novel Bab-
el-oued describes Spanish-descended characters during the First World War,
many of whom held no particular sympathy for France, Favre wrote:
Bab-el-oued et la Guerre. Ceux qui s’en foutent. Qui ne lisent même pas les
communiqués. Parce que c’est trop loin [France]. Qu’ils sont Algériens avant
d’être Français. Qu’ils n’ont personne là-bas.22
[Bab-el-Oeud and the war. Those who don’t give a damn. Who don’t even
read the official statements. Because France is too distant. Because they are
Algerian before being French. Because they have no one over there.]
The main character of Favre s book, Ascension, is a twenty-year-old
settler of Spanish origin. Although born in Spain, and living in a French
colonial country, she progressively becomes accustomed to her new sur
roundings and adopts an Algerian identity. The narrator of the story re
counts, “Ascension n est pas encore française, mais, insensiblement, elle est
devenue algérienne”23 (“Ascension is not yet French but, unconsciously, she
has become Algerian”). By the end of Lucienne Favre s narrative however,
Ascension proudly exclaims, in her strongly accented mix of French and
Spanish, “vivé la Franché!” (“Long lib’ France”). The novelist Ferdinand
Duchêne examined Algerian social groups and concluded that perhaps a
third generation of Algerian-born settlers would identify more with France
and Frenchness than did preceding generations such as that of Ascension.24
French schools and other assimilating institutions, he believed, could pro
gressively carry out this cultural transformation.
Social critic Achille Baubier noted the varying degrees of French and
Algerian sentiment that existed within the settler community in the early
twentieth century. First generation French immigrants freshly arrived from
France could maintain for instance that they were “Français avant tout et
d’abord,” (“French first and foremost”) and Algerian second. Yet this per
spective was not necessarily shared by their sons: “[. . .] Peut-on vraiment
leur demander d’avoir un amour aussi profond que le nôtre de la France
métropolitaine?” (“... Can one really ask them to love metropolitan France
as profoundly as we do?”) Barbier asked. These native sons of Algeria
[. . .] sont, eux, Français de coeur, c’est entendu; ils ne seraient pas nos fils
s’ils ne l’étaient pas; mais ils sont peut-être Algériens avant d’être Français.
[. . . are themselves French at heart, it is clear; they wouldn’t be our sons if
they were not; but they are perhaps Algerians before being French.]
As for the naturalized European population of Algeria, their algérianité was
more firmly grounded. If they were also French, Vest vraiment parce que
l’Algérie est française. Ils sont surtout, avant tout Algériens. Et peut-on leur
en vouloir? Franchement non”25 (“its actually because Algeria is French.
They are first and foremost Algerian. And can one blame them? Frankly
no ).
Algerian Characteristics and Culture
Settlers became Algerians in a real sense when they no longer felt like exiles,
when they had made Algeria their home. “Nous ne sommes plus des exilés”
(“We are no longer exiles”), wrote the essayist Jean Mélia in 1952, himself
a setder of Italian descent. “L’Algérie est devenue notre patrie. Nous vivons
à toutes les minutes de la journée, dans la pensée de l’Algérie”26 (“Algeria
has become our homeland. We live every minute of the day in the thought
of Algeria”). Literary figures such as Pascuallette begin to think of them
selves as Algerian, after years of tribulation and strife in North Africa had
attached them to this land.27 In a contemporary study describing European
settler life, Marie Cardinal wrote,
Les gens avaient fait leur place, ils avaient ensemencé la terre, bâti des maisons,
baptisés des tas de nouveau-nés, enterrés des tas de morts. Ils n*étaient plus
des exilés, des immigrés ou des aventuriers, maintenant ils avaient pris racine
là, ils étaient de là. La France demeurait la mère, l’aïeule plutôt, mais elle
n était plus notre terre.28
[People had created their own space, they had sowed the earth, built homes,
baptized many newborns, buried many dead. They were no longer exiles,
immigrants or adventurers; now they had established roots there, they were
from there. France remained the mother, or rather the ancestress, but it was
no longer our country.]
Now mature and self-sufficient according to Franco-Algerian familial meta
phors, no longer in need of a maternal and dominant figure, Algerians of
European descent severed the bonds connecting their country to metro
politan France.
In making Algeria their home away from the maternal homeland,
Algerians developed the characteristics that came to define them. The de
fining traits appearing most frequently in literature are those that made
existence in North Africa possible. “Avide, intempérante, brutale, emportée,
sans beaucoup d’éducation, oubliant quelquefois la règle du tien et du
mien”29 (“Eager, intemperate, brutal, overzealous, lacking in education,
forgetful of the rule of yours and mine”)—such is one definition of Alge
rian identity. Another noted the ideals of “travail, audace, persévérance”30
(“work, courage, and perseverance”). The hardworking farmer of the Alge
rian frontier represented the embodiment of the colonial effort and iden
tity.31 The rigors of life in a colonial country produced characteristics that
often ran toward the extreme. The novelist Paul Achard wrote,
LAlgérien est paroxyste. Entier dans ses affections, ses enthousiasmes et ses
haines, il est capable de s’atteler au char d’un homme aimé, comme aussi
bien de massacrer celui qu’il déteste.32
[The Algerian is spasmodic. Total in his affection, his enthusiasm, and his
hatred, he is capable of attaching himself to the fate of a dearly loved man
while also massacring the one that he hates.]
The fictional Algerian settler also possesses more refined attributes,
complementing the rugged, vital ones necessary for life in colonial society.
“Algerianness” is marked by specific celebrations and social customs, dis
tinguishable from those found in France. Alvarez, a character from Robert
Randaus Le Professeur Martin (1936) notes distinct Algerian culinary prac
tices.33 Consumption of “la Mouna,” a Spanish pastry, at Easter time pro
vides an annual affirmation of algérianité:
Qui n’a pas entendu parler de la Mouna ne peut pas être Algérien. La Mouna
concrétise un rite et devient un critérium. Elle joue encore au signe du
Zodiaque: Pâques est dominé par la Mouna.34
[Whoever has not heard of Mouna cannot be Algerian. Mouna constitutes a
rite as well as a criterion. It is still governed by the sign of the Zodiac. Easter
is dominated the consumption of Mouna.]
For novelists of the colonial period, the most compelling Algerian
characteristic was youthful energy. Their writings suggest that Algeria was a
young country, just one hundred years old in 1930, and its population
reflected this youth.35 An uncanny vitality and resourcefulness exemplified
Algerian youthfulness for them. The Algerian, according to French essayist
Gabriel Audisio, exhibited an “esprit constructeur,” a dynamic, pioneering
nature that fostered development. The foundation of European-style cities,
the erection of schools, hospitals, municipal buildings, homes and roads
stood as evidence of these defining characteristics. Audisio asserted that
Algerian dynamism was equally demonstrated in the intellectual and cre
ative domain, in the works of writers, distinguished professors, singers,
actors, and musicians. He predicted that the phenomenal growth of Alge
ria and the creative panache of Algerians was such that the country would
soon have a film industry rivaling Hollywood.36
Some colonial authors drew a parallel between Algeria and the United
States, linking the two by their common traits of youth and dynamism.
Indeed, one referred to Algeria as T Amérique à la française”37 (“French
America”). Algeria seemed to resemble America,
Par sa richesse, par l’audace et la santé de son peuple, jeune et travailleur,
formé de races dont la guerre comme aux Etats-Unis, avait cimenté l’union.38
[By the richness, the audacity and the vitality of its people, young and hard
working, made up of races of which the experience of war, like in the United
States, had fused the union.]
European settlers had acquired the title “Américains dAfrique” (“Ameri
cans of Africa”) as a result of their efforts,39 Novelists referred to “une autre
196 The Politics o f Frenchness in Colonial Algeria» 1 9 3 0 -1 9 5 4
Californie” (“another California”) that had emerged in North Africa, with
similarly abundant natural resources and development potential. Like set-
tiers in North America, Algerians had accomplished their own “conquest
of the Western frontier,” establishing themselves on barren territory and
erecting settlements and fortunes from nothing. Their Algerian home was
modeled on the America that they read about and imagined. Both sites,
authors contended, were conceived as beacons of modernity, places where
the future of mankind would be rewritten. Algerian panache could suppos
edly help to rejuvenate metropolitan France, constantly plagued by low
birth rates, with its abundant reserves of bodies and energy.40
According to Albert Camus, Algeria and the United States each main
tained diverse settler populations that had fused. He described Algerians,
favorably, as
Une race bâtarde, faite de mélanges imprévus. Espagnols et Alsaciens, Italiens,
Maltais, Juifs, Grecs enfin s’y sont rencontrés. Ces croisements brutaux ont
donné, comme en Amérique, d’heureux résultats.41
[A bastardized race, made up of surprising mixes. Spaniards and Alsacians,
Italians, Maltese, Jews and Greeks ultimately came together. Such intermin
gling has had, as in America, positive results.]
While Camus included Algerian Jews in this hybrid population, he made
no reference to Muslims. Indigenous populations of course populated North
Africa and the United States, yet different fates awaited them. As one au
thor pointed out, European settlers had not exterminated indigenous Ar
abs and Berbers as Americans had done to Indians.42
Algeria mirrored the United States in its linguistic composition. As
was the case for the English language in America, writers maintained that
the official idiom in colonial Algeria, French, took on a new colonial form.
Its distinctiveness, discussed further in this chapter, resulted from usage by
diverse groups who had settled in North Africa and had not abandoned
their native tongues.
The vigor attributed to the Algerian people in colonial novels and essays
manifested itself differently in other texts. Writings describe a cult of the
physique and of sport in general. They further blur the distinction between
fiction and reality in constructions of colonial Algeria. To Algerian novel
ists, Algerians were natural athletes. The Algerian man in particular dis
played his physical gifts in impressive feats of athleticism. Born and bred
on the northern shores of the African continent, the Algerian had the
strength and the stamina to excel, and indeed surpass his metropolitan
counterpart. Soccer and boxing were two popular sports in colonial Alge
ria, and the physical nature of each matched the image of the rugged colo
nial pioneer described in literature.43Algerians so revered displays of physi
cal prowess, they were such a focal part of Algerian identity, that they would
even cheer for talented, non-Algerian (i.e., Muslim) athletes who origi
nated from the same town or region.44
Given the contentious atmosphere of the colonial arena, sporting
events between European and indigenous teams in colonial Algeria some
times represented much more than purely athletic competition. When con
flict mounted between groups, such as after the violence in the Sétif area in
1945, sporting events became tension-filled and were symbolic of increas
ing hostility between indigenous and settler populations.
Similarly, matches pitting local against metropolitan athletes encour
aged different sorts of rivalries, and often drew enthusiastic crowds. When
Algerian teams defeated teams from France, there was cause for spirited
celebration in Algeria.45 Colonial Algeria had supposedly demonstrated its
superiority over the mire-patrie. The proverbial child had surpassed its par-
ent/teacher figure. When Algerian teams competed against each other, the
competition could be almost as intense. O f his native city of Oran, the
novelist Emmanuel Roblès noted the heated rivalry when the local soccer
team faced its nemesis from Algiers:
[...] Le mot ‘algérois* sonnait comme un cri de guerre par toutes les vieilles rues
populaires de notre ville. [. . .] Les Algérois nous tiennent pour des rustres et
nous tenons tous les Algérois pour des fils-à-papa et des chiquems (vaniteux).46
[. . . The word “algérois” rang like a war cry throughout the old working-
class streets of our city. ... People from Algiers take us [people from Oran]
for country bumpkins and we consider people from Algiers to be vain
Mommas boys.]
Local Algerian identities were perhaps as compelling as any collective sense
of algérianitéSports stars occasionally rose above regional or ethnic rival
ries in colonial Algeria.47The indigenous boxer Koudrie, for instance, was
an accomplished fighter known throughout Algeria, in settler as well as
indigenous communities. Pugilist Marcel Cerdan, a native of western Alge
ria, became European and World Champion and received acclaim through
out the French colonial world.
The cult of athletics and physical feats placed a premium on health
and beauty. While colonial literature presented the Algerian man as an
impressive specimen, possessing natural athletic abilities, Algerian women
were also physically well endowed. In a 1935 essay, the conservative French
writer Henri de Montherlant portrayed striking female beauty as another
manifestation of Algerian dynamism and vitality. “L'Algérienne” (“the Al
gerian woman”) was superior to and easily distinguishable from “la Française”
or French woman because of her natural attributes. The former had a healthy,
radiant glow and a robust physique that metropolitan women allegedly
lacked.48 Fictional French women, described in the preceding chapter, were
perhaps physically frail, but they were socially dominant in colonial Algeria.
Algerian . . . or African?
Algérianiste authors drew a causal link between the rugged characteristics of

settlers and the physical contour of Algeria. They suggested that life in
North Africa had brought about a metamorphosis; the harsh Algerian cli
mate and conditions had altered the settler body. European emigrants not
only appropriated an Algerian identity, as they claimed, the country had
made Africans of them. A curiously racialized colonial identity emerged in
European settler circles, one closed to other ethnic groups. Frances own
geographic shape and climate had supposedly played a role in the develop
ment of the French people and character, as historian Michelet had as
serted. Colonial Algerian chroniclers described a physical transformation
of emigrants, a darkening of white skin, a toughening of the body and
spirit in North Africa induced by life on African shores. Whenever Euro
pean settlers returned to their ancestral countries, they were no longer rec
ognizable as a result of this metamorphosis.
Marcel Florenchie, who was born in France and had spent much of
his life in Algeria, claimed to have experienced this very process. He com
mented that when visiting his native Corrèze as a young child, villagers
marveled at his “blackness” and that of his brother. They became known as
“les deux Africains” (“the two Africans”) within the rural community. As an
adult, Florenchie admitted to a whimsical and enduring sense of African
identity.49 Spanish settlers in Robert Randau s novel Les colons proudly evoke
their “Africanness.” Gomez proclaims that it distinguished him from those
who had not spent as much time in North Africa. “Avant tout vieux, soyons
des Africains” (“First and foremost old man, lets be Africans”), one Spanish-
descended character exclaims to another.50 This lighter-skinned variant of
“Africanness” could of course be forgotten at strategic moments, enabling set-
der populations to oscillate between métropole and colony when desired.
The sense of “Africanness” described by European writers transcended
a purely physical evolution. It emerged from the romanticized ways that
novelists, and presumably settlers themselves, liked to think about them
selves. Authors imagined their characters not just as pioneering settlers, but
as legitimate sons and daughters of North Africa. Asserting African iden
tity was a way of laying claim to this land that they had made theirs. Essay
ists renamed Algeria “AfroFrance” and its inhabitants “les Franco-Africains.”51
The Algerian novelist Mohammed Dib commented that one would almost
be led to believe that Arabs and Berbers were foreigners in colonial Algeria.
A manual worker from Dibs 1954 novel LTncendie exclaims,
N e som m es-nous pas com m e des étrangers dans notre pays? [...] O n croirait
que c’est nous les étrangers, et les étrangers les vrais gens d ’ici.52
[Are we not like foreigners in our ow n lan d?. . . O n e w ould think that we are
the foreigners, and the foreigners the people truly from here.]
Having taken root in North Africa, European settlers replaced Arabs and
Berbers as the “natives.” The indigenous Islamic sons and daughters of
Algeria had been figuratively denaturalized.53
The novelist Louis Bertrand was known as “l’Africain” among his
early twentieth-century contemporaries, and much of his work provided
an argument for the legitimacy of European claims to Africanness. Bertrand
assembled a collection of writings illustrating the ancient and persevering
“latinité” (“Latinness”) of North Africa, dating back to Roman times, and
including the early Christian epoch.54 This centuries-old Latin or Euro
pean presence in North Africa, in Bertrandian logic, supported the claim
of indigenousness made by European settlers. The Romans had supposedly
established a culture, religion, and language in North Africa. Christianity
had remained an important part of cultural life within later European settle
ments. Latin did not prove to be as persevering, but twentieth-century
novelists referred nonetheless to the lingua franca of colonial Algeria as
“latin d’Afrique.”55 The European settlers that they described were the
modern inheritors of this Latin language and tradition. They became Afri
cans in carrying on what their Roman forefathers had begun centuries earlier.
Although a sense of Africanness among the “Latins of Africa” further
distinguished this heterogeneous settler population, they did not cease to
affirm their European ancestry, and to periodically express their devotion
to France. The slogan and war cry of European troops from Algeria during
the Second World War was “C’est nous les Africains” (“We are the Afri
cans”). As mentioned in a previous chapter, they had come to Frances res
cue from their North African home, helping to save their besieged “patrie.”
Language and Algérianîté
Languages, even the ephemeral “latin d’Afrique,” very often constitute a

persuasive and powerful unifying force. Collective identities, whether eth
nic, regional, or national, are frequently centered around and grounded in
the sharing of a common tongue.56 In defining an Algerian social category,
novelists and writers used the specific nature of their language to support
their assertions of identity. Language represented an important aspect of
Algerian identity itself for them. Although the French language predomi
nated as a mode of expression in colonial literature, the French spoken in
North Africa had evolved. The French of Algeria took on a form that was
quite distinct, writers asserted, from the French of France, otherwise known
as “le français naturel.”
Colonial authors used several different modes of expression in their
accounts of a heterogeneous colonial population. The dialogues that novel
ists created represent the linguistic diversity of settler groups. In eastern
Algeria, locals of Italian descent spoke “le parler bônois,” an Italian dialect
fused with French and Arabic, used in and around the city of Bone.57In the
western part of the country, where many Spaniards had settled, locals used
“chapourla,” a distinct mix of French and Spanish, to communicate.58The
characters of colonial literature expressed Algerian identity in another hy
brid idiom that fused many of the different languages in North Africa.
Novelists gave this linguistic form a name: pataouète.
Francis Lanly, one of few contemporary linguists to study language in
French North Africa, wrote that an Algerian dialect had emerged from the
contact between so many different tongues.
Il ne fait pas de doute que les colons’ d’Algérie parlent un français plein de
particularités. [. . .] Au cours des tâtonnements empiriques faits par les
Espagnols, les Italiens, les Maltais, le français parlé a notablement évolué.59
[There is no doubt that the settlers ofAlgeria speak a French full of peculiari
ties. ... As a result of the inroads made by Spaniards, Italians, and Maltese,
spoken French has remarkably evolved.]
The result, according to Lanly, was a “français créolisé,” the linguistic mix
known as pataoüète. Pataouète was not to be confused with “sabir,” a
form o f‘pidgin” French that had facilitated communication between in
digenous populations and the French during the early phases of coloniza
tion.
From the turn of the century through the 1950s, Algerian writers
published novels, shorts stories, and poems in the local Algerian idiom.
Writers Paul Achard and Ferdane are two of many who wrote entirely or
partially in “pataouète.”60 The best known Algerian novelist who dabbled
in “pataouète” was Musette, author of the Cagayous series. Cagayous not
only spoke the Algerian vernacular, his emphatic gesticulating conveys the
essence of algérianité as Musette defined it. The following example of
Cagayous* speech conveys a hint of its specificity. Cagayous utters a warn
ing to those unfamiliar with the Algerian capital and its brutish residents:
Si vous savez pas comment y faut faire pour se battre ici, Alger, que tous y
sont canailles et qui sait donner le coup de tête, moi je vous apprends. Les
nouveaux débarqués quand mieme y sont bien taillés, mastocs, costos et
tout, toujours on se f .. . des trempes par nous autres, pourquoi mieux nous
connaissons.61
[If you dont know how hard you have to fight here in Algiers, where all are
. bastards who know how to hit, Til tell you. The newly arrived, even when
well build, strong, and tough, are always fucked over by us, so its better to
know us.]
While not too removed from standard French, the cited phrase gives some
sense of Algerian linguistic (as well as cultural) particularity. Lanly cites the
relatively small number of foreign words that were added to a French base
to form colloquial Algerian expression.62The linguistic influence of Cagayous
was such that essayist Gabriel Audisio referred to the Algerian dialect as “le
parler Cagayous” or “le Cagayous” more simply. A linguistic mish-mash of
Mediterranean dialects, Audisio called it “le langage courant du peuple
bigarré des néo-Français”63 (“the common language of the mixed group of
neo-French”).
“Pataouète” was primarily an oral form of communication, giving
disparate members of the Algerian populace a means of exchanging infor
mation (or insults) that was all their own. Yet its written form appeared in
a number of different places, not just novels. Passages written in pataouète
appeared on a regular basis in local Algerian newspapers. Alger-Républicain
published a weekly column between 1947 and 1954 written exclusively in
the local vernacular. A front-page piece appeared every Saturday, comment
ing on the weeks political, social, and cultural events. The Algerian dialect
in which the columnistTonet de la Baseta wrote contrasted with the French
of the surrounding articles.64Widely circulated papers such as LEcho d'Alger
and La Dépêche algérienne published segments of the Cagayous series in
their daily editions.65 Such writings were published expressly for an Alge
rian audience.
The use of pataouite served as a means of marking the authenticity of
Algerian expression and identity. Its usage distinguished colonial Algerian
from metropolitan French populations. Many novels included glossaries of
pataouite terms, some including a breakdown of the dialect into its various
parts of speech.66 This was intended to facilitate the comprehension of
metropolitan French readers who were unfamiliar with the idiom. Recent
work has sought to preserve pataouite from extinction as its speakers dwindle
in number.67
Linguists such as Francis Lanly noted that the colorful language of
Cagayous began to lose its specificity in the early part of the twentieth
century. Many of the European emigrants who had come to North Africa
in the nineteenth century had been illiterate seasonal workers. Terms and
expressions from their mother tongues were added haphazardly to the French
that these populations began to speak in Algeria. By the first or second
decade of the twentieth century, emigration to Algeria had slowed consid
erably, and the Spanish and Italian syntax, which had given pataouite much
of its distinctiveness, was no longer as present. Moreover, the access settler
populations had to French schooling within the colonial educational sys
tem brought about increased proximity between pataouite and standard
French or French as spoken in France, “le français naturel.”68 As the de
scendants of Spaniards, Italians, and Maltese began to speak better and
better French, their local dialect progressively disappeared. Linguistic as
similation appeared inevitable; the destiny ofpataouite was clearly French.
The colonial dialect recorded by novelists could perhaps otherwise be
described as halting French, spoken at varying levels of proficiency, and
accentuated with Spanish, Italian, and Arabic influences. Gabriel Audisio
admitted that Cagayous
[...] N’a guère été à l’école, il est inhabile à utiliser les moyens complexes et
abstraits du français qu’il connait mal. D’oii ses barbarismes, sans doute, et
son besoin d’abréger, de réduire la phrase à l’essentiel, et sa syntaxe peu
nuancée.69
[. . . Has hardly been to school, he is unused to using complex or abstract
forms of French which he barely knows. Hence his barbarisms no doubt,
and his need to abridge, to reduce the sentence to its most elementary level,
and his scarcely nuanced syntax.]
Pataouite in its written form was assured a certain longevity, but its living,
spoken form dissolved as Algerians like Cagayous passed through French
institutions such as schools and the army. Would algérianité survive the
powerful forces of linguistic and cultural assimilation? Algerians may have
become more versant in the standard French language, but in other ways
they remained stubbornly Algerian.
La Patrie algérienne
Assertions of Algerian cultural, linguistic, and racial distinction culminated,

for some, in demands for an autonomous Algerian state. Colonial authors
of fiction and non-fiction imagined Algeria as more than simply a colonial
appendage to France. They created figures who periodically expressed a
desire for territorial and political freedom. Some authors, while convinced
of Algerian specificity, conveyed the belief that algérianité and francité were
not mutally exclusive. Jean Mélia referred to Algeria in 1952 as the “patrie
de ceux qui y sont nés” (“the homeland of those born here”) and to France
as the universal “patrie de ceux qui pensent”70 (“homeland of those who
think”). He claimed,
Il est trop tard pour qu un Algérien, quelles que soient sa race et sa religion,
ne puisse plus se considérer comme plus proche de la France que de tout
autre pays.71
[It is too late for an Algerian, whatever his race or religion, not to consider
himself closer to France than to any other country.]
Ferdinand Duchêne also addressed the notion of simultaneous local and
national identities, forged within a “petite” and a “grande patrie.”72 The
title of an essay written by the former Deputy-Mayor of Algiers in 1930
described “la petite patrie algérienne dans le coeur de la grande patrie
française”73 (“the small Algerian homeland in the heart of the larger French
homeland”).
While certain “enlightened” individuals could claim France as their spiri
tual home, only those European settlers born in Algeria, we have seen, could
legitimately define themselves as true Algerians (according to Algérianistes),
And as patriotic Algerians, they periodically voiced dissatisfaction with France.
When metropolitan officials seemed particularly indifferent or hostile to the
concerns of their country, irate setders broached the subject of secession. One
of Robert Randaus irascible characters from Les Colons exclaims,
Emancipons-nous que diable! On s'imagine à Paris qu’il y a deux sortes de
Français au monde, ceux d’Europe, les maîtres, et ceux d’outre-mer, les serviles.
Hommes d’Algérie, nous n’obéirons qu’aux lois bonnes pour l'Algérie et que
nous aurons par avance discutées. Mais la France est une garce chlabe, et
quand on l’engueule beaucoup on obtient d’elle ce que l’on veut!74
[By God let’s free ourselves! People in Paris think that there are two sorts of
French in the world, those from Europe, the masters, and those from the
colonies, the servants. Men of Algeria, we will only obey laws good for Alge
ria and which we have discussed in advance. France is a beaten whore, and
when you bellow incessantly at her, you get what you want!]
Fundamental differences seemed to distinguish Algeria, “pays des néo-latins
de faction” (“country of neo-Latins of action”) from France, “pays de l’idée”75
(“country of ideas”). Louis Bertrand elucidated such distinctions between
French and Algerian ideas in his fiction.76 The mere crossing of the Medi
terranean Sea, he noted, could trigger a metamorphosis in ones thoughts,
from a French to an Algerian mindset, or vice versa.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Algerians had already expressed
desire for a measure of independence from France. Right-wing furor over
the Dreyfus Affair resulted in the denunciation of Jewish “infiltration” of
both French and Algerian society and triggered demands for more autonomy.
French legislators accorded Algerian financial planners budgetary freedom
in 1900 when the creation of the Délégations financières was finalized.77
Administrators could now make decisions for themselves independent of
metropolitan intervention.
After the Second World War, European writers continued to portray
separatist tendencies. An old villager in Ferdinand Duchêne s novel La Fièvre
algérienne (1946) comments,
[. . .] J’admettrais fort bien, pour ma part, que nous nous séparions de la
France. En somme, une mère-patrie, c’est vieux jeu, [...] et encombrant. Ça
vous surveille, ça enjoint [. . .] ça blâme quelques fois. [...] Sans doute, elle
nous a enfantés, puis élevés. L’heure venue, elle nous défendrait puisqu’elle
est la mère. [...] Mais qu'est-ce que c’est que tout ça, et que lui devons-nous
à présent? Nous sommes robustes et elle nous gêne.78
[. . . I could easily accept that we separate from France. In sum, a mother-
country is old-fashioned .. . and encumbering. It keeps you under surveil
lance, it imposes... it places blame sometimes___Without a doubt, France
gave birth to us, then brought us up. If necessary, France would defend us
because she is the mother.... But what who cares about all this and what do
we owe France at present? We are strong and she gets in our way.]
Achille Baubier, a chronicler of the European settler experience, wrote in
1928, “le mot autonomie est dans toutes les bouches”79 (“the word au
tonomy is in every mouth”). European settlers of non-French descent ap
peared most likely not to identify with France:
Croit-on vraiment que tous ces néo-Français, que tous les Algériens d’origine
française, nés et élevés en Algérie, ne prendraient pas parti, ne se rangeraient
pas du côté algérien plutôt que du côté français? Eh bien qu’on y prenne
garde. Le danger est là.”80
[Do people really believe that all these neo-French, that all of these Algerians
of French descent, born and raised in Algeria, will not chose sides, siding
with the Algerian camp rather than the French? Well, beware. The danger is
there.]
Colonial school materials, while disseminating French culture, hinted at
the formation of an Algerian social type. According to one textbook,
Cette fusion lente des races, en Algérie, donne naissance à un type algérien,
foncièrement français sans aucun doute, mais au cachet particulier, à la fois
pratique et aventureux.81
[This slow fusion of the races in Algeria gave birth to an Algerian type, fun
damentally French no doubt but with a particular cachet, simultaneously
practical and adventurous.]
Declarations of Algerianness were issued in the colonial press. A jour
nalist writing for La Dépêche algérienne in 1936 noted the level of dissatis
faction with France in settler communities, accompanied by assertions of
Algerianness:
Le seul fait que le mot d’autonomie ait pu venir aux lèvres de certains Algériens
énervés était un symptôme à ne pas négliger. Demain, si les colons doivent
défendre, fusil en main, leurs familles, le fruit de leur travail, ils considéreront
comme résponsable la Mère-Patrie. Elle ne pourra plus compter sur eux ni
sur les tirailleurs. Ce sera tant pis pour la plus grande France.82
[The mere fact that the word autonomy had come to the lips of certain
angered Algerians was a symptom one could not neglect. Tomorrow, if the
settlers must defend their families, the fruits of their labors, gun in hand,
they will consider the Mother-Country responsible. She will no longer be
able to count on them, nor on indigenous soldiers. That will be too bad for
Greater France.]
Such claims were clearly worrisome to French officials. To their dismay,
detailed surveys authorized by the offices of the General Government con
firmed the existence of Algerian sentiment. Intelligence reports noted the
emergence of an “Algerian people,” the result of fusion among European
settler groups in colonial North Africa.83 One commented on the forma
tion of a distinct Algerian culture and identity among settlers of Spanish
descent in particular.84
The rumor of separation discussed by Algerians made its way across
the Mediterranean Sea. A 1946 speech given in the French Assembly warned
that “certains éléments européens ont envisagé une autre présence que la
France à Alger”85 (“certain European elements envisaged a presence other
than that of France in Algiers”). Earlier, after Frances 1940 defeat in the
Second World War, individuals were reported to have regretted that they
had not taken advantage of France s weakened position to lay the founda
tion for an autonomous Algerian nation.86
For many authors who described colonial society of the 1930s, 1940s,
and 1950s, it had become increasingly clear that Algeria was not France
(except under duress), and could no longer be proclaimed to be such. New
definitions of the North African country, they believed, should reflect this
reality. Because of very real differences in population, in geographic con
tour, in climate, and in conditions, the country could not be administered
simply as a French department, as a part of France. Essayists raised doubts
about the capacity of French institutions to assimilate settler and indig
enous groups. Vast cultural differences allegedly rendered the notion of
three French departments in North Africa illusory:
L'idée de l’assimilation est chimérique en soi. [. . .] L’Algérie comprend des
Français, des Espagnols, des Italiens, des Maltais, des Arabes, des Turcs, des
Kabyles, des Mozabites et des hybrides que l’on rencontre dans toutes les
échelles du Levant. On ne peut songer à administrer un pareil assemblage de
peuples comme un département français.87
[The idea of assimilation is a chimera. . . . Algeria is comprised of French,
Spaniards, Italians, Maltese, Arabs, Turks, Kabyles, Mozabites and hybrids
of all types in the Orient. One cannot imagine administering such of mix
ture of peoples as a French department.]
Many individuals had hoped that all settler and indigenous groups could
in fact be administered under the umbrella of the French administration.
Arab and Berber intellectuals had long favored serious attempts at assimila
tion in hopes that this would allow Algeria to function in reality as a French
department. If Algeria were indeed a part of France, all of those who lived
there should be equally French (as citizens), they believed.
Several observers proposed a redefinition of Algeria in order that its
boundaries more accurately reflect their vision of the country’s present and
future. Some of these propositions do not appear to have been serious, but
were rather the musings of creative writers. Others, written in the early to
mid-twentieth century, were conceived as blueprints for the restructuring
of colonial Algerian society. Essayist Jean Pomier suggested, for instance,
that Algeria be designated "la Francitanie” and its language "le francitan.”88
The country would thus be identified as distinct, but remain nonetheless
an integral part of the French colonial world, of Greater France. Social
critic Jean Paillard proposed the establishment of a dominion to take the
place of the three overseas French departments in Algeria. He suggested
that they be redefined as a "province française d’empire” ("Imperial French
province”) having its own administrative body which would pursue eco
nomic and social policy.89 Collaboration between European and indigenous
groups would be promoted within this framework by way of reorganized
universal suffrage. Corporations, communes, and ethnic groups, Paillard
suggested, would all receive parliamentary representation. This imperial
French province would continue to work closely with France. Other texts
describe a “citizenship of empire” that could be issued to those persons
living within the limits of the French Empire. Individuals might be known
as "Français d’empire.”90
In 1956, R. C. Llamo discussed the establishment of Euralgérie
(“Euralgeria”), a geographic space reserved exclusively for Agerians of Eu
ropean descent.91 The alleged impossibility of fusion between European
and indigenous populations led Llamo to suggest that two separate states
be founded within Algeria, one Muslim and the other European: "Il s’agirait
de séparer, pour mieux unir”92 ("Separation must take place in order to
better unite”). Llamo gave no specific details on the parameters of this
exclusively European space, nor did he indicate the territory to be inhab
ited by indigenous populations. He claimed that the settler population
would be assured of personal safety in Euralgeria—a concern that reached
new heights after the Second World War. A “Euralgérien” state supported
by France and other European nations was the only conceivable future for
the settler population, Llamo concluded.
Neither Euralgérie nor a ‘province française d’empire” was, of course,
ever established. Algeria continued to be administered as it had been since
the mid-nineteenth century, as a part of France. Yet the colonial status quo
was unsatisfactory both to elites of European descent, some of whom de
sired greater autonomy for Algeria, and to Muslim leaders, who believed
that all inhabitants of French departments should have the right to French
citizenship.
Counter Discourses of Algérianité
A few European writers outside of algérianiste circles proposed a less exclu

sionary notion of Algerian identity. Breaking with the idea of Euralgérie
and separation, they suggested that Algerian identity be redefined to en
courage all to live together in North Africa as Algerians, not separated into
hostile and opposing factions. In 1935, Gabriel Audisio defined Algerianness
as “une synthèse de races bordières cimentées par la culture française”93 (“a
synthesis of closely-related races fused together by French culture”). A de
cade later, Jean Mélia conceptualized a future union of indigenous and
settler groups in colonial Algeria. None should be denied access to Algerian
identity. He wrote,
[...] N ous ne pouvons être, fils de la terre nord-africaine, que de purs et vrais
Algériens, en dehors de toutes les m entalités d ’im portation, de toutes les
vertus de races, de tous les instincts de religions, de toutes les hérédités de
tem péram ents et de toutes les affinités de toutes les générations venues sur
notre sol pour y chercher une raison de vivre et d’espérer.94
[We, the sons o f N orth Africa, can only be pure and true Algerians freed
from all im ported mentalities, all racialized virtues, all religious doctrine, all
inherited tem peram ents and affinities o f those generations arrived on our
soil seeking a reason to live and to hope.]
Such assertions of an inclusive Algerian identity were expressed, we have seen,

in the indigenous press. Ferhat Abbas and his team of journalists at Egalité in
particular proposed a very similar definition of Algerian identity.95
Writers such as Gabriel Audisio and Jean Méfia, the founders of the
humanist école d'Alger, described an identity that was more Mediterranean
than tied to any particular country or identity. It linked persons of numer
ous nationalities, ethnicities, and religions. Audisio stated that the veritable
"patrie” to which North African populations were devoted was neither France
nor Algeria, but the Mediterranean Sea. "L’Homme Méditerranéen” repre
sented a composite of the various peoples found in the region, a hybrid
consisting of
La narine sémitique, l’oeil andalou, le muscle berbère, le sein provençal, la
cheville sicilienne, un doigt des baléares, un cheveu de la Corse, et dans une
même bouche l’idiome indéfinissable composé par tous les ports, toutes les
îles, toutes les races, de toute la Méditerranée!96
[A Semitic nose, Andaluscian eyes, Berber muscle, a provençal chest, a Sicil
ian ankle, a finger from the Balarean Islands, a strand of hair from Corsica,
and in the same mouth the indescribable idiom formed in all of the ports, all
the islands, all the races of the Mediterranean!]
This interpretation contrasted with the ethnically based notion of Algerian
identity defined by algérianistes. The Mediterranean Man (my emphasis)
who had some curiously feminine features, revered the sun, sea, and wind,
the primary elements of the region. He descended from no one race nor
did any one nation hold his allegiance.
Members of the Arab and Berber elite, who were aware of restrictive
colonial views, supported a more inclusive definition of Algerian identity.
Former teacher and essayist S. Faci wrote in 1936,
Nous désignons sous le nom d’Algérien tous les habitants de l’Algérie, sans
distinction de race: cela nous paraît plus logique que de réserver ce vocable,
comme on le fait souvent, aux seuls Européens d’Algérie.97
[We designate under the name of Algerian all inhabitants of the country,
without reference to race. This seems to us to make more sense than to
reserve this tide solely for Europeans, as has often been done.]
Iba-Zizen, a lawyer at the Algiers Court of Appeals, evoked his own sense
of “Algerianness” in a presentation given in 1948. "Notre pays est l’Algérie”
(“Our country is Algeria”), he stated.
Si nous appartenons à la Nation Française, notre pays est quand même l’Algérie.
Tous ceux qui y sont nés et qui y vivent en permanence sont donc Algériens.98
[If we belong to the French nation, our country is nonetheless Algeria. All
those born in Algeria and who live there are thus Algerians.]
Arab and Berber intellectuals objected to the distinction of “Algerianness”

being attributed solely to Europeans. Not only could settlers identify as
Algerians, their status as French citizens gave them uncontested authority
in Algeria. This dual sense of identity could be used strategically, Muslim
elites suggested. For example, the previously mentioned Titouss from Paul
Achard s novel L'Homme de mer, a self-proclaimed Algerian, easily navigates
between French and Algerian identities, depending on which best suits his
immediate needs. “Français je suis, quand je veux,” (“I am French when I
so desire”), he proclaims." This is indicative, I would argue, of colonial
Algerian notions of identity more generally.
As General Secretary of the Union démocratiquepour le Manifeste algérien
(UDMA) in the mid-1940s, Ferhat Abbas supported the construction of a
“patrie algérienne” (“an Algerian homeland”) in which all groups would be
recognized as Algerian citizens. Such an arrangement would make
[. . .] des Européens enracinés dans notre pays à!authentiques Algériens, mais
sans porter atteinte à leur qualité de Français. En même temps, il restitue aux
Algériens autochtones une personnalité quils n o n t jamais abdiquée, et leur
accorde, comme à tous les hommes, la citoyenneté dans leur propre pays. Son grand
mérite est de sortir l’Algérie de l’équivoque funeste entretenue depuis un siècle.100
[. . . o f Europeans settled in our country authentic Algerians, but w ithout

changing their status as French. A t the same time, it restores to indigenous
Algerians a personality that they had never given up, and grants them , as to
all m en, citizenship in their own country. Its considerable m erit is to remove
Algeria from the harm ful uncertainty which has existed for a century.]
Abbas thereby proposed ways of being both Algerian and French for all
populations in colonial North Africa.
The exclusive notion of Algerianness associated with the algérianiste
perspective made little sense to Ferhat Abbas and to writers associated with
l'école d'Alger in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Writing in 1958, as an in
creasingly violent war in Algeria escalated, Gabriel Audisio wrote that “la
communauté algérienne na pratiquement jamais existé”101 (“the Algerian
community has practically never existed”). This represented a shift from
some of his earlier interjections. Several years before this, Jean Pomier de
scribed the term Algerian as a still amorphous social category in search of
its definition.102 “L’Algérie est une poussière incohérente de petits groupes
humains [. . .] la fusion n’est pas encore faite” (“Algeria is an incoherent
union of small human groups . . . fusion has not yet been accomplished”),
wrote social scientist E. E Gautier in 1930. He added,
Il y a dix, vingt petits clans fermés, qui sont organisés pour se suffire, et pour
s’ignorer les uns les autres; il y a un groupe espagnol, un groupe italien, un
groupe français, et dans chacun des sous-groupes.103
[There are ten or twenty autonom ous clans, w hich are organized to survive
independently, and to ignore the others; there is a Spanish group, an Italian
group, a French group, and in each group, sub-groups.]
Literary depictions of rivalry and bickering among Italian, Spanish, and
Maltese settlers in Louis Bertrand s early twentieth-century novel Pépite et
Balthasar do little to convey any sense of a shared French, Algerian, or
other identity.104 Members of l’école d A’ lger wondered how one could speak
of any real sense of Algerianness when its colonial definition excluded a
majority of the country's total population.
Until the mid-twentieth century, Axab and Berber writers rarely used
the term “algérien” in their works. In the writings of the Muslim intelligent
sia, there is no indigenous equivalent of Cagayous defiantly asserting his
Algerianness. Reproducing the colonial language of difference, they desig
nated Algerian Muslims as “indigènes” or “natives.” Titles of essays such as
French Algeria As Seen by a Native (1914) and The Algerian Problem Seen by
a Native (1938) indicate the adoption and usage of this colonial terminol
ogy.103 Exceptionally, R. and A. Zenati, authors of the novel Bou-el-Nouar,
lejeune Algérien (1945) used Algerian to designate members of the Muslim
population, as did Ferhat Abbas in his 1931 essay, De la Colonie vers la
province: Le jeune Algérien. In both cases, the individuals defined as Algeri
ans were so because they belonged to an Francophone indigenous elite. It is
not insignificant that both R. Zenati and Ferhat Abbas were Jeunes algériens,
French-speaking Muslim intellectuals, who held similar political views.106
If Arab and Berber writers did not generally express a sense of Algerianness
in their early works, it is at least partially a result of their French education.
Conclusion
“Algerianness,” as defined in colonial literature of the twentieth century,

was a restricted identity. Algérianité served to unite otherwise diverse Euro
pean settler groups and to exclude indigenous populations, while at the
same time it dismantled the assumption that all setders had adopted a French
cultural identity. Prolonged existence in North Africa, novelists claimed,
had forged a new people and community quite apart from those in the
métropole. Crises, however, consistently drew colony and métropole back
together again.
Algérianiste literature—both fiction and non-fiction— reveals much
about this European component of colonial society.107 Colonial authors
envisioned Algeria as a country that emigrants from Mediterranean regions
had adopted for their own, that they had gained control over and trans
formed, and that had transformed them in the process. Captivated by the
romanticism of the colonial experience, these writers described individuals
who had experienced life in North Africa and whose language, culture, and
identity had evolved. Simply by living where they did, European settlers
had supposedly become Algerians, ‘natives,” or “Africans.” Paul Gilroy’s
theory of “routes and roots” facilitates understanding of this transforma
tion. After long routes across land and sea, emigrants developed strong roots
in North Africa.108 They laid claim to a colonial Algerian identity. Indi
vidual and collective struggles to carve out an existence in Algeria, after the
trauma of migration and exile, evoke a powerful connection to this prom
ised land. National character and identities are linked to the shared joys
and sorrows, great victories and defeats, the dramas and tragedies of history
which periodically draw together the lives of human beings. Colonization
in North Africa assembled all of these factors.
Because of its focus on European settler populations, and the attribu
tion of Algerian identity exclusively to Europeans, post-colonial critics have
contended that the “reality” conveyed in colonial literature is skewed, that
the colonial novel merely served to “produce blindness.”109They have sug
gested that novelists wrote to justify European presence in North Africa, to
legitimate their dominant position in colonial Algerian society while deny
ing the rights of others by ignoring their presence. This criticism may very
well be accurate. Yet Algérianistes described an identity that existed to such
an extent that it was recorded not just by novelists, but by administrators
and social scientists, and acknowledged by groups of people collectively in
colonial North Africa. Displaced Algerians and their descendants living in
“exile” in France today have preserved its memory. An Algerian homeland
and identity, Nostalgérie, became even more tangible following Algerian
independence in 1962. Albert Camus, who knew something of such mat
ters, wrote “Il est bien connu que la patrie se reconnaît toujours au mo
ment de la perdre”110 (“It is well known that the homeland is always recog
nized at the very moment it is lost”).
Algérianité; The Emergence o f a Colonial Identity 213
Notes
1. See Marcel Florenchie, Terre algérienne: Mémoires dun colon (Alger: Editions France-
Afrique, 1932), and Terrefrançaise (Alger: Baconnier, 1946).
2. See Jean Dejeux, Bibliographie de la littérature “algérienne”des Français (Paris: CNRS,
1978).
3. Some of his more noteworthy books include Le Sang des races (Paris: Ollendorf,
1898), and Pépète et Balthasar (Paris: Albin Michel, 1904). See also Louis Bertrand, “L’Alger
que j’ai connue,” Revue des deux mondes, 15 juin 1934 (769-93), 1 juillet 1934 (43-79), 15
juillet 1934 (328-44).
4. See Hubert Gourdon, Jean-Robert Henry, and Françoise Henry-Lorcerie, “Ro
man colonial et idéologie coloniale en Algérie,” Revue algérienne des sciences juridiques,
économiques et politiques 11, 1 ( mars 1974).
5. Two of the more cited of these travel accounts are Théophile Gautiers Voyage
pittoresque en Algérie (Paris, 1845), and Eugène Fromentin s Une Année dans le Sahel (Paris:
Plon, 1898).
6. See Gourdon, Henry, and Henry-Lorcerie, “Roman colonial et idéologie coloniale
en Algérie.”
7. See Section entitled “Muslims into Frenchmen” in chapter 5 for more information
on these novelists.
8. Ferdinand Duchêne, Ceux d ’Algérie: Types et coutumes (Paris: Editions des Hori
zons de France, 1929).
9. Ibid., 7.
10. Ibid.
11. Victor Démontés, Le Peuple algérien: Essais de démographie algérienne (Alger:
Imprimerie algérienne, 1906).
12. See René Lespès, Pour Comprendre lAlgérie (Alger: V. Heintz, 1937), and Philippe
Lucas and Jean-Claude Vatin, LAlgérie des anthropoloques (Paris: Maspero, 1975).
13. Paul Achard, L’H omme de mer (Paris: Mercure de France, 1931).
14. Ibid., 150.
15. Ferdinand Duchêne, Mouna, cachir et couscouss (Paris: Albin Michel, 1930), 7.
16. Musette, alias Auguste Robinet, was a lawyer by profession as well as a novelist with
an intimate knowledge of the lower European classes. See Emanuel Sivan, “Colonialism and
Popular Culture in Algeria ”Journal o f Contemporary History 14, 1 (January 1979): 21-54.
17. Ferdinand Duchêne, Ceux d Algérie, 8. This is the authors emphasis.
18. Ibid.
19. Gabriel Audisio, Cagayous ses meilleures histoires (Paris: Gallimard, 1931), 100.
20. E. F. Gautier, Un Siècle de colonisation (Paris: F. Alcan, 1930), 117.
21. Marie Cardinal, Les Pieds-Noirs (Paris: Belfond, 1988). A pied-noir identity de
veloped as a post-colonial sense of consciousness among former settlers in France. It reaf
firmed ties to the land European settlers had abruptly left, sometimes in the worst of condi
tions.
22. Lucienne Favre, Bab-el-oued (Paris: La Table ronde, 1946), 100.
23. Ibid, 208-9.
24. Ferdinand Duchêne, Mouna, cachir et couscouss, 15.
25. Quotes taken from Achille Barbier’s essay Vive LAlgérie monsieur! (Alger: Baconnier,
1928), 56.
26. Jean Mélia, Dans la Patrie française, la patrie algérienne (Alger: La Maison des
livres, 1952), 70.
TJ. Louis Lecoq, Pascuallette, l'Algérien (Paris: Albin Michel, 1934).
28. Cardinal, Les Pieds-Noirs, 46-47.
29. Ferdinand Duchêne, La Fièvre algérienne (Alger: Baconnier, 1946), 19.
30. Ibid.
31. See Aimé Dupuy, "La Personnalitévdu colon,” Revue d'histoire économique et sociale
33 (1955): 77-103, 166-205.
32. Achard, L'Homme de mer, 5-6.
33. Robert Randau, Le Professeur M artin: Petit bourgeois d'Alger (Alger: Baconnier,
1936).
34. Duchêne, Mouna, cachir, et couscouss, 25.
35. See Gabriel Audisio, Jeunesse de la Méditerranée (Paris: Gallimard, 1935).
36. Gabriel Audisio, Amour d'Alger (Alger: Chariot, 1938), 85.
37. Ibid.
38. Achard, L'Homme de mer, 220.
39. Aimé Dupuy, Bouzaréa: Histoire illustrée des écoles normales d'instituteurs d'Alger-
Bouzaréa (Alger: Fontana, 1938), 57.
40. Settler and indigenous populations throughout the French colonial world were
included among the “French” population.
41. Albert Camus, Noces suivi de L'été (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 127-28.
42. Jean Pélégri, Les Oliviers de la justice (Paris: Gallimard, 1959).
43. The popularity and importance of sport in colonial Algeria has been studied. On
Algerian sports culture in the Western portion of the country, see Oran sportif, vols. 1 and 2,
by Paul Oliva (Montpellier: Imprimerie Frontignan, 1988-89).
44. Pélégri, Les Oliviers de la justice, 250.
45. Franco-Algerian competition was frequently the subject of commentary in the
colonial press.
46. Emmanuel Roblès, Jeunes Saisons (Alger: Baconnier, 1961), 71.
47. Pélégri, Les Oliviers de la justice, 250.
48. Henri de Montherlant, Il y A Encore des Paradis: Images d'Alger (1928-1931)
(Alger: Soubiron, 1935).
49. In Terre algérienne, p. 144, Marcel Florenchie refers to himself as “l’Africain blasé
que je suis” (“the blasé African that I am”).
50. Robert Randau, Les Colons (Paris: Albin Michel, 1926), 27.
51. These terms are frequendy mentioned in colonial texts, notably in Robert Randau’s
novels.
52. Mohammed Dib, L'Incendie (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1954), 45-46.
53. See Abdelmalek Sayad, “Naturels et naturalisés,” Actes de la recherche en sciences
sociales, n° 99 (septembre 1993): 26-35.
54. Louis Bertrand’s concept of “latinité” is developed in several works. See for in
stance “La résurrection de l’Afrique latine,” Revue l'Afrique latine (mars 1922). Two other
relevant works are Les Villes d'or: Algérie et Tunisie romaines (Paris: Fayard, 1921), and Sur les
Routes du sud (Paris: Fayard, 1926). Ferhat Abbas, Mohammed Dib, and Gabriel Audisio
object to the Bertrandian notion of “latinité.”
55. Ferdane’s Joyeux Pêcheurs de la côte oranaise (Oran: Fouque, 1948), was report
edly written in “latin d’Afrique.”
56. The literature on the relationship between language and identity is numerous.
For a study of the French case, see Mary MacDonald, *We are not French!* Language, Culture
and Identity in Brittany (London: Routledge, 1989).
57. For examples of “le parler bônois,” see Edmond Brua’s Fables dîtes bônoises (Alger:
Chariot, 1946).
58. According to Georges Galunaud, Gavatcho: L'histoire dun petit villageois d*Oranie
(Alger: Imprimerie Barbry, 1956).
59- Francis Lanly, Le Français d'Afrique du Nord: Etude linguistique (Paris: Bordas,
1970), 11,22.
60. See titles such as L'Homme de mer and Salaouetches (both Alger: Baconnier, 1941)
by Paul Achard, as well as Ferdane’s Joyeux Pêcheurs de la côte oranaise and Ttngitâneries
(Alger: La Maison des livres, 1951).
61. Audisio, Cagayous ses meilleures histoires, 43.
62. Lanly finds approximately 600 terms taken from Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and
southern French patois in “pataouète.”
64. Tonet de la Basetas weekly entries in the local dialect, entitled “La semaine,”
addressed issues that mattered to Algerians. Its usage perhaps helped to make French poli
tics, administrative matters, or local information more entertaining and familiar. It was also
an effective way of selling more newspapers. Basetas column lasted for eight years, and so
had likely struck a chord with the European population.
65. Segments of Cagayous le poilu appeared in L'Echo d'Alger, notably from March
1919 until May 1920.
66. Audisio, Cagayous ses meilleures histoires.
67. See Roland Bacri, Trésors des racinespataoüètes (Paris: Belin, 1983), and Duclos,
Mass, Monneret, and Pleven, Le Pataouète: Dictionnaire de la langue populaire d'Algérie et
d'Afrique du Nord, (Calvisson, France: J. Gandini, 1992).
68. Liane Prioli, author of the novel Antoine de Chijfalo (Alger: La Typo-Litho-
Carbonnel, 1941), refers to “le français naturel.”
70. Mélia, Dans la Patrie française, la patrie algérienne. These citations are Mélias
opening thoughts to his essay.
71. Ibid., 135. See also Mélias La France et l'Algérie (Paris: Plon, 1919), in which he
made similar remarks. Concerning Muslim participation in the First World War, Mélia
stated that “nous serons en même temps de très bons Algériens et d’excellents Français” (“we
will be at the same time very good Algerians and excellent French”), p. viii.
72. Ferdinand Duchêne, “France-Algérie la petite patrie et la grande,” Bulletin de la
société de géographie dAlger et de l'Afrique du Nord, n° 103 (3ème trim., 1925): 219-36.
73. See essay of the same name by Louis Pasquier-Bronde, “maire-adjoint” of the Alge
rian capital around 1930. Anne-Marie Thiesse discusses the relationship between the “petite”
and “grande” patrie in the context of metropolitan France of the Third Republic. See her Ils
apprenaient la France (Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1997).
74. Randau, Les Colons, 27.
75,. Ibid, 27.
76. See Bertrand, Le Sang des races, 155.
77. For more information, see Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie
contemporaine (Paris: PUF, 1979).
78. Duchêne, La Fih>re algérienne, 30.
79. Baubier, Vive lfAlgérie monsieur!, 55.
80. Ibid., 57.
81. Edgar Colin, Pierre Damville, and Jean Guillemin, LAlgérie histoire et géographie
(Alger: Baconnier, 1949), 128.
82. La Dépêche algérienne, 20 septembre 1936.
83. AOM, 9 X 78; AN, F 60 871.
84. AOM, 9X 445.
85. Paul Tubert, “L’Algérie vivra heureuse et française,” Intervention à l’Assemblée
consultative, 10 juillet 1945. The published text is a response to former Algerian General
Governer Maurice Viollette’s essay LAlgérie vivra-t-elle?
86. See interviews conducted in Daniel Lecontes book, Les Pieds-Noirs: Histoire et
portrait dune communauté (Paris: Le Seuil, 1980). The colonial administration was also
aware of indigenous discussions on Algeria and Algerian identity. A report authorized by the
services of the government general acknowledged a declaration made by Ferhat Abbas in
1948 on a future “Dominion algérien.” AN, F 60 807.
87. Jean Paillard, Faut-il Faire de lAlgérie un dominion?(Paris: Fernand Sorlot, 1939),
105.
88. Jean Pomier, “Algérien ? . . . un mot qui cherche son sens,” Afrique, n° 242
(octobre-novembre 1951), 7 -19.
89. Paillard, Faut-il Faire de lAlgérie un dominion?, 109.
90. See AN, F 60 888, “L’Union française.” The constitution of the Fourth Republic
specifically refers to a broadened notion of citizenship within the new “French Union.”
91. R. C. Llamo, Essai sur le peuplement européen de lAlgérie: Euralgérie ou de la
naissance dun peuple orignal (Alger: Imprimerie Moderne, 1956).
92. Ibid., 67.
93. Audisio, Jeunesse de la Méditerranée, 112.
94. Mélia, Dans la Patrie française, la patrie algérienne, 80-81.
95. See chapter 4.
96. Audisio, Amour dAlger, 20.
97. S. Faci, LAlgérie sous l'égide de la France contre la féodalité algérienne (Toulouse:
Imprimerie régionale, 1936), 14.
98. M. Iba-Zizen (avocat à la cour d’appel), “Les réalités algériennes,” conférence
prononcée au ‘Régent cinéma’ à Alger, le 29 février 1948, sous l’égide des ‘Solidarités
algériennes’ (Alger: Imprimerie Fontana).
99. Achard, L'Homme de mer, 129.
100. UDMA, Du Manifeste à la République algérienne (Alger: Editions ‘Libération,’
1948), 16.
101. Audisio, Algérie, Méditerranée: Feux Vivants, 26.
102. Jean Pomier, “‘A lgérien?. . . un mot qui cherche son sens.”
103. E. F. Gautier, Un Siècle de colonisation, 97.
104. Louis Bertrand, Pépète et Balthasar.
105. See Chérif Benhabiles, LAlgérie française vue par un indigène (Alger: Fontana,
1914), and R. Zenati, Le Problème algérien vu par un indigène (Paris: Publications du comité
de l’Afrique française, 1938).
106. As noted, the Jeunes Algériens were an organization of French-educated Arabs
and Berbers founded in 1912.
107. Aimé Dupuy, a student of colonial Algerian society, writes “[. . .] les ouvrages
nord-africains strictement littéraires appellent également l’attention de l'historien." (“. . .
strictly literary North African works also merit the attention of the historian.) See Dupuy,
“Le Roman et l’essai nord-africains actuels dans leurs rapports avec l’Histoire,” L'Information
historique, n° 2 (mars-avril 1956): 55. For general information, see Morroe Berger, Real and
Imagined Worlds: The Novel and Social Science (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977).
108. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cam
bridge: Harvard UP, 1993), 190.
109. Gourdon, Henry, and Henry-Lorcerie, “Roman colonial et idéologie coloniale
en Algérie,” 100.
110. Camus, Noces suivi de L'été, 87.
CONCLUSION
What was distinctly French yet also specifically Algerian about existence in
colonial North Africa? This analysis attempts to gain a better sense of what
persons of Arab-Berber, Jewish, and European origin were thinking and writ
ing about French Algeria during the latter stages of the colonial period. In the
minds of many people on both sides of the Mediterranean Sea, Algeria had
truly become French. Metropolitan institutions as well as daily life had gener
ated French sentiment within groups who had sometimes never set foot in
France. Whether in the French army or in schools, through the press or through
literature, setder and indigenous populations were informed that Algeria was a
part of Greater France, and that they were members of an extended French
community. It should be noted that some indigenous and setder populations
were not always full members of this select group, nor were they particularly
welcome ones at times. Nonetheless, an assortment of figures—novelists, jour
nalists, educators, politicians, and administrators—believed and wanted to
convince others that Algeria and Algerians were, singularly, French.
I have attempted to demonstrate, throughout this analysis, that colo
nial definitions of French identity in Algeria fluctuated considerably, from
group to group and over the course of time. All persons were not equally
French in colonial society, whether one measured Frenchness by citizen
ship rights, cultural practices, or other barometers. We know that measur
ing and defining French identity today, in our post-colonial setting, is no
easier than in the imperial past. During the first half of the twentieth cen
tury, some clearly wanted Algeria to be more French than did others.
Frenchness in the colonial world represented a zero-sum game in which the
assimilationist gains of a few signified a loss for others. For European sup
porters of Algérie française, only restricted access to Frenchness assured the
country s French status. If Algeria were to become too French according to
this view, or in other words if citizenship rights were given to Muslims, the
218
Conclusion 219
country would eventually cease being French and return to its original state.
Persons who had never “really” been French would thus assume control of
what was a predominantly Islamic country. As we have seen, European
writers periodically alluded to the incompatibility of Frenchness with Is
lamic or Jewish traditions. They suggested that a French country could not
be derived from populations that were “unassimilable.”
Algeria’s settler and indigenous advocates and intellectuals engaged
metropolitan French politicians in a dialogue about their status as French
people in colonial North Africa. These discussions often did little to satisfy
those concerned. European political representatives demanded that France
serve the interests of the least foreign French populations, that is people
who had emigrated from France or naturalized settlers. They hoped to ob
tain economic incentives and subsidies from French officials in order to
encourage the emigration of more Europeans, i.e., potential Frenchmen, to
colonial North Africa. The “néo” or nearly French status of non-French
European settlers proved, ultimately, to be insignificant when compared to
greater and menacing differences between them and Muslim populations.
Those less French on the colonial scale struggled to find their place in
Algerian society. Algerian Jews sought assurances from French officials about
their position. Though French citizens since 1870, they claimed to lack
recognition as participating members of French colonial society. Anti-
Semitism in colonial Algeria continuously placed their assimilation in a
dubious light. Similarly, throughout much of the colonial period, leaders
from the Muslim elite sought naturalization reform, that is to say, equal
access to French citizenship for all groups in Algeria. They lobbied persis
tently for the reform of naturalization laws. Although citizenship did not
necessarily reflect an assimilated French identity, they championed the cause
of a universal, officially acknowledged French status. Collective naturaliza
tion, in their opinion, would initiate the actual francisation of a land and a
population that had prematurely been called French.
French politicians proposed several measures to redefine French iden
tity in colonial Algeria. The first half of the twentieth century saw a series
of proposals supporting reform in naturalization laws—in 1919,1936,1944,
1946, and 1947. These measures offered citizenship to a larger proportion
of the total Arab and Berber population. While they concerned a relatively
small number of people, most were met with hostility from settler groups
and not implemented. Differing metropolitan and colonial views about
assimilation, citizenship, and identity prevented the development of con
sensual policy. French Algeria and the French o f Algeria continued to be
defined differently at the center and periphery of Greater France.
If legislation had made French citizens of all indigenous and Euro
pean settler populations, would colonial Algeria have become truly French,
and would it have been able to maintain formal ties to France? Answers to
this question are of course pure conjecture. Perhaps a more collectively
French French Algeria would have lingered on a few more years. I do not
believe it would have endured. The growing tide of nationalist, anti-colo
nial activity would not be slowed. By 1947, when such reform was in fact
discussed among legislators and offered to indigenous groups, the Muslim
elite no longer collectively supported naturalization. Well before then, doubts
had emerged not only within the Arab and Berber population, but among
Spanish setders and Algerian Jews, about whether assimilation would ever
be accomplished in North Africa. Disparate degrees of perceived Frenchness
created lesions in the fabric of Algerian society, perpetuating social stratifi
cation and distinct “colonizer”/4''colonized” spheres.1This certainly did not
bode well for the future of French Algeria.
The now dated colonized/colonizer framework is in fact too sche
matic, I believe, to accurately portray colonial Algerian heterogeneity. The
non-Frenchness of the “colonized” as well as of the ‘colonizers” represented
an intriguing refutation of the official rhetoric of assimilation. Under the
surface, one finds a complex, post-modern scenario of ambiguous identi
ties, of doubleness, and of a largely imaginary “métissage” or mixing with
out much contact between groups in colonial Algeria. Among many other
influences in the colonial setting, people sometimes considered themselves
French and Algerian.
Documents from the French colonial period are full of ironies and
contradictions. School texts generally (but not always) referred to the cul
tural homogenization of a collectively French population in colonial Alge
ria. Novels, newspapers, and administrative reports indicated the preserva
tion of varied cultural practices among indigenous and European settler
populations. Crises such as the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War,
and the creation of Israel exacerbated fears of the “foreign threat,” anath
ema to French sovereignty in colonial Algeria. Suspicions about the capac
ity of foreigners to assimilate illustrate the dubiousness of Frenchness in the
colonial world. Critics labeled some groups as “faux français,” imposters
merely posing as French in colonial Algeria. They were French citizens per
haps, but certainly not patriots, according to this line of thought. Their
loyalty to the French mire-patrie remained unclear.
Politicians and administrators feared that “phony” Frenchness could
indeed take on threatening forms and jeopardize French influence in North
Conclusion 221
Africa. The predominant Arab-Berber population and emigrants of Span
ish origin generated the most concern. These were the largest “non-French”
groups in colonial Algeria. Collectively, a highly diverse population of set
tler and indigenous groups undermined French Algeria long before Muslim
nationalists attempted to topple colonial rule.
French Algeria, as it was defined in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, served a
small but vocal constituency of European settlers, politicians, and some
wary Muslim assimilationists. The enlarged entity conceived by the propo
nents of colonial activity, Greater France or la plus grande France, provided
welcome support to metropolitan France, a country that many believed to
be convalescing from two World Wars, low birth rates, and economic slug
gishness. The accumulation of territory and populations allowed concerned
individuals in France to feel less vulnerable in the first half of the twentieth
century. A French colonial commonwealth reassured them that modern
France was still great. Similarly, the notion of French Algeria allowed Euro
pean settlers to feel more secure about life in North Africa, even though
they were far removed from the métropole and surrounded by indigenous
populations.
Despite the assurances that a French-governed Algeria provided to
both metropolitan and colonial populations, they rarely agreed on the mean
ing of French Algeria. Notions of Frenchness were in constant flux during
the colonial period. Colonial populations rallied to mother France when
she was under attack. Yet when metropolitan actions in North Africa alarmed
European settler communities and their political representatives, these
groups ceased considering Algeria as unequivocally French, at least tempo
rarily. The métropole then seemed excessively and sometimes intrusively
foreign, that is, French. This was particularly true for individuals who had
grown attached to their Algerian homeland and for whom metropolitan
customs and mores seemed obtrusive. Before the armed uprising of Alge
rian nationalists in the 1950s, talk of establishing an autonomous Algeria,
freed from French influence, periodically emerged among people of Euro
pean descent. Given the dependent nature of the Franco-Algerian relation
ship, this appears to have been more a ruse or mere posturing than any
thing else. European settlers knew very well that French support assured
their presence in North Africa.
French law during the colonial period did not recognize anyone liv
ing in Algeria, of settler or indigenous descent, as Algerian: “Le discours
juridique (largement contrôlé par le pouvoir métropolitain) se refuse à
attribuer [Algerian status] aux habitants de l’Algérie quels qu ils soient. [. . .]”2
(“Ju rid ical discourse, largely controlled by metropolitan forces, refuses to
attribute Algerian status to any Algerian inhabitant. . . .”) French authori
ties and institutions clearly had little reason to encourage the development
of “Algerianness.” Arabs, Berbers, Jews, and European settlers were expressly
French (in varying degrees), not Algerian. There was no legal basis for an
Algerian identity or citizenship during the colonial period, despite the ap
peals made by Ferhat Abbas, Algérianistes, or others. Never would an Alge
rian passport or any other official documentation distinguish Algerian per
sons from French ones in the first half of the twentieth century.3Nor would
census reports describe a distinct “Algerian” social category.
Visions of French Algeria, or even settler-led Algerian Algeria, col
lapsed when nationalists were granted independence in 1962. One scholar
described the period leading up to this date as “the passing of French Alge
ria.”4The colonial perceptions of the country examined in this study slowly
dissipated. In an independent country whose previous ties to France had
been severed, “Algerianness” took on liew meaning: “Quand pour le droit,
l'Algérie est enfin peuplée d’Algériens/ elle cesse d'être ‘française'”5 (“When
Algeria is at last legally populated by Algerians,' it ceases to be ‘French’”).
European settlers no longer held claim to Algerian identity. According to
the Evian agreement, which brought an end to the seven-and-a-half-year
war in Algeria, settlers were given the option of obtaining a new and offi
cial Algerian nationality, but the vast majority of the settler population
opted instead to “repatriate” to France.6 They, like the Indian populations
forced to leave Uganda for England, discovered a foreign mere-patrie far
removed, in many senses, from their place of birth. The allegorical mother
referred to throughout this study was perhaps more accurately the stereo
typical step-mother, distant, cold, and uncaring.
Today, European populations have all but disappeared from Algeria,
but French influence has remained. This presence is visible in a still exis
tent French educational system, in the use of the French language, and in
the demand for French newspapers and television programs. French cul
tural consumption by elite classes as well as by the general public continues
in spite of more than ten years of civil war and the condemnation of west
ern influences by fundamentalist groups.7 It signals a certain permanency
of the French colonial imprint.
By the mid-twentieth century, the French colonial model of assimila
tion had run its course. The notion of association resonated for a time
afterwards, but direct colonial ties continued to rupture.8 Autonomy was
Conclusion 223
the next step in this progression. In the span of roughly half a century,
between 1900 and 1960, French colonialism, as it was conceived among
political supporters in France, changed from a constructive, empowering
activity, one generating a source of national pride, to a national burden.9
Charles de Gaulle oversaw the shift from a politics of colonization to one of
decolonization. His own views seem to have evolved, if one compares his
ambiguous “Je vous ai compris” (“I have understood you”) speech to set
tlers in 1958 to his eventual support of Algerian autonomy.10 De Gaulle is
remembered bitterly by European settlers, the uprooted “Pieds Noirs,” as
the person who applied the coup de grâce to French Algeria. French Algeria
lives on still today in the recorded and unrecorded memories of a dwin
dling number of these individuals.11
Perhaps, as Ferhat Abbas wrote in the preface to a reedition of his
thoughts on colonization, Algerian populations of indigenous and Euro
pean origin had been duped.12 He claimed that they had naively been led to
believe in VAlgériefrançaise. “Nous avons été victimes d’un mythe,” he wrote
(“We were victims of a myth”). For all of those involved in the great colo
nial adventure in North Africa—Europeans, Jews, and Muslims alike—
demystification, the forced separation of the qualifier “French” from Alge
ria, was a long and often painful process.
Notes
1. Albert Memmi, Portrait du coloniséprécédé du portrait du colonisateur (Paris: Buchet/
Chastel, 1957).
2. Jean-Robert Henry, "L’Identité imaginée par le droit: De l’Algérie coloniale à la
construction européenne,” in Cartes d'identité: Comment dit-on 'nous*en politique?, ed. Denis-
Constant Martin (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1994), 52.
3. French historian Gérard Noiriel argues that circulating symbols of a governing
state, such as passports, identity cards, and even money, are what generate a sense of na
tional identity. See Noiriel, Population., immigration et identité nationale> XIXe-XXe siècle
(Paris: Hachette Supérieur, 1992).
4. David C. Gordon, The Passing o f French Algeria, 1936—1966 (New York: Oxford
UP, 1966).
5. Henry, Cartes d*identité, 57.
6. See Jean-Pierre Rioux, La Guerre d*Algérie et les Français (Paris: Fayard, 1990).
7. See Severine Labat’s Les Lslamistes algériens: Entre les urnes et le maquis (Paris: Edi
tions du Seuil, 1995). See also Algerian author Rachid Boudjedras FIS de la haine (Paris:
Denoël, 1992).
8. Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890-
1914 (New York: Columbia UP, 1961).
9. Jacques Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalismefrançais: Histoire dun divorce (Paris:
Albin Michel, 1984).
10. See relevant articles in Rioux, La Guerre d'Algérie et les Français.
11. The “Cercles algérianistes” of France, as well as a host of other organizations,
have attempted to preserve memory of setder life in North Africa.
12. See the “avertissement au lecteur” in the 1981 reedition of Ferhat Abbas' De la
Colonie vers la province: Le jeune Algérien (Paris: Garnier).
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---------- . Parlez-moi de la France. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1994.
Wright, Gwendolyn. The Politics o f Design in French Colonial Urbanism Chicago: U. of
Chicago Press, 1991.
INDEX
Abbas, Ferhar, 8, 21-22, 105-06, Amrouche, Jean, 109, 120-21

109, 117-18, 120-21, 128-34, Anderson, Benedict, 6
142, 162, 208, 210-11, 222-23 anti-Semitism, 24, 88, 123, 149-50,
Abdel-kader, 16, 109, 153 152-54, 158-59, 190, 219; See
Achard, Paul, 163, 188-89, 194, 201, Dreyfus Affair, Drumont, Edouard,
210 La Libre Parole, Amitiés latines
Africa (French), Africanness, 31-33, Arab army, 157
198-199; Africa, Latin, 18, 58, Arab-Jewish hostility, 153-54
132, 199 See abo A.R.RA. Archimbaud, Léon, 17-18
Ageron, Charles-Robert, 79 Association pour le rayonnementfrançais
les Algérianistes, 187-88, 198, 203, en Afrique (A.R.FA.), 31-34
209-10, 212, 222 Audisio, Gabriel, 18, 188, 195, 201-
algérianité (settler identity) 9, 187— 02, 208-10
203, 208-12, 222 See also la patrie Auriol, Vincent, 98
algérienne Auxilio social, 172
Algerian Assembly, 28 See Statute for
Algeria Bab-el-Oued, 166, 190
Algerian identity, nation, nationalism, Barthes, Roland, 7
republic, 57, 68, 94, 106, 116-17, Baubier, Achille, 150, 161, 193, 205
120-22, 131-35, 144, 157,210- Le Beau, Georges, 91
11,220-22 Ben Badis, Cheikh, 110, 119
Algerian independence, war, 94, 222- Bendjelloul, Dr., 105, 112
23 Bertrand, Louis, 53, 58, 132, 150,
Algerian women, 36; literacy, 49; 177-78, 187-88, 199, 204, 211 See
emancipation, 107 also Africa, Latin
UAlgérie libre, 122 Beuscher, R, 78, 86-87, 91, 94, 96
Alger-Républicain, 77-79, 201 Bhabha, Homi, 5-6, 176
Algiers, 16, 27, 66, 75, 92, 96, 98, Blum, Léon, 123, 152
110, 122, 149-50, 152, 166, 175, Blum-Viollette project, 26-27, 88,
190, 197, 201 See also Bab-el-Oued 122-24
Alsace, 3, 44-45, 133, 171-72, 175 Boualam, Bachaga, 162-63
American identity, culture, 195-196 Bouzaréah, 48, 109
Amitiés latines, 152-153 Bretons, 175
230
Index 231
Bruno, G., 44, 57 Doumergue, Gaston, 19, 96, 98
Bugeaud, General, 16-17, 120 Dreyfus Affair, 85, 149, 190-91, 204
Bugéja, Marie, 108 See also anti-Semitism
Drumont, Edouard, 149
Cagayous, 189-92, 201-03, 211 See Duchêne, Ferdinand, 18, 53, 108,
also Musette 163, 188-89, 193, 203-04
Camus, Albert, 8, 17, 79-80, 93, 99- Dupuy, Aimé, 48, 175
100, 160, 188, 196,212 Durkheim, Emile, 53
Cardinal, Marie, 194 L'Echo d’Alger, 78
Centennial celebration, 19-22, 30, 36, L'Echo d'Oran, 78
75, 80-81,96, 186 L'EcoU d'Alger, 188, 209-11
citizens, citizenship, 5, 7, 22-23, 25-
26, 29, 32,43, 67-68, 105-06, 114- Egalité-la République algérienne, 112,
15, 117-18, 122-25, 127-28, 133- 128-35
35,140-43,145,148-51, 153,158, LEntentefranco-musulmane, 110, 112,
160-63, 170-71, 173-74, 179, 119
189-90, 207-08, 210, 218-20 See L'Estafette d'Alger, II
also naturalization reform L'Etendard algérien, 109
civilizing mission, 4-5, 19 évolués, 105, 111-12
Code de l'indigénat, 23-24 Ezra, Elizabeth, 42
colonization, of Algeria, 15-16 See also
Abd el-Kader Faci, S., 108-09, 116, 142, 209
Combat, 79, 93, 112 Fanon, Frantz, 50
communes mixtes, 17, 28, 34, 130 Favre, Lucienne, 163, 166, 178, 188,
communes de plein exercice, 16-17, 28, 192
46 Feraoun, Mouloud, 176-77
Constantine, 16-17, 28, 82, 98, 110, Ferdane, 201
153-54, 158 Ferry, Jules, 3; Ferry laws, 43, 46
Crémieux decree, 24, 148-^49, 151, First World War (Great War or Grande
158 guerre), 5, 22, 26, 45, 84, 109,
120-21, 126-28, 169-70, 192
Daudet, Alphonse, 143 Florenchie, Marcel, 31, 186-87, 198
La Défense* 110, 115, 120, 123 Fourth Republic, 28, 129
Délégationsfinancières, 204 francisation, 1,3,5, 15, 36, 42, 67-
Démontés, Victor, 160-61, 189 68, 75, 114, 120-21, 123, 144,
départements, in Algeria, 14, 16, 32, 148-49, 161, 169,219
46, 73, 81, 120, 130, 133, 206-08 Franco-Prussian War, 3,22,43-45,175
La Dépêche algérienne, 78, 88-89 French Algeria (Algériefrançaise), 3, 7-
La Dépêche de Constantine, 78, 96 9, 15, 17, 22, 29, 31, 35-37, 46,
La Dépêche de Lest, 78 60, 63, 75, 79-81, 85-86, 89, 95,
Déroulède, Paul, 45 99, 105, 112-13, 117-20, 123-24,
Dib, Mohammed, 143, 147-148, 128, 131, 134-35, 144, 161, 174,
176, 188, 199 186-87, 193, 206-07, 218-23
232 Index
French, of France, 25, 33-34; L ’Islam, 108-09
emigration of, 29-35, 174-75 Israel, 154-59 See Zionism, Jews
French identity (cultural, imperial, Italians, of Algeria, culture 160-63,
national, regional, racial), 2-9, 28- 173-74, 200
2 6 ,4 1 ,4 3 , 50-51,54-55,61-62,
67, 74, 82-83, 99-100, 106, 112- Jeunes Algériens (Young Algerians),
16, 121, 125-27, 129-30, 140-45, 109,211
150-51, 158, 160, 169-70, 174- Jews, of Algeria, history, community,
75, 187, 189, 192-93, 210, 218- 50, 86, 148-59, 219-20; See also
19; contested vs. authentic anti-Semitism, Crémieux decree,
Frenchness, 9, 37, 116-17, 141, Israel, naturalization reform,
154, 174-79, 220-21 Sénatus-consulte, Zionism
French Union ( Union française ), 28, Jonnard law, 26
129-30
Frenchwomen, 176-77, 198 Kabyle myth, 48
Kessous, Mohammed-el-Aziz, 112
De Gaulle, Charles, 27, 92, 158, 223 Khaled, Emir, 109
Gautier, E.F., 192, 211
General Governor, 16, 30-31 Lamoudi, Lamine, 110
Gilroy, Paul, 212 Lanly, Francis, 200-02
Greater France {la plus grande France), Lavisse, Ernest, 44-45, 55
3, 8-9, 17-19, 28-29, 41, 46, 55, Lebrun, Albert, 170
57-58, 64, 74, 76, 81-82, 89, 91 - Leclerc, General, 58
92, 95-96, 100, 125-26, 129, 143, Leconte, Daniel, 73
145, 169, 175, 206-07, 219, 221 Lespès, René, 50
La Libre Parole, 152
Hassan, 108, 142, 144 Llama, R.C., 207-08
Heller, Maximilienne, 150-51
Hexagon, 2, 17, 20, 42, 63-65 Maltese, 161-63, 189
Hoffmann, Stanley, 85 Mammeri, Mouloud, 146-47
holidays, French national, 62-63, 75, M anifeste dupeuple algérien, 106,112,132
82-84, 121-22 M arianne, 64-65
Hureau, Joëlle, 75 marriages, mixed, 113-14,151,170,177
Mediterranean identity, sea 4, 18-19,
L ’Ikdam , 109 63-66, 133, 143, 209
instruction in Algeria, 46-50, 67; Megglé, Armand, 13
European and Indigenous school Mélia, Jean, 18, 22, 85, 109, 188,
tracks, 47-48; French history, 193, 203, 208-09
geography, 32, 54-59; language Memmi, Albert, 4-5, 148, 220
instruction, 50-54, 169; materials, mère-patrie, 6, 14, 27, 62, 66, 74-75,
42-44, 47, 51, 55-56, 60-61, 66- 86, 91, 95-96, 143-44, 159, 168,
67; religious, 49; resistance to, 49; 170, 197, 204-06, 220, 222
vocational, 46-47, 67 Messali Hadj, 122
Index 233
Miliana, 153 160; Jewish, 151, 154-56; mass
De Montherlant, Henri, 198 circulation, 73-74, 77; purge
Mouvementpour le triomphe des libertés (WWID, 76-77; Spanish, 76,166-69
démocratiques (MTLD), 157 Prost, Antoine, 43
M'tournis, 36, 49, 115-16, 145
Le M ’tourni, 115-16 Randau, Robert, 150, 176-77, 187,
Musette, 190, 201 See also Cagayous 195, 198, 204
Le Musulman, 109 Régence d'Alger, 15 See also Ottoman
Empire
Naegelen, Marcel, 33, 56 Renan, Ernest, 4
naturalization reform, 23-25, 106, republicanism, 4, 41, 47, 53, 55, 64-
113-14, 121, 134, 219-20; March 65, 78, 88, 126 See also, Third
7, 1944, 27; naturalized Muslims, Republic
23, 141-42, 174; of 1889, 24, Rhaïs, Elissa, 150-51
160-61 See also Blum-Viollette Roblès, Emmanuel, 175-76, 178,
project, citizenship, Crémieux 187, 197
decree, Sénatus-Consulte Roman Empire, 58, 199 See also
néo-français, 161-163, 170, 192, 201, Africa, Latin
205, 219 Roumis, 35, 145
Nora, Pierre, 161 Rouzé, Michel, 92
Oran, 16, 98, 109, 152-53, 160, 166, Sahlins, Peter, 5
168-72, 197 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 158-59
Ottoman Empire, 15, 159-60 Second World War, 5, 27-28, 58, 7 5 -
76, 89-90, 98-99, 109-10, 122,
Paillard, Jean, 149-50, 159, 207 146-47, 172-73, 199-200, 206,
Palestine, See Israel 208; Hider, Adolph, 89, 123, 125,
Parti du peuple algérien (PPA), 157 127, 147; May 8, 1945, 91-92, 99;
pataouète, 200-203 mobilisation, 90-91, 125-26, 145-
la patrie algérienne, 203-08, 210, 221 46; Union sacrée (1939-45), 124—
Pélégri, Jean, 188 28; Vichy, 27, 47, 91, 158-59
lepéril étranger (“foreign threat”), Ségur, comtesse de, 54
160-61, 169-70, 187, 220 Sénatus-Consulte, 23, 148 See also
Pétain, Philippe, 27, 78, 91 See naturalization reform
Second World War, Vichy Sérigny, Alain de, 98
Le petit Parisien, 77 Sétif, 28, 34, 92-94, 98, 122, 197
Pied-Noirs, 159, 192, 223 Sidi-Ferruch, 15, 19, 77, 122, 162
Pomier, Jean, 207, 210 Spaniards, emigration to Algeria,
Popular Front {Frontpopulaire), 75, 79, culture, 160-73, 200, 220-21;
83-84, 87-88, 92, 99, 122-23, 152 Spanish Civil War, 89, 171-72;
press, Arabie, 76, 108; bilingual, 76, Greater Spain, 171-73
109; colonial, 73-79; indigenous, Spielmann, Victor, 21
74, 105-12, 134-35; Italian, 76, Statute for Algeria, 28, 48, 94, 129-30
234 Index
Stoler, Anne L. and Cooper, Frederick, Viollette, Maurice, 86, 108-09
5, 23 La Voix des humbles, 107, 109-10,
Stora, Benjamin, 134 112, 123
La Voix indigène (after 1946, La Voix
territoires du sud, 17, 130 libre), 109-11, 113, 123-24, 128
Third Republic, 1, 3, 43-45, 48, 85
See republicanism Weber, Eugen, 5, 29
Tour de France, 95-97
Truphémus, Albert, 108, 177 Yacine, Kateb, 188
Ulémas, 110 Zenati, R., 105, 110, 113, 117-19,
Union démocratiquepour le Manifeste 121, 124, 126-31, 142-45, 211
algérien (UDMA), 210 Zentar, Joseph, 115-16
“Union of the races,” 60-64 Zionism, 154-57
Universal Colonial Exposition of
1931, 19

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ROCHESTER STUDIES in

AFRICAN HISTORY and the DIASPORA

Power Relations in Nigeria: Ilorin West Indians in West Africa, 1808—

m UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PRESS

Map of Mediterranean basin. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1982.

List of Illustrations viii

Map of Mediterranean basin frontispiece

1830, June 14 Beginning of French colonial presence in Algeria. French

“L'Algérie est française” (“Algeria is French”), wrote French essayist and

Making Algeria French

French Algeria was conceived and reared in a rather unorthodox fashion, to

French Algeria in Greater France

French Algeria as defined in the colonial period made up an integral part of

The Demographics of French Algeria

As Algeria was France, colonial literature suggested, so local populations

desirous of still more able bodies, reopened debate on the assimilation of

The Call for New French Settlement

How might French Algeria maintain self-sustaining numbers of French

French Algeria at the Half-Century Mark

A comprehensive investigation carried out in the early 1950s addressed the

1. Armand Megglé, LAlgérie terresfrançaises (Paris: Société française d’éditions, 1931),

School children in metropolitan France and throughout the French colonial

French Schools, Citizenry, and National Identify

The connection between French school programs and the development of

Education in Colonial Algeria

In March 1882, French lawmakers declared primary school education free,

Greater French History

While colonial educators emphasized French language instruction in colo­

[. . .] Loccupation romaine, pourtant si féconde et si belle, ne laissa d’autres

[. . . Roman occupation, so fertile and attractive, left no traces other than

While only vestiges remained, Roman influence, according to educators,

1. Le com bat de M onna Casale en Italie (1944).

2. Le débarquem ent allié en Provence (15 août 1944).

The rudiments of French language, literature, history, and geography formed

Figures 2 and 3. Illustrations from a school textbook. H. Miraton, Notre

from poorer, uneducated Muslims. Europeans appear as teachers, doctors,

Viewed through the prism of specialized textbooks, some conclusions can

“L’Algérie officielle vit à l’heure française,” (“Official Algeria lives on French

A History of the French Press in Colonial Algeria

Daily Algerian newspapers, which first appeared in print in the mid-nine­

Algeria on French Time

The Faces of France in the Colonial Press

When the columns of Algerian newspapers focused attention on France,

A concluding remark contended, “Notre union et notre courage auront

Greater France in Wartime

No single event in the quarter century examined in this study generated

An Algerian Tour de France

Aujourd’hui : S A 1 N T -B R IE U C -C A E N (235 km.)

[Today, it seems that to reveal the misery of a French country is to be a bad

In some of the very same municipalities where settler-oriented newspapers

An Overview of the Indigenous Press

The Algerian indigenous press consisted of a small group of newspapers

ABONNEMENTS Journal dod’union Franco-M usulmane

3 5 . Rue Nationale - CONSTANTrNK otneoTEUIt

An Indigenous Perspective on France and Frenchness 111

LE MAITRE ET SES ÉLÈVES

Figure 5. The indigenous Algerian press. La Voix indigne, 12 septembre 1929.

One of the most commonly expressed objectives in the indigenous

[If it is anti-French to request French rights, French freedom, and French

A La Voix indigène journalist described the wide spectrum of opinion

Commemoration and Identity

The celebration of French national holidays in the indigenous press pro­

The Blum-Viollette Debate

While colonial educators emphasized French language instruction in colo

Daily Algerian newspapers, which first appeared in print in the mid-nine

The celebration of French national holidays in the indigenous press pro

Mouloud Mammeri conveys £ wavering of opinion and even indif

A few European writers outside of algérianiste circles proposed a less exclu