French rule in Algeria, 18301962
Most of France's actions in Algeria, not
least the invasion of Algiers, were propelled by contradictory impulses.
In the period between Napoleon's downfall in 1815 and the revolution of
1830, the restored French monarchy was in crisis, and the dey was weak
politically, economically, and militarily. The French monarch sought to
reverse his domestic unpopularity. As a result of what the French
considered an insult to the French consul in Algiers by the dey in 1827,
France blockaded Algiers for three years. France used the failure of
the blockade as a reason for a military expedition against Algiers in
1830.
Invasion of Algiers
Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan
for the invasion of Algeria, 37,000 French soldiers landed twenty-seven
kilometers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch, on June 14, 1830. To face
the French, the dey sent 7,000 janissaries, 19,000 troops from the beys
of Constantine and Oran, and about 17,000 Kabyles. The French
established a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part
to superior artillery and better organization. Algiers was captured
after a three-week campaign, and Hussein Dey fled into exile. French
troops raped, looted (taking 50 million francs from the treasury in the
Casbah), desecrated mosques, and destroyed cemeteries. It was an
inauspicious beginning to France's self-described "civilizing mission,"
whose character on the whole was cynical, arrogant, and cruel.
Most of France's actions in Algeria, not
least the invasion of Algiers, were propelled by contradictory impulses.
In the period between Napoleon's downfall in 1815 and the revolution of
1830, the restored French monarchy was in crisis, and the dey was weak
politically, economically, and militarily. The French monarch sought to
reverse his domestic unpopularity. As a result of what the French
considered an insult to the French consul in Algiers by the dey in 1827,
France blockaded Algiers for three years. France used the failure of
the blockade as a reason for a military expedition against Algiers in
1830.
Invasion of Algiers
Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan
for the invasion of Algeria, 37,000 French soldiers landed twenty-seven
kilometers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch, on June 14, 1830. To face
the French, the dey sent 7,000 janissaries, 19,000 troops from the beys
of Constantine and Oran, and about 17,000 Kabyles. The French
established a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part
to superior artillery and better organization. Algiers was captured
after a three-week campaign, and Hussein Dey fled into exile. French
troops raped, looted (taking 50 million francs from the treasury in the
Casbah), desecrated mosques, and destroyed cemeteries. It was an
inauspicious beginning to France's self-described "civilizing mission,"
whose character on the whole was cynical, arrogant, and cruel.
Hardly had the news of the capture of Algiers reached Paris than Charles
X was deposed, and his cousin Louis Philippe, the "citizen king," was
named to preside over a constitutional monarchy. The new government,
composed of liberal opponents of the Algiers expedition, was reluctant
to pursue the conquest ordered by the old regime, but withdrawing from
Algeria proved more difficult than conquering it. A parliamentary
commission that examined the Algerian situation concluded that although
French policy, behavior, and organization were failures, the occupation
should continue for the sake of national prestige. In 1834, France
annexed the occupied areas, which had an estimated Muslim population of
about 3 million, as a colony. Colonial administration in the occupied
areas the so-called régime du sabre (government of the sword) was
placed under a governor general, a high-ranking army officer invested
with civil and military jurisdiction, who was responsible to the
minister of war.
The Land and Colonizers
Even before the decision was made to annex
Algeria, major changes had taken place. In a bargain-hunting frenzy to
take over or buy at low prices all manner of property homes, shops,
farms and factories Europeans poured into Algiers after it fell. French
authorities took possession of the beylik lands, from which Ottoman
officials had derived income. Over time, as pressures increased to
obtain more land for settlement by Europeans, the state seized more
categories of land, particularly that used by tribes, religious
foundations, and villages.
Soon after the
conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician Bertrand Clauzel and others
formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official
discouragement, to subsidize its settlement by European farmers,
triggering a land rush. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the
Mitidja Plain and envisioned the production there of cotton on a large
scale. As governor general (183536), he used his office to make private
investments in land and encouraged army officers and bureaucrats in his
administration to do the same. This development created a vested
interest among government officials in greater French involvement in
Algeria. Commercial interests with influence in the government also
began to recognize the prospects for profitable land speculation in
expanding the French zone of occupation. They created large agricultural
tracts, built factories and businesses, and exploited cheap local
labor.
Even before the decision was made to annex
Algeria, major changes had taken place. In a bargain-hunting frenzy to
take over or buy at low prices all manner of property homes, shops,
farms and factories Europeans poured into Algiers after it fell. French
authorities took possession of the beylik lands, from which Ottoman
officials had derived income. Over time, as pressures increased to
obtain more land for settlement by Europeans, the state seized more
categories of land, particularly that used by tribes, religious
foundations, and villages.
Soon after the
conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician Bertrand Clauzel and others
formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official
discouragement, to subsidize its settlement by European farmers,
triggering a land rush. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the
Mitidja Plain and envisioned the production there of cotton on a large
scale. As governor general (183536), he used his office to make private
investments in land and encouraged army officers and bureaucrats in his
administration to do the same. This development created a vested
interest among government officials in greater French involvement in
Algeria. Commercial interests with influence in the government also
began to recognize the prospects for profitable land speculation in
expanding the French zone of occupation. They created large agricultural
tracts, built factories and businesses, and exploited cheap local
labor.
Called colons (colonists) or, more popularly, pieds noirs
(literally, black feet), the European settlers were largely of peasant
farmer or working-class origin from the poor southern areas of Italy,
Spain, and France. Others were criminal and political deportees from
France, transported under sentence in large numbers to Algeria. In the
1840s and 1850s, to encourage settlement in rural areas official policy
was to offer grants of land for a fee and a promise that improvements
would be made. A distinction soon developed between the grands colons
(great colonists) at one end of the scale, often self-made men who had
accumulated large estates or built successful businesses, and the petits
blancs (little whites), smallholders and workers at the other end,
whose lot was often not much better than that of their Muslim
counterparts. According to historian John Ruedy, although by 1848 only
15,000 of the 109,000 European settlers were in rural areas, "by
systematically expropriating both pastoralists and farmers, rural
colonization was the most important single factor in the destructuring
of traditional society."
Opposition to the Occupation
Whatever initial misgivings Louis
Philippe's government may have had about occupying Algeria, the
geopolitical realities of the situation created by the 1830 intervention
argued strongly for reinforcing the French presence there. France had
reason for concern that Britain, which was pledged to maintain the
territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, would move to fill the
vacuum left by a French pullout. The French devised elaborate plans for
settling the hinterland left by Ottoman provincial authorities in 1830,
but their efforts at state building were unsuccessful on account of
lengthy armed resistance.
Whatever initial misgivings Louis
Philippe's government may have had about occupying Algeria, the
geopolitical realities of the situation created by the 1830 intervention
argued strongly for reinforcing the French presence there. France had
reason for concern that Britain, which was pledged to maintain the
territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, would move to fill the
vacuum left by a French pullout. The French devised elaborate plans for
settling the hinterland left by Ottoman provincial authorities in 1830,
but their efforts at state building were unsuccessful on account of
lengthy armed resistance.
The most successful local opposition immediately after the fall of
Algiers was led by Ahmad ibn Muhammad, bey of Constantine. He initiated a
radical overhaul of the Ottoman administration in his beylik by
replacing Turkish officials with local leaders, making Arabic the
official language, and attempting to reform finances according to the
precepts of Islam. After the French failed in several attempts to gain
some of the bey's territories through negotiation, an illfated invasion
force led by Bertrand Clauzel had to retreat from Constantine in 1836 in
humiliation and defeat. Nonetheless, the French captured Constantine
the following year.
Abd el Kader
The French faced other opposition as well in
the area. The superior of a religious brotherhood, Muhyi ad Din, who had
spent time in Ottoman jails for opposing the dey's rule, launched
attacks against the French and their makhzen allies at Oran in 1832. In
the same year, tribal elders chose Muhyi ad Din's son,
twenty-five-year-old Abd el Kader, to take his place leading the jihad.
Abd al Kader, who was recognized as amir al muminin (commander of the
faithful), quickly gained the support of tribes throughout Algeria. A
devout and austere marabout, he was also a cunning political leader and a
resourceful warrior. From his capital in Tlemcen, Abd al Kader set
about building a territorial Muslim state based on the communities of
the interior but drawing its strength from the tribes and religious
brotherhoods. By 1839, he controlled more than two-thirds of Algeria.
His government maintained an army and a bureaucracy, collected taxes,
supported education, undertook public works, and established
agricultural and manufacturing cooperatives to stimulate economic
activity.
The French in Algiers viewed
with concern the success of a Muslim government and the rapid growth of a
viable territorial state that barred the extension of European
settlement. Abd el Kader fought running battles across Algeria with
French forces, which included units of the Foreign Legion, organized in
1831 for Algerian service. Although his forces were defeated by the
French under General Thomas Bugeaud in 1836, Abd el Kader negotiated a
favorable peace treaty the next year. The treaty gained conditional
recognition for Abd al Qadir's regime by defining the territory under
its control and salvaged his prestige among the tribes just as the
shaykhs were about to desert him. To provoke new hostilities, the French
deliberately broke the treaty in 1839 by occupying Constantine. Abd el
Kader took up the holy war again, destroyed the French settlements on
the Mitidja Plain, and at one point advanced to the outskirts of Algiers
itself. He struck where the French were weakest and retreated when they
advanced against him in greater strength. The government moved from
camp to camp with the amir and his army. Gradually, however, superior
French resources and manpower and the defection of tribal chieftains
took their toll. Reinforcements poured into Algeria after 1840 until
Bugeaud had at his disposal 108,000 men, one-third of the French army.
Bugeaud's strategy was to destroy Abd al Qadir's bases, then to starve
the population by destroying its means of subsistence crops, orchards,
and herds. On several occasions, French troops burned or asphyxiated
noncombatants hiding from the terror in caves. One by one, the amir's
strongholds fell to the French, and many of his ablest commanders were
killed or captured so that by 1843 the Muslim state had collapsed. Abd
el Kader took refuge with his ally, the sultan of Morocco, Abd ar Rahman
II, and launched raids into Algeria. However, Abd el Kader was obliged
to surrender to the commander of Oran Province, General Louis de
Lamoricière, at the end of 1847.
Abd el Kader was promised safe conduct to Egypt or Palestine if his
followers laid down their arms and kept the peace. He accepted these
conditions, but the minister of war who years earlier as general in
Algeria had been badly defeated by Abd el Kader had him consigned to
prison in France. In 1852, Louis Napoleon, the president of the Second
French Republic who would soon establish the Second Empire as Napoleon
III, freed Abd el Kader and gave him a pension of 150,000 francs. In
1855, Abd el Kader moved from the Byrsa, the citadel area of Carthage,
to Damascus. There, in 1860, Abd el Kader intervened to save the lives
of an estimated 12,000 Christians, including the French consul and
staff, during a massacre instigated by local Ottoman officials. The
French government, in appreciation, conferred on him the Grand Cordon of
the Legion of Honour, and additional honours followed from a number of
other European governments. Declining all invitations to return to
public life, he devoted himself to scholarly pursuits and charity until
his death in Damascus in 1883.
The French faced other opposition as well in
the area. The superior of a religious brotherhood, Muhyi ad Din, who had
spent time in Ottoman jails for opposing the dey's rule, launched
attacks against the French and their makhzen allies at Oran in 1832. In
the same year, tribal elders chose Muhyi ad Din's son,
twenty-five-year-old Abd el Kader, to take his place leading the jihad.
Abd al Kader, who was recognized as amir al muminin (commander of the
faithful), quickly gained the support of tribes throughout Algeria. A
devout and austere marabout, he was also a cunning political leader and a
resourceful warrior. From his capital in Tlemcen, Abd al Kader set
about building a territorial Muslim state based on the communities of
the interior but drawing its strength from the tribes and religious
brotherhoods. By 1839, he controlled more than two-thirds of Algeria.
His government maintained an army and a bureaucracy, collected taxes,
supported education, undertook public works, and established
agricultural and manufacturing cooperatives to stimulate economic
activity.
The French in Algiers viewed
with concern the success of a Muslim government and the rapid growth of a
viable territorial state that barred the extension of European
settlement. Abd el Kader fought running battles across Algeria with
French forces, which included units of the Foreign Legion, organized in
1831 for Algerian service. Although his forces were defeated by the
French under General Thomas Bugeaud in 1836, Abd el Kader negotiated a
favorable peace treaty the next year. The treaty gained conditional
recognition for Abd al Qadir's regime by defining the territory under
its control and salvaged his prestige among the tribes just as the
shaykhs were about to desert him. To provoke new hostilities, the French
deliberately broke the treaty in 1839 by occupying Constantine. Abd el
Kader took up the holy war again, destroyed the French settlements on
the Mitidja Plain, and at one point advanced to the outskirts of Algiers
itself. He struck where the French were weakest and retreated when they
advanced against him in greater strength. The government moved from
camp to camp with the amir and his army. Gradually, however, superior
French resources and manpower and the defection of tribal chieftains
took their toll. Reinforcements poured into Algeria after 1840 until
Bugeaud had at his disposal 108,000 men, one-third of the French army.
Bugeaud's strategy was to destroy Abd al Qadir's bases, then to starve
the population by destroying its means of subsistence crops, orchards,
and herds. On several occasions, French troops burned or asphyxiated
noncombatants hiding from the terror in caves. One by one, the amir's
strongholds fell to the French, and many of his ablest commanders were
killed or captured so that by 1843 the Muslim state had collapsed. Abd
el Kader took refuge with his ally, the sultan of Morocco, Abd ar Rahman
II, and launched raids into Algeria. However, Abd el Kader was obliged
to surrender to the commander of Oran Province, General Louis de
Lamoricière, at the end of 1847.
Abd el Kader was promised safe conduct to Egypt or Palestine if his
followers laid down their arms and kept the peace. He accepted these
conditions, but the minister of war who years earlier as general in
Algeria had been badly defeated by Abd el Kader had him consigned to
prison in France. In 1852, Louis Napoleon, the president of the Second
French Republic who would soon establish the Second Empire as Napoleon
III, freed Abd el Kader and gave him a pension of 150,000 francs. In
1855, Abd el Kader moved from the Byrsa, the citadel area of Carthage,
to Damascus. There, in 1860, Abd el Kader intervened to save the lives
of an estimated 12,000 Christians, including the French consul and
staff, during a massacre instigated by local Ottoman officials. The
French government, in appreciation, conferred on him the Grand Cordon of
the Legion of Honour, and additional honours followed from a number of
other European governments. Declining all invitations to return to
public life, he devoted himself to scholarly pursuits and charity until
his death in Damascus in 1883.
Abd el Kader is recognized and venerated as the first hero of Algerian
independence. Not without cause, his green and white standard was
adopted by the Algerian liberation movement during the War of
Independence and became the national flag of independent Algeria. The
Algerian government brought his remains back to Algeria to be interred
with much ceremony on July 5, 1966, the fourth anniversary of
independence and the 136th anniversary of the French conquest. A mosque
bearing his name has been constructed as a national shrine in
Constantine.
Colonization and Military Control
A royal ordinance in 1845 called for
three types of administration in Algeria. In areas where Europeans were a
substantial part of the population, colons elected mayors and
councils for self-governing "full exercise" communes (communes de
plein exercice). In the "mixed" communes, where Muslims were a large
majority, government was in the hands of appointed and some elected
officials, including representatives of the grands chefs (great
chieftains) and a French administrator. The indigenous communes (communes
indigènes), remote areas not adequately pacified, remained under
the régime du sabre.
By 1848
nearly all of northern Algeria was under French control. Important tools
of the colonial administration, from this time until their elimination
in the 1870s, were the bureaux arabes (Arab offices), staffed by
Arabists whose function was to collect information on the indigenous
people and to carry out administrative functions, nominally in
cooperation with the army. The bureaux arabes on occasion acted
with sympathy to the local population and formed a buffer between
Muslims and rapacious colons.
Under the régime du sabre, the colons had been permitted
limited self-government in areas where European settlement was most
intense, but there was constant friction between them and the army. The colons
charged that the bureaux arabes hindered the progress of
colonization. They agitated against military rule, complaining that
their legal rights were denied under the arbitrary controls imposed on
the colony and insisting on a civil administration for Algeria fully
integrated with metropolitan France. The army warned that the
introduction of civilian government would invite Muslim retaliation and
threaten the security of Algeria. The French government vacillated in
its policy, yielding small concessions to the colon demands on the one
hand while maintaining the régime du sabre to protect the
interests of the Muslim majority on the other.
Shortly after Louis Philippe's constitutional monarchy was overthrown in
the revolution of 1848, the new government of the Second Republic ended
Algeria's status as a colony and declared the occupied lands an
integral part of France. Three "civil territories" Algiers, Oran, and
Constantine were organized as French départements (local administrative
units) under a civilian government. For the first time, French citizens
in the civil territories elected their own councils and mayors; Muslims
had to be appointed, could not hold more than one-third of council
seats, and could not serve as mayors or assistant mayors. The
administration of territories outside the zones settled by colons
remained under a régime du sabre. Local Muslim administration was
allowed to continue under the supervision of French military
commanders, charged with maintaining order in newly pacified regions,
and the bureaux arabes. Theoretically, these areas were closed to
European colonization.
European migration, encouraged during the Second Republic, stimulated
the civilian administration to open new land for settlement against the
advice of the army. With the advent of the Second Empire in 1852,
Napoleon III returned Algeria to military control. In 1858 a separate
Ministry of Algerian Affairs was created to supervise administration of
the country through a military governor general assisted by a civil
minister.
Napoleon III visited Algeria twice in the early 1860s. He was profoundly
impressed with the nobility and virtue of the tribal chieftains, who
appealed to the emperor's romantic nature, and was shocked by the
self-serving attitude of the colon leaders. He determined to halt
the expansion of European settlement beyond the coastal zone and to
restrict contact between Muslims and the colons, whom he
considered to have a corrupting influence on the indigenous population.
He envisioned a grand design for preserving most of Algeria for the
Muslims by founding a royaume arabe (Arab kingdom) with himself
as the roi des Arabes (king of the Arabs). He instituted the
so-called politics of the grands chefs to deal with the Muslims directly
through their traditional leaders.
To further his plans for the royaume arabe, Napoleon III issued
two decrees affecting tribal structure, land tenure, and the legal
status of Muslims in French Algeria. The first, promulgated in 1863, was
intended to renounce the state's claims to tribal lands and eventually
provide private plots to individuals in the tribes, thus dismantling
"feudal" structures and protecting the lands from the colons. Tribal
areas were to be identified, delimited into douars (administrative
units), and given over to councils. Arable land was to be divided among
members of the douar over a period of one to three generations, after
which it could be bought and sold by the individual owners.
Unfortunately for the tribes, however, the plans of Napoleon III quickly
unraveled. French officials sympathetic to the colons took much of the
tribal land they surveyed into the public domain. In addition, some
tribal leaders immediately sold communal lands for quick gains. The
process of converting arable land to individual ownership was
accelerated to only a few years when laws were enacted in the 1870s
stipulating that no sale of land by an individual Muslim could be
invalidated by the claim that it was collectively owned. The cudah and
other tribal officials, appointed by the French on the basis of their
loyalty to France rather than the allegiance owed them by the tribe,
lost their credibility as they were drawn into the European orbit,
becoming known derisively as beni-oui-ouis (yes-men).
Napoleon III visualized three distinct Algerias: a French colony, an
Arab country, and a military camp, each with a distinct form of local
government. The second decree, issued in 1865, was designed to recognize
the differences in cultural background of the French and the Muslims.
As French nationals, Muslims could serve on equal terms in the French
armed forces and civil service and could migrate to metropolitan France.
They were also granted the protection of French law while retaining the
right to adhere to Islamic law in litigation concerning their personal
status. But if Muslims wished to become full citizens, they had to
accept the full jurisdiction of the French legal code, including laws
affecting marriage and inheritance, and reject the competence of the
religious courts. In effect, this meant that a Muslim had to renounce
some of the mores of his religion in order to become a French citizen.
This condition was bitterly resented by Muslims, for whom the only road
to political equality was perceived to be apostasy. Over the next
century, fewer than 3,000 Muslims chose to cross the barrier and become
French citizens. A similar status applied to the Jewish natives.
When the Prussians captured Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan (1870),
ending the Second Empire, the colons in Algiers toppled the
military government and installed a civilian administration. Meanwhile,
in France the government directed one of its ministers, Adolphe
Crémieux, "to destroy the military regime [and] to completely assimilate
Algeria into France." In October 1870, Crémieux, whose concern with
Algerian affairs dated from the time of the Second Republic, issued a
series of decrees providing for representation of the Algerian
départements in the National Assembly of France and confirming colon
control over local administration. A civilian governor general was made
responsible to the Ministry of Interior. The Crémieux Decrees also
granted blanket French citizenship to Algerian Jews, who then numbered
about 40,000. This act set them apart from Muslims, in whose eyes they
were identified thereafter with the colons. The measure had to be
enforced, however, over the objections of the colons, who made
little distinction between Muslims and Jews. (Automatic citizenship was
subsequently extended in 1889 to children of non-French Europeans born
in Algeria unless they specifically rejected it.)
The loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871 led to pressure on the
French government to make new land available in Algeria for about 5,000
Alsatian and Lorrainer refugees who were resettled there. During the
1870s, both the amount of European-owned land and the number of settlers
were doubled, and tens of thousands of unskilled Muslims, who had been
uprooted from their land, wandered into the cities or to colon farming
areas in search of work.
The most serious native insurrection since the time of Abd el Kader
broke out in 1871 in the Kabylie and spread through much of Algeria. The
revolt was triggered by Crémieux's extension of civil (that is, colon)
authority to previously self-governing tribal reserves and the
abrogation of commitments made by the military government, but it
clearly had its basis in more long-standing grievances. Since the
Crimean War (185456), the demand for grain had pushed up the price of
Algerian wheat to European levels. Silos were emptied when the world
market's impact was felt in Algeria, and Muslim farmers sold their grain
reserves including seed grain to speculators. But the community-owned
silos were the fundamental adaptation of a subsistence economy to an
unpredictable climate, and a good year's surplus was stored away against
a bad year's dearth. When serious drought struck Algeria and grain
crops failed in 1866 and for several years following, Muslim areas faced
starvation, and with famine came pestilence. It was estimated that 20
percent of the Muslim population of Constantine died over a three-year
period. In 1871 the civil authorities repudiated guarantees made to
tribal chieftains by the previous military government for loans to
replenish their seed supply. This act alienated even pro-French Muslim
leaders, while it undercut their ability to control their people. It was
against this background of misery and hopelessness that the stricken
Kabyles rose in revolt.
A royal ordinance in 1845 called for
three types of administration in Algeria. In areas where Europeans were a
substantial part of the population, colons elected mayors and
councils for self-governing "full exercise" communes (communes de
plein exercice). In the "mixed" communes, where Muslims were a large
majority, government was in the hands of appointed and some elected
officials, including representatives of the grands chefs (great
chieftains) and a French administrator. The indigenous communes (communes
indigènes), remote areas not adequately pacified, remained under
the régime du sabre.
By 1848
nearly all of northern Algeria was under French control. Important tools
of the colonial administration, from this time until their elimination
in the 1870s, were the bureaux arabes (Arab offices), staffed by
Arabists whose function was to collect information on the indigenous
people and to carry out administrative functions, nominally in
cooperation with the army. The bureaux arabes on occasion acted
with sympathy to the local population and formed a buffer between
Muslims and rapacious colons.
Under the régime du sabre, the colons had been permitted
limited self-government in areas where European settlement was most
intense, but there was constant friction between them and the army. The colons
charged that the bureaux arabes hindered the progress of
colonization. They agitated against military rule, complaining that
their legal rights were denied under the arbitrary controls imposed on
the colony and insisting on a civil administration for Algeria fully
integrated with metropolitan France. The army warned that the
introduction of civilian government would invite Muslim retaliation and
threaten the security of Algeria. The French government vacillated in
its policy, yielding small concessions to the colon demands on the one
hand while maintaining the régime du sabre to protect the
interests of the Muslim majority on the other.
Shortly after Louis Philippe's constitutional monarchy was overthrown in
the revolution of 1848, the new government of the Second Republic ended
Algeria's status as a colony and declared the occupied lands an
integral part of France. Three "civil territories" Algiers, Oran, and
Constantine were organized as French départements (local administrative
units) under a civilian government. For the first time, French citizens
in the civil territories elected their own councils and mayors; Muslims
had to be appointed, could not hold more than one-third of council
seats, and could not serve as mayors or assistant mayors. The
administration of territories outside the zones settled by colons
remained under a régime du sabre. Local Muslim administration was
allowed to continue under the supervision of French military
commanders, charged with maintaining order in newly pacified regions,
and the bureaux arabes. Theoretically, these areas were closed to
European colonization.
European migration, encouraged during the Second Republic, stimulated
the civilian administration to open new land for settlement against the
advice of the army. With the advent of the Second Empire in 1852,
Napoleon III returned Algeria to military control. In 1858 a separate
Ministry of Algerian Affairs was created to supervise administration of
the country through a military governor general assisted by a civil
minister.
Napoleon III visited Algeria twice in the early 1860s. He was profoundly
impressed with the nobility and virtue of the tribal chieftains, who
appealed to the emperor's romantic nature, and was shocked by the
self-serving attitude of the colon leaders. He determined to halt
the expansion of European settlement beyond the coastal zone and to
restrict contact between Muslims and the colons, whom he
considered to have a corrupting influence on the indigenous population.
He envisioned a grand design for preserving most of Algeria for the
Muslims by founding a royaume arabe (Arab kingdom) with himself
as the roi des Arabes (king of the Arabs). He instituted the
so-called politics of the grands chefs to deal with the Muslims directly
through their traditional leaders.
To further his plans for the royaume arabe, Napoleon III issued
two decrees affecting tribal structure, land tenure, and the legal
status of Muslims in French Algeria. The first, promulgated in 1863, was
intended to renounce the state's claims to tribal lands and eventually
provide private plots to individuals in the tribes, thus dismantling
"feudal" structures and protecting the lands from the colons. Tribal
areas were to be identified, delimited into douars (administrative
units), and given over to councils. Arable land was to be divided among
members of the douar over a period of one to three generations, after
which it could be bought and sold by the individual owners.
Unfortunately for the tribes, however, the plans of Napoleon III quickly
unraveled. French officials sympathetic to the colons took much of the
tribal land they surveyed into the public domain. In addition, some
tribal leaders immediately sold communal lands for quick gains. The
process of converting arable land to individual ownership was
accelerated to only a few years when laws were enacted in the 1870s
stipulating that no sale of land by an individual Muslim could be
invalidated by the claim that it was collectively owned. The cudah and
other tribal officials, appointed by the French on the basis of their
loyalty to France rather than the allegiance owed them by the tribe,
lost their credibility as they were drawn into the European orbit,
becoming known derisively as beni-oui-ouis (yes-men).
Napoleon III visualized three distinct Algerias: a French colony, an
Arab country, and a military camp, each with a distinct form of local
government. The second decree, issued in 1865, was designed to recognize
the differences in cultural background of the French and the Muslims.
As French nationals, Muslims could serve on equal terms in the French
armed forces and civil service and could migrate to metropolitan France.
They were also granted the protection of French law while retaining the
right to adhere to Islamic law in litigation concerning their personal
status. But if Muslims wished to become full citizens, they had to
accept the full jurisdiction of the French legal code, including laws
affecting marriage and inheritance, and reject the competence of the
religious courts. In effect, this meant that a Muslim had to renounce
some of the mores of his religion in order to become a French citizen.
This condition was bitterly resented by Muslims, for whom the only road
to political equality was perceived to be apostasy. Over the next
century, fewer than 3,000 Muslims chose to cross the barrier and become
French citizens. A similar status applied to the Jewish natives.
When the Prussians captured Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan (1870),
ending the Second Empire, the colons in Algiers toppled the
military government and installed a civilian administration. Meanwhile,
in France the government directed one of its ministers, Adolphe
Crémieux, "to destroy the military regime [and] to completely assimilate
Algeria into France." In October 1870, Crémieux, whose concern with
Algerian affairs dated from the time of the Second Republic, issued a
series of decrees providing for representation of the Algerian
départements in the National Assembly of France and confirming colon
control over local administration. A civilian governor general was made
responsible to the Ministry of Interior. The Crémieux Decrees also
granted blanket French citizenship to Algerian Jews, who then numbered
about 40,000. This act set them apart from Muslims, in whose eyes they
were identified thereafter with the colons. The measure had to be
enforced, however, over the objections of the colons, who made
little distinction between Muslims and Jews. (Automatic citizenship was
subsequently extended in 1889 to children of non-French Europeans born
in Algeria unless they specifically rejected it.)
The loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871 led to pressure on the
French government to make new land available in Algeria for about 5,000
Alsatian and Lorrainer refugees who were resettled there. During the
1870s, both the amount of European-owned land and the number of settlers
were doubled, and tens of thousands of unskilled Muslims, who had been
uprooted from their land, wandered into the cities or to colon farming
areas in search of work.
The most serious native insurrection since the time of Abd el Kader
broke out in 1871 in the Kabylie and spread through much of Algeria. The
revolt was triggered by Crémieux's extension of civil (that is, colon)
authority to previously self-governing tribal reserves and the
abrogation of commitments made by the military government, but it
clearly had its basis in more long-standing grievances. Since the
Crimean War (185456), the demand for grain had pushed up the price of
Algerian wheat to European levels. Silos were emptied when the world
market's impact was felt in Algeria, and Muslim farmers sold their grain
reserves including seed grain to speculators. But the community-owned
silos were the fundamental adaptation of a subsistence economy to an
unpredictable climate, and a good year's surplus was stored away against
a bad year's dearth. When serious drought struck Algeria and grain
crops failed in 1866 and for several years following, Muslim areas faced
starvation, and with famine came pestilence. It was estimated that 20
percent of the Muslim population of Constantine died over a three-year
period. In 1871 the civil authorities repudiated guarantees made to
tribal chieftains by the previous military government for loans to
replenish their seed supply. This act alienated even pro-French Muslim
leaders, while it undercut their ability to control their people. It was
against this background of misery and hopelessness that the stricken
Kabyles rose in revolt.
In the aftermath of the 1871 uprising, French authorities imposed stern
measures to punish and control the whole Muslim population. France
confiscated more than 5,000 km² of tribal land and placed the
Kabylie under a régime d'exception (extraordinary rule), which
denied the due process guaranteed French nationals. A special indigénat
(native code) listed as offenses acts such as insolence and
unauthorized assembly not punishable by French law, and the normal
jurisdiction of the cudah was sharply restricted. The governor
general was empowered to jail suspects for up to five years without
trial. The argument was made in defense of these exceptional measures
that the French penal code as applied to Frenchmen was too permissive to
control Muslims.
Hegemony of the Colons
A commission of inquiry set up by the
French Senate in 1892 and headed by former Premier Jules Ferry, an
advocate of colonial expansion, recommended that the government abandon a
policy that assumed French law, without major modifications, could fit
the needs of an area inhabited by close to 2 million Europeans and 4
million Muslims. Muslims had no representation in Algeria's National
Assembly and were grossly underrepresented on local councils. Because of
the many restrictions imposed by the authorities, by 1915 only 50,000
Muslims were eligible to vote in elections in the civil communes.
Attempts to implement even the most modest reforms were blocked or
delayed by the local administration in Algeria, dominated by colons,
and by colon representatives in the National Assembly, to which
each of the three départements sent six deputies and three senators.
Once elected to the National Assembly, colons
became permanent fixtures. Because of their seniority, they exercised
disproportionate influence, and their support was important to any
government's survival. The leader of the colon delegation,
Auguste Warnier, succeeded during the 1870s and 1880s in modifying or
introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to
settlers and continue the Algerian state's appropriation of land from
the local population and distribution to settlers. Consistent proponents
of reform, like Georges Clemenceau and socialist Jean Jaurès, were rare
in the National Assembly.
The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and
trade was controlled by the grands colons. The modern European-owned and
-managed sector of the economy centered around small industry and a
highly developed export trade, designed to provide food and raw
materials to France in return for capital and consumer goods. Europeans
held about 30 percent of the total arable land, including the bulk of
the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation. By 1900,
Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in
agriculture and practically all agricultural exports. The modern, or
European, sector was run on a commercial basis and meshed with the
French market system that it supplied with wine, citrus, olives, and
vegetables. Nearly half of the value of European-owned real property was
in vineyards by 1914. By contrast, subsistence cereal production
supplemented by olive, fig, and date growing and stock raising formed
the basis of the traditional sector, but the land available for cropping
was submarginal even for cereals under prevailing traditional
cultivation practices.
The colonial regime imposed more and higher taxes on Muslims than on
Europeans. The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating
from before the French conquest, also paid new taxes, from which the colons
were often exempted. In 1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost
90 percent of the population but produced 20 percent of Algeria's
income, paid 70 percent of direct taxes and 45 percent of the total
taxes collected. And colons controlled how these revenues would
be spent. As a result, colon towns had handsome municipal
buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, while
Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little if at all from tax
revenues.
The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for
Algerian Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to
learn reading, writing, and engage in religious studies. Not only did
the state appropriate the habus lands (the religious foundations that
constituted the main source of income for religious institutions,
including schools) in 1843, but colon officials refused to allocate
enough money to maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for
an adequate number of teachers and religious leaders for the growing
population. In 1892, more than five times as much was spent for the
education of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many
children of school age. Because few Muslim teachers were trained, Muslim
schools were largely staffed by French teachers. Even a state-operated madrasah
(school) often had French faculty members. Attempts to institute
bilingual, bicultural schools, intended to bring Muslim and European
children together in the classroom, were a conspicuous failure, rejected
by both communities and phased out after 1870. According to one
estimate, fewer than 5 percent of Algerian children attended any kind of
school in 1870.
Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of Muslims along
with European students in the French school system as part of France's
"civilizing mission" in Algeria. The curriculum was entirely French and
allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded
even in Muslim schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated,
gallicized Muslims the évolués (literally, the evolved ones) had
been created. Almost all of the handful of Muslims who accepted French
citizenship were évolués; more significantly, it was in this privileged
group of Muslims, strongly influenced by French culture and political
attitudes, that a new Algerian self-consciousness developed.
Reporting to the French Senate in 1894, Governor General Jules Cambon
wrote that Algeria had "only a dust of people left her." He referred to
the destruction of the traditional ruling class that had left Muslims
without leaders and had deprived France of interlocuteurs valables
(literally, valid go-betweens), through whom to reach the masses of the
people. He lamented that no genuine communication was possible between
the two communities.
A commission of inquiry set up by the
French Senate in 1892 and headed by former Premier Jules Ferry, an
advocate of colonial expansion, recommended that the government abandon a
policy that assumed French law, without major modifications, could fit
the needs of an area inhabited by close to 2 million Europeans and 4
million Muslims. Muslims had no representation in Algeria's National
Assembly and were grossly underrepresented on local councils. Because of
the many restrictions imposed by the authorities, by 1915 only 50,000
Muslims were eligible to vote in elections in the civil communes.
Attempts to implement even the most modest reforms were blocked or
delayed by the local administration in Algeria, dominated by colons,
and by colon representatives in the National Assembly, to which
each of the three départements sent six deputies and three senators.
Once elected to the National Assembly, colons
became permanent fixtures. Because of their seniority, they exercised
disproportionate influence, and their support was important to any
government's survival. The leader of the colon delegation,
Auguste Warnier, succeeded during the 1870s and 1880s in modifying or
introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to
settlers and continue the Algerian state's appropriation of land from
the local population and distribution to settlers. Consistent proponents
of reform, like Georges Clemenceau and socialist Jean Jaurès, were rare
in the National Assembly.
The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and
trade was controlled by the grands colons. The modern European-owned and
-managed sector of the economy centered around small industry and a
highly developed export trade, designed to provide food and raw
materials to France in return for capital and consumer goods. Europeans
held about 30 percent of the total arable land, including the bulk of
the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation. By 1900,
Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in
agriculture and practically all agricultural exports. The modern, or
European, sector was run on a commercial basis and meshed with the
French market system that it supplied with wine, citrus, olives, and
vegetables. Nearly half of the value of European-owned real property was
in vineyards by 1914. By contrast, subsistence cereal production
supplemented by olive, fig, and date growing and stock raising formed
the basis of the traditional sector, but the land available for cropping
was submarginal even for cereals under prevailing traditional
cultivation practices.
The colonial regime imposed more and higher taxes on Muslims than on
Europeans. The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating
from before the French conquest, also paid new taxes, from which the colons
were often exempted. In 1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost
90 percent of the population but produced 20 percent of Algeria's
income, paid 70 percent of direct taxes and 45 percent of the total
taxes collected. And colons controlled how these revenues would
be spent. As a result, colon towns had handsome municipal
buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, while
Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little if at all from tax
revenues.
The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for
Algerian Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to
learn reading, writing, and engage in religious studies. Not only did
the state appropriate the habus lands (the religious foundations that
constituted the main source of income for religious institutions,
including schools) in 1843, but colon officials refused to allocate
enough money to maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for
an adequate number of teachers and religious leaders for the growing
population. In 1892, more than five times as much was spent for the
education of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many
children of school age. Because few Muslim teachers were trained, Muslim
schools were largely staffed by French teachers. Even a state-operated madrasah
(school) often had French faculty members. Attempts to institute
bilingual, bicultural schools, intended to bring Muslim and European
children together in the classroom, were a conspicuous failure, rejected
by both communities and phased out after 1870. According to one
estimate, fewer than 5 percent of Algerian children attended any kind of
school in 1870.
Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of Muslims along
with European students in the French school system as part of France's
"civilizing mission" in Algeria. The curriculum was entirely French and
allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded
even in Muslim schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated,
gallicized Muslims the évolués (literally, the evolved ones) had
been created. Almost all of the handful of Muslims who accepted French
citizenship were évolués; more significantly, it was in this privileged
group of Muslims, strongly influenced by French culture and political
attitudes, that a new Algerian self-consciousness developed.
Reporting to the French Senate in 1894, Governor General Jules Cambon
wrote that Algeria had "only a dust of people left her." He referred to
the destruction of the traditional ruling class that had left Muslims
without leaders and had deprived France of interlocuteurs valables
(literally, valid go-betweens), through whom to reach the masses of the
people. He lamented that no genuine communication was possible between
the two communities.
The colons who ran Algeria maintained a condescending dialogue only with
the beni-oui-ouis. Later they deliberately thwarted contact
between the évolués and Muslim traditionalists on the one hand
and between évolués and official circles in France on the other.
They feared and mistrusted the francophone évolués, who were
classified either as assimilationists, insisting on being accepted as
Frenchmen but on their own terms, or as integrationists, eager to work
as members of a distinct Muslim elite on equal terms with the French.
ابطال الجزائرالذين فجروا الثورة وارهبوا
الاستعمار رحمهم الله
الاستعمار رحمهم الله