ALGERIA

In 1800 what is now northern Algeria was an Ottoman province—known as the Regency of Algiers—one of three regencies created after the Ottoman conquest of the area in the fifteenth century. The regencies were initially administered by an Ottoman pasha (provincial governor), but Ottoman power weakened over the ensuing three centuries creating economic and political changes. Simultaneous to the decline in political power was a decline in the profitability of Algerian privateering, once an important source of income for both the Algerian regency and the government of the empire. These two processes undermined Ottoman institutions, and in Algiers the Ottoman pasha was replaced by an Algerian dignitary, the dey. At first the dey was elected by a council, or divan, the majority of whose members were Janissaries (elite Turkish soldiers). By 1800, however, the divan was no longer an Ottoman bastion but comprised an oligarchy whose interests lay in supporting the dey. Although Algeria was still an Ottoman province as the nineteenth century began, Ottoman authority there was weak. The European powers, in particular France and Britain, had started their encroachment into the area. Economic ties between France and the regency had developed during the eighteenth century, and by the end of the century Algiers was supplying grain to the south of France and to the Napoleonic armies in Italy.

Relations with the European powers may have developed differently had the first three decades of the nineteenth century not been characterized by economic and political upheavals that greatly undermined the regency's strength. The area had always been subject to sporadic revolts, particularly by the mountain-dwelling Kabyles, but the major rebellion that broke out in the rural areas at the beginning of the nineteenth century, led by the tribal elites and religious brotherhoods, destabilized the central government. To the political turmoil was added the misery of disease and economic hardship. Bubonic plague ravaged the countryside from 1793 to 1799 and again in 1815. Cholera and smallpox also took their toll. Harvest failures and locusts jeopardized grain exports, caused economic uncertainty, and created shortages in the countryside. Hungry peasants either joined the revolts or moved into urban areas in search of improved economic conditions. The influx of rural dwellers into urban areas created added economic and political tensions.

In the early nineteenth century the population of Algeria, which was estimated to total approximately three million, was made up of many different ethnic and religious groups, the largest of which were the Arabs and the Berbers, most of whom were pastoralists or agriculturalists. The Berbers comprised four subdivisions, whose socioeconomic singularities were shaped by geographic location and occupational differences; the most numerous were the Kabyles. Less important in number but still politically influential were the Turks, all of whom lived in or around urban centers where the population was largely non-Algerian. Other urbanites included the Koulouglis, men of mixed Algerian and Turkish origin who had significant urban economic interests, and the Moors, descendants of Andalusian refugees who dominated the cultural and commercial life in Algiers and other towns. Finally, there were Jewish communities in towns throughout Algeria. The most influential of these were the juifs francs, Jews of Italian and French origin, who acted as the regency's commercial middlemen. They kept their distance from the older Jewish communities of Spanish origin, establishing strongholds in Algiers, Bône (now Annaba), and Constantine. Added to the existing economic and political instability, the social diversity of the regency, with its potential for fractiousness, created a setting that was propitious to European interference.

The Napoleonic invasion of Ottoman Egypt put a temporary stop to the grain trade between France and Algeria, and the two houses of Bushnaq and Bakri that handled the trade were not paid. Although negotiations to clear the account were carried on throughout the three decades leading up to French conquest, the debt was never settled. In 1827 when the French consul, Pierre Deval, was paying his respects to the dey, the question of repayment was brought up. In the ensuing altercation the dey tapped the consul with a fly whisk. Three years later the French prime minister, Jules de Polignac, wanting to divert attention from French domestic problems, used this breach of etiquette as an excuse for a punitive expedition to Algiers.

french conquest

On 14 June 1830, having assembled the largest naval force since the Napoleonic wars, the French landed west of Algiers at Sidi-Ferruch. Three weeks later Algiers was in French hands, and the dey and his family went into exile. The arbitrary imprisonments and killings and the pillaging, destruction, and expropriations of property were a mark of the brutality that was to characterize the whole colonial period.

The conquest of Algeria took twenty-seven years; seventeen of these were taken up in subduing the coastal regions and areas bordering the coast inhabited by nomadic pastoralists, mainly Arabs. A further ten years were necessary to subdue the mountainous region of the Djurdjura, which the French had dubbed Kabylia after the Kabyles who inhabited it. Initially the French sought to secure only the towns along the coast, which would provide the French strategically important outposts on the southern Mediterranean shore. Any British activity in the area could thus be countered from both sides of the sea. The French moved eastward from Algiers to Philippeville (present-day Skikda), but conquest was not easy. They encountered fierce resistance on the part of the Arabs, who combined forces under the leadership of the charismatic Abdelkader. Furthermore, cholera, malaria, and other ailments took a heavy toll, demoralizing the troops. In France indecision about the merits of colonizing the area meant that there was no coherent colonial policy.

The arrival in February 1841 of General (later Field Marshal) Thomas Bugeaud as military commander of Algeria (and governor-general as of 1845) transformed the situation for the French and eliminated existing uncertainties about whether or not to colonize. Bugeaud's innovative military strategies and brutal tactics gave the French the upper hand, and his theory of colonization, by the plough and the sword, encouraged the idea of military occupation and administration. By 1847 Abdelkader had been vanquished. A year later the area under French domination was divided into three departments and thus incorporated administratively into the French mainland. The same year Marshal Randon began the conquest of Kabylia. By 1858 the military deemed the pacification of Algeria to be complete.

military administration

It was during Bugeaud's tenure that the Bureaux Arabes (Arab bureaus), military administrative units established as liaisons between the French central government and the local chiefs, acquired their definitive form. A bureau comprised one or more French officers, depending on the size of the cercle, or unit, administered; a "native" adjunct; and if necessary an interpreter and a French medical officer. A number of cercles were grouped together into subdivisions, which were in turn grouped into divisions, each commanded by an officer of appropriate rank. During the period of military rule, tribal administration was left to the officers of the Bureaux Arabes. Policies were not formulated in Paris but were developed by the officers, evolving out of past experience in the cercles. "Indigenous" policy thus bore the imprint of the officers of the Bureaux Arabes.

As Bugeaud's conquests progressed, a scientific commission was established to reconnoiter the area under French control. In the tradition of the Napoleonic scholars who compiled the Description of Egypt (1809–1828), the commission's members covered every conceivable aspect of research that could be of use in understanding, administering, and colonizing the area, producing thirty-nine volumes published between 1844 and 1867. Although the period from 1830 to 1870 was one of military rule, civilian activity in the colony increased steadily. Periods of crisis in France led to an influx of new settlers. For example, following the coup d'état of 2 December 1851, which completed the destruction of the Second French Republic, the "mixed commissions" set up by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III) shipped thousands of men to Algeria, many of whom were sent there because they had risen up in defense of the republic or because they had been prominent Montagnards (leftists). Land expropriation, first in the urban centers and then in the rural areas, started the social dislocation that was to pauperize much of the local population. In the early days of conquest the French paid little attention to the moral or legal aspects of such expropriation. With time, however, they justified their actions by a series of legal measures designed to clarify land tenure procedures and allow the local population to present their case for retaining their property. A notable example was the Senatus-Consulte of 1863. Local landowners, who were not versed in French law, were at a distinct disadvantage in legal transactions, and unscrupulous settlers used this to their benefit.

Throughout the 1860s, the last decade of military administration, dubbed the royaume arabe (Arab kingdom) because of the pro-Arab policies of

Napoleon III, marked tensions developed between the military and the civilians. The strident civilian accusations of military Arabophilia were the manifestation of a power struggle to control the way in which colonization was to take shape. Military efforts to influence its progress, by stopping what the officers deemed to be civilian abuses, were unsuccessful. Paradoxically many of the policies instigated during the military administration to protect the local population from undue exploitation, such as the 1863 Senatus-Consulte, did more harm than good.

disturbances and revolts

Arab and Berber discontent manifested itself in sporadic revolts, the setting of forest fires, and passive resistance to French impositions, all of which fueled anti-"indigenous," and by extension antimilitary, sentiments among much of the civilian population. The collapse of the Second Empire in 1870 discredited the French army and provided an opportunity for the civilians to take over the administration of the colony. Furthermore, the 1870 events in France and the demise of the military regime in Algeria prompted the Kabyles to revolt. The Great Kabyle Rebellion of 1870–1871 nearly succeeded in expelling the French. In the wake of their near-defeat, French reprisals were draconian. Land expropriations, from which the military had largely sheltered the Kabyles until then, created long-term economic hardship and prompted the Kabyles to migrate in search of a livelihood first to urban centers and eventually to France. In the aftermath of the rebellion the settler lobby in Paris persuaded the National Assembly to enact a series of laws, applicable only to the Muslims of the colony, transgression of which would lead to imprisonment or fines. The numerous offenses included being disrespectful to a French official, traveling without a permit, defaming the

French Republic, refusing to fight forest fires, and so forth. Designed as a temporary measure to control resistance in the aftermath of the 1871 rebellion, the Code de l'Indigénat lasted until World War II and was a humiliating reminder to the Muslims that they were mere subjects, and second-class ones at that.

civilian rule

The early years of civilian rule developed in tandem with the establishment of the Third Republic in France. Citizenship, education, and economic development were central concerns of the colonial regime. In 1870 the Crémieux decrees granted French citizenship to Algerian Jews. The Muslims, on the other hand, could not obtain French citizenship unless they renounced their personal status as set down in Muslim customary law, an act that amounted to apostasy for the devout. Settler society in Algeria was made up largely of nationals from southern Europe: Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Maltese, and Greeks. The French, always reluctant to emigrate, were the minority. Fears that the demographic imbalance between the French and their subjects would lead to serious sociopolitical problems prompted the colonial authorities to pass a law in 1889 granting French citizenship to all children of European origin born in Algeria. By the 1890s, therefore, all but the Muslims had obtained French citizenship. Citizenship, however, was not the ticket to social equality. Those of southern Mediterranean origin were considered to be neo-français by the "true" French. Frenchness became the yardstick by which one's social standing was measured, creating a hierarchy with ethnocultural markers that were easily transformed into racist configurations. The Arabs and Berbers who, with few exceptions, were neither citizens nor sufficiently acculturated to be considered "French" were inevitably at the bottom.

From 1870 to 1914 settler society took root in Algeria. Diseases, such as cholera and malaria, which had taken such a heavy toll in the early years, were kept in check so that the expansion of the European population in the colony was no longer just a question of immigration. The mosquito-infested swamplands of the Mitidja were cleared and cultivated. The phylloxera epidemic in France prompted the development of the Algerian wine industry, which became one of the colony's leading sources of wealth. The economy was gradually transformed from an indigenously controlled subsistence economy to a settler controlled capitalist one. Land sequestration provided the land for these developments, while the ensuing pauperization of the local population meant that there was a constant supply of cheap labor for the labor-intensive capitalism that the settlers were developing.

In the face of such aggressive colonization and systematic settler opposition to any reforms, there was little the Algerians could do but retrench and bide their time. French education, the pathway to economic and political empowerment in the colony, was largely inaccessible and would remain so until after World War I. Islam became the refuge from which to counter French influences. It was only during the interwar period that opposition to French rule achieved the necessary organizational structure that eventually led to independence in 1962.

See alsoFrance; Imperialism.

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Patricia M. E. Lorcin