Algerians without Borders: The Making of a Global Frontier Society by Allan Christelow

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 287 the work, do we find what we’ve missed, a brief note of the importance of the religion, and of its dominance in the work of al-Shammākhī. To do it justice, a different book is required. MICHAEL BRETT School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ALLAN CHRISTELOW, ALGERIANS WITHOUT BORDERS: THE MAKING OF A GLOBAL FRONTIER SOCIETY. GAINSVILLE: UNIVERSITY PRESS OF FLORIDA, 2012. Trans-nationality is always a complicated issue, particularly when the emergence of a national identity and its timing is often difficult to pin down. In this volume, Allan Christelow brings together many life stories and anecdotes which interweave in sometimes startling ways to reveal the web of ‘Algerians’ located around the world. The book spans a period from the late eighteenth up to the twenty first century and it is based on the premise that ‘Algerians’ have always been an outgoing people, involved in global affairs often in unexpected ways, and that they have also been travellers and migrants whose experiences have helped shape global affairs but also the modern history of Algeria itself. Christelow adopts a roughly chronological approach, moving gradually from the tentative external contacts of a few Algerians in the eighteenth century to the great migrant flows engendered by French colonialism and postindependence economic need. His purpose in exploring trans-national encounters, what he describes as a ‘global frontier society’, is to ‘ask what factors make it possible to build or maintain a viable framework of negotiation, and what a factors can lead to its breakdown.’ (p24) However, why Algerians are more on the ‘frontier of civilisations’ than other North Africans, for instance, is not completely clear. Chapter one looks at the tentative contacts between inhabitants of the Ottoman Deylik of Algiers and the rest of the world and their ultimate failure to avoid colonisation by the French. The next chapter explores the very different and more intense population movement engendered during the colonial era. Chapter three moves on to the First World War and its ramifications for Algerians at home and abroad. The Revolutionary Era which includes the struggle for independence and the dynamics of post-independence Algeria is the subject of chapter four while chapter five brings us to the present with insights into the contemporary Algerian diaspora. 288 BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS Although chronological, the book’s narrative is not linear but depends on a series of micro-histories and incidents which illustrate the larger points which Christelow seeks to make. This approach adds colour and interest to what can, in other contexts, seem rather bland statistics about army recruits or migrants. Instead Christelow gives us real people in real situations whose stories weave through the pages of the book in implicit emulation of the historian al-Hajj Ahmad Sharif al-Zahhar whose work informs the first chapter. Christelow’s deep knowledge of his subject is revealed on every page in his ability to make connections between disparate individuals which depends on his mastery of a huge range of source materials. The obverse of the coin is that, even for someone with a fair knowledge of the history of modern Algeria, the constant shifts of focus and sometimes tenuous connections between anecdotes and ideas undermines the book’s narrative unity. There are frequent shifts from political affairs, to culture, especially the impact of theatre, cinema and music, and to medicine and welfare, and also to different parts of the globe. While each section is fascinating in its own right, the headings of these sections and sub-sections leave the reader questioning where each really fits in the longer story being told. Moreover, the whole notion of ‘Algeria’ and ‘Algerians’ is problematic, particularly in the earlier sections of the book. Although a figure such as ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri became a national hero in later times, it is debatable whether he understood his own identity as ‘Algerian’ in the modern sense of the word. References to Ibn Khaldün and much earlier empires such as those of the Fatimids and Almohads also do more to obfuscate than clarify the story of the Algerian diaspora in the last two centuries. Nonetheless, Chistelow...