Civilizing through Cork: Conservationism and la Mission Civilisatrice in French Colonial Algeria

Abstract

The French occupation of Algeria began in 1830 and lasted over 130 years. In the decades following the initial conquest, French imperial agents emphasized the colonial enterprise's social and environmental aims. Claiming that centuries of misuse and abuse had decimated Algeria's environment, they presented the colonial project as an opportunity to adapt indigenous inhabitants to more sustainable uses of land. This civilizing mission helped elevate Algerian cork production into one of the colony's most profitable industries. In the process, it had a detrimental impact on Algerian forests and mobile pastoralists. This article uses cork as a case study to explore the meaning of the French civilizing ethic and its role in France's occupation of Algeria. It makes three main claims. First, it argues that the nineteenth-century French civilizing mission combined social and environmental values, perceptions, and concerns. Second, it demonstrates that this ethic was a guiding factor in the French conquest of Algeria. Finally, it posits that the Algerian cork industry succeeded in part because it purported to embody the French colonial mission's social and environmental ideals.