Language learning versus vocational training: French, Arab and British voices speak about indigenous girls’ education in nineteenth-century colonial Algeria

Abstract

This article focuses on the first school for indigenous girls in Algeria that opened in Algiers in 1845. The founder, Eugénie Luce, taught girls the rudiments – French language and grammar, reading, arithmetic, and Arabic, while the afternoon hours were devoted to sewing. This early focus on teaching French in order to achieve the “fusion of the races” by forming women who would be intermediaries between the French colonisers and indigenous families, foundered in the early 1860s. In the place of language learning, the colonial administration decided to support vocational training and transformed the existing schools into embroidery workshops. The workshop continued to exist until 1906 under the responsibility of Luce’s granddaughter, Henriette Benaben. The two women’s friendship with British women tourists had an impact on the way they promoted their activities and played a role in the shift toward teaching vocational skills. An analysis of the debates and discussion surrounding the nature of the Luce–Benaben school and workshop provide a way to question how cosmopolitan encounters and imperial examples shaped educational experiments in Algeria. By including the voices of French colonial administrators, Arab notables, British women visitors, and, of course, Luce herself, the article argues for the importance of considering trans-imperial encounters, as well as the weight of individual actors, in the interpretation of shifting colonial educational policy.