Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria by Joshua Cole

Abstract

Reviewed by: Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria by Joshua Cole Benjamin Sparks Cole, Joshua. Lethal Provocation: The Constantine Murders and the Politics of French Algeria. Cornell UP, 2019. ISBN 978-1-5017-3941-5. Pp. 317. Relations between the Jewish and Muslim populations in Constantine in eastern Algeria during the interwar period reached a climax in August 1934 with the riots and murder of twenty-five Jews and three Algerian Muslims. The tension between these two parties traces its origins largely to issues of citizenship and the Crémieux decree of 1870, which allotted a majority of the Algerian Jewish population full French [End Page 233] citizenship. However, the Muslim community was not granted the same access and remained under second-class indigenous status outlined in the Code de l'Indigénat. With this citizenship, the Jews were allowed to vote while only representing 12% of the population. Meanwhile, they represented 25% of the electorate. The distinction between Europeans, Muslims, and Jews shaped the politics of colonial Algeria, and the strain on political relations among these groups provides some of the background details that lead to the riots and murders of 1934. Mohammed Salah Bendjelloul, an Algerian Muslim and proponent for electoral reform, contributed to the strife in the French political system and became a leading spokesperson for his community and political alliance, the Fédération des élus musulmans de Constantine. The official report of the 1934 events, never released to the public but accessible through the archives today, blames the violence and riots on religious fanaticism. Initial speculation blamed this fanaticism on Bendjelloul's followers. Joshua Cole, however, argues that our understanding of the events requires a reevaluation of the riots and murders as acts of provocation by a small group and not unrelated spontaneous incidents of religious fanaticism. To address this revision, Cole approaches this history by arguing that Mohamed El Maadi, a soldier in the French army, was not only a local conspirator but also an infamous extremist who, as part of a larger unknown organization, planned, provoked, and led the murders of at least twenty of the Jewish victims on 5 August 1934. El Maadi's participation, however, was not included in official reports and investigations, leading to an apparent cover-up due to possible links with four separate levels of government authority in Constantine. Shortly after the riots, El Maadi departed the region on a six-month leave due to previous injuries sustained in 1927, suggesting, as Cole does, that his superiors wanted him far from the investigation. A later unrelated document about a political murder in 1938 from the same organization that led the investigation in Constantine, the police mobile, indicates that the police believed El Maadi to be the leading force of the violence on 5 August. Cole provides a history of El Maadi's life after the 1934 events to indicate his anti-Semitic inclinations, including his role in the Vichy government and later involvement in the German SS, to validate the hypothesis that El Maadi had been the leading figure for the murder of the Jews that day. Cole's history of the murders in Constantine provides an intriguing reading of a murder mystery and its cover-up, interconnected in the sociopolitical history of colonial Algeria. Benjamin Sparks University of Memphis (TN) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French