Massacres and Modernities: Nature, scandal and empire in North Africa

Abstract

In the spring of 1869, after years of environmental disaster, a caravan of Hammama (Tunisian) merchants crossed into Nememcha (Algerian) territory to buy grain at market. A faction of Nememcha cavaliers slaughtered them, possibly under the direction of the French Arab Bureau. The “Scandal of the Oued Mahouine” has many interesting aspects; this article considers why the massacre was not carried out by Ahmed Lakhdar. Head of a Nememcha faction, Lakhdar refused the oral request of the Arab Bureau officer de Boyat to raid the caravan, citing the lack of a written command. This article examines the particular character of modernity in the Maghrib through this instance of colonial audacity: What does it mean for Ahmed Lakhdar to have insisted on written orders? Can we arrive at a universal modernism through a history of local contingencies? The actions of Ahmed Lakhdar help us understand the peculiarly local way that ecology and empire could conspire to create modernity, and how “modern” forms of command, control and power were understood and (re)produced in the imperial nineteenth century.