Teaching morality and religion in nineteenth-century colonial Algeria: gender and the civilising mission

Abstract

Historians have long presented France’s ‘civilizing mission’ within its colonies in secular terms ignoring women’s presence as both actors and subjects. This is particularly true in Algeria where the colonial government’s explicitly prohibited proselytism. This artilce emphasizes women’s roles pursuing both secular and religious goals in Algeria. An initial section highlights the early effors to include Muslim girls in the civilizing mission through the creation of Mme Luce’s Arab-French school for girls in 1845. Secondly, the article explores how issues of morality combined with gender power politics to end this experiment in schooling urban indigeneous girls. The civilizing mission was not limited, however, to the local Arabs, Moors or Berbers as teachers and clerics recognized that the European settler populations sorely required moral uplift. As a result, a third sections examines the activities of female Catholic teaching congregations exploring their ‘forgotten’ contribution to the colonial educational project.