The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria by Owen White (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria by Owen White Kolleen M. Guy White, Owen–The Blood of the Colony: Wine and the Rise and Fall of French Algeria. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021. 319 p. French Algeria was the fourth-largest wine producer in the world for much of the twentieth century. And, yet, there has been no comprehensive study of wine and the vine in Algeria since the publication of Hildebert Isnard’s La vigne en Algérie: étude géographique in the 1950s (volume 1 in 1951, and volume 2 in 1954). Writing at a moment when Algerian vineyards were on the frontline of a nationalist insurrection, Isnard’s two-volume work was based on an impressive albeit limited range of archival sources. It has remained the starting point for scholars interested in colonial agriculture and the culture of the vine in North Africa—until now. With the publication of Owen White’s magisterial study, we have a comprehensive overview of the vine and wine in Algeria that makes use of new archival collections and new methodological approaches. The result is an essential read for anyone interested in French wine, environment, race, and the aggressive capitalism of imperialism. [End Page 236] It was the aggressive capitalist pursuit of commodities that shaped the early French colonizer’s vision of the landscape of Algeria. Agricultural production in North Africa, including the cultivation of vines for wine, was diverse and thriving at the time of conquest. What the early colonists saw, however, was not success but “potential.” French inspection after 1830 projected the ecology of southern France on North Africa with rows of grain, olive trees, and grape vines enhanced under an agricultural mission civilisatrice. Much like in other colonial ventures, the European-born settlers and planners experimented with the best path to extract wealth. Land appropriation and diminished property rights for Indigenous Algerians led to widespread destruction of local forms of cultivation. Great hopes were placed by colonial advocates in crops like tobacco and cotton that would complement the metropolitan economy. By the late 1860s, with the colony running a commercial deficit and famine and other hardships facing those on the land, settlers turned away from these experiments and returned to crops that had long been cultivated by Indigenous Algerians, including the vine. It would be a mistake, however, to see the spectacular rise in vine cultivation after 1870 as inevitable. White makes a case that the expansion of the Algerian vineyard had a gold-rush quality where gamblers who were willing to place bold bets might reap big payoffs. Some of the high stakes gamblers built fortunes by betting on vineyard expansion just as the metropolitan wine production was crippled by a still unnamed vine blight. Smaller players with ties to Europe were also able to improve their fortunes through some well-timed gambles on land, vines, or allied services, such as barrel making or wine transport. Phylloxera was a wild card, however, creating opportunities and ruining fortunes when it eventually was discovered on Algerian vines. White argues that the combination of phylloxera and market fluctuations made for the consolidation of land in the hands of banks and wealthy investors. This reality did not deter the creation of the myth of the French “colonizing genius.” By 1892, Jules Ferry toured the Algerian vineyards highlighting what he saw as the heroic achievement of colonization and the role of vines in “consecrating” the land to assure it was “fully and authentically French” (p. 64). Vines became a symbol of the “spirit of enterprise” in the French colonial project. While South Africa had its “Randlords” with portfolios based on a similar rush for gold and diamond extraction, Algeria now had what White calls “vinelords” with fortunes and political power based on vast tracts of vine monoculture and vertical investments (p. 79). On the eve of the Great War, Algeria exported more wine than any other region of the world. With this new global position came a “refashioning of the land and the shaping of local identities” (p. 79). These local identities, in the first half of the twentieth century, were shaped...