Trans-Imperial Islam in the Crucible of War

Abstract

Chapter 7 examines France’s North African empire during the years of the First World War, noting how trans-imperial movements fueled by the war destabilized and outwardly challenged notions of a bounded “French North Africa.” As recent histories of the First World War have shown, the conflict was characterized by the intensification of imperial struggles after 1914 as the Entente and Central Powers struggled for global dominance. With Germany fomenting anti-colonial revolutionary movements across Africa and the Middle East as part of its war strategy and the Ottoman Empire declaring a global jihad, both France and Britain faced the prospect of colonial revolts in their Muslim empires. In this context, expressions of solidarity among North African Muslims evident on the eve of the war were radicalized, especially as German agents offered material assistance to Muslim activists. Algerian and Tunisian dissidents took to the press and set up revolutionary committees in Switzerland, Istanbul, and Berlin. They espoused notions of Wilsonian self-determination and spoke in the name of an Algerian-Tunisian Muslim community demanding postwar independence. Pan-Islamism and North African Muslim unity came together in this anti-colonial campaign, demonstrating the extent to which opposition assumed both an intra-imperial and trans-imperial dimension as the war progressed. By examining newspapers and magazines published in French, German, and English, this chapter follows North African activists who used the aid offered by Germany and the Ottoman Empire to pursue their own anti-colonial platforms.