Algerian Question Research Articles

Decolonization Struggles at the United Nations: The Question of Algeria, 1955-1961

AbstractAlthough national self-determination emerged as an international legal norm with the formation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945, its implementation continued to be resisted by European colonial powers for decades after. This raises the following question: how was European colonial rule challenged at the UN? This article contends that existing accounts of decolonization have not fully theorized the processes through which colonialism was contested at the UN. It fills this gap by demonstrating the critical role of argumentation, narrativization and discursive struggles through deploying the crucial “Question of Algeria” that was debated between 1955 and 1961. It demonstrates that the Algerian question yielded two opposing discourses—an anticolonial internationalist discourse and a metrocentric civilizational discourse—with both drawing on distinct ideas about human rights and development. The analysis explains the eventual triumph of the former as states increasingly rallied behind the Algerian cause.

Projects of Colonization of Algeria During the Early French Occupation (1830–1834)

After the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 and with the further conquest of North African lands, the share of the European population in the conquered territories was constantly increasing. At the same time, at the early stage of the French occupation of Algeria in 1830-1834, the fate of the lands seized by the French was not resolved, and there were different solutions to the “Algerian question”. This period has not received sufficient coverage in historiography. This article examines plans for the colonization and further development of Algeria on the materials of the Archives nationales d'outre-mer in Aix-en-Provence (A.N.O.M. F 80/1161), containing many projects dedicated to the colonization of the country, which were sent by French citizens for consideration in the Chamber of Deputies in the period 1830–1834. An auxiliary source used in the article is the published transcripts of the debates in the French Parliament. The projects of colonization were various and mostly utopian, and the authors themselves did not have clear understanding of the natural, ethno-confessional, and social realities of the country in which they proposed to establish a colony. The analysis of the archival materials revealed a wide cross-section of opinions on the structure of the future colony in Algeria and demonstrated the aspirations of the French of that time to regain the prestige of France in the international arena, to get a rich colony, and to evict the “inconvenient” population, i.e. prisoners, the poor, the unemployed, and emigrants to Algeria.

The Cult of the Modern: Trans-Mediterranean France and the Construction of French Modernity by Gavin Murray-Miller

Reviews 227 a “Western” entity for categorizing Arabs and French banlieue Muslims who partake in same-sex relations as homosexual, thereby imposing a Western homo-hetero binary that transforms sexual practices into identities on a group of people who presumably do share the same perspective. Both authors, however, ignore that many Arabs and banlieue Muslims who engage in same-sex relations do adopt a corresponding sexual identity. Mack goes so far as to excuse violence committed against gay banlieusards and places the blame on both the French equivalent of the Gay International and gay Muslims who adopt the homo-hetero binary.Yet, Mack’s thesis is unsubstantiated; he has not done any fieldwork among gay Muslims in the banlieue. Perhaps the author ought to have asked the “clandestine” why they remain “clandestine,” rather than uncritically adopting Massad’s central claims about the Gay International and the Arab World. In a book largely about gay Muslims, Mack does not bring up cases of actual,“ordinary”gay Muslims.The only gay Muslim association in France,Homosexuels musulmans de France (HM2F), receives only a fleeting mention in Mack’s book. Therefore , despite the timeliness of the topic, Sexagon is ultimately a conceptually and methodologically flawed study on gay Muslims in the banlieue. University of Manchester Adi S. Bharat Murray-Miller, Gavin. The Cult of the Modern: Trans-Mediterranean France and the Construction of French Modernity. Lincoln: UP of Nebraska, 2017. ISBN 9780 -8032-9064-8. Pp. 336. Murray-Miller first traces the key ideological concepts of la France transméditerran éenne and modernity in France before and after the Second Empire, which was “constitutive of the social relations and political projects that assumed shape over the course of the nineteenth century” (7). The author examines modernity as a “decentered and diasporic community extending across national and spatial frontiers” (45), modernity as it was imagined by elites in post-revolutionary France with the onset of colonial conquests, the Algerian colonization during the nineteenth century and the colonial logic anchored in the belief in France’s mission civilisatrice and the perfectibility of mankind. He goes on to outline Napoléon III’s imperial civilization rhetoric, the“political culture of modernity”(80), populist and modernizing strategies and policies (colonial exhibitions, technological innovations, infrastructure improvements , industrial exhibitions and urban renovation in France and Algeria), used to legitimize his Coup d’état. The pax Napoléon “constituted the germ of transMediterranean civilizing mission” (64) which justified the use of violence against opponents. Chapter 3 examines debates on nationalité, unité, and nativism, the emperor’s politique de nationalité and its “penchant to represent the modernizing impulses of colonialism as a trans-Mediterranean program of national revival and nation-building” (95), in particular through its politique indigène and the creation of Arab Offices in Algeria as examples of French modernization efforts. The author also discusses the politicization of the Second Empire’s divisive education policies, debates over secular and religious instruction, the role of education as a tool of pacification and sociability in Algeria and student activism in France. He analyzes the links between Positivism and republicanism, the emergence of scientific republicanism and a new liberalism and heated debates surrounding the complex concepts of liberty, Positivism, democracy, Bonapartist modernity and authoritarianism, and acceptable forms of postrevolutionary republican democracy advocated by“young”republicans (181). He also discusses the challenges to“forge a national and democratic polity”(193) in rural France and the need for decentralization and the development of the press as a means of socialization and politicization of the rural population in particular. He maps the transformation of the“Algerian question into a national one”(212), that is the appropriation by the colons of the terms of republican modernization to the colony. Murray-Miller convincingly demonstrates that“Nation and Empire, France and North Africa became central to the articulation of the new social imaginary that modernity anticipated” (251). This meticulously researched and intellectually stimulating study focuses primarily on continental France (not so much, as indicated by the title, on France’s colonies and trans-Mediterranean relations, with the exception of the final chapter). The author makes excellent use of historical source materials—though all of them originate from prominent...

Drawing Algeria into Europe: shifting French policy and the Treaty of Rome (1951–1964)

In France and Europe today, claims arise defining so-called Muslim and European ‘worlds’ and labelling them irreconcilable. These claims ignore the intertwined history of France and North Africa. When the six founding members of the European Economic Community (EEC) signed the Treaty of Rome, French administrators still considered Algeria to be a constituent part of France, despite the ongoing war. The Algerian question was central to negotiations for the Treaty of Rome and during them, French officials attempted to inscribe Algeria within the founding documents of the European project through a policy of ‘Eurafrique’. Their partners, eager for France’s signature on the Treaty, accepted a vision of integrated Europe with borders crossing the Mediterranean. This decision raised thorny issues in the months and years to come, first in debates of how or even if the Treaty could be implemented overseas, then when independent Algeria attempted to define its relationship with the EEC. These episodes of negotiation and interaction reveal the centrality of the question of empire to the foundations of integrated Europe.

A Conflicted Sense of Nationality: Napoleon III’s Arab Kingdom and the Paradoxes of French Multiculturalism

Abstract Les débats les plus récents à l’égard de l’identité nationale française ont révélé la résistance républicaine à la diversité culturelle dans la communauté nationale, exposant les problèmes de l’État pour encourager actuellement l’intégration musulmane. En revoyant les débats relatif à la nationalité et l’Algérie pendant le dix-neuvième siècle, cet article examine l’origine du multiculturalisme pathologique français en rapport avec la politique du Royaume Arabe. Il affirme que les débats sur la « question algérienne » sous le Second Empire déterminaient considérablement les conceptions de la nationalité et la modernité en France. En dépit de l’intention du Royaume Arabe d’établir une place pour les musulmans dans la nation française, il a confirmé en fin de compte les distinctions entre les ressortissants français et a sapé le but de réaliser une communauté cosmopolite française. Malgré cet échec les années du Second Empire constituait une époque dans laquelle les imaginaires nationaux parallèles ont émergé dans la politique française, mettant en lumière les possibilités alternatives à la nationalité républicaine française et le communauratisme républicain qui persiste au present.

Ferienlager gegen die Rebellion. Jumelages und Colonies de vacances im Algerienkrieg (1959–1962)

Holiday Camps against the Rebellion. Jumelages and Colonies de vacances in the Algerian War (1959–1962) The article discusses a still unexplored aspect of the Algerian War (1954–1962). Due to the Algerian question, the French government increasingly came under international and domestic pressure. Starting in 1959, Paris therefore began to establish a broad network of partnerships involving the Algerian arrondissements and the départements of metropolitan France. These Franco-Algerian co-operations were called partnerships and were organised in close consultation with the local representatives in metropolitan France. They should facilitate the colonial propaganda at the regional level. Furthermore, they created the framework, which allowed shortterm stays of over 8000 Algerian children in holiday camps in French twin-départements. The purpose of these undertakings was both to strengthen the relationships between Algeria and metropolitan France, and to maintain the colonial status quo, which were both threatened by the Algerian War.

Confronting The Stone Face : The Critical Cosmopolitanism of William Gardner Smith

In one of key moments of William Gardner Smith's 1963 novel The Stone Face, African American expatriate Simeon Brown passes near Odeon metro station in Paris when he is hailed by a man speaking in thickly accented English. Hey, stranger shouts, How it feel to be a man? (Stone Face 55). Simeon is startled at this outburst, and by laughter of shouter's companions. After all, he is visibly black, and four men who are heckling him are light-skinned Algerians. However, although label seems absurd to him, he recognizes almost instantly that it is true: here, in Paris of early 1960s, he is indeed enjoying, in spite of his skin color, privileges of a man, and it is Algerian minority that takes place of, as one of them puts it, the niggers (57). Simeon is deeply shocked at this realization, which at once destroys illusion of a racial paradise with which Paris so far seemed to present him. The fate of Algerians in France, he suddenly understands, is different but at same time similar to fate of African Americans in segregated United States; while he himself, as a black American, might be safe and free in Paris, others are not. Simeon's painful recognition about omnipresence of racism and oppression mirrors that of novel's author, who made similar experiences and came to similar insights as a black American expatriate in France during 1950s and '60s. Once believed to be on verge of a great literary career, William Gardner Smith faded into obscurity after his death, and his work has received very little attention over years from scholars of African American literature. His biographer LeRoy Hodges noted in 1985 that Smith was--unjustly--considered a minor writer with a marginal creative output (i), and despite Hodges's efforts, little has changed since then. However, Smith's work--and particularly his fourth and final novel The Stone Face--deserves more scholarly attention, as Michel Fabre, Paul Gilroy, and Tyler Stovall all have pointed out. (1) Not only is novel one of few African American texts dealing with complicated relationship of black U. S. community in Paris to so-called Algerian question; it is also an impressive exploration of difficulties and complexities of intercultural understanding, and of ways that cosmopolitan sentiments and attitudes are produced and expressed. Smith's protagonist Simeon starts out as a man habituated to American patterns of racism, haunted by his memories of violence and abuse, and rather oblivious to French racialization and discrimination of Algerians. In course of story, however, and as a result of his encounters with people he learns to care for, Simeon comes to understand that inhuman stone face of racism--which gives novel its title--is universal, even if its colors and features vary as much as those of its victims. Simeon's reaction to this realization is to change his understanding of France as a racism-free space and to give up his privileged position as a white man. Newly politicized, he begins to actively support Algerian liberation struggle, and, at end of novel, decides to return to U. S. to support civil rights movement there. This final moment of homecoming, Simeon's apparent abandonment of a political conflict in exile in favor of what seems to be a more domestic national struggle, is what Paul Gilroy, in Against Race (2000), has termed a capitulation to demands of a narrow version of cultural kinship (323). In Gilroy's view, Smith's choice to send his protagonist home to African America significantly damages what is otherwise a powerful story about cosmopolitan personal expansion and universal political commitment. For this reason, Gilroy insists, novel does not measure up to best historical examples yielded by actual black Atlantic itinerants whose lives might be used today to affirm other, more timely and rewarding choices (324). …

The Algerian Question in Nkrumah's Ghana, 1958–1960: Debating “Violence” and “Nonviolence” in African Decolonization

In recent years, historians and other scholars have greatly expanded how they approach the study of African decolonization. This article builds upon this growing scholarship by exploring the political and intellectual debates surrounding the use of “violence” in decolonization. Taking Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana as its setting, it explores the ways in which the armed struggle of the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962) helped transform African perceptions of the political and social processes of decolonization in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as the moral ambiguities surrounding them. It shows how the Algerian presence in the Ghanaian capital of Accra competed with and transformed Nkrumah’s own interpretations of decolonization and the possibilities of a pan-African world created through “nonviolent Positive Action.”

The Algerian Question in Nkrumah's Ghana, 1958–1960: Debating “Violence” and “Nonviolence” in African Decolonization

The Algerian Question in Nkrumah's Ghana, 1958–1960: Debating “Violence” and “Nonviolence” in African Decolonization

Dialectic or Dissemination? Anti-colonial Critique in Sartre and Derrida

Sartre's writing on colonialism and anti-colonial critique is diverse, protean and frequently self-contradictory, and for this reason has generated a good deal of controversy. His celebrated and notorious 'Orphée noir', written as the preface to Senghor's Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, has been read as both veneration and critique of the negritude movement, and he has been named both spokesman and traitor of anti-colonial resistance in Africa. Explicating the dynamics of an assertion of black identity in contradistinction to colonial influence, Sartre introduced revolutionary black poetry to the European audience it was directed against, only to be condemned by some of the other negritude thinkers, such as Alioune Diop, as eurocentric and blinded by his own position as a metropolitan, and therefore colonial, intellectual. The version of negritude promoted in 'Orphée noir' was criticised by such thinkers for being too rigid and essentialist, yet conversely, Fanon objected that Sartre's stress on the movement as transitory and provisional meant that was insufficiently immersed in 'authentic black experience'. In addition, Sartre's more journalistic writing, which called for the withdrawal of the French presence in Algeria during the war of independence, aptly served to draw attention to dissension about the Algerian question within French society, but, as Robert Young points out, the Marxist approach underpinning many of these pieces has also been seen as universalising.

Guerres de mémoires autour de la question algérienne. À propos de quelques revendications militantes

■ Savarese Memory Wars About the Algerian Question : Concerning Some Militant Claims In a time when commemoration belongs to civic virtues, the French state is now confronted with the splitting of Algerian memories. The Pied-Noir example shows that the same existence of distinctive groups (Pieds-Noirs, Harkis, etc.) depends on the militant involvement in such Algerian memory wars. Besides, the so-called wars set off an intense political activity, each group aiming to obtain from authorities the official establishment of memory places and museums in benefice of their own memory and at others expense.

Le parti social-démocrate allemand face à la guerre d’Algérie (1958-1962)

The SDP leaders gave priority to Franco-German relations over the Algerian question, even after their 1958 Congress, when the pro-NLF minority could no longer be regarded as insignificant. They hardened their words but did not alter their approach and basically kept looking at the Algerian war from a German angle. The Fraktion concerned itself with the Foreign Legion, the inspection of German ships by the French navy, the presence of Algerians in the FRG. For a minority group around Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, Willi Eichler, Peter Blachstein, Hellmut Kalbitzer etc., who considered decolonisation as a modern form of the emancipation of mankind, the Algerian war had symbolical value. They thus committed themselves to providing logistic backing, information as well as political support for the NLF. Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski is likely to have played a significant part in the evolution of the Auwärtiges Amt’s policy. As an opposition Member of Parliament, he was able to take responsibility for actions government officials could not undertake. The SDP could thus pride itself on having contributed to the working out of the new German Third World policy, in accordance with the Bad Godesberg programme. All Social Democrats however were disappointed by the turn of events in Algeria after independence.

FRENCH ATTITUDES TO EMPIRE AND THE ALGERIAN WAR

THIS ARTICLE has two aims, one general and one specific. The first is to throw some more light on French attitudes to Empire, and the second is to examine the proposition that it was the peculiar 'consensus' of such attitudes that more than anything else was responsible for the traumas of decolonization in the 1950s in Indo-China, Morocco, Tunisia but above all in Algeria. French attitudes to Empire during the IIIrd Republic (1871-1940) have been analysed in some detail by Brunschwig, Girardet and Ageron who have presented a clear picture of a strong and disproportionally powerful 'Parti Colonial' exploiting French self-doubts, economic anxieties and the Napoleonic tradition of the 'civilising mission' to create a mood of chauvinistic expansionism which was the dynamic force behind the creation of the French Empire in Africa and Asia. However, the attitudes of the 'Parti Colonial' were by no means representative of the whole of France, leaving some Frenchmen indignant and an even greater number indifferent.' Vichy France, the mauvaise conscience of the twentieth century French experience, has only recently started seriously to emerge from the polite cloud of humbug that denied that it existed at all except as a background to the Resistance. Thus whilst much is known about the role played by the colonies as the only concrete reality of 'Free France' much less is known about the colonies as an expression of Vichy France.2 That the humiliation of 1940 cast a long shadow over the IVth Republic (1946-58) and that the colonies, now constituted as the Union frangaise offered a chink of light in an otherwise sombre view of France's position in the world is difficult to doubt. Yet by 1960 almost all the colonies were either independent or well on their way to becoming so. What then was the nature of the colonial commitment of these years? It was above all the Algerian question that put France's commitment to her colonies to the test. Although severely shaken by the war in Indo-China and the troubles in Morocco and Tunisia, faith in the need to maintain 'Algerie frangaise' was widely shared in 1954. Algeria, after all was the jewel of France's empire. Invaded by the French in 1830, by 1954 its population included over a million settlers of European origin and represented France's

Sartre on Colonialism

In the fifth volume of his collected essays, Jean-Paul Sartre has brought together thirteen pieces written during the last ten years and dealing with the problems of colonialism and decolonization. They range from prefaces or reviews of books to polemical articles and interviews on the Algerian question and French politics; as is to be expected, they vary widely in quality as well as importance. Some of them are perhaps better seen as documents, testimonials of Sartre's courageous stand against the policies of successive French cabinets toward Algeria. At a time when the majority of the French people and of their leaders were striving to avoid seeing or acknowledging the profound moral issues confronting them, Sartre's voice was among the few raised to point out the real problems, to remind Frenchmen of their own recent experience under the Nazis, and to warn them against imitating those Germans who "did not know" what was happening at Dachau and Auschwitz. At the time of the Hungarian revolt of 1956, Sartre did not let his commitment to Marxism and to the left still his voice or his conscience. During the Algerian war, in the late 1950's, he became once again the conscience and the voice of French humanism and French culture. He and his collaborators and friends kept up the intellectual (and sometimes material) contact between France, as a nation and as an idea, and her rebellious colonial subjects.

The French Catholic Hierarchy and the Algerian Question

OR ALMOST EIGHT YEARS, from 1954 to 1962, France passed through one of the most severe ordeals in her checkered history. The Algerian war toppled a regime, fundamentally altered the division of powers within France, revolutionized France's colonial policy, caused the ruin of some political parties, and made the fortune of others. The gravity of the conflict led almost all responsible Frenchmen, no matter how far removed from politics, to speak out on the Algerian question. During this time of social tension and moral disorganization men with recognized and unimpeachable integrity had a particularly good opportunity to present their advice to France. Of course, many such people can be found in the French clergy and Catholic laymen's groups. Numerically, French Catholics form the largest subgroup within the French nation. But the Catholic subgroup is far from being monolithic. Catholics profess no one political ideology; groups impregnated with Catholic values are located on almost every spot of the French political spectrum. Yet all Catholics must recognize the spiritual leadership of the Church hierarchy, and particularly of the French bishops.' As the recognized spiritual and moral leaders in a largely Catholic country, the French bishops have a unique opportunity to mold public opinion through their pronouncements and published declarations. A large audience of the Catholic faithful is always attentive to any bishop's declaration. Indeed, a great many French Catholics are willing to be directed by the Church even in political affairs.2 In addition, the most noteworthy declarations of bishops are reported by all major newspapers, and are given careful attention by French policy-makers. Ever since World War I pushed the church-state issue off center stage in French political life, the French bishops have been moving away from political involvement. Today one sees the result of this evolution: with certain exceptions an election, unrest among workers or farmers, or other political events bring from the bishops only general exhortations for civic virtue and political awareness rather than statements of high partisan content. But the Algerian war threatened

The French Catholic Hierarchy and the Algerian Question

The French Catholic Hierarchy and the Algerian Question

Arab League

The agenda of the Arab League Council meeting in Cairo during the last three weeks of February i960 reportedly centered around consideration of “the whole Palestine case in all its aspects,” comprising such problems as organization of the Palestinian people, formation of a Palestine defense army, use of the waters of the Jordan River for irrigation purposes, representation of the Palestine people by a legitimate body to speak in their name, and proposals for reactivization of the UN Arab-Israeli conciliation commission.’ The agenda also included discussion of the Algerian question, with representatives of the self-proclaimed Algerian provisional government expected to ask the League to support proposals put forward by the recent All African Peoples' Conference in Tunis for the organization of a force of Arab-African volunteers to help the Algerian nationalists. The first debate of the meeting was said to have occurred over the absence of two League members, Iraq and Tunisia, the leaders of which were at odds with President Nasser of the United Arab Republic. Cablegrams stressing the importance of their participation in the Cairo discussions were dispatched to the two countries at the suggestion of the foreign minister of Jordan.

Suez, Hungary and European Integration

The double crisis we witnessed last autumn dates back to six months ago, yet it may already be possible to outline a schematic picture of its repercussions on the international organizations in Europe. I shall describe neither the structures of these organizations nor the way they work, but, rather, the political context, which alone permits us to evaluate their potential for action and influence on the European scene. This paper will therefore deal first with the immediate consequences of the Budapest massacres and with the unsuccessful enterprise of the Anglo-French forces in Suez. It will then try to evaluate the present political motivations of the French, British, and German policies, and this will lead to an examination of the political decay of both NATO in Europe and the Western European Union. A cursory glance at what is usually called the European parliaments—already in existence or in the process of being created—will lead us to conclusions in which the Algerian question and the question of German reunification will figure more predominantly than international organizations whose juridical future seems more certain than their political effectiveness.