By Sword and Plow: French Settlement in Algeria
1880 map of French Algeria
The conquest of Algeria in 1830 was the beginning of France’s second period of imperial expansion. *
Like many colonial wars, the conquest became a sinkhole, eating armed forces and resources that many believed could better be used back home in France, which was in political turmoil following the July Revolution. (You could argue that France was in political turmoil for the entire nineteenth century, with a revolving door of revolution and restoration. But that’s a long story for another time.)
In the late 1830s, the commander in charge of the Algerian occupation and later Governor-General of French Algeria, General Thomas-Robert Bugeaud reached the conclusion that colonization was the only way to subdue Algeria, and consequently free up French troops needed to prevent social upheaval at home. Citing the example of Rome, he called for colonization on a grand scale: “Look for colons everywhere,” he urged. “Get them, whatever, the cost, from the towns, from the countryside, from among your neighbors…”
Drawn by the promise of fertile land, colons came from throughout the European Mediterranean and settled on land seized from its Algerian owners by a variety of legal stratagems.** The massive program of land distribution was made easier by the fact that the indigenous Algerian population was reduced by half between 1830 and 1850 as a result of the wars of conquest.
Algeria was formally integrated into the French national territory in 1848--after all it was only 400 miles away from Marseilles. European settlers (though not indigenous North Africans) were given the rights of French citizens, including representation in the parliament. By the end of World War II, when European imperialism was coming to an end, roughly one million settlers of European origin, known as pied noirs, had settled in Algeria--most of them not French. The colony’s economy was interwoven with that of the metropole and its cities were increasingly French in appearance and architecture.
Bugeaud had not planned on the fact that immigration would go both ways as it became easier to travel between Algeria and France. In the early twentieth century, Algerians began to migrate to France in search of jobs in the shipping, mining, construction and sugar refining industries, drawn by higher salaries and social benefits. The pied noirs complained bitterly about the loss of their work force. In response, the French government set up a department to control colonial recruitment. It did nothing to stem the flow of migrants. By the beginning of World War I, an estimated 80,000 Algerian colonial workers lived in France.*** During the war, roughly one third of Algeria’s male population were shipped to France as soldiers and workers to contribute to the war effort. 25,000 Algerian Muslims died on the battlefield defending France.
When the war was over, France made a concentrated effort to repatriate its Algerian soldiers--and to deport the Algerian workers that arrived before the war. (That's how you say "Thanks for the help. Job well done.") It didn’t work. Algerian migration to France increased. Perhaps because colonial expansion and land seizure in Algeria also increased. France soon had the largest Muslim population in Europe.
*France lost its first overseas empire at the end of the Seven Years’ War, known as the French and Indian Wars in the United States.
** My favorite? Deciding that the Arab owners “weren’t making good use of the land” and therefore should be relocated to land more suitable to their uses.
***It’s not clear to me if that number includes family members. It is likely that the migration patterns were similar to those of other ethnic groups in the late 19th and early 20th century: men traveled to the new country alone and sent money home to parents and wives. (Please note: at this point I’m making stuff up based on what I know about other places.)
****
Abd al-Qadir Fights Back
Abd al-Qadir by Rudolf Ernst
If the French hadn't invaded Algeria in 1830, Algerian emir Abd al-Qadir would probably have been content to follow his grandfather and father as the spiritual leader of the Qadiriyah Sufi order. In the fall of 1832, when the French began to expand their control into the Algerian interior, the Arab tribes of Oran elected al-Qadir as both the head of the Qadiriyah order and as their military leader.
Al-Qadir led Arab resistance against French expansion in North Africa from 1832 to 1847. He was so successful that at one point two-thirds of Algeria recognized him as its ruler. The French signed treaties with al-Qadir and broke them. (Similarities to the United States' relationship to its native peoples, anyone? ) After a crushing defeat in 1843, he was hunted across North Africa as an outlaw.
Abd al-Qadir surrendered at the end of 1847 and was imprisoned in France until 1853. Following his release, he settled in Damascus, where he entered the stage of world history one last time. In 1860, the Muslims of Damascus rose and began slaughtering the city's Christians. When the Turkish authorities did nothing to stop the massacre, Abd al-Qadir and 300 followers rescued over 12,000 Christians from the massacre. Once hunted by the French as a dangerous outlaw, Abd al-Qadir received the Legion of Honor from Napoleon III for his efforts.
Heroism is in the eye of the beholder.
Let Them Eat Cake?
Today we’re going to take a little side trip from French Algeria to think about grain*, thanks to Paul Hancq, who responded to my recent attempts to convert the price of an eighteenth century grain purchase into modern American dollars with the comment, “At any rate, that is a LOT of expensive grain!”
He’s right. That is a lot of grain. The army of the French Republic was large (in theory reaching a million and a half men following the unpopular levée en masse of 1793*) and it subsisted largely on bread.**
And grain was expensive. Fluctuations in the price of grain, and consequently bread, was a regular source of unrest in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Europe. In France the price of bread and its effect on the urban poor helped trigger the French Revolution--leading to the popular story that Marie Antoinette, on learning that the peasants could not afford bread, said “Let them eat cake”*--thereby demonstrating her fundamental lack of understanding of the realities of daily life for anyone other than a queen.
* In some ways, it’s not a detour at all. North Africa was the breadbasket of the Mediterranean from the time of imperial Rome through the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962).
**A million and a half on paper probably translated to 800,000 fighting men on the field. That’s still large compared to the British army in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which totaled 40,000 in 1793 and peaked at 250,000 in 1815. (I’d love to know the size of the army Russia fielded in the same wars, but Google has failed me. Any suggestions, Marginians?)
***There’s a reason they call it the “staff of life”.
****The source for this is Rousseau’s notoriously unreliable Confessions--in which he claimed that an unnamed “great princess” said “Let them eat brioche.” Not quite as snappy as the cake line. Not necessarily Marie Antoinette. (Antonia Fraser attributes the statement to Queen Maria Therese, 100 years earlier.) Possibly no one ever said it. In short, another example of what we’ve come to call “comic book history” here at the Margins--historical stories that are emotionally satisfying but factually untrue. They just keep coming.