We are no longer in France

Communists in colonial Algeria

Allison Drew

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780719090240
• eBook ISBN: 9781847799203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Recovers the lost history of colonial Algeria's communist movement

CHAPTER ONE

The land and its conquest

The Frenchmen who conquered the land now called Algeria were ruthless. Before they arrived, the indigenous Berber people had survived many invasions, from the Phoenicians to the Vandals, the Byzantine and the Arabs, who came in the seventh century bringing Islam. The Berbers adopted Islam but maintained their own language and customs. From the eleventh through to the thirteenth centuries the Almoravids and Almohads, Berber dynasties from Morocco, extended their influence from the west. Sunni became the dominant school of Islam. With the overthrow of Islamic Spain in 1492, North African Muslims turned to Ottoman Turks to help fight off Spanish expansion into Africa. Although Spain conquered the west in the sixteenth century, the Ottomans gained control of the east and the area around Algiers, extending their reach until they established the land between Morocco and Tunisia as a geopolitical territory. The Ottoman Regency brought stability, but direct rule lapsed in 1580, after war with Spain. From then on, the region was indirectly ruled by the Turkish military, led by the dey, who extracted surplus from the local population under threat of force. The land was divided into regions, each governed by a bey, assisted by calipha or lieutenants. Under the bey were cadis, or judges, and caïds, tax collectors or local government administrators. Below these were local tribal leaders. The urban authorities lived in what Arabic speakers called the bled el makhzen (lands of government) along the coast and coastal plains, in contrast to the montagnards or mountain dwellers of the bled es siba (lands of dissidence) whom the Turkish military controlled with difficulty. By 1830 the Ottoman regency in Algiers was wracked with infighting, and European financiers dominated the local economy. The French state, in the final days of the Bourbon restoration monarchy, took full advantage.¹

The fall of Algiers in 1830 was heralded by the looting of its properties. The transfer of land to French colons or settlers soon followed, as the French state extended its reach across the Mediterranean. Over the next four decades the French army marched across the Algerian landscape. Governor-General Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, who led the conquest, was utterly frank about his aims: ‘There is only one interest one can seize in Africa, the interest vested in agriculture ... I have found no other means of subjugating the country than to seize that vested interest.’²

When Algiers fell, only 5 or 6 per cent of the population resided in cities.³ The perennial risk of invasion necessitated protection, and cities were walled. Each city or town had at least one mosque, whose minaret facilitated the call to prayers and served as a lookout. Close by was the market. Urban Islam was scripture-based, placing a premium on literacy to read the Koran. The cities had kuttabs, or Koranic schools, medersas, or institutions of higher learning and the Shari‘a courts. Arabic had a special status as the language of the Koran, as well as the language of administration, trade and commerce.

The cities were home to the grandes familles, the notables who traced their lineage back centuries across generations and often owned rural estates. The urbanites were cosmopolitan. In addition to the Arabo-Berbers, many were of Turkish origin, and there were also Andalusians, influential in commerce and culture, Jewish traders from France and Italy, indigenous Jews, generally of modest means, who had lived in North Africa for centuries, Christian slaves and slaves from other parts of Africa. Labour and leisure were divided by gender. Men engaged in trade and commerce; women prepared food and cosmetics, processed sheepskins and wove blankets. Men gathered in cafés to exchange news, and women, who wore a veil outside the home, in hammams, or Turkish baths. Despite their small size, the cities’ influence extended across the countryside.⁴

The landscape stretched from the coast across the Tell (the north) - a hilly and mountainous strip running inland some 150 miles and, with the Mitidja and Chelif plains, the country’s most fertile area - to the Atlas mountains, the southern plains and the desert. The overwhelming majority of people lived in these diverse rural environments. In 1830, some 50 per cent of the rural population were sedentary cultivators, either freeholders or landless peasants. Most freehold lands were in the mountainous areas; urban elites and well armed nomads had access to the fertile lowlands. Sedentary cultivators, predominantly Berbers, lived in the Grand Kabylia, the Aurès and Atlas Mountains, the western mountains and the Dahra and Ouarsenis massifs around the Chelif river valley. In Grand Kabylia, for example, villages were self-contained and inward-facing at or near mountain tops, with cultivated land below. As elsewhere in Africa, cultivation reflected a sexual division of labour. Rural women, who generally did not wear veils, prepared food, engaged in weaving and trading and tended the vegetable gardens, which were close to their homes. Further down the slopes men grew wheat, barley and other crops. At the bottom were fig and olive orchards. Landless peasants often lived near cities in the Mitidja valley, the Algiers Sahel and the plain of Constantine, typically on land belonging to the bey. Frequently indebted, these landless peasants worked as khamamisa or sharecroppers on large estates and resembled feudal serfs. The remaining 45 per cent of the population were nomads or semi-nomads who lived in the Tell, the high plains and the Sahara.⁵

Rural society was organised outwards from the family to the lineage, clan, tribe and, sometimes, confederations of tribes. In contrast to urban Islam, rural Islam was organised around cults celebrating the lives of marabouts, or holy men and, occasionally, holy women, and in which women were active participants. Sufism, based on cults of these saints and their tombs, emerged in the twelfth century. Sometimes these cults were localised; in other cases, the saintly personages were widely known. Women generally visited local tombs on a daily basis, while Saharan oasis shrines attracted both settled and nomadic communities. Related to maraboutism, but geographically more dispersed, were the tariqas, or brotherhoods, mystical sufi orders led by shaykhs. Reflecting the less literate rural culture, Sufism and maraboutism emphasised signs and symbols rather than writing. These two strands of Islam, Sufism and maraboutism, coexisted in tension over the centuries. When the French invaded, the Sufi orders led the resistance.⁶

Ottoman rule left a highly stratified society. Land allocation was based on a complex system of use rights and obligations, with land taxed at 2 per cent of total yield. The major distinction was between the bey’s land and that held by tribes. The bey controlled melk, beylik and mokhzen land. Melk land, individual freehold over which the bey retained ultimate control, was widespread. Melk land ranged from small peasant-cultivated parcels to large estates worked by sharecroppers while the landlords lived in towns. Beylik land was that allocated to local rulers and administered for their own benefit; upon the local ruler’s death, the land reverted to the state. Mokhzen or azel land consisted of land confiscated or purchased by the bey and used to reward loyal officials or tribes. Tribal land or bled el‘arsh was allocated to individual members based on use right; working the land guaranteed security of tenure. Religious institutions also owned land known as habus that had been donated by individuals or groups with the provision that they retained rights of use. Irrespective of the type of land tenure, all rural Algerians had access to land.⁷

This changed dramatically as the French state tightened its grip on the territory and its people. Terror was integral to the French conquest. Thus, one lieutenant colonel instructed his troops to ‘annihilate all who will not grovel at our feet like dogs’. French forces burned, pillaged and ravaged the tribes between Blida, the Chelif and Cherchell. Yet despite inspiring great terror, confessed Maréchal François Certain-Canrobert, ‘the principal aim of pacification is far from being reached’.⁸ The bloody 1840s - when French troops used a scorched earth policy and engaged in mass murder of peasants - was accompanied by rapid French settlement. French troops received a share of land as compensation for their efforts. This conquest was a prelude to surveying the land and transferring it into what became known as le domaine publique – the state-controlled public domain. Beylik and habus land was seized outright, and taxation, which tripled during 1839–40, was used to pressure landowners and cultivators. Much of the land seized in the name of the public domain was transferred to the growing number of colons. For Muslim women colonisation meant the loss of their Islamic inheritance rights and increased use of the veil.⁹

Algerian responses varied. Some communities migrated – often to Morocco, Tunisia or Syria. Others fought. The Emir Abdelkader forged rural and urban alliances and combined diplomacy and armed struggle to stave off French incursion into the Sahara, attempting to consolidate an independent Algerian state. His efforts continued from 1832 to 1847, when his forces were crushed with help from the Turkish government. Still others negotiated. These included the Mozabites - dubbed the ‘Puritans of the desert’ because of their ascetic and industrious lifestyle - who practised Ibadi Islam. Constructing dams, reservoirs and unusually deep wells through their own labour and that of slaves imported from further south, they established oases of date palms in the northern Sahara’s Mzab Valley. In 1853 they signed a convention with France allowing them autonomy in exchange for an annual payment.¹⁰

The French rapidly imposed their administrative stamp. On 22 July 1834 King Louis-Philippe had created the post of gouverneur général charged with military control and overall administration. The post entailed the fusion of various types of power - symbolised by the clenched fist that Mahmood Mamdani argues characterised colonial rule in Africa.¹¹ Under the governor-general, the French adapted existing administrative structures into their own system of indirect rule. Thus, the French sent caïds to areas where they were outsiders to prevent them from forging local links and to ensure their dependence; caïds became hated by the local people for their authoritarian behaviour. The Royal Ordinance of 15 April 1845 divided the land into three provinces, creating three types of local administration to reflect the varied proportions of settlers and indigenous people across the land. Civil territories (later called communes de plein exercise), had a substantial proportion of European settlers and were governed by French common law. Mixed territories or communes had small European settlements and were governed by a combination of military rule and limited self-government for settlers. Arabo-Berber territories were under full military rule.

In France the February 1848 Revolution brought the short-lived Second Republic to power. The colons, aspiring to their full democratic rights as French citizens, supported the republic, which declared Algeria to be an integral part of France. The three provinces became the departments of Algiers, Constantine and Oran or Algérois, Constantinois and Oranie. In Paris that June a popular uprising was quashed; the Second Republic was only too pleased to help the rebels and potential trouble-makers settle in Algeria. Others followed, often from southern France. It was an arduous life for those trekking to outlying areas, and many died from malaria, cholera and other ailments; Albert Camus would be one of their descendants on his father’s side. In December 1848 Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte became President of the Second Republic. Three years later, he declared himself emperor and launched the Second French Empire. The emperor tightened military rule in Algeria to control the colons, whom he thought too greedy for land.¹²

The Sénatus-consulte of 12 April 1863 and 14 July 1865 laid the basis for future French land policy in Algeria. The 1863 law - ostensibly to protect Algerian property from the settlers - stipulated that Algerian tribes owned the lands that they had historically and permanently occupied, and that such tribal lands could only eventually become legally transferable if they were subdivided into individual property. The law essentially abolished the use rights on which small cultivators had depended and made Algerian-owned land available on the market. But many colons resented the 1863 law, and the civil authorities, siding with them, allowed significant amounts of Algerian land to be transferred into the public domain. The 1865 Sénatus-consulte codified differences in the personal status of French and Algerians, relegating Algerians to political inferiority: although France claimed Algeria as French, its indigenous inhabitants were to be subjects, not citizens. However, t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• General editor’s introduction
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Map
• Introduction—Imagining socialism and communism in Algeria
• 1 The land and its conquest
• 2 Grappling for a communist foothold
• 3 ‘The mountain “was going communist”’: peasant struggles on the Mitidja
• 4 ‘This land is not for sale’: communists, nationalists and the popular front
• 5 The nation in formation: communists and nationalists during the Second World War
• 6 For an Algerian national front: unity and division in the liberation struggle
• 7 Sparking an insurrection: pressure from the countryside
• 8 ‘Our people will overcome’: to the cities and the prisons
• 9 ‘We need a country that talks’: imagining the future Algeria
• Conclusion—Algerian communists and the new Algeria
• Bibliography
• Index