Algerian orphans and colonial christianity in Algeria, 1866-1939

French History

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 240-259

  Taithe, Bertrand ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ALGERIA; CHILD; CHILD WELFARE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; CULTURAL FACTOR; CUSTODY; DEMOGRAPHY; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FRANCE; GOVERNMENT; HISTORY; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; ORPHANED CHILD; POLITICAL SYSTEM; PRESCHOOL CHILD; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; RELIGION; REVIEW; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL PROBLEM; SOCIAL STATUS;

ALGERIA; CHILD; CHILD CUSTODY; CHILD WELFARE; CHILD, ORPHANED; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; COLONIALISM; CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS; CULTURAL DIVERSITY; DEMOGRAPHY; FRANCE; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; LOCAL GOVERNMENT; RACE RELATIONS; RELIGION; SOCIAL CONDITIONS; SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION;

EID: 53749087620     PISSN: 02691191     EISSN: 14774542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fh/crl019     Document Type: Review

References (90)

1. See B. Taithe, 'Humanitarianism and colonialism: religious responses to the Algerian drought and famine 1866-1870', in C. Mauch and C. Pfister, eds., Natural hazards: Responses and strategies in global perspective (Lanham, 2007) forthcoming.
2. D. Sari, Le désastre démographique (Algiers, 1982), p. 130;
3. A. Nouschi, Enquête sur le niveau de vie des populations rurales constantinoises de la conquête jusqu'en 1919 (1961), pp. 337-78.
4. F. Fanon, The wretched of the earth (1967);
5. A. Memmi, The colonizer and the colonized (1972).
6. Hybridity does not necessarily denote a positive cultural position - indeed some have described hybridity as a monstrous anomaly, particularly in a society like that of France or Algeria where the emphasis has always been on a normative form of identity underpinned by biological forms of racism. For a later generation, see the Algerian nationalist man of letters, Christian-Kabyle-French Jean El-Mouhoub Amrouche: T. Yacine, ed., Un Algérien s'adresse aux Francçais ou l'histoire d'Algérie par les textes (1943-1961) (1994).
7. On the concept of hybridity more broadly construed: C. Blanckaert, 'Of monstrous métis? Hybridity, fear of miscegenation, and patriotism from Buffon to Paul Broca', in S. Peabody and T. Stovall, eds., The color of liberty: Histories of race in France (Durham, 2003), pp. 42-70.
8. P. M. E. Lorcin, 'Rome and France in Africa: Recovering Colonial Algeria's Latin past', French Historical Studies, 25 (2002), 295-330.
9. N. Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine. Monuments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie 1830-1930 (2004).
10. Archives d'Outre-Mer (AOM) F80 1705, Administration de l'Algérie.
11. D. Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1990);
12. C. Zeynep, Urban forms and colonial confrontation: Algiers under French rule (Berkeley, 1997);
13. J.-J. Jordi and J.-L. Planche, eds., Alger 1860-1939: Le modèle ambigu du triomphe colonial (1999).
14. This relationship was not very well defined, and Lavigerie, Bishop of Algiers after 1868, adopted a particularly hierarchical interpretation of it. Lavigerie ended up controlling the bishoprics of Algiers, Constantine and Tunis directly and personally: H. Barthès, Monseigneur de las Cases, évêque de Constantine (Montpellier, 1980).
15. S. A. Curtis, 'Emilie de Vialar and the religious reconquest of Algeria', French Historical Studies, 29 (2006), 261-92.
16. AOM Alg. Constantine B/3/496, surveillance des missionaries protestants anglais and AOM F80 1748, Culte Israélite, ordinance of 9 November 1845 on the consistoire of Algeria; report of Béquet, Rapport au conseil de gouvernement, organisation du culte Israélite en Algérie (Algiers, 1858).
17. A. Tissier, De l'application du décret du 24 octobre 1870 sur les Israélites indigènes de l'Algérie (Algiers, 1891);
18. M. Ansky, Les Juifs d'Algérie du décret Crémieux à la Libération (1950);
19. R. Attal, Regard sur les Juifs d'Algérie (1996);
20. S. Schwarzfuchs, Les Juifs d'Algérie et la France (1830-1855) ( Jerusalem, 1981).
21. Y. Turin, Affrontements culturels dans l'Algérie coloniale. Ecoles, médecine, religion, 1830-1880 (1971).
22. J. Clancy-Smith, Rebel and saint: Muslim notables, populist protest, colonial encounters (Berkeley, 1994).
23. See AOM Alg. GGA 3X 1.
24. Papiers Rinn. This anxiety was particularly strong after the mass uprising of 1871 led by El-Mokrani. Colonel Robin, L'insurrection de la Grande Kabylie en 1871 (1900);
25. M. Lings, A Sufi saint of the twentieth century: Shwikh Ahmad Al'AlawĪ (Cambridge, 1993).
26. R. Danziger, Abd Al-Qadir and the Algerian Resistance to the French (New York, 1977).
27. L. T. Fawaz, An occasion for War: Civil conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (New York, 1994);
28. K. Salibi, Histoire du Liban: Du dix-huitième siècle à nos jours (1988), pp. 167-95.
29. K. J. Perkins, Qaids, captains and colons: French military administration in the Colonial Maghreb, 1844-1934 (New York, 1981), pp. 147-45.
30. J. Frémeaux, Les bureaux arabes dans l'Algérie de la conquête (1993).
31. A. Hanoteau and A. Letourneux, La Kabylie et les coutumes Kabyles, 2 vols (1872), p. 311.
32. Alain Mahé has since shown the great importance of Hanoteau and Letourneux's work in the 'fixing' of Kabyle customs: A. Mahé, Histoire de la Grande Kabylie (2001).
33. P. M. E. Lorcin, Imperial identities: stereotyping, prejudice and race in colonial Algeria (1995).
34. AOM F80 1746, Rapport du Colonel Hanoteau, Fort Napoléon, on the activities of abbé Creusat, 31 May 1868.
35. V. Colonna, 'La compagnie de Jésus en Algérie, 1840-1880: L'exemple de la mission en Kabylie', Maghreb-Machrek, 135 (1992), 67-78.
36. A. Rey-Goldzeiguer, Le Royaume Arabe, la politique algérienne de Napoléon III (1977).
37. D. Sainte Marie, 'La province d'Alger vers 1870, l'établissement du douar commun et la fixation de la nature de la propriété dans le cadre du Senatus Consulte du 22 avril 1863', Revue de l'Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, 9 (1971), 37-61.
38. J. Bowlan, 'Polygamists need not apply: Becoming a French citizen in colonial Algeria, 1918-1938', Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, 24 (1997), 110-9. A douar (indigenous tent village) was the name given to rural administrative units and was utilized to administratively assemble tribal groups and apportion land amongst their members.
39. M. Levallois, Ismaÿl Urbain (2000).
40. Voyage de S.M. Napoléon III en Algérie (Algiers, 1865), speech of 5 May 1865, p. 38; AOM GGA 1K 290. French Islamist policies are the object of an interesting debate in sub-Saharan Africa where it was often more clearly articulated than in Algeria.
41. D. Robinson, 'French "Islamic" policy and practice in late nineteenth-century Senegal', Journal of African History, 29 (1988), 415-35; P. le Pautremat, La politique musulmane de la France au XXème siècle, de l'Hexagone aux terres d'Islam. Espoirs, réussites, échecs (2003).
42. J. Maurain, La politique ecclésiastique du Second Empire de 1852 à 1869 (1930), pp. 876-901.
43. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, A16 24.
44. AOM GGA 1K 361, Letter from the cercle of Batna, 7 May 1868. All the bureaux arabes reported similar disasters, varying only in intensity: for example, AOM 66 Mi 232, annual report from Tiaret.
45. Abbé V. Burozet, Histoire des désordres de l'Algérie, 1866-1867-1868: Sauterelles, tremblement de terre, choléra, famine (Algiers and Paris, 1869).
46. X. Yacono, 'Peut-on évaluer la population de l'Algérie en 1830?', Revue Africaine, 98 (1954), 55-78;
47. D. Good, 'Notes on the demography of Algeria', Population Index, 27 (1961), 6-9.
48. J. Simon, L'immigration algérienne en France: Des origines à l'indépendance (2000), pp. 28-32.
49. Abbé Soubiranne, Discours sur l'Oeuvre des Ecoles d'Orient (1863).
50. M. Burrows, '"Mission civilisatrice": French cultural policy in the Middle East, 1860-1914', The Historical Journal, 29 (1986), 109-35.
51. AOM GGA F80 1746, Circulaire aux préfets de l'Algérie, 14 October 1867, regarding the establishment of communal schools.
52. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, A16 69 ff. Lavigerie corresponded with many generals and officers in the cercles. Some like Generals de Sonis or de Geydon corresponded with him even after their departure from Algeria.
53. Economiste Francçais, 268 (1868), 94; AOM F80 1746, 'Comment découvrir la vérité algérienne'.
54. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, A16 34, p. 3, Mandement de l'évêque de Gap.
55. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B7 191, 17 January 1868.
56. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B7 40-8, lists for 1872-3.
57. Mohammed Harbi narrates in his autobiography that this association of religion and citizenship applied both ways: The local priest in his village of El-Arrouch thus tolled the bells for the death of a pious Muslim French citizen: Une vie debout: mémoires politiques, tome 1, 1945-1962 (2001), p. 16.
58. R. Berthelier, L'homme mahgrébin dans la littérature psychiatrique (1994).
59. R. Gibson, 'Hellfire and damnation in nineteenth-century France', Catholic Historical Review, 74 (1988), 383-402.
60. Ibid; M. Foucault, Discipline and punish (1977), pp. 178-94;
61. P. J. Harrigan, 'The Catholic contribution to universal schooling in France, 1850-1906', Journal of Modern History, 57 (1985), 211-47;
62. S. Curtis, 'Supply and demand: Religious schooling in nineteenth-century France', History of Education Quarterly, 39 (1999), 51-72.
63. This dress code was perceived as an attempt to usurp the role of marabouts. It followed wellestablished models of acculturation practised since the seventeenth century by Jesuit priests in India and China. Conseil Général d'Alger, Procès verbal de la séance du 22 avril 1874, p. 4.
64. Abbé Monterat, Mémoire en faveur de Mgr Dupuch, premier et ancien évêque d'Alger à l'appui de la manifestation du clergé d'Afrique (Algiers, 1852).
65. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B10 2. In February 1880, the murder of Father Dioré in the village of Les Attafs cast a shadow over inter-confessional relations.
66. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B7 168, 16 August 1869, and B7 108.
67. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, 'Procès-verbal de la séance du 22 avril 1874'.
68. J. Tiquet, Une expérience de petite colonisation indigène en Algérie: Les colons arabeschrétiens du Cardinal Lavigerie (1936), p. 93.
69. For an analysis of some of the medical grounding of racial theories in Algeria, see P. M. E. Lorcin, 'Imperialism, colonial identity, and race in Algeria, 1830-1870: The role of the French Medical Corps', Isis, 90 (1999), 653-79. The Code de l'Indigénat came into existence in 1874.
70. C. Lavigerie, Oeuvres choisies de son éminence le cardinal Lavigerie, archevêque d'Alger (1884), pp. 164-6.
71. Tiquet, Une expérience, p. 126.
72. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B9 12, 21 February 1886.
73. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B9 33, 20 August 1885.
74. AOM F80 1685-6.
75. P. Birnbaum, 'La France aux Francçais'. Histoire des haines nationalistes (1993), pp. 260-3.
76. P. Hebey, Alger 1898: la grande vague antijuive (1996).
77. G. Dermenjian, La crise anti-juive oranaise 1895-1905: L'anti-sémitisme dans l'Algérie coloniale (1986).
78. This can be verified in the files of the Médecins de Colonization Indigènes, for instance AOM, Alg. GGA 1U 28, Ali Ben Mohamed Boulouk Bachi, or 1U 68, Ben Fiah Djilali and so on.
79. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B9 44, 7 January 1891.
80. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B9 49(2).
81. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B9 42(4).
82. AGMA Papiers Lavigerie, B49 19(1).
83. On instituteurs, see F. Colonna, Instituteurs algériens, 1883-1939 (1975).
84. AOM C1197 VIII, Service médical de colonisation;
85. AOM Alg. GGA 5X 6/16, Direction des Affaires Indigènes, circulaire du GGA au préfet, 5 December 1904;
86. Anon, Rapport sur les oeuvres spéciales intéressant les indigènes (Algiers, 1904), pp. 4-5.
87. N. MacMaster, Colonial migrants and racism: Algerians in France, 1900-1962 (1996), pp. 118-25. This author dates anti-Arab racism from the First World War at the earliest.
88. Mass immigration, predominantly from Kabylia, began in earnest after the liberalization of 1905-13: MacMaster, Colonial migrants, p. 16;
89. Simon, L'immigration algérienne, pp. 39-43;
90. B. Stora, Ils venaient d'Algérie: L'immigration algérienne en France (1912-1992) (1992).