A Short History of Africa by Gordon Kerr

Author:Gordon Kerr [Kerr, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781842436349
Publisher: Oldcastle Books Ltd
Published: 2011-12-07T14:00:00+00:00

North and North-East Africa

Although part of the Ottoman Empire in the early part of the nineteenth century, the Turkish rulers of North Africa operated fairly independently. Even so, their authority did not extend far beyond the coastal strip.

Algeria

The French had been engaged in disputes with the ruler of Algeria, the dey, for decades and, in 1827, diplomatic relations were finally broken. In 1830, France invaded, ostensibly to stop piracy, but in reality in an effort to boost the image of the French monarchy at home. The nomadic and semi-nomadic clans and Muslim brotherhoods of Algeria had been rivals for centuries, but the French threat and the possibility of the imposition of an alien religion, culture and legal system united them. At least the Turks had been Muslim, after all. They launched a jihad – a holy war that would last for fifty years, one of the fiercest wars of resistance against colonial rule on the continent.

The early leader of the Algerian resistance was the Islamic scholar, Sufi and political and military leader Abd al-Qadir (1808–1883) who united all the disparate elements of the Algerian resistance into a single entity. Ultimately, however, the French won with an army that, by 1850, numbered 100,000 men. In the process it lost many thousands of troops. Algerian losses were even greater, in the hundreds of thousands. Abd al-Qadir was himself captured and exiled in 1847, but Algerian resistance continued until 1879 when the French could at last consider themselves to be victorious.

Arab-Berber farmers and pastoralists were driven from their land as white settlers from both France and Spain began to arrive. By 1871, the colons, as the settlers were called, numbered 130,000 and by 1900 there were a million. They owned most of the arable land but were mainly absentee farmers, living in the cities and leaving poorly-paid and unfairly taxed indigenous farmers to work the land. French law replaced Islamic law and restrictions, reminiscent of those imposed on the indigenous peoples of southern Africa, were imposed on Algerians who continued to seethe with resentment.

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