Colonial Algeria and the Politics of Citizenship by Avner Ofrath;

Author:Avner Ofrath;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350260047
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2022-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

Despite vehement opposition, the activity of the Young Algerians set in motion a slow yet significant shift across the French political spectrum, which was now more open to the idea of tolerating difference within the French body politic. The organ which led this change was the Revue indigène. In an issue dedicated to the question of naturalization in 1911, the editors and contributors suggested allowing for naturalization without demanding that Muslims renounce Islamic legislation. Of course, such proposals had been drafted already in the 1880s, as we have seen. But the 1911 publication of the Revue indigène exerted a far more significant influence on French public opinion. Gathering a group of renowned jurists and colonial administrators at the crucial moment of introducing conscription amongst Algeria’s Muslim population, the Revue indigène effectively broke a decade-long taboo in openly calling for practising Muslims to be let into the cité française. This call would be taken up by prominent political figures and would preoccupy the Chamber on several occasions during the war.

Articulating their ideas through the language of assimilation and the ‘civilizing mission’, most contributors to the 1911 publication of the Revue indigène viewed citizenship instrumentally: it was to be granted to certain colonial subjects not as a natural right but as a reward used selectively by the French state. Editor Bourdarie, for instance, though declaring the ultimate objective of his reform agenda to be the ‘complete and definite fusion of the Arabo-Berber people [peuple] within the French nationality’, made it clear that political rights ought to be granted selectively.27 Criticizing the indiscriminate application of the Code de l’indigénat, he argued that the Algerian Muslim population should be divided into two major categories: ‘One composed of everything notable and honourable in the indigenous population; the other including everything that is the subject of caution in the same population . . . If the indigénat is justified vis-à-vis the second, it is absolutely impolitic vis-à-vis the first.’28 The same principle was to apply to the question of citizenship, and the Algerian administration was encouraged to adopt the ‘American principle’ of distinguishing between ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ immigrants when considering which Algerians should be admitted into the French body politic.29 This last remark highlights a key element of French colonial thought: Though it was France which occupied Algeria, Algerians were perceived as immigrants to the cité française.

A particularly interesting view was provided by Henri de Lamothe, who had been active in colonial reform campaigns since the 1880s as discussed in Chapter 2. Then as now, de Lamothe insisted that the right to vote had to be granted to parts of Algerian society. Most crucially, he provided an unusual view of the statut personnel – the simplified French codification of Islamic civil legislation to which Algerians were subjected. ‘The personal and familial status of the Muslim inhabitants of North Africa is as worthy of the legislator’s respect as the Gallic-Roman customs sanctioned by the codes of the metropole.’30 Abandoning the common view of French civil legislation as

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