The Blood of the Colony by Owen White

Author:Owen White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

“LIBERATED” ALGERIA

The flow of Algerians to work for the Germans was abruptly halted after November 8, 1942, with Operation Torch and the landing of American and British troops in Algeria and Morocco. The success of this operation in turn placed the flow of wine to France in doubt, as within days German and Italian troops reacted to the Allies’ strengthened position in the Mediterranean by occupying southern France. For Algerians the arrival of Allied forces offered some hope of new employment opportunities, though by December it was already evident that the Americans’ spending power was driving up the cost of living.30

One group with special cause for relief at the Allied intervention was Algeria’s Jewish population. In October 1940 the Vichy regime abrogated the Crémieux Decree that in 1870 had bestowed French citizenship on Algerian Jews. The regime also enacted a slew of measures to exclude Jews from most public employment and professions.31 Relatively few Algerian Jews were involved in agriculture, so their participation in the wine industry was often on the side of commerce and distribution, from small-scale operators like Moïse Lascar in the southerly settlement of Saïda to somewhat bigger players like Albert Benassouli in Oran.32 For Jewish wine producers, like members of the Monsonégo family around Aïn-Tédélès near Mostaganem, or Emile Moatti, a respected promoter of the wines of the Mount Zaccar region, a November 1941 decree that aimed to confiscate Jewish property was a dire threat.33 Two particular targets of the Office for Economic Aryanization that was created to fulfill this decree were Elie and Adolphe Douïeb. Originally cloth merchants based in Algiers, the Douïeb brothers owned several large vineyards in the Mitidja plain and had only a few years previously been praised for contributing to the “grandeur” of French Algeria.34 When the administration solicited bids for these properties, covetous Euro-Algerians typically offered well below their market value, as seen in the bid submitted by Raymond Laquière, a prominent lawyer and conservative politician in Algiers, for the 171-hectare Domaine Ben d’Ali Ali at L’Arba.35

The Allies’ arrival saved the Douïebs and others from being stripped of their property, though in triggering the German occupation of southern France put Jews elsewhere at greater risk. (One of them was Fédia Cassin, a leading importer of Algerian wine in Marseille, who went into hiding in the central department of the Creuse.36) November 1942 did not, in fact, bring a clean break with the preceding regime in Algeria. For several months, prominent defenders of Pétain remained in leading positions, and the last anti-Semitic legislation was not revoked until October 1943. At that point the Crémieux Decree was restored, along with Algerian Jews’ French citizenship.37

The Allied invasion, what it suggested about France’s ability to maintain control in North Africa (or its empire more generally), and French demands for Muslim support in liberating the metropole did embolden some Algerians to advance their claims to a new political and economic order. Most notable was the Manifesto of the Algerian People issued by Ferhat Abbas. Characterized

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