@ -5117,7 +5117,7 @@ the seventy-five years that followed during which it was able to exploit it with
It remains to measure its past and present role, no longer on the French scale but “European”, even “globalized” in the destructuring / destruction of the economy and society of independent Algeria and in the resumption of (Islamist) violence, from the 1980s to today.
/section{Emerging capitalisme and colonial conquest}
\section{Emerging capitalisme and colonial conquest}
1. The share of capital in the decision of the expedition of Algiers.
@ -5129,7 +5129,7 @@ the conflict originated in the non-payment, under the Empire and then under the
The mercantilist circles of the port of Marseille nevertheless aggravated the conflict, in particular by the murky game of the consul Deval.
The latter, not having transmitted to the Dey 478 891 gold Francs (about 6 million current) released by Louis XVIII in 1816, has, on the other hand, in 1825, had militarily occupied the trading post of La Calle taken as a pledge by Algiers and had Charles X claim, in addition to his concession without royalty, the suzerainty on the surrounding plain, from Bône to the Tunisian border.
Colonial rivalry played a role: on 14 Oct. 1827*(tl note * is in the original text, I don't know why, maybe some missing footnote?) the Minister of War, Clermont-Tonnerre, proposed that he “take advantage of the embarrassment in which (...) England is to conquer the state of Algiers”.
Colonial rivalry played a role: on 14 Oct. 1827*[tl note * is in the original text, I don't know why, maybe some missing footnote?} the Minister of War, Clermont-Tonnerre, proposed that he “take advantage of the embarrassment in which (...) England is to conquer the state of Algiers”.
And the economist Sismondi, hostile to free trade, wrote as early as May 1830, three months before the landing (176):
“This kingdom of Algiers (...) will be a colony, (...) a new country on which the surplus of the French population and activity can spread. ”
There is therefore a goal of exploitation of capitalism still in its infancy, even if the supporters of opposing interests fight the expedition, source of expenditure of men and wealth, by wrapping themselves in respect for international law.
@ -5153,17 +5153,17 @@ The dominant tendency of rising capitalism was, from the beginning, to assume th
The latter proposes, after having noted “the contradiction (of) the march of the occupation” “to extend colonization under military protection” so as not to reduce “the fruit of many efforts” (187).
The capture of Constantine in 1837 rallied, apart from Desjobert's last fires, the liberals to a “single thought” of French capitalism.
176 in /emph{Revue encyclopédique, May 1830.
176 in \emph{Revue encyclopédique, May 1830.
177 To the king and the chambers on the real causes of the break with Algiers, Paris, 1830.
178 Parlementary Archives , vol. 61, in R. VALET, /emph{L'Afrique devant le parlement au XIXe siècle}(Africa before the parliament in the XIXth century), Paris 1824.
179 /emph{Ibid., vol. 96,} in R. VALET, /emph{op. cit.}
180 /emph{Ibid.
181 /emph{Ibid., vol. 96,} in R. VALET, /emph{op. cit}
182 /emph{Ibid., vol. 110,} in R. VALET, /emph{op.cit.}
183 Quoted in DUBOIS and TERRIER, /emph{Un siècle d'expansion coloniale} (A Century of Colonial Expansion.)
184 parl. arch., vol. 66, in R. VALET, /emph{op. cit.}
185 LARCHER, /emph{Traité élémentaire de législation algérienne}, vol. II Paris, 1911.
186 R. VALET, /emph{op. cit.}
178 Parlementary Archives , vol. 61, in R. VALET, \emph{L'Afrique devant le parlement au XIXe siècle}(Africa before the parliament in the XIXth century), Paris 1824.
179 \emph{Ibid., vol. 96,} in R. VALET, \emph{op. cit.}
180 \emph{Ibid.}
181 \emph{Ibid., vol. 96,} in R. VALET, \emph{op. cit}
182 \emph{Ibid., vol. 110,} in R. VALET, \emph{op.cit.}
183 Quoted in DUBOIS and TERRIER, \emph{Un siècle d'expansion coloniale} (A Century of Colonial Expansion.)
184 parl. arch., vol. 66, in R. VALET, \emph{op. cit.}
185 LARCHER, \emph{Traité élémentaire de législation algérienne}, vol. II Paris, 1911.
186 R. VALET, \emph{op. cit.}
187 Minutes and reports of the commission appointed by the King on 7 July 1833.
@ -5183,7 +5183,7 @@ The “contempt for a solemn capitulation” (...) of rights ... the most natura
Following its example, Voirol, as early as 1834 in Algiers, then Trézel in 1835 in Orania, violated the Desmichels Treaty, concluded on January 6, 1834 with 'Abd el-Qader, to have a free hand against the bey of Constantine.
Similarly, once this city was taken, the deliberate transgression in 1839 of the Treaty of Tafna concluded for the same end, with the same partner, on May 30, 1837, the deliberate passage of troops in the disputed area because of the ambiguity between Arabic text and French translation, provoked the offensive reaction of the emir.
188 /emph{Ibid.} (Paris 1834).
188 \emph{Ibid.} (Paris 1834).
In the House on 8 June 1838, had Not Bugeaud said: “Treaties have never bound nations except when they are in accordance with their interests? (189).”
@ -5215,16 +5215,16 @@ Babor and the Wadi el-Kebir in 1851 (196). In 1849, in the Aurès and ziban, the
in Nara, “everything that had been locked there passed through weapons or crushed by the fall of the terraces of houses” (197).
In 1857, during the occupation of the great Kabylia, according to the Count of Hérisson (198), “the native ears were worth for a long time 10 francs a pair, and their wives remained, like them, a perfect game” as well as in the South where, from a column where a shot had not been fired, he confessed to having brought back “a full barrel”.
189 Cité par AZAN (Colonel P.) /emph{L’Émir ‘Abd-El-Kader}, Paris, 1925.
191 \emph{Voyage dans la Régence d’Alger}, vol. III. Paris, 1833.
192 CAVAIGNAC, Letter to General Létang, 19 Avril 1834, in M. EMERIT, \emph{L’Algérie au temps d’Abdelkader}.
193 MONTAGNAC (Colonel de), \emph{Lettres d’un soldat}(letters of a soldier), Paris 1885.
194 T.E.F. (Tableau des Établissements Français dans l’Algérie/Table of French Establishmentsin Algeria) 1844-45.
195 /emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 7.
196 /emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 11, (1850-52) pp. 2, 3, 5, 7 et 8.
197 /emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 11.
198 HÉRISSON (Count of), /emph{La chasse à l’homme}, Paris, 1866.
195 \emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 7.
196 \emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 11, (1850-52) pp. 2, 3, 5, 7 et 8.
197 \emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 11.
198 HÉRISSON (Count of), \emph{La chasse à l’homme}, Paris, 1866.
@ -5293,20 +5293,20 @@ of all those, Muslims and Jews, of Miliana; of all those also of Medea, Mascara,
The result, note the T.E.F. about Constantine, “an unfortunate influence on the industrial and commercial movement of the city” (218), also reported for Algiers, Mascara, Tlemcen, etc. (increase in prices and rents, impoverishment and scarcity of buyers, break with the countryside, etc.), in no way compensated by the “traffic” initiated around the garrisons of the new centers.
199 BARTILLAT (Marquess of), /emph{Relation de la campagne d'Afrique en 1830}(Relation of Africa campaign in 1830), Paris, 1833.
199 BARTILLAT (Marquess of), \emph{Relation de la campagne d'Afrique en 1830}(Relation of Africa campaign in 1830), Paris, 1833.
200 T.E.F., 1839 and 1840.
201 /emph{Ibid.}, 1842.
202 /emph{Ibid.}, 1844-45, pp. 2-5, and 1846-49, pp. 2.
203 /emph{Ibid.}, 1845-46, p. 8.
204 /emph{Ibid.}, 1846-1849, pp. 7-11.
205 ROZET, /emph{op. cit}, vol. III, pp. 202-214.
205 ROZET, \emph{op. cit}, vol. III, pp. 202-214.
206 MONTAGNAC, op. cit., p. 334.
207 T.E.F., 1840.
208 SAINT-ARNAUD (letters of Marshal of..), t. I, Paris 1858.
209 T.E.F. (1844).
210 /emph{Ibid.} (1844-45) pp. 2-5.
211 /emph{Ibid.} (1846-49).
212 /emph{Ibid.} (1850-1852), pp. 2-8.
210 \emph{Ibid.} (1844-45) pp. 2-5.
211 \emph{Ibid.} (1846-49).
212 \emph{Ibid.} (1850-1852), pp. 2-8.
213 SAINT-ARNAUD, .op. cit., vol. II.
214 Case of General Youssouf reported by d'Hérisson. According to AZAN (op. cit., p 459), in 1854, in the High-Sebaou, “everywhere the houses ... were largely demolished,... the fruit trees, olive trees, fig trees, were cut down by the workers.”
215 ROZET, op. cit. cit., vol. I, p. 120, vol. III, p. 264 and p. 204.
@ -5330,9 +5330,9 @@ Even with the colonial contribution, Algiers did not regain its total population
as for their Muslim component, these cities were not to find it again until 1906, 1911, 1901, 1891 respectively; Oran, and even Kolea and Cherchel, yet intact, not before 1872 (220).
Still, it would essentially be a rural or ruralized settlement for at least a generation, driven back or exodus by their impoverishment in the countryside, precarious in a dilapidated or marginal habitat.
The “dispossession of the fellahs” (221) began in 1830 with the confiscation of the lands of the former state (beylik) and its dignitaries, — their haouch(s) in Mitidja — then in the plains of Bône and Oran, and after 1837 of the /emph{'azel} of the Constantinois, first awarded for rent to speculators who made their former farmers work there, then increasingly conceded (the 94,796 ha of the haouchs in 1838).
The expropriation of the /emph{'arch} lands of the communities immediately followed, prolonging destruction and extortion, to establish on their best lands, following sequestration or confiscation of fallow land without titles, centers of colonization populated in particular by the deportees of June 1848.
This “cantonment” often took more than half of the /emph{'arch}. 224,993 ha of /emph{'azel} were lost for their 5,232 farmers, expelled, before the end of the Second Empire.
The “dispossession of the fellahs” (221) began in 1830 with the confiscation of the lands of the former state (beylik) and its dignitaries, — their haouch(s) in Mitidja — then in the plains of Bône and Oran, and after 1837 of the \emph{'azel} of the Constantinois, first awarded for rent to speculators who made their former farmers work there, then increasingly conceded (the 94,796 ha of the haouchs in 1838).
The expropriation of the \emph{'arch} lands of the communities immediately followed, prolonging destruction and extortion, to establish on their best lands, following sequestration or confiscation of fallow land without titles, centers of colonization populated in particular by the deportees of June 1848.
This “cantonment” often took more than half of the \emph{'arch}. 224,993 ha of \emph{'azel} were lost for their 5,232 farmers, expelled, before the end of the Second Empire.
If the proclaimed objective of the senate-consulte of 1863 is to establish the property of the tribes, it will above all make it possible to detach possibly unrecognized sections on the best lands.
The sequestration, at the expense of tribes refugees in Morocco or sanctioning the insurgents of 1863-1864 and 1871, puts the richest lands at the disposal of colonization:
a reserve of 568,817 hectares in 1871,222, removing from the Kabyles the winter pastures of their plains and the high cereal plains of Medjana.
@ -5346,10 +5346,10 @@ It has also nationalized or communalized areas of the same order.
219 Speech to the Chamber of Deputies, 14 May 1840.
220 Data derived mainly from comparative population counts.
221 To use the title of a book by Djilali SARI, Alger, 1975.
222 Figure borrowed from A. NOUSCHI, in LACOSTE, NOUSCHI, PRENANT, /emph{L’Algérie, passé et présent}(Algeria, past and present), Paris, 1960, like other data in this paragraph
222 Figure borrowed from A. NOUSCHI, in LACOSTE, NOUSCHI, PRENANT, \emph{L’Algérie, passé et présent}(Algeria, past and present), Paris, 1960, like other data in this paragraph
2.4. Les conséquences : le « désastre démographique » algérien.
2.4. Consequences : The algerian “demographic disaster”.
The whole period of colonial possession is indeed for the country, as Dj. Sari pointed out about the famine of 1867-1868, a “demographic disaster” (223).
@ -5363,7 +5363,7 @@ However, in the same space, there were only 2,653,000 souls and, in 1871, 2,125,
On this basis, we can make the minimum hypothesis of an excess mortality that has hit, in forty years, between 1.2 and 1.7 million souls, half of the number of 1830, one in five of the Algerian Muslims who lived in the period.
This excess mortality is obviously linked in part to the massacres, the addition of which figures “by tens of thousands the losses ... of the civilian population” (225).
It is also explained by the fighting, very unequal: T.E.F. report, for the only most important battles, 2,000 killed in 1840, 800 in 1841, 480 in 1842, 950 in 1843, more than 600 in 1844, or 1,136 in 1851, 880 in 1852. To these figures, we must add the simple unquantified notations, the most frequent, of "significant losses" or "considerable" (as in 1840 for the fight, however crucial, of Mouzaïa). Nothing is even said about the 200 killed, according to Azan, at Bab T'aza in April 1842, the 1,800 to 2,000 he mentioned to Macta on June 28, 1835, nor the 2,000 killed and wounded at Tafna on April 25, 1836, etc.
It is also explained by the fighting, very unequal: T.E.F. report, for the only most important battles, 2,000 killed in 1840, 800 in 1841, 480 in 1842, 950 in 1843, more than 600 in 1844, or 1,136 in 1851, 880 in 1852. To these figures, we must add the simple unquantified notations, the most frequent, of “significant losses” or “considerable” (as in 1840 for the fight, however crucial, of Mouzaïa). Nothing is even said about the 200 killed, according to Azan, at Bab T'aza in April 1842, the 1,800 to 2,000 he mentioned to Macta on June 28, 1835, nor the 2,000 killed and wounded at Tafna on April 25, 1836, etc.
It “is no exaggeration to estimate the number of those killed in action at an annual average of one or more tens of thousands” (226) for forty years.
Less cruel was the loss of settlement due to the emigration, in the Moroccan refuge, of entire populations of plains neighboring Orania such as that of the Mekerra.
@ -5374,7 +5374,7 @@ there are no decisive conditions here, but only favourable to the tipping point
— to follow two periods of marked repression: in 1848-1849, the one that followed the crushing of the resistance of 'Abd el-Qader and the upheavals that prolonged it, among others the burning of all the crops of the insurgent Ouarsenis, the destruction of reserves, the consequent abandonment of land, fines, confiscations;
in 1866-1868, the repression of the insurrection of 1864-1865 arose in particular in the west, the Algerian-Oran steppe and the Babor, also marked by destruction, heavy fines, 6 million gold of war contribution
— to accompany a decline in Algerian appropriation and the exploitation of land itself: the first phase is characterized by the beginning of the “cantonments” and the creation of many centers of colonization on the land taken, the second by their acceleration, the first limitations of /emph{'arch} because of the Senatus-consulte, the granting of its concession to the Algerian company.
— to accompany a decline in Algerian appropriation and the exploitation of land itself: the first phase is characterized by the beginning of the “cantonments” and the creation of many centers of colonization on the land taken, the second by their acceleration, the first limitations of \emph{'arch} because of the Senatus-consulte, the granting of its concession to the Algerian company.
The responsibility of power can be read in this official commentary on the famine of 1848-1849:
@ -5400,14 +5400,14 @@ In Miliana, if the balance sheet is, narrowly, negative for the Europeans (but n
The mark of a rural excess mortality at least as serious can be read in the inscription (usually insignificant) of 107 and then 486 unknown and external to the commune who came to take refuge and die there, these two years.
223 SARI (Djilali), /emph{Le désastre démographique}(the demographic disaster), Algiers, 1982.
224 Cf. YACONO (X.), Can we evaluate the population of Algeria on the eve of the conquest, in /emph{Revue Africaine}, 1954, and PRENANT (A.) in LACOSTE, NOUSCHI, PRENANT, /emph{op. cit.}.
225 Cf. A.PRENANT in LACOSTE, NOUSCHI, PRENANT, /emph{op. cit.}, p. 321.
226 /emph{Ibid.}, p. 320.
223 SARI (Djilali), \emph{Le désastre démographique}(the demographic disaster), Algiers, 1982.
224 Cf. YACONO (X.), Can we evaluate the population of Algeria on the eve of the conquest, in \emph{Revue Africaine}, 1954, and PRENANT (A.) in LACOSTE, NOUSCHI, PRENANT, \emph{op. cit.}.
225 Cf. A.PRENANT in LACOSTE, NOUSCHI, PRENANT, \emph{op. cit.}, p. 321.
226 \emph{Ibid.}, p. 320.
227 T.E.F. (1846-49), p. 13.
228 Letter to the Duke of Magenta (Mac Mahon), 20 June 1865.
229 T.E.F. (1866-72), pp. 62-64.
230 SARI (Dj.) /emph{op. cit.} Cit.
230 SARI (Dj.) \emph{op. cit.} Cit.
2.5. The consequences: the impoverished and bruised French people.
@ -5422,7 +5422,6 @@ The metropolitan contribution intended to fill it, equal to 45% of local resourc
In 1863 it accounted for 11% (2,316,000 gold francs) of the forecasts of civil expenditure alone— a quarter of total expenditure — unproductive expenditure devoted solely to administration.
However, these expenses represented little cost compared to military expenses, entirely covered by the French budget of the war:
in 1839, the appropriations of the military health service and engineering alone (6,893,038 gold francs) equalled 80% of the total civilian budget, and in 1863, the year of respite from the fighting, as the previous one, the total forecast of army expenditure reached 62,067,553 gold francs (nearly one billion today).
The profits went to colonial enterprises, primarily financial and commercial, without enriching or equipping Algeria other than to install colonization and drain its production.
The installation of a system of exchange of raw products of colonization, then agricultural for more than 40% of their value, — cereals exported even in 1867, against the import of very little flour! (232) - against elaborate imports, created, at the same time as these profits, a permanent deficit, of the order of 40 to 50 million fr.-or (between 20 and 50 % of exports) by increasing exports from less than 10 million in 1850 to 108 in 1864 and 165 in 1872 and imports from 50 to 130 and then 206 million (233).
It was also this deficit that was offset by the contribution of public funds.
@ -5433,7 +5432,6 @@ It was the same in 1857, 1863-1865, and even in 1871, before the uprising, when
Of these numbers, deaths in ambulances and hospitals, 125,000, or more than 3,000 per year (4%), are approaching, in a population of young adults physically “fit”, twice the average rate of civilian deaths at the time.
For a rate of 1% of the workforce in the quiet years (thus in 1861-1863), or 2% (in 1852-1853), we reach 4% in 1847, 5% in 1838, 10% in 1832-1833 or in 1836-1837, 14% (9,587) and 12% (7,802) in 1840 and 1841, at the beginning of the war against 'Abd el-Qader, and as much in 1851 and 1857 during the Kabylie campaigns, in 1859 and 1871.
This means that more than 100,000 of these dead were direct victims of the war.
The number of killed in battle, when it is mentioned (254 at the Macta in 1835, “hundreds” at the Tafna in 1836, more than 1,000 in 1837 during the two assaults against Constantine, 108 in Mitidja on November 21, 1839, 332 at the Mouzaïa pass on May 12 and June 15, 1840, 400 at Sidi Brahim in 1845, the entire Beauprêtre column in 1864) was often superior, rarely less than half that of the wounded.
It exceeds even more the number of those who died of their injuries in hospital. This allows for a total loss approach.
@ -5441,12 +5439,12 @@ It exceeds even more the number of those who died of their injuries in hospital.
Finally, among the generals of the army of Algeria are Cavaignac, who, having returned to France, directed the murderous repression of the days of June 1848, and Saint-Arnaud, organizer of December 2, 1851 and the repression that followed.
231 General Statistics of Algeria (1865-66) pp. 110-111, and (1866-72), pp. 212-213. The evolution is provided by the T.E.F. (1830-37, 1838, 1839, 1840-41, 1842-43, 1844-45, 1846-49, 1850-52, 1853-58, 1859-61, 1862, 1863-64).
232 Cf. SARI (Dj.), /emph{op. cit.}, pp. 188-191 and pp. 208-209.
232 Cf. SARI (Dj.), \emph{op. cit.}, pp. 188-191 and pp. 208-209.
233 PRENANT (A.), La dépendance de l'Algerie et les finances françaises, In Économie et Politique(economy and politics), Nov. 1956, pp. 42-51.
/section{The exploitation of “French Algeria” (1871-1954)}
\section{The exploitation of “French Algeria” (1871-1954)}
The suppression of the insurrection of 1871 created for 75 years, then, after an even more deadly repression, in 1945, for another ten years, until November 1954, a period of “calm” favorable to “business”.
@ -5471,7 +5469,7 @@ roads, railways, vineyards, citrus fruits, health, schools, etc., on the underst
In the context of a more subtle colonial “revisionism”, Jacques Marseille, in the edition of his thesis (234), considers that the importance of the expenditure of French public funds in this country 235 would attest to the magnitude of the “metropolitan effort”.
It is he who would have thus set up “the structures generating imbalance” by making it possible to satisfy demand “at the price of (the) trade deficit”, an effort made “to save Algeria from misery and rebellion” (236).
It considers as proof that the possession of the country would not have been “of such great convenience for the metropolis” the maintenance by this financing, — and by the transfers of the emigrants -, of a local consumption and, a posteriori, the finding that with independence, “the disappearance of the protected area did not (a) finally cause any serious damage” (237) for “France” whereas according to /emph{Les Échos} on 12 March 1956, it should have “inevitably led to unemployment”.
It considers as proof that the possession of the country would not have been “of such great convenience for the metropolis” the maintenance by this financing, — and by the transfers of the emigrants -, of a local consumption and, a posteriori, the finding that with independence, “the disappearance of the protected area did not (a) finally cause any serious damage” (237) for “France” whereas according to \emph{Les Échos} on 12 March 1956, it should have “inevitably led to unemployment”.
The favourable evolution for “Algeria” of the terms of trade during the crisis and the Second World War would prove that “France” did not take advantage of it to “impose surcharges on its Algerian customers (and) to supply themselves cheaply” (238).
Ultimately, it would be the generosity of French capital that would be responsible for the deterioration of the “state of equilibrium (...) of the “Algerian economy” that Jacques Marseille believes to detect from 1914 to 1945 in the “satisfactory situation of public finances and foreign trade” by arousing, by “the parity of wages with France,” social security, family allowances, a “new series of handicaps” to “attract capital”.
He also took up the thesis of Le Figaro affirming, on October 11, 1953, that if “half of the Muslim rural masses (...) slowly dies of hunger, this is the “consequence of hygiene brought by the France”:
@ -5489,7 +5487,6 @@ The number of doctors, including civil servants, from 1,033 in 1939, still 1,074
While J. Marseille asserts that “a subsistence minimum (is) relatively maintained for a large majority of the population”, the years 1941-1942 and 1945-1946 find, in the middle of a period of “economic equilibrium” (because of it?) a demography close to that of the years of famine 1867-1868.
If the general statistics mask it because of under-reporting (in particular of child deaths), urban civil states denounce it, as three quarters of a century earlier:
at Setif (241), in 1942, the mortality rate (4.88%), almost double the already high minimum rate of 1932, 1936, 1948, exceeded the birth rate, in 1945 it equalled it (at 3.9%) despite still undeclared child deaths, with marked peaks in winter and late summer and, in 1945, in the “lean season”, from March to May.
In Sidi bel-'Abbes (242), according to the declarations, the mortality rate, 4.77% in 1941, 5.32% in 1942, 4.8% in 1945, exceeded in those years that of the birth rate (3.77%, then 4%, then 4.27%), leaving a natural increase deficit of 238, 326 and then 135 individuals;
it compensated for it to the nearest 115 in 1948, with 4.57% against 5.08, between usual rates still of 2.52% in 1951 and 3.72% in 1943, double, despite the youth of the population, those of the settlers of the time.
The same was true in marginal precarious neighbourhoods, such as the Sénéclauze “subdivision”, where the mortality rate remained at 2.8% in 1951, mainly due to the death rate of less than one year per 1,000 births and where life expectancy at birth did not exceed 17 years.
@ -5502,26 +5499,24 @@ Similarly, schooling affected very few Muslim school-age children, mostly male a
in 1951-1952, 168,940 boys in primary classes and 56,796 girls— 16 per cent of schoolchildren, or 25 per cent and 8.8 per cent of each sex, compared with 10 per cent in 1940.
However, according to Rozet (245), in 1830, “almost all men knew how to read, write, count” and “there were (in Algiers) a hundred schools... where children were taught to read and write the Qur'an, and sometimes a little calculation.”
All the more so, at the end of the colonial period, segregation only exceptionally allowed “Muslim” children access to kindergarten, secondary education (one for every five Europeans), and even complementary courses, where there were 5,567, including 1,625 girls, 0.6% of their age group, compared to 10,111 colonials; At university, at the time of independence, they would be only 5% of students.
As for the technical infrastructures, they were only commensurate with the requirements of colonization and capital. There was of course in 1830 no kilometer of rail in Algeria, — neither in France.
But the 4,372 kilometers, single-track, often narrow-gauge, set up from the 1860s, represented, for four times the surface and a fifth of the population of France only one-fifteenth of the metropolitan railways, based on the colonial minority alone and a tenth of the colonized, in equivalent numbers.
They responded, in their traffic as in their route, only to the need to drain export products to the ports, by linking Morocco and Tunisia by Oran, Algiers, Bône (Annaba) through the colonized plains, and leading to these ports, to Nemours (Ghazaouet), Bougie (Bejaïa) and Philippeville (Skikda), zinc from Zellidja, alfa of the routes of Crampel (Ras-el-Mâ), from Bechar (Kenadza) with coal, and from Djelfa, dates from Touggourt and Biskra, phosphates and iron from Kouif and Ouenza.
All the unprofitable branches from Tlemcen to Beni-Saf, towards Arzew and Mostaganem, even the wheats from Tiaret, especially in the Eastern High Plains between Meskiana, Khenchela and Tebessa, had already been deposited.
On a network with loose meshes, traced (like the Bechar rail for strategic reasons) private road traffic replaced, with 43,078 trucks in 1951, 40% of a car fleet whose 56,391 passenger cars corresponded to the French service rate (1 for 40 souls) only, again for the million Europeans and one Algerian in ten.
234 /emph{Empire colonial et capitalisme français, histoire d'un divorce}(Colonial empire and french capitalism, history of a divorce), Paris, Albin Michel, 1984.
235 “ from 1865 to 1937,... as first investment capital,... 1531, 3 million francs” /emph{Ibid.}, p. 116.
236 /emph{Ibid.}, pp. 141-142.
237 /emph{Ibid.}, p. 32.
238 /emph{Ibid.}, p. 68.
239 /emph{Ibid.}, pp. 145-139.
240 /emph{Ibid.}, pp. 135-137.
241 PRENANT (A.) Settlement factors of a city in inland Algeria: Setif, In /emph{Annales de Géographie}, Paris, 1953, pp. 434-451.
242 Id. Questions of urban structure in three suburbs of Sisi-Bel-Abbès. In /emph{Bulletin de l'Association de Géographes Français}, 1956, pp. 62-75.
234 \emph{Empire colonial et capitalisme français, histoire d'un divorce}(Colonial empire and french capitalism, history of a divorce), Paris, Albin Michel, 1984.
235 “ from 1865 to 1937,... as first investment capital,... 1531, 3 million francs” \emph{Ibid.}, p. 116.
236 \emph{Ibid.}, pp. 141-142.
237 \emph{Ibid.}, p. 32.
238 \emph{Ibid.}, p. 68.
239 \emph{Ibid.}, pp. 145-139.
240 \emph{Ibid.}, pp. 135-137.
241 PRENANT (A.) Settlement factors of a city in inland Algeria: Setif, In \emph{Annales de Géographie}, Paris, 1953, pp. 434-451.
242 Id. Questions of urban structure in three suburbs of Sisi-Bel-Abbès. In \emph{Bulletin de l'Association de Géographes Français}, 1956, pp. 62-75.
243 Statements of Civil Status, and Diplomas of Higher Studies of H. Delannoy (Annex) and M.-A. Thumelin-Prenant (1956).
244 Statistical Yearbook of Algeria, Algiers, 1948-49, 1950, 1951.
245 ROZET, /emph{op. cit.}, vol. II, p.75.
245 ROZET, \emph{op. cit.}, vol. II, p.75.
@ -5532,7 +5527,6 @@ But these are public deficits, and they do not have their origin in spending of
As we have seen, the “state of equilibrium” linked to the “satisfactory situation of public finances” from 1914 to 1945 is in no way accompanied by “a relatively maintained subsistence minimum for a large majority of the population” (246) which, before 1941-1942 and 1945, experienced urban mortality rates exceeding 4% from 1911 to 1929, 4.5% from 1917 to 1922 and in 1927-1929 and even 5% in 1920-1922.
These rates are linked to malnutrition and lack of care and demographic deficit factors.
This is because, as A. Nouschi notes, only “5 to 10% of the natives (are) inserted in the commercial movement” and that, as Marseille acknowledges (247), the difference with the price paid to the producer matters a lot.
In fact, government spending is the result of low private investment, and the assistance provided to it to make profits.
J.Marseille writes it himself, when he shows (248), in 1927, the “(French) winegrowers exasperated by wine imports from Algeria (subject) to infinitely lower tax charges”, subsidized, paying the gasoline of tractors five times less, and that he recalls the absence of social insurance.
The quote he makes of Giscard d'Estaing taking up H. de Molinari in 1898, according to which “Algeria had already cost more than 4 billion (and) claims every year from 20 to 30 million from the metropolis to cover its budget” underlines the permanence of the imbalance between these public investments and the weakness of the private effort to withdraw its profits:
@ -5543,7 +5537,6 @@ In truth, these “good deals” were made at the expense of the Algerian people
The clearest is the transfer of land, from the Warnier law (1873) carried out more by forced transactions (for debts, mortgages etc.) than by official attributions, often for the benefit of absentee urban businessmen.
In the 1950s, this transfer left in the hands of 20,000 owners, 2,700,000 hectares, a third (the best) of the country's arable land, half to a tenth of them.
99% of Algerian owners share the remaining two-thirds and are thus reduced either to insufficient exploitation or to daily work, possibly complementary. This is the major factor in the rural exodus.
In the years preceding the Second World War and in those that followed it, the very slowdown in production and the difficulties due to the crisis and then the war led to a decrease in French exports and, consequently, a reduction or disappearance of the Algerian balance deficit.
However, this deficit, already present and increased, as we have seen, from 28 to 90 million gold francs from 1863 to 1873, rose from 34 to 78 billion francs in current terms from 1950 to 1954, toward France, but also, increasingly, toward other countries.
@ -5558,11 +5551,11 @@ the repatriation of the rest (46 billion that year) and the amount of the trade
246 MARSEILLE (J.), op. cit., p. 140.
247 /emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 72.
248 /emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 237.
249 /emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 116.
250 /emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 132.
251 The data of the report of the study group on financial relations between France and Algeria (1955) are largely put to use in these paragraphs which attempt to summarize A. PRENANT, Art. Cit. in /emph{Économie et Politique}, Nov. 1956.
247 \emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 72.
248 \emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 237.
249 \emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 116.
250 \emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 132.
251 The data of the report of the study group on financial relations between France and Algeria (1955) are largely put to use in these paragraphs which attempt to summarize A. PRENANT, Art. Cit. in \emph{Économie et Politique}, Nov. 1956.
4. The massacre opposed to rising political demands.
@ -5592,7 +5585,7 @@ This is the observation that leads to the insurrectional struggle a nucleus from
/section{1954-1962. A war to keep exploiting}
\section{1954-1962. A war to keep exploiting}
1. A return to massacres, destructions, destructuring.
@ -5609,7 +5602,7 @@ To the deaths are added, in Algeria, the destruction of villages, crops and fore
and the displacement of populations (estimated at least 1,800,000 souls) (252), driven from prohibited areas, thus removed from their cultures and "grouped" (concentrated) either in plains in areas of mechanized colonial appropriation that do not offer work, or around cities.
The rural exodus, triggered at the end of the last century by the dispossession of the fellahs, reinforced after 1918 by the loss of jobs linked to the mechanization of agriculture, is thus exacerbated, accentuating imbalance and distortion between settlement and economy of cities deprived of housing (until the colonial exodus of 1962), social infrastructure and industry.
252 Cf. /emph{L’Événement du Jeudi}, 25 au 31 Octobre 1990.
252 Cf. \emph{L’Événement du Jeudi}, 25 au 31 Octobre 1990.
2. Adverse impact on France.
@ -5626,7 +5619,7 @@ This violence of the power is also exercised against the French protests, two mo
253 PRENANT (A.), art. Cit. 1956, p. 43.
254 MARSEILLE (J.), op. cit. cit., p. 256.
255 See EINAUDI (J.L.), /emph{La Bataille de Paris}, 17 October 1961, Paris, Seuil, 1991.
255 See EINAUDI (J.L.), \emph{La Bataille de Paris}, 17 October 1961, Paris, Seuil, 1991.
@ -5648,24 +5641,23 @@ Public investment has therefore played well, at this time to compensate for the
Mendès-France declaring, on April 11, 1961: “Algeria costs us (...) more than it brings us” (262) silenced these returns to private capital.
The fact remains that, for the first time in the history of colonization, probably in the illusion of retaining its use, the French colonial capitalist state created in Algeria, and bequeathed to it in 1962 with independence, a productive equipment, although conceived exclusively as integrated into the needs of French capitalism.
256 PEYREFITTE (Alain), /emph{C’était de Gaulle.}(It was De Gaulle)vol. 1, Paris, Fayard, 1994, pp. 76-77.
256 PEYREFITTE (Alain), \emph{C’était de Gaulle.}(It was De Gaulle)vol. 1, Paris, Fayard, 1994, pp. 76-77.
257 Quoted by J. MARSEILLE, op. cit., p. 349.
258 Quoted, /emph{id., ibid.}
259 PRENANT (A.), /emph{art. cit.}, 1956, p. 44.
258 Quoted, \emph{id., ibid.}
259 PRENANT (A.), \emph{art. cit.}, 1956, p. 44.
260 Cité in MARSEILLE (J.), p. 146.
261 /emph{Ibid.}, p. 147.
262 In a press conference quoted by J. TOUCHARD, Le Gaullisme, 1940-1969, Paris, Seuil 1978, taken up by MARSEILLE (J.), /emph{ibid.,} p. 373.
261 \emph{Ibid.}, p. 147.
262 In a press conference quoted by J. TOUCHARD, Le Gaullisme, 1940-1969, Paris, Seuil 1978, taken up by MARSEILLE (J.), \emph{ibid.,} p. 373.
/section{1980-1998. Towards structural adjustment through Islamist terrorism}
\section{1980-1998. Towards structural adjustment through Islamist terrorism}
It is a productive apparatus created for Algerian national needs, offering four times more jobs than before independence and on the way to a largely integrated structure, which the opening to the “market” neutralizes from 1978-1980 before sterilizing and eroding it, again destructuring Algerian society.
During the previous eighteen years, during which Algeria had hardly remained linked to international capitalism except by the exchange of 95 to 98% of its hydrocarbons for imports, mainly of equipment (for more than a third) and (for all that) of raw materials and semi-finished products, the production of energy (and above all electricity) had been multiplied by 7.
Industrial production, especially public production, diversified, had seen its value more than tripled and satisfy for more than half its own demand, that of agriculture, construction and consumers; that of agriculture, despite the decline of the vine with the closure of its subsidized market, had remained constant, but for a population almost doubled and with increased requirements.
Oil exports ($8 billion) accounted for only 15% of GDP, quadrupled since independence, which represented per capita, 2.3 times that of Tunisia, 4 times that of Morocco.
The distribution of creations, planned to rebalance between regions and between rural and urban areas, employment and settlement, implied the acceptance of additional costs increased by the demand for housing and social needs: primary school enrolment increased to 75 per cent (60 per cent for girls), average enrolment to 40 per cent, secondary school to 25 per cent.
It is by giving the classic weapon of colonial control, the debt, contracted to respond by importing to shortages born of increased demand and turn a “non-competitive” production towards a diversification of exports that Algeria has reopened itself to the domination of big capital.
But its recolonization, which is no longer the work of a State, requires its integration, in a subordinate position, into the “new world order”.
The search for an increase in the value of exports through the very expensive valorization of hydrocarbons (the “Valhyd” plan) increased the external debt from 11 to 198 billion dollars from 1978 to 1980.
@ -5705,20 +5697,15 @@ Nevertheless, it uses violence and threats of violence, that of an identity-base
André Prenant is a geographer.
263 Cf. PRENANT (A.) et SEMMOUD (Bouziane) : Algeria; the deconstruction of an industrial fabric, in : Méditerranée, N°3-4, Aix, 1997.
264 Cf. /emph{les Cahiers du GREMAMO}, n° 12 : SEMMOUD (B.) Urban growth, mobility and social change in the Oran conurbation (1995) and n° 14: Recherches urbaines sur l'Algérie (1997).
265 Algeria : a resistible regression, in /emph{Aujourd’hui l’Afrique(Today Africa)}, n° 67, February 1998.
264 Cf. \emph{les Cahiers du GREMAMO}, n° 12 : SEMMOUD (B.) Urban growth, mobility and social change in the Oran conurbation (1995) and n° 14: Recherches urbaines sur l'Algérie (1997).
265 Algeria : a resistible regression, in \emph{Aujourd’hui l’Afrique(Today Africa)}, n° 67, February 1998.
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