\chapter[Algeria 1830-1998]{Algeria 1830-1998 : From colonial capitalism's infancy to the monopolar enterprise of “globalized” recolonisation}

\chapterauthor{André PRENANT}

In Algeria, capitalism, even if it has little part in the decision of conquest, intervenes as soon as it is implemented and, with the exception of the two decades that followed independence, until now:
until 1962 it played as a model of colonial capitalism, from its mercantilist beginnings to its oil fixations; today, in the context of globalization, as a type of monopolar “recolonization”.

Admittedly, in 1830, capital still had little authority in France.
But it was throughout the duration of its evolution that he presided in Algeria over the structuring of legislation and the colonial economy, its maintenance in the face of the resistance that emerged there, until the final violence by which he tried to avoid being ousted.
Since independence, it has played on the fragility and external dependence of the “non-capitalist” economy that was trying to build itself there, on the consolidation of the antagonism between social classes developed by the contradictions of this economy, to provoke its crisis.
It provided an opportunity to reintroduce the constraints that have aggravated and aggravates it, by determining the violence weighing on the country, in turn used to put it back in its place in the “new world order”.

Alien to the very decision of the expedition of 1830 (born of the refusal by the French monarchy to assume a debt), the capitalist system determined, on the other hand, the forty years of gaiter and violence it took to control the country (1830-1871),
the seventy-five years that followed during which it was able to exploit it without massive “illegal” violence (1871-1945), and the seventeen years (1945-1962) that range from the Setif-Guelma massacres to Independence.
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}


\subsection{The share of capital in the decision of the expedition of Algiers.}

Paradoxically, the Algiers expedition, which occurred in France at the end of the transition from mercantilism to the Industrial Revolution, was made against the proponents of economic liberalism and the representatives of manufacturing.
They are opposed to public spending where they see little prospect of profit.
Unlike the colonial strangleholds that would follow, such as that of England over Egypt, it did not invoke unpaid debts by the country to be dominated, and for good reason:
the conflict originated in the non-payment, under the Empire and then under the Restoration, of grain deliveries to the Directory, for 7,942,992 gold francs including 350,000 due to the bey, representing in 1827 with the accumulated interest some 24 million-gold, including 1.25 due to the bey.

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*\rfootnote{The \enquote{*} 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 \footnote{in \emph{Revue encyclopédique, May 1830.}}:
“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.
Thus, Alexandre de Laborde \footnote{To the king and the chambers on the real causes of the break with Algiers, Paris, 1830.} refuses to take Algiers “without being able to keep it (and that) these expenses can bring profits”:
it is in the name of “this mass of hard-working men (...) who will see the flow (...) of enormous sums of which they do not understand either the purpose or the cause” which he denounces “the last deals... passed without open credit” for a war that he “does not fear to ... call... unjust”, at least as long as the occupation of Algiers is not carried out.
The same is true of a Bignon, deputy of the Eure (and the textiles of Évreux), declaring on July 10, 1829 \footnote{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.} that “the causes of the rupture did not deserve the tenth part of the sacrifices it ... has already cost”

Both tendencies persisted after 1830: liberalism, advocating the use of capital spent in Algeria to equip France, and “a small number of monopolists” speculating on land “bought fictitiously and at a low price (to re-)sell it much more expensive”.
These monopolists were denounced on May 20, 1835 by Desjobert, deputy of Seine-Maritime, also a draper department \footnote{\emph{Ibid., vol. 96,} in R. VALET, \emph{op. cit.}}.
In his eyes, the motivations of the monopolists remain interested \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}}: “the only result” of the conquest remains in 1835 “to have transported to Marseille the business (...) previously spread throughout France. ”
In 1839, however, he could not “grant (the war) a man, nor a penny.”
The Count of Sade, recalling in 1835 that “the lands are not available” \footnote{\emph{Ibid., vol. 96,} in R. VALET, \emph{op. cit}} refuses to “exterminate the natives before dispossessing them”.
Hippolyte Passy, future minister of Napoleon III, still advocates in 1837 \footnote{\emph{Ibid., vol. 110,} in R. VALET, \emph{op.cit.}}. to “prohibit, or at least limit... the acquisition of land”, and proposes, in the same sense, to “deal with the ready-made powers on this country” and to “put it ... in such a state that we can maintain friendly relations with him, traffic with it without fear... and extract grain from it for the supply of our southern provinces.”

The latters saw in it, like Marshal Gérard on 12 November 1830, like Sismondi, “a vast outlet for the superfluous of our population and... the sale of the products of our manufactures” \footnote{Quoted in DUBOIS and TERRIER, \emph{Un siècle d'expansion coloniale} (A Century of Colonial Expansion.)}.
On March 21, 1832 \footnote{parl. arch., vol. 66, in R. VALET, \emph{op. cit.}}, after that, on the 20th, Marshal Clauzel, himself interested in Mitidja in several companies (two from Paris with a capital of 2 and 3 million (gold), two from Marseille worth 5 and 6 million, and several English) boasted that “Algiers receives more buildings than it once received in three years”,  the Marseille deputy Reynard mentions a company in creation “for the construction of steamboats (for) navigation”.

The war of conquest is, with them, that of the “swarm of speculators (...) shot at Algiers, seeking to buy at a low price to resell (...) the buildings of the city ... and the countryside” \footnote{LARCHER, \emph{Traité élémentaire de législation algérienne}, vol. II Paris, 1911.}, resulting in the government's “tacit commitments to the farmers, industrialists and capitalists it allowed to settle” \footnote{R. VALET, \emph{op. cit.}}.
The dominant tendency of rising capitalism was, from the beginning, to assume the risk of war, massacres, a risk admitted on July 7, 1833 by the African Commission.
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” \footnote{Minutes and reports of the commission appointed by the King on 7 July 1833.}.
The capture of Constantine in 1837 rallied, apart from Desjobert's last fires, the liberals to a “single thought” of French capitalism.

\subsection{War on the people, a deliberate policy. 1830-1871.}

As an instrument of conquest, war had, from the beginning, led to atrocities.
The African Commission was aware of it, which, before deciding to continue it, reported:
“We sent to torture, on mere suspicion and without trial, people whose guilt has remained more than doubtful ever since. (...)
We have massacred people with safe-conduct; slaughtered, on suspicion, entire populations who then found themselves innocent;
... put on trial men with deemed saints (brave enough to) intercede on behalf of their unfortunate compatriots (...) that there have been judges for... condemn and civilized men to have them executed. ” \footnote{\emph{Ibid.} (Paris 1834).}

The “contempt for a solemn capitulation” (...) of rights ... the most natural of the peoples”, recognized as such by the very decision which violated them, marked in 1833 the will to continue this war to extend the occupation of the country.
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.
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? \footnote{Cité par AZAN (Colonel P.) \emph{L’Émir ‘Abd-El-Kader}, Paris, 1925..”}

\subsubsection{Massacres.}

In 1833, massacres had already taken place: thus, in 1832, that of the tribe of el-Oufia, in Mitidja, reported in his memoirs by an officer \footnote{CHRISTIA, \emph{L’Afrique française}, Paris, 1863.}:
“A corps of troops surprised... the sleeping tribe... and slaughtered the unfortunate... without a single one seeking to defend himself (...); no distinction was made, neither of age nor of sex.
On their return from this shameful expedition, our riders carried heads at the end of their spears.
All the cattle... was sold (...) ; the rest of the loot, bloody remains..., exposed to the market... Bab-Azoun (...), women's bracelets still attached to cut wrists, earrings hanging from shreds of flesh (...);
was divided between the slaughterers and an agenda of April 8 ... proclaimed the high satisfaction of the general.”
In his book just after \footnote{\emph{Voyage dans la Régence d’Alger}, vol. III. Paris, 1833.}, the geographer of the expeditionary force Rozet envisaged the necessity, in order to colonize mitidja, “to exterminate all the Berbers (of) the mountains of Beni-Menad, Chenoua, etc.”
Shortly after, General Cavaignac, regretting not having met a Turk who went “to present his flag in the tribes with 300 or 400 Turks who cut 1,000 to 2,000 heads, shook a province and returned ... loaded with booty”, at the same time considered that Algerians “must have seen in the French regime only Turkish violence in the hands of Christians” \footnote{CAVAIGNAC, Letter to General Létang, 19 Avril 1834, in M. EMERIT, \emph{L’Algérie au temps d’Abdelkader}.}.
Still Bugeaud will judge, after the rupture of the treaty with 'Abd el-Qader, that his predecessors sinned by weakness:
“There must be,” he declared in the House on 14 May 1840, “a great invasion, which resembles what the Franks were doing, what the Goths were doing.”

These principles will be methodically applied in the war waged against 'Abd el-Qader from 1840. Colonel de Montagnac reported, on 17 Jan. 1842, that he was abducting from the “enemy” (sic), in the Mascara region, “women, children, cattle, wheat, barley” and, on 11 February, that General Bedeau “forcibly abducted women, children and cattle” from “a tribe on the banks of the Chelif” \footnote{MONTAGNAC (Colonel de), \emph{Lettres d’un soldat}(letters of a soldier), Paris 1885.}.
On November 19, he had praised his leader Lamoricière to “find the Arabs” and take “women, children, flocks” from them.
In 1845, the “technique” recommended by Bugeaud was that of the enfumages initiated by Cavaignac against the Sbeha, in the Ouarsenis.
Saint-Arnaud used this same technique on August 12, against the Beni-Ma'doun of Tenès thus causing 500 deaths.
“Compensation” for the defeat of Sidi-Brahim, Pélissier smokes, on June 19, the Ouled-Riah, in the west, making 760 dead and leaving only about forty survivors.
These massacres are described as “strict measures” by the Table of French Establishments \footnote{T.E.F. (Tableau des Établissements Français dans l’Algérie/Table of French Establishments in Algeria) 1844-45.}.

The surrender of 'Abd el-Qader in no way put an end to the massacres, reproduced at each resumption of the conquest and during each repression, during the Second Republic as during the Second Empire.
The collection of taxes from the 'achour alone resulted in 40 killed and 29 women prisoners among the Beni-Snous, near Tlemcen, on September 27, 1848 \footnote{\emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 7.}.
After the use of such methods in the Biban, in the “devastated" villages of Beni 'Abbes and Zouaoua in 1847, it was the extermination raids of Saint-Arnaud in the Guergour, the
Babor and the Wadi el-Kebir in 1851 \footnote{\emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 11, (1850-52) pp. 2, 3, 5, 7 et 8.}. In 1849, in the Aurès and ziban, the populations of Nara and Za'atcha were massacred after the assault:
in Nara, “everything that had been locked there passed through weapons or crushed by the fall of the terraces of houses” \footnote{\emph{Ibid.} (1846-49), p. 11.}.
In 1857, during the occupation of the great Kabylia, according to the Count of Hérisson \footnote{HÉRISSON (Count of), \emph{La chasse à l’homme}, Paris, 1866.}, “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”.

\subsubsection{Looting and destruction.}

The looting had begun as soon as Algiers was taken, with the sack of the “Treasury of the Qaçba” estimated at “30 million strong piastres” (more than a billion and a half today) and “reduced by two-thirds, and all the precious stones” \footnote{BARTILLAT (Marquess of), \emph{Relation de la campagne d'Afrique en 1830}(Relation of Africa campaign in 1830), Paris, 1833.} in violation of the capitulation agreement and in defiance of the claims of the dey.
After the stranglehold on the 51.7 million gold francs inventoried in the Algerian treasury (more than 600 million today), they continued to swell, “formalizing”, confusing themselves with the collection of taxes, penalties, fines, war contributions, or sequestration. They thus contributed to the economic decline of the country.

As early as September 8, 1830, in defiance of the convention of capitulation of July 5 guaranteeing to “inhabitants of all classes their religion, property, trade and industry”, its signatory Bourmont sequestered the property of expelled Turkish Algerians, those of Islamic and Habbou institutions intended for worship and Koranic teaching:
it assimilated them to the state-owned of a State abolished but not replaced by the Convention. We saw the looting accompany the massacre of El-Oufia, and all those that followed.
In 1836, according to Cavaignac himself, the Arab who came to sell at the Tlemcen market was “obliged to give a quarter, a half, the whole.”
In 1837, the capture of Constantine was followed by the sack of the city, as was going to be any city capture, from the war against the state of 'Abd el-Qader, so Miliana in 1839, Medea in 1840, etc.
Until 1872, Algeria's budget would include a chapter “taken from the enemy” covering the proceeds of public sales of confiscated movable property, crops and livestock removed.

Thus, as early as March 1839, “2,500 sheep and 600 oxen” and a year later “a large quantity of cattle” were taken from a fraction of the Harakta (Constantinese) following the murder of a sheikh already sanctioned by the execution of six convicts \footnote{T.E.F., 1839 and 1840.}.
One can note, in the long list of these cases, the taking, with 3,000 prisoners, of “1500 camels, 300 horses and mules and 15,000 or 16,000 head of cattle ... brought back” from the Beni Menacer, west of Algiers, in 1842 \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, 1842.}, those of 3,000 head of cattle to Ouled Defelten (Ouarsenis) in May 1845 and, in June, for “insubordination”, that of 20,000 sheep, 800 oxen and 500 camels to the Nememcha; 500 sheep, 350 oxen, 250 camels in the Mouïadat (S. de Medea); from 700, then 1,000 oxen, 2,000 then 15,000 sheep, 300 beasts of burden and 30 camels to refugees in Morocco in the Tlemcen region; in 1846, the taking “every day,... (of) large herds (...) of some fraction of the Ouled Naïl”; from 33,000 sheep, 500 camels, horses, tents to the Hamyan on January 13, 1847 \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, 1844-45, pp. 2-5, and 1846-49, pp. 2.}.

War contributions can simply formalize these flights, as, in the Jebel Amour, “in just three days, (that) of 3,000 oxen and 7,000 sheep” of May 1846 \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, 1845-46, p. 8.}.
They can replace or be added to it in the form of cash raises; thus the 58,000 F gold raised in 10 days on the Bellezma in 1844;
in 1845, near Tenès, a “fairly strong” contribution was required from the Beni Hidja and the Beni Macdoun, the latter shortly before they were smoked, and 120,000 F were requested from the Beni Chougran;
in 1846, 20,000 francs were taken from the Ouled 'Abdi after the fire in their village, and 200 to 300 francs per head from the Harrar du Chergui (i.e. the average income of two years);
were still raised, that year, 20,000 F on the Amoucha (Babor), 30,000 in three days on the Ouled Sidi-Yahia, near Tebessa, 55,000 on the borders of Philippeville and, in 1847, on January 10, 50,000 F on the Ouled Jellal. In January 1948, the Hamyans, already deprived of their herds, were taken 100,000 francs and removed 10 douars for not having paid.
Fines are imposed on the refusal (or inability) to pay war contributions or taxes:
as well as those which, in the Ouarsenis, had to pay, for refusal of taxes, in 1848, the Ouled Defelten deprived of their herds two years earlier, and those imposed on the Beni Zouqzouq, the Righa, the Beni-Menad close to Miliana, and the Beni Hassan of Titteri;
in 1849, the fine due by Bou Sa'ada for the barricades erected in the city, and the 10,000 francs demanded of the neighboring Ouled Faradj, the fines levied on the Ouled Soltan and Ouled Sylem of Ouarsenis, and the Ouled Younès of Dhahra;
in 1850, those who hit the Harakta, eleven years after the confiscation of their livestock, and the Segnia of Hodna \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, 1846-1849, pp. 7-11.}.

In addition to the destruction of the resources remaining for the occupied populations, above all that of their crops and livestock, there is also the transfer to the occupier of the latter, of crops, and monetary income, in order to impoverish the poorest for the benefit of the richest and thus place him in his dependence.
This destruction is indeed, as is the destruction of humans themselves, a major weapon of repression.
From the first year, Rozet \footnote{ROZET, \emph{op. cit}, vol. III, pp. 202-214.} defined the tribes around Blida as “those that we sacked with General Berthezène (en) May 1831”;
he estimates the consumption of fruit taken the previous winter by the troop to the inhabitant in the 400 hectares of orange trees of Blida at 400,000, while “it was not noticed”;
he points out that “our bivouacs ... have lightened a little” the olivettes of the Mitidja, and that this plain was cultivated, towards Birtouta and Boufarik, only “when we passed there for the first time”.

Again, this was only about the life of the troop on the country. Destruction is only then erected as a system. 
Let us recall that, for Montagnac \footnote{MONTAGNAC, op. cit., p. 334.} “all populations that do not accept our conditions must be razed, everything must be taken, ransacked, regardless of age or sex”.
The Official Journal, Moniteur algérien of April 14, 1844, will publish bugeaud's threat to the Kabyles de Tisser, namely to “burn... (their) villages ... to cut ... (their) fruit trees” if they “do not banish Ben-Salem”.
During the war against the state of 'Abd el-Qader, the litany began, only to accelerate as the Algerian resistance weakened:
these are the Hadjout douars destroyed in western Mitidja on March 12 and 13, 1840;
on 27 and 28 August the second “severe punishment” of the Kabyles of Mouzaïa and the Beni-Salah of the Atlas of Blida then the “ruin” of the Righa of southern Setif rallied to the emir \footnote{T.E.F., 1840.}.
In 1842, among the relatives Beni Menacer, Saint-Arnaud \footnote{SAINT-ARNAUD (letters of Marshal of..), t. I, Paris 1858.} said to fire “few shots of rifle”, but burn “all the douars, all the cities, all the huts” and, two months later, confirms:
“we ravage, we burn, we plunder, we destroy houses and trees.”
On October 2, 1844, he wrote “burn (in Kabylia) the properties of Ben-Salem and Bel-Cassem”, and “cut down the orange trees”, by only executing the threats of Bugeaud mentioned above, after having “almost entirely ruined” the houses and burned the crops of 19 fractions of the Flissa \footnote{T.E.F. (1844).}.
Again, after the surrender of 'Abd el-Qader, during the occupation of Kabylia and until the repression of the insurrection of 1871, these “methods” will remain used.
In 1845, the Ouled'Abdi, before being fined, saw “their main villages burned” \footnote{\emph{Ibid.} (1844-45) pp. 2-5.}; in January 1847, the same treatment for the Ouled Younès, and seven Ouled-Naïl douars, in order to “prevent any attempt” \footnote{\emph{Ibid.} (1846-49).}.
In 1848, among the destructions, let us mention near Tlemcen that of Tameksalet, those carried out among the Zouagha, the Ouled Sidi-Cheikh, the Zouaoua, that of the Mzaïa villages near Bejaïa, “the devastation” of the villages and crops of the Beni 'Abbes;
in 1850, the destruction of the Tifra villages of Sebaou, and the burning of those of the Beni-Immel du Guergour.
In 1851, Saint-Arnaud recurred: he burned on April 10 on the Wadi Sahel, Selloum and its inhabitants, on May 12 the villages of Ouled Mimoun and Ouled Asker, on the 19th, “more than fifty villages surrounded by orchards and gardens”, on the 26th and 27th those of the Beni Foughal, on June 9th, three villages Beni Aïssa, in July,  towards Collo, three others of the Djebala, still others, before in July were burned villages and harvests, further west in the Guergour and Soummam, among the Ouzellaguen, the Beni Aïdel and the Beni Immel \footnote{\emph{Ibid.} (1850-1852), pp. 2-8.}.
He himself writes, from Little Kabylie: “All the villages, about two hundred, were burned, all the gardens ransacked, the olive trees cut. \footnote{SAINT-ARNAUD, .op. cit., vol. II.} ”
From 1854 to 1857, the resistance of Greater Kabylia yielded only to the systematic burning of villages and crops, practiced even sometimes after refusing to accept the submission of the tribes.\footnote{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.”}

Urban destruction has affected most cities in non-Saharan Algeria, even partially those that have not experienced fighting.
Among these, especially the first taken from the Turkish state, before any people's war, Algiers saw from 1831, according to Rozet, its “small suburb” of Bab el-Oued “partially destroyed” and its pipes punctured “to make our horses drink”, Blida was looted;
as for the “beautiful houses" of Oran, “our soldiers destroyed almost all of them, in order to have the wood of the floors to cook” \footnote{ROZET, op. cit. cit., vol. I, p. 120, vol. III, p. 264 and p. 204.}.
In the cities that, after 1840, surrendered without a fight (Tlemcen, Nedroma), clearing the ramparts and drilling clear roads destroyed many houses (by the hundreds in Algiers).
Those who resisted suffered not only the destruction of sieges and assaults (a third of Constantine in 1837), but the sacking after their occupation.
Clauzel plundered and burned Mascara, capital of the emir, from 6 to 9 December 1835, so that in 1838 his suburb of Arqoub Ismail was “in ruins and almost devoid of inhabitants” and those of Baba Ali lived “in huts... on the ruins of their houses” \footnote{T.E.F. (1838), pp. 263-264.}.
The generalized war from 1840 multiplied the destruction of cities. That year, Mascara and Medea were set on fire again.
In Miliana, “the ravages of the fire were joined by inevitable degradations, consequences of the abandonment of the city (...) and the first necessities of military occupation” \footnote{Ibid. (1840).}.
In 1841, the capture of the cities created by the emir permanently razed his capital, Tagdemt (near Tiaret), but also destroyed Scaïda, Sebdou, Boghar, T'aza, at the same time as his attempts to retake those already lost were sanctioned by new destruction in Miliana, Medea, Mascara, in 1842 in Tlemcen, in 1843 in Tenès, Laghouat, Biskra.


All thoses destructions was accompanied by the flight of the inhabitants:
of all those, Muslims and Jews, of Miliana; of all those also of Medea, Mascara, Cherchel, Tenès; 7,000 of the 10,000 Oranese, more than a third of the 35,000 Constantinois, the 12,000 Tlemcenians, the 30,000 to 40,000 Algiers.
The result, note the T.E.F. about Constantine, “an unfortunate influence on the industrial and commercial movement of the city” \footnote{T.E.F. (1840), pp. 364-65.}, 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.

\subsubsection{The looting of property and land.}

The looting of property and land is, from the outset, the intended outcome of these abuses.
“Wherever there is good water and fertile land,” Bugeaud said, “this is where settlers must be placed without knowing who owns the land (... and ...) distribute them to them in full ownership” \footnote{Speech to the Chamber of Deputies, 14 May 1840.}.

In the city, the sequestration of the property of refugee families in rural areas, especially in the mountains, prepared the substitution of a colonial population for Algerian city dwellers, thus excluding them from their own city.
This phenomenon has led to the lasting deurbanization of Muslim Algerians.
Thus were sequestered, and generally redistributed or resold to “Europeans” 812 urban buildings in Mascara, 1,033 in Tlemcen, 490 in Miliana, almost as many in Medea, 60 in Jijel, etc.
Even with the colonial contribution, Algiers did not regain its total population of 1830 until 1861, Constantine in 1871, Mascara in 1876, Tlemcen in 1886;
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 \footnote{Data derived mainly from comparative population counts.}.
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” \footnote{To use the title of a book by Djilali SARI, Alger, 1975.} 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\footnote{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} removing from the Kabyles the winter pastures of their plains and the high cereal plains of Medjana.
This sequestration was accompanied by the deportation of the Hashem from this plain in the arid steppe of the Hodna, and the raising of an extraordinary war contribution of 27,452,000 F or, putting entire populations at the mercy of usurious loans.
This dispossession benefits, from this phase, the concentration of land capital, by the intervention of bank credit for the benefit of the most solvent, then by the major concessions dedicated to latifundiary under-exploitation:
20,000 ha. to the Société Genevoise, near Setif from 1853; 100,000 to the Algerian Generale in 1865, in the middle of the “Arab Kingdom” against a loan of 100 million F. gold.
It has destructured and impoverished rural society, putting it at the mercy of imposed “purchases” in the future, even though even before the sequestration of 1871, more than 500,000 hectares were taken from it by colonization, 96\% by the colonial state. 
It has also nationalized or communalized areas of the same order.

\subsubsection{Consequences: The algerian \enquote{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” \footnote{SARI (Djilali), \emph{Le désastre démographique}(the demographic disaster), Algiers, 1982.}.
This was compounded by the loss of life in combat, during the massacres, the destruction, looting and taking committed on a piecemeal basis, as well as the dispossession and living conditions imposed on all Algerians by the system.
If we can debate the number of inhabitants (5 million) to which Sari estimates the population in 1830, the minimum of 3 million for non-Saharan Algeria alone, 6\% of whom are urban, is no longer disputed \footnote{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.}.}.
The enumeration of 1845, from which Kabylies and Aurès escaped, and those of 1851 (three years after the deadly famine of 1848) and 1856, which can still only estimate the population of Greater Kabylia, give respectively 2,028,000, 2,324,000 and 2,302,000.
In 1853, Carette's more reliable estimate attributed to the tribes (excluding the cities) 2,670,410 inhabitants, or in all, more than 2.8 million, after 23 years of occupation and war.
This is a figure very close to that of 1861 (2,732,851), following the murderous campaign of Kabylia.
That is to say the shortfall on the evolution that would have occurred outside this context, which can be estimated, in thirty years, between half a million and a million lives lost.
However, in the same space, there were only 2,653,000 souls and, in 1871, 2,125,052, down 80,000 and then 527,000, at annual rates of -0.58\%, during a period that included the repression of the insurrection of 1863-1864, then by 4.37\% during the years of famine and epidemics of 1867-1868,  this implies an average mortality rate of more than 8\% per year.
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” \footnote{Cf. A.PRENANT in LACOSTE, NOUSCHI, PRENANT, \emph{op. cit.}, p. 321.}.
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” \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, p. 320.} 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.

The most massive mortality, however, was due to the famines of 1848-1849 and 1866-1868, the root causes of which, contrary to what has been said, are not climatic.
Admittedly, the years in question, except 1867-1868, were marked by below-average rainfall, aggravated in several regions by poor annual distributions, with light rains at the end of winter and spring and in 1865-1866 by a marked scale of locust flights;
there are no decisive conditions here, but only favourable to the tipping point into scarcity. These two phases, on the other hand, have in common:

— 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.


The responsibility of power can be read in this official commentary on the famine of 1848-1849:
“The Arabs are beginning to understand that peace alone will provide them with the means to repair the disasters caused by two years of famine” \footnote{T.E.F. (1846-49), p. 13.}.
And Napoleon III himself announced one to two years in advance that of colonial capitalism in 1866-1868:
“Among the indigenous populations, poverty is increasing because of their proximity to the major European centers. The Saharan tribes are rich and the Arabs of Tell are ruined” \footnote{Letter to the Duke of Magenta (Mac Mahon), 20 June 1865.}.
The fact that exports persisted—especially wheat produced by the settlers,” in 1866 and 1867, despite the need to import flour in 1867— shows how scarcity encouraged people to take advantage of rising prices at the expense of matmura reserves.

Cereal harvests fell rapidly, more markedly for barley than for wheat, from 20 million quintals to 11.3, then 10.8, then 8, then 4.4, from 1863 to 1867, before rising (but to just 10.3) in 1868.
The harvests of the settlers, subject to the same climatic hazards, certainly fall by 60\%, but those of the Algerians fall by 80\%, from 18 to 3.9 million quintals.
At the same time, the area sown fell from 2,450,000 hectares to 2.3, then 2.1 and then 2 million hectares in 1866 and 1867 and fell to 1.4 million hectares the following year, climatically favourable:
the lack of arms, due to the loss of life caused by famine and cholera, will render vain in 1868 the good climatic conditions and will prolong the crisis.

According to an official account, it was the depletion of resources that allowed the cholera epidemic of 1867.
The latter, which wreaked havoc on “the poorly clothed and malnourished natives” and provoked, in 1868, the famine that brought the inhabitants down to the plain “where they hoped to find barley and wheat ..., compact masses of Arabs (who we saw) desert their douars to come and implore the mercy of the settlers.
Our cities and our countryside were cluttered with these hungry crowds” \footnote{T.E.F. (1866-72), pp. 62-64.}.
This report, which “estimates the number of victims at more than 300,000”, is, as we have seen, far below the reality.

The human effects of the first disaster cannot be assessed, due to the lack of data on indigenous demographic movements; we can measure those of the second in the civil status of the cities, only to hold one.
Sari provides \footnote{SARI (Dj.) \emph{op. cit.} Cit.} a whole series of mortality evolution curves in Medea, Miliana, Mostaganem, Oran, Tlemcen, Mascara, Constantine, during the 1860s, which often show (in Oran, Constantine) a negative natural movement over the entire period, only exacerbated from 1866 to 1868;
sometimes (in Tlemcen) appeared in 1865, return accentuated in 1867 and especially 1868, and persistent, less marked, until 1870. The effects of winters are very marked.
In Miliana, if the balance sheet is, narrowly, negative for the Europeans (but not for the Jews), in 1867 and 1868 it is much more so for the Muslims of the commune, except in 1865 and 1870, with, in 1867 and 1868, 485 deaths then 354 deaths per 3,000 inhabitants (16.2 then 11.8\%!) and a growth deficit of 379 then 281 individuals.
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.

\subsubsection{The consequences: the impoverished and bruised French people.}

If the colonial conquest entails, for Algeria, the integration into structures of colonial exploitation in the subjection to a minority of newcomers supposed to represent France, this mutation is not for all that to the advantage of the French people.

During these forty-one years, public expenditure on the French treasury must meet both the costs of the war, the civil expenditure accruing to the metropolitan ministries (religion, justice, public education, finance), and those intended to make up the Algerian deficit.
Over the whole period, the total real participation of the French State in civil expenditure amounted to 192 million gold francs \footnote{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).} (about 2.7 billion currently) of which 37\% (71 million) devoted to filling the deficit of the Algerian budget.
However, this deficit has not tended to be reduced, both because of the tax facilities granted to colonial companies and the growing crushing of the Algerian tax base by looting, destruction, transfers of property, abuses of “Arab taxes” and sanctions taken to impose them on an impoverished people to the point of not being able to pay.
The metropolitan contribution intended to fill it, equal to 45\% of local resources in 1836 (2.5 million gold), amounted to 59\% of these resources (3.15 million) in 1839, 54\% (8.5 million) in 1841 and 101\% (12.86 million) in 1844. 
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! \footnote{Cf. SARI (Dj.), \emph{op. cit.}, pp. 188-191 and pp. 208-209.} - 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 \footnote{PRENANT (A.), La dépendance de l'Algerie et les finances françaises, In Économie et Politique(economy and politics), Nov. 1956, pp. 42-51.}.
It was also this deficit that was offset by the contribution of public funds.

The human losses, especially affecting the working class who were unable to pay the replacements they provided in the era of seven-year military service, exceeded 200,000 deaths during these forty years.
The war retained at least until 1871 more than 70,000 metropolitan soldiers each year (73,188 out of 80,862 to the total number in 1844, 70,611 out of 83,870 in 1859, relatively calm years) and many more during offensives and uprisings (in 1835-1836, 1840-1842, 1845-1846) where they were well over 100,000,  one for every 30 Algerians, including women and children.
It was the same in 1857, 1863-1865, and even in 1871, before the uprising, when the German army invaded France.

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.

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.

\section{The exploitation of \enquote{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”.

\subsection{The \enquote{calm} of exhaustion.}

It is in reality the cessation of military resistance, which is now disturbed only by sporadic movements.
It was achieved by the physical destruction of a significant part of the population, especially male, the economic ruin of its great majority, its social destructuring and its cultural disintegration, at the end of the forty years of previous war.
It is characteristic that the major uprisings that occurred in the period, in 1881 among the Ouled Sidi-Cheikh under Bou 'Amama, and in 1916 in the Aurès and the Sahara, which remained local, occurred on the borders of the South, outside the regions of agrarian colonization, in socially less unstructured areas despite previous repressions but victims of the code of indigenate.
The first, already raised in 1863, was subject to military rule, the second refused conscription for the foreign war of 1914-1918 in Europe.
It is also notable that the Marguerite affair, which occurred in 1898 near Miliana, in colonized land, called into question problems, no longer directly of refusal of domination and insubmissiveness, as the previous ones, but of social relations and posed political problems of resistance to economic domination.

It is that, even if the colonial power resumes, from 1880, on the southern margins of the country, military operations to annex the Sahara, with the objective, which it will not really achieve, to thus open to French capital a land trade route to its African empire, the “pacification” obtained by exhaustion must allow by stabilizing relations of domination,  to organize the exploitation of the resources and human labor power of the country.
It is against this exploitation at the same time as against the political and cultural dependence that allows it that, from the First World War, the political movement is organized more and more around a national demand.
It is against this politicization that exploitation imposes from the end of the nineteenth century its discriminatory legislation, corollary of socio-economic discrimination.

\subsection{What does \enquote{the work of France} represent?}

Until algeria's independence, French schoolchildren heard about “the work of France”; since 1962, memories of the “exceptional infrastructure” bequeathed by the colonizer to his colonized who became independent have been revived:
roads, railways, vineyards, citrus fruits, health, schools, etc., on the understanding that Algeria would have had nothing in 1830 and that it has been “given” everything since then.

In the context of a more subtle colonial “revisionism”, Jacques Marseille, in the edition of his thesis \footnote{\emph{Empire colonial et capitalisme français, histoire d'un divorce}(Colonial empire and french capitalism, history of a divorce), Paris, Albin Michel, 1984.}, considers that the importance of the expenditure of French public funds in this country \footnote{ “ from 1865 to 1937,... as first investment capital,... 1531, 3 million francs” \emph{Ibid.}, p. 116.} 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” \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, pp. 141-142.}.
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” \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, p. 32.} 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”:
the increase in the trade deficit expresses only “an imbalance between demographic and production developments” \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, pp. 145-139.}.
And it blames infrastructure development for the rapid worsening of financial dependence after 1945 \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, pp. 135-137.}.

Enough. What is true in this thesis is the reality of Algeria's budgetary and trade deficits, which are in fact permanent, except for the second out of thirteen of the years 1930-1948 when the terms of trade are balanced or positive.
These deficits precede family allowances and social security allocated in fact sparingly to permanent Muslim employees and this not before 1947, and all the more so a parity of wages never applied.
Supporting these theses is only possible by amalgamating reality within broad categories:
“France” or “Algeria”, without distinguishing sufficiently between public and private shares, capital and wage labour; by classifying in Algeria “settlers”, “mining companies”, and “Muslims” without separating, for example, among them, their mass from the small handful that participates in exports, etc.
This is to neglect the observation, in 1955, by the very official “Maspétiol commission”, of the impossibility of increasing the tax burden on the indigenous masses.

In reality, demography owes to a French contribution of hygiene only vaccinations (as much ignored in France as in Algeria in 1830!), here applied late in the face of contagions insensitive to the distinctions between natives and settlers.
The number of doctors, including civil servants, from 1,033 in 1939, still 1,074 in 1943, amounted to only 1,356 in 1945, 1,449 in 1949, 1,629 in 1952 (242 hospitallers), including 916 in Algiers and Oran (one per 900 inhabitants, 64\% European), and 713 for the rest of the country (one per 11,000 inhabitants,  to 95\% Muslims).
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 \footnote{PRENANT (A.) Settlement factors of a city in inland Algeria: Setif, In \emph{Annales de Géographie}, Paris, 1953, pp. 434-451.}, 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 \footnote{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.}, 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 \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, p. 68.}, 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.
This was also the case in the peri-urban areas of Tlemcen, Miliana and Nedroma, for example \footnote{Statements of Civil Status, and Diplomas of Higher Studies of H. Delannoy (Annex) and M.-A. Thumelin-Prenant (1956).}.
Poor health services and poor rural areas exacerbated these imbalances, even if under-reporting seemed to make them areas of well-being.
In 1947, 1948, 1949 had died at less than a year 245, then 195, then 201 children out of 1,000 born in the prefectures and sub-prefectures of the country \footnote{Statistical Yearbook of Algeria, Algiers, 1948-49, 1950, 1951.}.
One wonders how much of the difference between the 276,000 Muslim children declared in 1948 and the 195,000 recorded is due to this infant mortality.

Similarly, schooling affected very few Muslim school-age children, mostly male and especially urban:
in 1951-1952, 168,940 boys in primary classes and 56,796 girls— 16\% of schoolchildren, or 25\% and 8.8\% of each sex, compared with 10\% in 1940.
However, according to Rozet \footnote{ROZET, \emph{op. cit.}, vol. II, p.75.}, 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.

\subsection{Gifts? Yes, not to Algeria, but to Capital.}

What remains true in the thesis of J. Marseille is the constancy of deficits, except for certain years from one world war to another.
But these are public deficits, and they do not have their origin in spending of general interest, let alone social carried out “for Algeria”.
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” \footnote{MARSEILLE (J.), op. cit., p. 140.} 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 \footnote{\emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 72.}, 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 \footnote{\emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 237.}, 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:
if, “from 1865 to 1937, public expenditure on first investment capital amounted to 1,531.3 million F \footnote{\emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 116.}” in comparison, the share capital of the companies did not exceed 94 million.
Algeria is no less, for this author, with Indochina, one of the two areas of “good business” ... “on which are located 20 of the 32 companies” \footnote{\emph{Id., ibid.}, p. 132.} that have made the most profits.

In truth, these “good deals” were made at the expense of the Algerian people, and for the benefit of a very small minority of colonial owners and the large French capitalist companies, first mining or commercial.
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.

From 1950 to 1953 the metropolitan budget paid Algeria 286 billion francs (about 40 billion francs today), of which, according to the Maspétiol commission \footnote{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.}, in 1953 “50\%... seem to be considered as providing aid to Algeria.”
Thus, in 1953, out of 93 billion, 62 billion related to operating expenditure, two-thirds military, investment credits (35.7 billion) used, for 6 billion, to repay previous loans, and for 27 billion, to subsidize, by 6\% of expenditure, colonial enterprises or by 27\%, to lend them.
However, they benefited from “advantages already granted in tax matters” the importance of which the Maspétiol report stressed.
The tax burden rate, from 33\% in France, fell for them to 19\% (16.4\% in metallurgy against 28.4\% ; 16.2\% in texties against 26.2\%);
in the face of taxes on property income and agricultural profits further reduced from 6\% of the budget in 1949 to 1.8\% in 1953, taxes on wages were doubled, income tax left at constant rates, indirect taxes increased.
It was to prolong the constant tendency to “make the poor pay” since the time, a century earlier, when Muslims, from 1863 to 1872, had provided in “Arab tax” and war contributions, 28\% of the Algerian budget, against 2.8\% to the beneficiaries of colonization or that, in 1890, when “Arab taxes” provided 3/4 of direct contributions (15\% of budgetary resources) when settlers were still exempt from property tax.
In the Algerian GDP of 1953, the share of profits was 47\% (239 billion francs current), that of wages only 34\% (160 billion), and the proportion of accumulated capital reinvested on the spot, 52\%:
the repatriation of the rest (46 billion that year) and the amount of the trade deficit represented the exodus of capital offset by public funds.

\subsection{The massacre opposed to rising political demands.}

Exceptional legislation, maintaining segregation, has been the weapon used to impose on Algerians this situation of inequality formalizing their exploitation.
The code of indigenate, legalized in 1874, extended to the “mixed communes” of civilian territories in 1881, revised in 1881 and 1914, maintained this “apartheid” until the Second World War.
It defined a series of crimes specific to Muslim Algerians, ranging from “remarks against the France and the government” to “delay in paying taxes,” and placed them under the arbitrariness, not of justice, but of the administration of appointed officials of authority.
This exceptional procedure, which included, in addition to penalties of deprivation of liberty, free work (chores) and sequestration, will persist after the Second World War, without the “Southern Territories” under military administration.
It is coupled with a forestry code that excludes Algerians from an essential resource and, in defiance of basic rights, admits responsibility and collective punishment.
It is relayed, throughout the territory, from 1935, by the decree Régnier threatening with prison and fines “whoever has ... provoked... Indigenous Algerians... to disorder or demonstrations against French sovereignty”.

These are the only answers made, between the two world wars, to a political movement that initially demanded justice and access to equality, from the beginning of the twentieth century either, for the notables, by access to a less restricted, even limited, share of the management of their own affairs, or to a French citizenship that did not impose renunciation of personal status.
These answers remain, from the immigration in France of workers, those given to the national demand carried, in the 1920s, by the North African Star.
Created by Messali Hadj with the support of the French Communists, disappointed in its aspirations, like the entire national movement, by the reversals of the Popular Front, it became the P.P.A. (Algerian Popular Party). 
Forbidden, its leaders imprisoned, this one, in the wake of the liberation, claims independence, like the U.S. D.M.A., the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto, which represents more the small and middle bourgeoisie, does not reject any link with the France.

It is to these demands associated with the celebration of the armistice understood as the announcement of the freedom of the peoples, and intolerable for capital and the colonial owners that responds, on May 8, 1945, the prohibition of demonstrations and, in Setif and Guelma, the provocation supposed to impose it: the banners torn off and the first shots fired.
The 88 victims of the demonstrators' reaction unleashed the repression by which colonial capital believed it was establishing its power, especially over the entire region north of Setif, the Babor, where resistance was manifesting.
Aerial bombardments, naval bombardments of the coast, sweeping of the region, destruction of farms and villages, parking of entire populations, executions without judgment, including “wood chores”, drownings etc. in Kherrata, are added to the 1,500 official deaths in “operations”, most often estimated at around 45,000 dead, and according to the French military themselves 6,000 to 8,000.

The break of May 8 nevertheless allowed exploitation by colonial capital to continue: 
the status of Algeria made Algerians, in their country, sub-citizens, having, in the Algerian Assembly, in the French Parliament, in the local assemblies, only a number of elected representatives equal to that of ten times fewer colonials.

Still, fraud reigns over these “Algerian-style” elections systematized by the socialist Naegelen and the “mixed communes” continue to administer most of the mostly rural areas of dominant Algerian settlement.
It is, with the continuation of the repression, and the maneuvers of division of the national movement, in particular between parties, but also within the M.T.L.D. (Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Freedoms) the means sought to allow the continuation of exploitation.
This is the observation that leads to the insurrectional struggle a nucleus from the O.S. (Special Organization) from the P.P.A., which triggers, on November 1, 1954, the armed action that will lead, eight years later, to independence.

\section{1954-1962. A war to keep exploiting}

\subsection{A return to massacres, destructions, destructuring.}

The number of Algerian deaths from the war of independence is uncertain.
Even if it is probably between the million and a half affirmed by the F.L.N. and the 330,000 to which the official French counts reduce it, anxious not to count the corpses of the mass graves that are discovered from time to time.
Disagreements between the results of the 1954, 1960 and 1966 counts and the natural increase balances allowed by the declarations must be read in view of the accentuation of the under-reporting of births and deaths.
This is evident for births, the rate of which from 1950 to 1955 was constantly between 4.2 and 4.4\% and rose to almost 5\% after 1962.
It exists all the more so for deaths whose reported number, during these eight years, rises, above the 115,000 of 1954 as of 1963, up to 140,000 to 154,000 after 1956, i.e. an annual excess mortality of 0.4 to 0.5\% (already more than the official French figure).
The 1960 count also found 168,000 fewer inhabitants than would result from the reported natural increase, while emigration to France had become scarcer, and the 1966 census another deficit of 160,000, mainly due to the years 1960-1962, if only because of the return of refugees in 1963-1964.
We can thus consider as likely the loss of at least 600,000 Algerian human lives, not counting the French killed, due to the obstinacy of French colonial capital, especially after the discoveries of Saharan hydrocarbons, to keep Algeria.
This is much more than just the victims of the fighting.

To the deaths are added, in Algeria, the destruction of villages, crops and forests, much more effective than those of the war of conquest which ignored bombs and napalm, all the more so than the forest offenses, true or suspected that punished the specific code;
and the displacement of populations (estimated at least 1,800,000 souls) \footnote{Cf. \emph{L’Événement du Jeudi}, 25 au 31 Octobre 1990.}, 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.

\subsection{Adverse impact on France.}

Financial imbalance and budget deficit only increased in France, from 1954 to independence, due to the increase in military spending that had given rise to it 124 years earlier.
As early as 1955 the contribution of the metropolitan budget to that of Algeria was increased by a third — from 107 to 140 billion francs \footnote{PRENANT (A.), art. Cit. 1956, p. 43.} (about 17 billion today) — apart from the military expenses due to the sending in 1954-1955 of the “drafted”, then to that of the conscripts of the contingent and to the extension of one year of their service, allowed by the granting in March 1956 of the “special powers” to Guy Mollet.

This policy of preserving “French Algeria” devoted increasing sums to keeping half a million men permanently on the spot until 1962, an eighth of the number of French armies in 1916, or almost twice that of the French armies of liberation (1944-1945).
A whole series of coups de force ensued, and first on May 13, 1958 which “authorized” the establishment of the Fifth Republic with the support of French capitalism. J. Marseille \footnote{MARSEILLE (J.), op. cit. cit., p. 256.} acknowledges “that the employers' groups (have) participated in the campaign for French Algeria”, later extended by the “plot of the generals”, the “barricades of Algiers” and the O. A.S., guilty of attacks in France as well as massacres in Algeria, even if he does not want to see it as “a formal proof of their attachment to the colonial form of imperialism”.
This violence, in France, is also reflected in the racist attitude of the police engaged in “face hunting”;
they will find their climax after the arrival at the police headquarters of Maurice Papon, former prefect of Constantine, on October 17, 1961, when 200 Algerians, peaceful demonstrators, are killed, mainly by drowning in the Seine, by police commandos \footnote{See EINAUDI (J.L.), \emph{La Bataille de Paris}, 17 October 1961, Paris, Seuil, 1991.}.
This violence of the power is also exercised against the French protests, two months later, in Charonne, where nine demonstrators are killed.

\subsection{The oil interest. The deficit worsened, the profits increased.}

Even before May 13, the discoveries of Algerian gas and oil (Edjeleh, Hassi Mess'aoud), initially of interest to the C.F.P., Esso-Rep and S.N. Repal had, for 40 billion then invested until 1957, brought new motivations for the continuation of the war.
An Israeli-style partition plan, already suggested under Guy Mollet, had even been prepared for de Gaulle by Alain Peyrefitte \footnote{PEYREFITTE (Alain), \emph{C’était de Gaulle.}(It was De Gaulle)vol. 1, Paris, Fayard, 1994, pp. 76-77.}, bringing together the colonial population, and oil installations fixed in Arzew, between Mitidja and the plains of Oran and Sidi bel-'Abbes, with the Saharan corridors of oil and gas pipelines, and leaving Algerians Algeria non-oil, non-wine-growing,  and not citrus.

From the launch, in 1959, of the “Constantine Plan”, the expenses related to the permanent maintenance of half a million men on the spot were added, those intended to “anchor Algeria to France” by thus promoting “a form of metropolitan decentralization” \footnote{Quoted by J. MARSEILLE, op. cit., p. 349.}
This new orientation is based on the observation, affirmed by the Ministry of Algeria in 1958, that “the natural limits of agriculture lead to the recognition that industry must be the main basis for expansion” \footnote{Quoted, \emph{id., ibid.}}.
First of all, it leads to the acceleration of the search for and production of hydrocarbons.
Thus the Gaullist regime created the public company E.L.F./Algérie, and in 1958-1859 only, 188 billion (old) were invested, which allowed in two years the exploitation of deposits that could produce 20 million tons annually.
Outside this field, it essentially leads, with few exceptions (Berliet, Michelin), to public investment by national companies (Renault), but above all to the first massive capital expenditure by the State, which had increased, between 1950 and 1955, only from 14 to 25 billion \footnote{PRENANT (A.), \emph{art. cit.}, 1956, p. 44.} (from 27 to 18\% of the civil public funds transferred).
These expenses reinforce the strategic densification of the road network by the military, multiply emergency or other “cities” (which “welcome” Algerian families displaced from 7 to 8 people in “housing” of one to two rooms);
above all, they act as substantial support for private investors.
Faced with the stated objective of increasing, by creating 875,000 non-agricultural jobs, the standard of living by 5\%, and the official appeal to “industrialists (that) Algeria (their) offers (in addition to this expected expansion of the market) an aid to the establishment of (their) companies” \footnote{Cité in MARSEILLE (J.), p. 146.} provided by the French budget, “all the reports noted evasions of savings”  \footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, p. 147.}.
Public investment has therefore played well, at this time to compensate for the lack of private financing and nevertheless allow the formation of profits for the most part repatriated. 
Mendès-France declaring, on April 11, 1961: “Algeria costs us (...) more than it brings us” \footnote{In a press conference quoted by J. TOUCHARD, Le Gaullisme, 1940-1969, Paris, Seuil 1978, taken up by MARSEILLE (J.), \emph{ibid.,} p. 373.} 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.


\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\% (60\% for girls), average enrolment to 40\%, secondary school to 25\%.

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.
The tolerance of a parallel market born of shortages affecting in particular the wealthy circles, and thus of a traffic on the dinar eroding its value, all the more accepted as the ruling circles profited from it, confirmed the increased fragmentation of the “Front” in power into antagonistic social classes, by linking it to the bourgeoisie.
Under Chadli's presidency, the slowdown and then the cessation of productive public investment, the successive increases in the ceiling of private capitalizations, the opening (often against mafia commissions) to international capital, the recognition of currency trafficking, the “restructuring” of public enterprises aimed at their profitability often at the expense of production, such as those of the units of the Agrarian Revolution, have only aggravated the dependence on the  nascent Algerian capitalism, itself linked to its foreign counterpart.
Having become a “rentier” by ceasing to invest, the State saw its debt increased to \$25 billion in 1986 by the first fall in the price of crude oil and its annual service reach and then exceed its trade surplus.
The rescheduling granted in 1994 (until 1998 and 2002) was granted in exchange for the IMF's “conditionalities”: structural adjustment, over the past four years, has confirmed the direction that led to it: openness, devaluation, privatization, liberalization.
The efforts of the “good student” did not even prevent, in the winter of 1998, the macroeconomic “good results” from being cancelled out by the fall in crude oil prices, in the absence of new sources of income.

The consequences are in fact first of all, the radical fall in production, often by half, after its stagnation in the 1980s, linked to the ageing of its tool, without more means to renew it than to import raw materials and semi-products, also linked to the restriction of the internal market and non-competitiveness against competitors from the “North”.

It is, in the neo-liberal logic, the adjustment of employment to this fall \footnote{Cf. PRENANT (A.) et SEMMOUD (Bouziane) : Algeria; the deconstruction of an industrial fabric, in : Méditerranée, N°3-4, Aix, 1997.} which led, in 1997 alone, with the dissolution of 300 public enterprises, 132 000 redundancies, joining the 2 500 000 unemployed, — a third of the working population.
It was the continuation of the destructuring of Algerian society that, as early as the 1980s, had begun measures to prevent any workers' opposition and to appeal to Islamist support:
Article 120 imposing on the unions F.L.N. leaderships in 1982, family code in 1984, social segregation expelling from “standing” neighborhoods the marginalized popular elements offered to Islamist populism \footnote{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).}.

Thoses are also the destructions and massacres of Islamist terrorism, manipulated, well before 1990, by supporters linked as much as state power to neo-liberalism, that of the Algerian bourgeoisie as well as multinationals, with a presence in Western capitals, especially in London.
They are instrumentalizing an identitarianism that they want to confuse with Islam as a hope to recruit the marginalized of the system, especially in the suburbs.
The violence, used since the 1980s (by the maquis of Bouïali, among others) is part of a fascist strategy of terror.
Before 1995, it targeted trade unionists and intellectuals, artists, journalists, writers and academics, who were fighting it;
then, in addition to non-Muslim foreigners, the masses, men, women, children, of those who disobeyed him by working, voting, studying, especially in the isolated countryside, in 1995-1996 and in the winter of 1997-1998;
then the marginals who had escaped him and had met those who had fled him, in the new poor suburbs of Algiers. 
This terrorism, as is less well known, has also destroyed public production units, never private or belonging to big foreign capital, public educational, health and social institutions, in convergence with their destabilization by mafia speculation and structural adjustment. 
The deaths of 36,000 civilians in six years, not including the police and the army, according to official statistics, is the most dramatic effect. The resumption, for security reasons, of a massive rural exodus to the big cities, which had ceased since the 1970s with often abandonment of crops, is a factor in the coming crisis, as are the increase in mortality, and infant mortality, with the deterioration of care. 
The resumption of the decline in the birth rate, after its interruption from 1990 to 1994, no longer responds to family planning as it has since 1972, but to disarray \footnote{Algeria : a resistible regression, in \emph{Aujourd’hui l’Afrique(Today Africa)}, n° 67, February 1998.}.

Multinationals, American, Canadian, Japanese, Korean or Italian etc., are currently investing mainly in protected oils, from which they can easily take their share of this much-maligned “rent”. 
With French capital, anxious to put on the mask of “Europeans”, they want to recover the major industrial sites cheaply, update them and reconvert them by relocating units there: 
the labour power of unemployed Algerians trained in industrial labour, to produce not for the depleted Algerian market, but for the neighbouring European market, can exert more effective pressure on wages in the Schengen Europe than by keeping immigrants there. 
To this end, capital can hope for a dormancy of violence at the cost of a compromise that supposes the sharing of power with the Islamists: seven HAMAS ministers already sit in the government of Algiers.

The enterprise of imperialist recolonization by globalized capital uses this time the classic pressure of colonial enterprises of the nineteenth century: 
the indebtedness of the country to be dominated, by an ideological and economic mold, more than by military constraint. 
Nevertheless, it uses violence and threats of violence, that of an identity-based fascism, to weaken the potential of the country, Algeria, and exploit it, once appeased, without major investment, as a "deregulatory" satellite of Europe.

\rauthor{André Prenant}

André Prenant is a geographer.
