We ended up forgetting that before THE Algerian war, there was a “First Algerian War” whose 195th anniversary we commemorate, with sluggishness. This phase of conquest, well documented, but unknown to the general public, was decisive in the progress of independence and the instrumentalization of it by the Algerian power in the memory of the conflict. It made it possible, among other things, to convey the myth of a “ nation » united Algerian territory which would have existed before the landing of the French expeditionary force in June 1830.
The hazardous comparison established between the Nazi genocidal system and the abuses committed during the first years of colonization are not likely to shed light on the debates. To these victimizing provocations which decolonial thinking abuses, we must oppose the serene and nuanced examination of a complex period of our history.
Against the popular belief spread by the FLN, the capture of Algiers was not accompanied by any premeditated colonization project. It is moreover the original sin of this geopolitical inconsistency of Charles X which will be the burden of his successor, Louis-Philippe. The objective of power is circumscribed: to undermine English hegemony in the Mediterranean, to thwart the Ottoman power and to protect the French fleets from Barbary piracy.
Charles X’s expedition aroused astonishment but encountered only scattered resistance. Algiers falls in less than three weeks. The populations subjected to the yoke of Istanbul are hardly moved by the departure of the Dey and his corrupt entourage who pay one last time on the country before fleeing. Turkish colonization, although brutal, was however skillfully erased from the Algerian story of the country’s origins.
Republican disillusionment
However, political hesitation and regime change aroused the first resistance. The Emir Abd El-Kader only emerged in 1832 at the head of a movement which was not unanimous. THE ” country ” still has no territorial coherence. The eastern provinces remain loyal to the Sublime Porte and the Kabyles stand apart. The Algerian nation is thus only a vision educated late by the FLN. Only Islam cements a composite society but, here again, Algiers prefers to emphasize the fighting figure of Abd El Kader rather than his adherence to Jihad. This concealment thus underestimates the confessional nature of the conflict, which was still significant at the time of independence.
THE “Algerians” organized an armed response, unceremoniously repressed
If there is no glory to be sought in Africa, the idea of populating these northern countries is gradually gaining ground. Under the influence of Saint-Simonism, the July Monarchy installed European settlers and pioneers, often of Spanish or Italian origin, in the countryside, a new El Dorado. Everyone hoped to find fortune there, most will reap ruin there. The utopia of a plural society runs aground on cultural realities which still remain unsurpassed today.
As early as 1846, Marshal Bugeaud, with lucidity, warned, “the Arabs hate us, and every time they are warmed by men of the caliber of Abd el-Kader they will rise up and try to drive us out of their country”. In this regard, the taxonomic passion for species inherited from the Enlightenment led to racialist hypotheses of which colonization was to constitute the chemical revealer. From Tocqueville to Jules Ferry, the proclamation of a duty of civilization was thus nourished by this conviction of the existence of natural hierarchies within Humanity.
Guilty obsession of decolonials
Seizing the procrastination of Paris on the future of the colony, the “Algerians” organized an armed response, which was ruthlessly repressed. The violence committed from 1830 onwards was no exception to the cruel practices of war. Only technology gives them more dramatic intensity. The burnings and pillaging, the raids and the massacres of civilians are not new but are part of a practice inherited from the revolutionaries of 1793. Jean-Michel Apathy believes he is revealing abuses that have already been documented but misses the target in his analogy with Nazism. The methods used in Algeria are more in line with those of the dark infernal columns in Vendée.
The massacres committed in the Mediterranean are also denounced by the conservative camp in the Chamber of Peers. They are, on the other hand, covered by a military hierarchy which, without being of republican origin, remains imbued with “revolutionary” reflexes in the way of waging war. The colonization of Algeria was sadly similar to all forms of conquest that humanity has known, with their share of unworthy behavior and massacres. Completely driven by their guilt-ridden obsession, the decolonials absolutely want to attach to the French enterprise an a posteriori genocidal, historically unfounded dimension.
Colonization was a great adventure but in retrospect proved to be a great disillusionment
Colonization had its soldiers lost as it had its righteous. A detailed moralizing rereading will not exhaust its universal and timeless dimension. Colonization is only the expression of a balance of power which, in this case, worked for a long time to the advantage of the Europeans.
Demographically costly, economically inefficient, socially untenable and militarily exhausting, colonization was certainly a great adventure for many generations but retrospectively proved to be a great disillusionment for Westerners condemned for life to apologize and bear the consequences of massive immigration from their ex-colonies. The colonizers of the 19th century have nothing to do with the colonists of the 1960s. But the FLN in power includes them to infuse a tired population with easily exportable resentment and make them the instrument of hatred of France.
