Algeria Files - Part 1
AL1-S1 · Casbah of Algiers · Algerian flag
132 years. This city was standing for centuries before France arrived.
France invaded Algeria in 1830. What followed was not simply occupation. A French general documented mass killing in his own handwriting and was promoted for it. Before France arrived, nearly every village had two schools. By 1962, the literacy rate among Algerians was approximately 10 to 15 percent. This is Part 1 of 8.
AL1-S2 · Portrait of Bugeaud · Marechal de France
Thomas-Robert Bugeaud · Governor-General of Algeria 1840-184702 / 07
France sent this man to Algeria in 1840. He said the goal was to make the land uninhabitable for those who lived there.
Thomas-Robert Bugeaud was appointed Governor-General of Algeria in 1840. He developed and implemented the policy of total war, the razzia, against the Algerian population. His strategy was the systematic destruction of crops, villages and food reserves.
He wrote his tactics in dispatches. He signed them. They were sent to Paris. France named a street in Paris after him. Avenue Bugeaud still exists today.
Source: Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, "Coloniser, Exterminer," Fayard, 2005 · Wikipedia, Thomas-Robert Bugeaud
AL1-S3 · Cave entrance in Algerian mountains
The Dahra mountains · June 1845 · Colonel Pelissier · The enfumades03 / 07
Hundreds of people took shelter in caves in the Dahra mountains. Colonel Pelissier lit fires at the entrance and kept them burning.
In June 1845, members of the Ouled Riah tribe took refuge in cave systems in the Dahra mountains to escape French military operations. Colonel Aimable Pelissier ordered fires lit at the cave entrances and maintained them. Estimates of those who died range from 500 to over 1,000.
Pelissier wrote his own report to his superiors describing what he had done. The report reached Paris. He was not court-martialled. He was promoted. He later became Marshal of France and was given the title Duke of Malakhov.
Source: Colonel Pelissier's report to Bugeaud, June 1845, cited in Benjamin Stora, "Algeria 1830-2000," Cornell University Press, 2001 · Wikipedia, Dahra cave massacre
AL1-S4 · Bugeaud letter 16 fevrier 1834 · signed
Bordj Mustapha · 16 fevrier 1834 · Signed Bugeaud · His own handwriting04 / 07
He wrote it down. He signed it. "The caves which served as their retreat were smoked out. Not one came out."
This letter, dated 16 February 1834 from Bordj Mustapha, is addressed to the Marquis de Clauzel and signed Bugeaud. It documents that armed men were put to the sword and that caves used as retreats were smoked out with no survivors.
He describes this as "the only serious measure to ensure the future tranquility of this country and to make the indigenous people feel the power of France." This is not an allegation. It is a primary source. It is a French general describing mass killing in his own words to his superior officer.
Source: Bugeaud letter, 16 February 1834, Expedition d'Algerie, Secretariat general, to the Marquis de Clauzel · Cited in Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, "Coloniser, Exterminer," Fayard, 2005
AL1-S5 · Traditional Algerian mosque interior · Quran stand
1834 · French General's own observation on Algerian literacy05 / 07
Before France arrived, nearly every village had two schools. A French general wrote this down in 1834.
In 1834, a French general in Algeria documented his own observation: "nearly all the Arabs can read and write; in each village there are two schools."
By the end of French colonial rule in 1962, the literacy rate among Algerians had fallen to approximately 10 to 15 percent. The governor-general of Algeria in 1832 to 1833 articulated the purpose of colonial schooling explicitly: "to gradually replace Arabic by French."
The traditional funding for education, the hubus religious endowments, was seized by the French colonial administration shortly after 1830, ending the system that had maintained schools for generations.
Source: French General's 1834 observation cited in Wikipedia, French Algeria · Governor-General's stated purpose cited in Wikipedia, Education in Algeria · Benjamin Stora, "Algeria 1830-2000," Cornell University Press, 2001
AL1-S6 · Algerian plateau · abandoned stone farmhouse
Land seizures · 1830 to 1962 · 7.7 million hectares transferred06 / 07
The land was taken first by the army, then by the law, then by the settlers who built farms on what had been taken.
By the end of French colonisation, approximately 7.7 million hectares of Algerian agricultural land had been transferred to European settlers, who represented roughly 10 percent of the population.
In 1873 the Warnier Law made it easier to break up communally held Algerian land and sell it to European buyers. The process was systematic and documented in French administrative records.
Source: Benjamin Stora, "Algeria 1830-2000," Cornell University Press, 2001 · Alistair Horne, "A Savage War of Peace," Viking Press, 1978 · Wikipedia, French Algeria, land policy
AL1-S7 · Casbah doorway · Impasse des Deux Portes
The question. Not a claim.07 / 07
A general documented mass killing in his own hand. He was promoted. The street named after him still exists in Paris. What does it mean that this is the first time most people are reading this?
Tomorrow: the law. The Code de l'Indigenat 1881. The legal system that made Algerians second-class in their own country. The language stripped from schools. 132 years of documented legal separation in everything but name.
Some stories are buried on purpose. We dig.
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