- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804769099
- eISBN:
- 9780804774727
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804769099.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This book introduces the often overlooked, yet cardinal, influence of France's military Arabists on colonial policy making in Algeria from 1830 to 1870. These specialized officers and colonial ...
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This book introduces the often overlooked, yet cardinal, influence of France's military Arabists on colonial policy making in Algeria from 1830 to 1870. These specialized officers and colonial administrators, serving in concentrated numbers in the Ministry of War's Directorate of Arab Affairs in Paris and Algiers, were longstanding critics of native assimilation and proponents of “controlled association” with the Muslims of Algeria. Imbued with the teachings of the philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon, the Arabist officers contested the existence of primordial human racial and cultural characteristics, and insisted on the need for societies at different stages of historical development to evolve within their particular institutional structures and cultural traditions. This study also illustrates how the unfounded confidence in the assimilationist fiber of French colonialism became interrelated with three “problems” in writing the history of French Algeria. This chapter revisits these three historical problems and proposes a new periodization for the decades of military rule in Algeria (1830–1870).Less
This book introduces the often overlooked, yet cardinal, influence of France's military Arabists on colonial policy making in Algeria from 1830 to 1870. These specialized officers and colonial administrators, serving in concentrated numbers in the Ministry of War's Directorate of Arab Affairs in Paris and Algiers, were longstanding critics of native assimilation and proponents of “controlled association” with the Muslims of Algeria. Imbued with the teachings of the philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon, the Arabist officers contested the existence of primordial human racial and cultural characteristics, and insisted on the need for societies at different stages of historical development to evolve within their particular institutional structures and cultural traditions. This study also illustrates how the unfounded confidence in the assimilationist fiber of French colonialism became interrelated with three “problems” in writing the history of French Algeria. This chapter revisits these three historical problems and proposes a new periodization for the decades of military rule in Algeria (1830–1870).
