French views of the Maghreb vs. sub-Saharan Africa

The construction of race in France’s African colonies

French colonial policies were based on racist exclusion & racial theories as we have seen before..Gobineau: 3 main races (white, yellow, black); weaknesses & qualities, but white people placed on top of racial hierarchy.

Indigenous muscians, Morocco

• Non-Europeans were less civilised

• Colonial apologists used evolutionary racial (pseudo)science to place the world’s peoples according to European values (of civilisations).

• French colonial bureaucrats’ role:

a.To educate, b.To instruct, & c.To bring

advancement & enlightenment to the “colonial children”.

•France never governed Africa under a single colonial apparatus.

•Many French writers distinguished between the Maghreb & sub-Saharan Africa, frequently labelled Afrique noire (Black Africa).

•France ignored the longstanding economic, cultural, & political links between the Maghreb & sub-Saharan Africa.

Many in France & Europe preferred to regard the Sahara not as the highway & meeting place, but rather as a racialised boundary dividing black Africa from the Mediterranean world.

• Algeria: attempted to sever France’s largest & most important colony from Africa & bind it to France through the racialisation of colonial boundaries.

• Algeria was not “black” but Mediterranean, a kind of lesser-white region more closely tied to Europe than to Africa. The oasis town of El-Oved in the

Sahara, Algeria.

• Colonial scholars largely dismissed the continued connections across the Sahara, & Africa, & administrators encouraged attempts to ‘seal’ the Maghreb (meaning “white”) from l’Afrique noire .

In many ways, this view & policy succeeded in achieving the intellectual separation of the Maghreb from Africa in French thinking.

Islam • Colonial administrators &

academics saw: Islam south of the

Sahara as Islam noir (Black Islam).

(Islam: emphasis on equality of all Muslims, regardless of ethnic origin, in the eyes of God & the faith.)

Islam noir reflected a division unrecognisable to African Muslims of the time.

Christopher Harrison• France and Islam in

West Africa (1988), • French policy clearly

differentiated Muslim practices & beliefs in the Maghreb from those of French West Africa & French Equatorial Africa

• sub-Saharan Islam differed from Islam in the Middle East & North Africa because of racial difference.

• Colonial scholars & the administrators could not imagine religious practice outside of an organised scheme.

• They ranked civilisations & races = Europeans (especially French) at the top of civilisational achievement.

• Arabs: distinctly less advanced society, though still considered as “white.”

• Africans (sub- Saharans) located at bottom of this scale & were portrayed Africans as primitive

• French view : Arab Muslims had a cultural predisposition towards fanaticism & anti-European hostility.

Religion

• Algeria- 2 major population groups, speaking Arabic & various Berber languages.

• Berbers & Arabs(late arrivals): lived without much conflict for centuries- trading, inter-marrying, & often cooperating despite differences in language, customs, & culture.

• French Empire changed this

• * footnotes next 3 slides

Colonial administrators created artificial, racialised distinctions within Islam

Pause for footnotes: Algeria’s population now consists almost entirely of Arabs

• Arabs in Algeria are chiefly of Berber derivation, particularly in the Kabilia & Aurès areas & in the Sahara oases, or mixtures of Berbers with invaders from earlier periods.

• The Berbers, who resemble the Mediterranean sub-race of Southern Europe, are descendants of the original inhabitants of Algeria & are divided into many subgroups.

• They account for 99% of the population.

The Berbers (continued)Kabyles (Kaba'il), mostly farmers, live in the

compact mountainous section in the northern part of the country between Algiers & Constantine.

Chaouia (Shawiyyah) live in the Aurès Mountains of the northeast.

Mzab, or Mozabites, include sedentary date growers in the Ued Mzab oases.

Desert groups: Tuareg, Tuat, & Wargla (Ouargla).

There were Jews in Algeria before & during the arrival of the French

• ½ descended from converted Berbers, • & the remainder were mainly descendants of

Spanish Jews. • After independence, about 70,000 Jews

emigrated to France & 10,000 to Israel.• Almost all the rest left Algeria during the next

seven years <100 Jews remained as of 1998, & virtually all

synagogues were converted to mosques.

• Colonial scholars thought : Arabs invaded Algeria, usurpers who brought Islam to the region & imposed it, by force, on Berbers.

• Thus somehow the Berbers retained a collective cultural empathy for France & for European civilisation.

Kabyle Myth• Berbers gave the impression in

colonial texts as similar to Europeans, as open to the French civilising mission, as noble & ultimately less rebellious to French colonialism.

• Patricia Lorcin calls it the Kabyle Myth: it completely diminished both manifest* & frequent demonstrations of Berber opposition to the extension of French colonial rule and the similarities & connections between Arabs and Berbers.

• * obvious

Consequences for both colonial govt. postcolonial Algeria

• French policy did in fact favour Berbers.• French reinforced ideas of difference between Arabs

& Berbers. • Myths set up the 2 groups in opposition to each

other: Algerian Arabs- fanatical, obstinate, unruly, & inclined

to violence & disruption. Berbers - noble, honourable , & hospitable; less Islamic

& more civilised

* Berber opposition to colonial rule fed into myths about Algerian cultural

identities.• Many writers created an artificial separation between Arab &

Berber Muslims in Algeria. • In contemporary Algeria & among Algerian populations in France:

Arab & Berber now mean something in terms of social, cultural, & political difference.

• * French colonial mythmaking & racialisation of identity worsened, & mostly created, tensions between ethnic communities in Algeria.