Modern Algeria: A History from 1830 to the Present

by Charles-Robert Ageron, Michael Brett (Translator)

The history of Algeria from the beginning of the French conquest in 1830 to the present day

Genres: Algeria, History, Africa

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Charles-Robert Ageron was a French historian specializing in colonial Algeria.

Reviews

[LT]

The author, while remaining somewhat "objective" and focused on statistics of land and wealth distribution, ultimately states his opinion towards the end of the book: that the European colonizers of Algeria were a reactionary bunch whose resistance to any reform of the apartheid-like system was the primary cause of the nationalist revolution and their consequent expulsion from Algeria. Good thesis. This book was my first introduction to Algerian history, and I did learn a great deal, especially about the initial conquering (1830) of Algeria by France, and subsequent colonization of the country. The book then goes through the economic changes and changes in the rural landscape - particularly the transition from peasant agriculture to increasingly large, export-oriented farms. The focus is a bit heavy on government policy, and a bit lacking in daily conditions of life. He also describes development of a more assimilationist civil rights movement among the Algerian elite, and when this movement is completely rejected, the development of nationalist groups demanding liberation from France. He then quickly discusses the various attacks and armed groups that comprised the Algerian revolution, and the several years in which various treaties were being negotiated as the fighting occurred. I was most surprised to learn about the governements that followed the revolution, Soviet style communism recently overthrown by Islamist movements. The book totally lacks any explanation of the differences between various Muslim groups in Algeria, and the splits and conflicts, and ultimate huge changes within them. Originally published in 1964, the book has the feel of an older history book, with exacting careful research, but without some of the helpful, and more recent developments in historical writing that have come about with subaltern and postcolonial studies.

[Caracalla · Rating 4 out of 5]

An understated book that was important in French cultural history as a response to the war of independence and an internal critique of more than a century of disastrous and cruel colonial policy. Chapters divide history into economic and political spheres, the economic chapters often serving to cast doubt on older assumptions about Algerian society/economy. Interesting features like its argument that the occupation of Algerian was partly due to the semi-autonomy of the French soldiers occupying it from the centre and its outline of see-sawing attempts to establish some sort of civil government in the country. These were projected to either be self-governing (when all previous political institutions had been eliminated by the brutal initial campaigns of conquest) or assimiliationary, making the country part of France; the colons proved a grasping lobby who sought the integration of Algeria into France with few rights or privileges for the non-European parts of the population. Shocking account of the appropriation of Algerian land by French colonists often through disingenuous interpretation of existing land arrangements, particularly as this destroyed the education system which relied on rents from ecclesiastical land.