The Invention of the Maghreb: Between Africa and the Middle East 1108838162, 9781108838160

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The Invention of the Maghreb

Under French colonial rule, the region of the Maghreb emerged as distinct from two other geographical entities that, too, are colonial inventions: the Middle East and Africa. In this book, Abdelmajid Hannoum demonstrates how the invention of the Maghreb started long before the conquest of Algiers and lasted until the time of independence, and beyond, to our present. Through an interdisciplinary study of French colonial modernity, Hannoum examines how colonialism made extensive use of translations of Greek, Roman, and Arabic texts and harnessed high technologies of power to reconfigure the region and invent it. In the process, he analyzes a variety of forms of colonial knowledge including historiography, anthropology, cartography, literary work, archaeology, linguistics, and racial theories. He shows how local engagement with colonial politics and its modes of knowledge were instrumental in the modern making of the region, including in its postcolonial era, as a single unit divorced from Africa and from the Middle East. Abdelmajid Hannoum is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. He is the editor of Practicing Sufism: Sufi Politics and Performance in Africa (2016), and author of Living Tangier: Migration, Race, and Illegality in a Moroccan City (2020), Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (2010), and Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine (2001). He was a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, a senior Fulbright fellow, and a senior Fellow at the Aga Khan Center.

The Invention of the Maghreb Between Africa and the Middle East

abdelmajid hannoum University of Kansas

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108838160 DOI: 10.1017/9781108937337 © Abdelmajid Hannoum 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hannoum, Abdelmajid, 1960– author. Title: The invention of the Maghreb : between Africa and the Middle East / Abdelmajid Hannoum, University of Kansas. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021009039 | ISBN 9781108838160 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108947763 (paperback) | ISBN 9781108937337 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Africa, North – History – 19th century. | Africa, North – History – 1882– | Africa, North – Colonial influence. | France – Colonies – Africa, North – History. | Decolonization – Africa. | Africa, North – History – Historiography. | BISAC: HISTORY / Middle East / General | HISTORY / Middle East / General Classification: LCC DT194 .H266 2021 | DDC 961/.03–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009039 ISBN 978-1-108-83816-0 Hardback ISBN 978-1-108-94776-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

The Invention of the Maghreb

Under French colonial rule, the region of the Maghreb emerged as distinct from two other geographical entities that, too, are colonial inventions: the Middle East and Africa. In this book, Abdelmajid Hannoum demonstrates how the invention of the Maghreb started long before the conquest of Algiers and lasted until the time of independence, and beyond, to our present. Through an interdisciplinary study of French colonial modernity, Hannoum examines how colonialism made extensive use of translations of Greek, Roman, and Arabic texts and harnessed high technologies of power to reconfigure the region and invent it. In the process, he analyzes a variety of forms of colonial knowledge including historiography, anthropology, cartography, literary work, archaeology, linguistics, and racial theories. He shows how local engagement with colonial politics and its modes of knowledge were instrumental in the modern making of the region, including in its postcolonial era, as a single unit divorced from Africa and from the Middle East. Abdelmajid Hannoum is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. He is the editor of Practicing Sufism: Sufi Politics and Performance in Africa (2016), and author of Living Tangier: Migration, Race, and Illegality in a Moroccan City (2020), Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (2010), and Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine (2001). He was a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, a senior Fulbright fellow, and a senior Fellow at the Aga Khan Center.

The Invention of the Maghreb Between Africa and the Middle East

abdelmajid hannoum University of Kansas

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108838160 DOI: 10.1017/9781108937337 © Abdelmajid Hannoum 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hannoum, Abdelmajid, 1960– author. Title: The invention of the Maghreb : between Africa and the Middle East / Abdelmajid Hannoum, University of Kansas. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021009039 | ISBN 9781108838160 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108947763 (paperback) | ISBN 9781108937337 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Africa, North – History – 19th century. | Africa, North – History – 1882– | Africa, North – Colonial influence. | France – Colonies – Africa, North – History. | Decolonization – Africa. | Africa, North – History – Historiography. | BISAC: HISTORY / Middle East / General | HISTORY / Middle East / General Classification: LCC DT194 .H266 2021 | DDC 961/.03–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009039 ISBN 978-1-108-83816-0 Hardback ISBN 978-1-108-94776-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

The Invention of the Maghreb

Under French colonial rule, the region of the Maghreb emerged as distinct from two other geographical entities that, too, are colonial inventions: the Middle East and Africa. In this book, Abdelmajid Hannoum demonstrates how the invention of the Maghreb started long before the conquest of Algiers and lasted until the time of independence, and beyond, to our present. Through an interdisciplinary study of French colonial modernity, Hannoum examines how colonialism made extensive use of translations of Greek, Roman, and Arabic texts and harnessed high technologies of power to reconfigure the region and invent it. In the process, he analyzes a variety of forms of colonial knowledge including historiography, anthropology, cartography, literary work, archaeology, linguistics, and racial theories. He shows how local engagement with colonial politics and its modes of knowledge were instrumental in the modern making of the region, including in its postcolonial era, as a single unit divorced from Africa and from the Middle East. Abdelmajid Hannoum is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. He is the editor of Practicing Sufism: Sufi Politics and Performance in Africa (2016), and author of Living Tangier: Migration, Race, and Illegality in a Moroccan City (2020), Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (2010), and Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine (2001). He was a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, a senior Fulbright fellow, and a senior Fellow at the Aga Khan Center.

The Invention of the Maghreb Between Africa and the Middle East

abdelmajid hannoum University of Kansas

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108838160 DOI: 10.1017/9781108937337 © Abdelmajid Hannoum 2021 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2021 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hannoum, Abdelmajid, 1960– author. Title: The invention of the Maghreb : between Africa and the Middle East / Abdelmajid Hannoum, University of Kansas. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021009039 | ISBN 9781108838160 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108947763 (paperback) | ISBN 9781108937337 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Africa, North – History – 19th century. | Africa, North – History – 1882– | Africa, North – Colonial influence. | France – Colonies – Africa, North – History. | Decolonization – Africa. | Africa, North – History – Historiography. | BISAC: HISTORY / Middle East / General | HISTORY / Middle East / General Classification: LCC DT194 .H266 2021 | DDC 961/.03–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009039 ISBN 978-1-108-83816-0 Hardback ISBN 978-1-108-94776-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

In memory of Daniel Reig

Contents

List of Maps

page viii

List of Tables

ix

Acknowledgments

x

Introduction

1

1 Geographic Imagination and Cartographic Power

30

2 The Trace and Its Narratives

76

3 Language, Race, and Territory

123

4 Naming and Historical Narratives

170

5 Strategies for the Present

206

6 Cracks

246

Postscript

275

Bibliography Index

287 312

vii

Maps

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

viii

Africa, 1737, by Johann Mathias Hase page 34 Africa, 1722, by Guillaume Delisle 38 “Barbarie et Nigritie,” 1738, by Guillaume Delisle 40 Afrique Française (French Africa), 1843–1854, by LouisAdrien Bebrugger 49 Algeria, 1853, by Armand-Jacques Leroy de Saint-Arnaud under the direction of Eugène Daumas 55 “Algérie divisée par tribus,” 1846, by Ernest Carette and Auguste Warnier 56 The Regence of Tunis, 1843, by Ernest Carette 58 L’Afrique Francaise (French Africa), 1890, by Georges Roland 62

Tables

2.1 Names of countries of modern North Africa and their equivalent in Roman times page 92

ix

Acknowledgments

A book owes its existence as much to others as it does to its author. Without the input of a large community, the entire endeavor would be impossible. I started research for this book while I was a senior research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan Centre. I am very grateful to this institution for the generous hospitality it provided me during most of the academic year of 2018. I owe more than I can express to a number of colleagues and friends, some of whom I have never met. I would like to acknowledge by name, Judith Irvine, Brent Shaw, Cheikh Babou, Santa Arias, Karen Pinto, Nejat Brahmi, Khalid Ben Srhir, Adam Sabra, Mohamed Miloud Gharrafi, Karima Laachir, and Sam Everett for generous help provided at different stages of writing this book. I would also like to acknowledge Eric Bader for indexing the entire manuscript. My debt to Fayre Makeig is simply enormous. Her friendship, her great editing skill, and her generosity were essential for the writing of this book. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences funded this project in various ways through the General Research Fund, including a Craig Anthony Arnold Faculty Research Award and a sabbatical that helped me conduct archival work in Paris, Aix-en-Provence, and Nantes. At Cambridge University Press, I would like to express my gratitude to Charles Tripp, who first saw merit in the project, and to three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, critique, and encouragement. Maria Mesh, Atifa Jiwa, Stephanie Tylor, and Richards Paul were extremely helpful at every stage of this production. I am also very grateful to Ami Naramor for her remarkable editing. As always, any shortcomings in this book are mine. Last, I would like to thank Critique of Anthropology for granting me permission to include a revised and abridged version of my article “Notes on the Post-colonial in the Maghreb,” published in 2009 (volume 29, issue 3: 324–344). My thanks also to François Pouillon for permission to reproduce excerpts from my book chapter “L’auteur comme authorité en ethnographie coloniale,” published in La sociologie musulmane de Robert Montagne, edited by Daniel Rivet and François Pouillon (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1999). x

Introduction

In 1966, Charles-André Julien, a major historian of the region known as the Maghreb or North Africa, published a small book in the wellknown series “Que sais-je?” designed specifically for a large public. He called his work Histoire de l’Afrique blanche (History of White Africa), an unusual title, but not a new one. In 1939, Émile-Félix Gautier, an architect of the construction of the Maghreb, had published a book with a similar title, L’Afrique blanche.1 But Julien’s book was different; it was written by a staunch anti-colonialist, an unapologetic communist, and an unwavering defender of the region’s independence. His book came out in a postcolonial context, and with a title that could not leave the reader indifferent. Readers then, as now, were accustomed to associating blackness with Africa and Africa with blackness. Both whiteness and blackness are indicative of a relation to progress – the first embodies it, the second lacks it – wherever the people these abstracts signify might go, even outside of Africa itself. Whiteness is an attribute of Europe. It is as if Julien wants to tell his contemporaries that Europe does not have a monopoly on whiteness; Africa is also white. Which Africa? For Julien, it is the northern part that includes not just the Maghreb, but Egypt as well. Roger Le Tourneau, also a major historian of the region, reviewed the book and saw it as dealing with two rather distinct subjects within this entity of White Africa: Egypt and the Maghreb. He explains that the book deals with two subjects more separated than united. In fact, the Nile Valley is turned towards the Near East (Proche-Orient) and the eastern Mediterranean since the beginning of historical time whereas the Maghreb 1

Emile-Felix Gautier, L’Afrique blanche. Paris: Fayard, 1939. White Africa, in the view of Gautier, is not the same as the one we find in Julien. Abyssinia is white, in the view of Gautier, and the Maghreb is specified as Afrique blanche française. See Chapter 3 for a more detailed discussion of Gautier.

1

2

Introduction

is decidedly attached to the western Mediterranean and often to the Iberian Peninsula.2

Julien’s French audience then, and even now, would have easily understood his definition of the region: the Maghreb is neither part of the Middle East (of which Egypt is a significant part) nor it is really Africa. If both are comfortably located in northern Africa, the Maghreb is on one side, west, by itself, not even part of West Africa, which is genuinely Africa, while Egypt is on the other side, east, not part of what is called East Africa, but part and parcel of what is known as the Middle East, a bloc mostly located in Asia. Egypt was meant to be a leading nation of Arabs, a hub of Arab nationalism, the geographic center of the Arab Middle East, and the heart of its political and intellectual renaissance. The Maghreb was then (as it is now) a region whose construction the present book deconstructs: a geographic bloc by itself, with a history of its own, and an important zone of Francophonie in French postcolonial eyes. “Maghreb,” “Egypt,” “White Africa,” “Black Africa,” “Africa,” “Mediterranean,” “Middle East” – all are names invented at one point or another in modern history, and each meant different things at different times. Today, these names are postcolonial denominations with specific meanings, the genealogy of which can be found in colonial times, since France stepped foot in the region with Napoleon’s expedition on July 1, 1798. Napoleon and his savants defined modern Egypt; his successors, some of them also his companions in Egypt, engaged in the redefinition of the region west of Egypt – that is, the Maghreb – as early as the 1830s. Before 1830, Le Tourneau’s definition of the Maghreb would have been impossible to formulate as he did. The region was then perceived not as a single unit but as partly Ottoman and partly the Kingdom of Fez, or the Sharifian Empire. Officers of the French army who landed in Sidi Ferruch on June 14, 1830, would not have understood the definition a future historian such as Julien or Le Tourneau offered to them. Even seven decades later, by 1900, their definition would hardly have made sense to a Frenchman in Algeria or in France. The Maghreb did not exist yet, even though its embryo could already be found in the 2

Roger Le Tourneau, “Book Review, Charles André Julien, Histoire de l’Afrique blanche. Paris: PUF, 1966,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 1966 (2): 252–253.

Introduction

3

tremendous work of the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie. It took nearly a century to formulate. The concept of the Mediterranean itself was unclear, and the Middle East was not yet born.3 Even British Egypt looked more Napoleonic than Arab, and the entirety of the Levant was still part of the larger Ottoman Empire that also stretched into Asia and Europe, as European maps of the eighteenth century showed, despite the difficulties of the Ottomans in retaining these lands. In 1966, the definition of the region Le Tourneau put forward was so familiar, so natural, that most probably Le Tourneau and Julien did not doubt it as a natural entity.4 Something drastically important must have happened between 1830 and 1966 to make such a definition possible, comprehensible, and even natural. That thing was not only colonization by itself, but an entire process of colonial creation that transformed several precolonial entities into one single entity with an identity that makes it separate from others and distinct from anything else. This book is about how this definition became possible, understandable, and, by dint of discursive repetition, natural – that is, believed to be there, to exist independent of human consciousness. Thus, the book is about problematizing a name, and also a region, or rather, the conception of a region, with its geography, its population, its language, and its history. The book is an examination of geographical imagination; it is about the history of how the region was constructed and reconfigured throughout French colonial rule in the region. The history of the region’s colonial construction is also the history of the operation of colonial technologies of power, the dynamics of colonial institutions, and the creation of systems of geographical truths that changed and autocorrected as colonial power advanced militarily and became more technologically effective. By colonial technologies of power, I mean essentially the institutions French colonial administrations set in place, first in Algeria, and then in Tunisia, and Morocco, each of which functioned as a colonial state in and of itself, with 3

4

Anne Ruel, “L’invention de la Méditerranée,” Vingtième Siècle 1991 (32): 7–14. Florence Deprest, “L’invention géographique de la Mediterranée: Elements de réflexion,” L’Espace Géographique 2002 (1): 73–92. Hélène Blais and Florence Deprest, “The Mediterranean, a Territory between France and Colonial Algeria: Imperial Constructions,” European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’Histoire 2012 (19)1: 33–57. As it appears from Julien’s history of the region, Histoire de l’Afrique du Nord, a volume Roger Le Tourneau edited and updated.

4

Introduction

a distinct political status, power strategy, and modes of knowledge harnessed for each type of governmentality.5 Yet their separation is more apparent than real, for they were an extension of the metropolitan state, their coordination is necessarily through it, and their operation is what gives the state its imperial status. These institutions operated through the use of force (violence), and the use of ideology (knowledge). These institutions harnessed the arsenal of European technologies to operate: armaments, modern instruments of research, print machines, and so forth. The results were modes of modern knowledge that take different forms – historiography, anthropology, geography, archaeology, linguistics, statistics, biology, zoology, etc. – yet are all governed by the same episteme, and in their function are part of the same enterprise of recording a colony with a colonial mind. The history of this construction is also the history of the dynamics of power between colonial modernity and its local subjects and their traditional institutions (families, mosques, zawiyas, awqaf foundations, libraries, etc.) that acted and reacted within the dynamics of colonial power and according to rules set by it. This is not to say that this is a history of colonial domination and local resistance, but rather that colonial power itself creates the field in which the native operates, and thus the native can only operate in a field alien to him, whose vicissitudes he tries to manage, with different strategies to reinvent his present. In so doing, he becomes an historical actor, a cognitive operator, willingly or unwillingly, a political actor complicit in a game whose rules are set by colonial powers. This book covers the historical period during which the Maghreb was constructed as a geographical area between two other colonial entities, Africa and the Middle East, from long before the conquest of Algiers to the time of independence, and beyond – to our present. For the presence of Europe did not start with the conquest of Algiers and undoubtedly did not end with the end of the Algerian war. The region was scrutinized, explored, made sense of, even mapped and named before French soldiers landed in Algeria. It is upon a precolonial body of knowledge that their conception of the region was constructed. It is 5

Technologies of power is a concept Foucault uses in relation to biopolitics, but the concept (originating from the theorizing of Althusser) can also be applied to the production of knowledge essential to governmentality. Louis Althusser, “Les appareils idéologiques de l’état,” in Positions: 1964–1975. Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1976. Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.

Introduction

5

also upon a process of translation of Islamic texts known in Christian Europe that strategies of knowledge were set up. Colonial conquests made these strategies more effective by harnessing advanced technologies and implementing them on the ground to continually execute physical transformations of the lands, the cities, the regions, and of course the populations to conform the representation to its referents and to adjust the referents to the representation, as colonial administrators saw fit, according to colonial interests that were not only material but symbolic as well. The book seeks to understand the processes by which that construction was made and by which it came to mean something that people then, as now, understand as most familiar and most natural. The book, then, is a history of a name or a history of a concept. Being so, it is also a history of a construction, a reconfiguration, a full-fledged invention of an entire geopolitical, geocultural, and geostrategic entity that includes reconfiguration of lands, reordering of history itself, recategorization of populations, restructuring of their modes of life, and redefinition of their modes of thought and ways of being. By the late 1920s, the Maghreb region had emerged as a French colonial zone in North Africa that was separate from the Middle East, itself a post–World War I British invention.6 The Maghreb includes mainly Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and not so much Libya. I am writing the history of the creation of the Maghreb as a distinct geopolitical entity, neither really Middle Eastern nor totally African. I intend to examine how the Maghreb, which is still largely perceived through French scholarly lenses, was transformed by drastic and multiple strategies of colonial power and how, in the process of its transformation, it was divorced from the larger region now referred to as the Middle East on one hand, and from the region commonly called Africa on the other. Indeed, the Maghreb region seems to be neither. Even between the Arab Middle East and the Arab Maghreb, there is undoubtedly a divorce, as Jacques Berque once put it.7 Because the history of the invention of the Maghreb is also, and in important ways, the history of this divorce between the so-called Maghreb and the socalled Middle East, this book not only traces the genealogy of the 6

7

Daniel Foliard, Dislocating the Orient: British Maps and the Making of the Middle East, 1854–1921. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2017. Jacques Berque, “Perspectives de l’Orientalisme contemporain,” Revue IBLA 1957 (20): 217–238.

6

Introduction

Maghreb but also helps outline how the Middle East, both as a name and as a geopolitical, geocultural, and geostrategic entity, came into being. The book will thus be of great interest to Middle Eastern scholars across a wide range of disciplines who may be interested in how their region is defined openly or tacitly in relation to the two entities from which it was detached. Again, the Maghreb is neither Africa nor the Middle East – neither is it even Africa and the Middle East, despite the fact that it is also understood as culturally Middle Eastern and geographically African. Therefore, even academically, the unit fits in neither African studies (understood often racially – that is, in terms of color) nor Middle Eastern studies (defined mostly through the British colonial experience and the culture of nationalism generated in the region). By comparison, the Maghreb seems more French, or it is viscerally francophone, with its particular brand of nationalism(s). Fernand Braudel once wrote: Behind all of human history there is this actor who is quick to transform, but always so adroit, so pressing, so decisive in his interventions. What shall we call him? Space? It says too little. Land? It is ambiguous. Let us call him the geographical milieu.8

The geographical milieu, I would argue, is an actor only insofar as it is imagined as such in a historical narrative (for example, France invaded Algeria); used this way it is only metaphorical. However, upon examination, it is only a conception – one that has been constituted through time, resulting from a complex process of cultural production. The Maghreb is not a person and neither is France.9 It is a geographic milieu, imagined and defined by men who inhabit it. A geographical milieu does not have a natural existence; it does not exist outside of human consciousness. It exists only insofar as its existence is imagined. In historical narratives, the Maghreb appears as an actor, but it is an actor of narration (for example, the Maghreb resisted Rome). Therefore, as a construction, the Maghreb is the result of cognitive activities of historical actors (military officers, politicians 8

9

Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen á l’époque de Philippe II. Paris: Colin, 1949. Braudel considers it as such, following in the footsteps of Paul Vidal de la Blache. “We willingly repeat the words of Michelet: ‘France is a person.’” Samuel Kinser, “Annaliste Paradigm? The Geohistorical Structuralism of Fernand Braudel,” American Historical Review 1981 (86): 68.

Old Configurations

7

and diplomats, scholars, and all other types of colonial agents). These cognitive activities consist of modes of composing objects, strategies of writing narratives, the politics of representation, and the navigation of institutional powers in which all these actors are caught (that is, colonial power dynamics). Africa and the Middle East too were invented simultaneously through a long colonial process and according to specific patterns, politics, and modes of knowledge.10 West Africa and Egypt in particular were constructed in relation to the Maghreb. Westward, the region had to be separated from a bloc perceived according to schemes of thought specific to nineteenth-century Europe, especially France: race, religion, notions of frontiers and borders, history, language, climate, and so forth. Race, because of its centrality in modernity, was instrumental. Southward, it was also instrumental, along with what seemed to be natural frontiers separating black from white. Eastward, Egypt was already constructed by the Expédition d’Egypte as distinct. These constructions, the African ones and the Egyptian ones, required the complicity of natives to give them form and shape, even beyond the colonial period.11 This complicity is not necessarily a collaboration; it is the result of power dynamics within which colonials and locals act and react; power is indeed everywhere, but not held to the same degree in each place or by each person or each group.

Old Configurations The idea that Egypt and the Maghreb constitute two distinct areas does not seem to be only a colonial idea. An entire Arabic historiographic tradition also separates the two. Colonials seem to have inherited this separation and not invented it. In Greek geography and historiography, 10

11

On the Middle East, see Michael E. Bonine, Abbas Amanat, and Michael Ezekiel Gasper, eds., Is There a Middle East? Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Also see Foliard, Dislocating the Orient. Edward Said, Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. On Africa, see V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. For Africa, see Mudimbe, Invention of Africa. For the contribution of Egyptians to the construction of Egyptian identity, see Omnia El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.

8

Introduction

Egypt is decidedly part of Asia.12 It appears so in the geography of Ptolemy and the historiography of Herodotus. The Romans inherited this distinction. For them too Egypt was distinct from the land they called Africa. Arabic historiography seems to have only inherited this separation. In one of the earliest books dedicated to the Arab conquest of the region, Futu¯h Misr wa-Ifrı¯qı¯yah by ʿAbd al-Rahma¯n ibn ʿAbd al˙ ˙ ˙ H akam (d. 871), the region is separated, and Ibn ʿAbd al-Hakam ˙ ˙ 13 adopts the Roman name of the region: Ifriqiya. The name Ifriqiya is evidently derived from the name Afri that designated a people. Historian Brent Shaw comments: Located inland of Carthage, in the region of Wadi Tine . . . they became stands-ins for all other local or indigenous people of the land. Others like them became Afri or Africani, and metonymically, the land was called Africa. Over time, by cultural and political extension, the term came to designate a continental mass – the Third World, the tertia pars mundi of their time – as it was seen by outsiders in the Roman Mediterranean.14

However, neither in the Roman definition nor in the Arab one is there any mention of white as an adjective describing the region – the way it is mentioned by Julien and by Gautier before him. Even though occasional reference to color and phenotypes existed in Roman times as well as in its Islamic period, the region was never defined by its color. In modernity, it is essential since European civilization itself was selfdefined by color – that is, racially as white. Race has become a key concept in the ideology of modernity that explains human differences and human moral and intellectual inequality – that is, human progress and its opposite, human backwardness and retardation.15 Separated from Egypt, the region went through transformations. In Islamic history, the region is known by a series of names; sometimes it was perceived as a single unit, sometimes as part of other units in 12

13

14

15

For a general history of the continents, see Christian Grataloup, L’invention des continents: Comment l’Europe a découpé le monde. Paris: Larousse, 2009. Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley, California University Press, 1997. ʿAbd al-Rahma¯n ibn ʿAbd al-H akam, Futu¯h Misr wa-Ifrı¯qı¯yah, ed. ˙ Press, 1920. ˙ Yale University ˙ ˙ Charles Torrey. New Haven, CT: Brent D. Shaw, “Who Are You? Africa and Africans,” in A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Jeremy McInerney. London: Wiley Blackwell, 2014, pp. 527–540 at p. 527. Hannah Arendt, “Race and Race Thinking,” in The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, 1966, pp. 158–184.

Old Configurations

9

Europe (Andalusia) or in sub-Saharan Africa. One can undoubtedly write the history of these transformations: the logic behind the renaming, the cutting of parts to link them or to separate them from a core, the categorization of populations, the identification of religious affiliations, and so forth. Suffice it to say that in Arab historiography from the fourteenth century until the eighteenth, the plethora of Greek and Roman names for the land and the populations disappeared as if they had never existed. The general identification of Africanus (which St. Augustine used to self-identify)16 is not to be found; neither is there any trace of the identities Numidian, Gaetulian, or Musulamian, or the names of Mauretania Tingitana, Mauretania Caesariensis, and others.17 Only a few of these names survived in early classical Arab historiography: names such as Ifriqiya and Tripolitania (called tarâbulus) were ˙ still used in medieval Arabic historiography. However, in colonial times, many of these old Roman names resurfaced and were reactivated. Colonial authors, politicians, and ideologues reused them to connect Rome to France, and antiquity to modern times, in a process of creation that harnessed new technologies of power and produced novel modes of modern knowledge, most of which are still in use today. This creation, though specifically French, reached a European audience and was echoed in the historical modern discourse. For example, by 1949, when the region was already formed and its name was already established, anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard reproduced some of these names, combining old and new ones to describe the region. He reproduces the understanding of the region as a single bloc with Libya as a liminal space, not fully Maghrebi and not entirely Middle Eastern. For him, Libya is divided into three entities: Tripolitania, Fazzan, and Cyrenaica. The first two are closer to the Maghreb; the last is rather part of the Middle East: “The people of Cyrenaica,” he writes, “are linked to the classical Arab world of the East, to Egypt and the Jazirat al-ʿArab (Arabia, Palestine, Iraq, and Syria) rather than to the Maghrib.”18 16

17

18

“In a letter to his former teacher from the city of Madauros, the Christian bishop Augustine of Hippo wrote to the ‘pagan’ rhetor Maximus: ‘well now, [you] as an African writing to other Africans, and since we are both from Africa . . . ’ (Aug. Ep. 17.2).” Shaw, “Who Are You?” p. 527. For more details on these names and on the different configurations of the region, see Yves Modèran, Les Maures et l’Afrique Romaine ((IVe–VIIe siècle). Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2003. Ibid., p. 47.

10

Introduction

As a prelude to this book, I would like to briefly evoke the configurations of the region in its precolonial times. By this, I do not intend to write the history of its invention in precolonial times, but only to show that between the colonial and precolonial came a drastic transformation. It is not that the region was constituted in various ways throughout history only to culminate in its postcolonial configuration, as a historicist suggested long ago.19 But it is true that its colonial configuration is what makes the present. This configuration is only one reality amongst a series in a history during which the region was reconfigured in various ways, named differently, perceived differently, associated with some blocs and dissociated from other blocs that were themselves products of their historical moment. In other words, it is not that the Maghreb has had a formation of its own that led to its present identity, but rather that throughout history the region has been configured time and again – and what the historian believes to be a historical Maghreb may be only a manifestation of the colonial creation whose history I examine in this book. For one of the characteristics of modernity is exactly its power to destroy and reinvent, to eliminate and create. If “modernity extinguishe[d] various possibilities,” it also created new ones.20 Those possibilities were not only cultural, political, and economic but also geographical. In the Islamic period, one can trace different configurations of the region from the ninth century with Ibn ʿAbd al-Hakam to the four˙ teenth century with Ibn Khaldûn. A good number of Arabic texts by historians, geographers, and travelers show the configuration of the area. At times it is extended to include sub-Saharan Africa or part of Europe and particularly Spain, with Marrakech as a capital. At other times it is restricted to geographical segments connected to other geographies and other polities, as was the case on the eve of colonialism when the region was divided into units one of which was sovereign (alMaghrib al-Aqsâ, the Sharifian Empire in European terminology) while others were semi-independent, but still attached to the Ottoman Empire (for example, the Regence of Algiers, the Regence of Tunis, 19

20

Abdallah Laroui, L’histoire du Maghreb. Paris: Maspero, 1970. The same view is repeated by the author most recently; see interview, “Le Maghreb est l’idée d’une élite,” Zamane 2012 (18). Talal Asad, “The Trouble with Thinking,” in Powers of the Secular, ed. David Scott and Charles Hirschkind. Stanford, CA: Sanford University Press, 2006, pp. 243–303 at p. 274.

Old Configurations

11

the Regence of Tripoli). But these changes are only part of what constitute the area; these are only geographic contours that correspond to political limits. These units were also self-defined by a number of modes of identification such as religious affiliation, tribal belonging, regional and city identities, and even family identities that overlapped as one or the other took prevalence depending on the context. The tremendous discursive impact of the fourteenth-century text Kitâb al-ʿibar, by Ibn Khaldûn, used extensively by the French in a translation, L’Histoire des Berbères, was that it was not only a chronicle of events or a history of dynasties, but that it was also a comprehensive sociology of tribalism that allows us to see how the region, under different dynasties, self-identified, and how different modes of identification were harnessed for the purpose of making sense of space, land, and people.21 It is this Arabic text I would like to briefly examine to see how the region was configured in the fourteenth century. The idea here is not to say or imply that such human geography was still existent in the nineteenth century, but rather to give an idea of the configuration of the region in one of its dramatic historical moments. Ibn Khaldûn provides us with the cultural, intellectual, political, and economic structure of the region. It may be safe to assume that this structure must have long survived his epoch. And this may be one of the major reasons why this tremendous text constituted the foundation of French colonial knowledge of the region.22 Its discursive richness allows one to envision the world in which Ibn Khaldûn lived as well as the modes of thought used to understand it and to make sense of it. This is how Ibn Khaldûn defines the region: Know that the term west [maghrib] in its origins is additional and indicates a location amongst locations by being added to the direction of the east. The same goes for the term east [mashriq], by adding it to the direction of the west [maghrib]. However, Arabs may use these names to indicate specific regions and countries. For geographers interested in the configuration of the earth and its divisions, regions, the inhabited and the deserted parts, its ruins and its mountains, its seas and the locations of its inhabitants – such as Ptolemy 21

22

Abd al-Rahma¯n ibn Khaldûn, Kita¯b al-ʿibar wa-dı¯wa¯n al-mubtadaʾ wal-khabar fı¯˙ayya¯m al-ʿArab wa-l-ʿajam wa-l-Barbar wa-man ʿa¯sarahum min ˙ 1992. dhawı¯ l-sulta¯n al-akbar, 7 vols. Beirut: Dâr al-Kutub al-`Ilmiya, ˙ ˙ Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldûn, Abdelmajid Orientalist,” History and Theory 2003 (42)1: 61–81.

12

Introduction

and Roger of Sicily,23 to whom is attributed the famous book on the configurations of the earth and countries and the like – Maghrib is a single region, distinct from all other regions (qutr wahid mumayyaz mina al-aqtar). Its western frontier is the Atlantic, an element of water . . . its limit on the western side is the Atlantic, as we said; on it, there are many of its cities such as Tangier, Salé, Azmour, Anfi, Asafi . . . its limit from the northern direction is the Mediterranean (al-baḥr al-rûmi) which, derived from the Atlantic, flows through a strait between Tangier in the country of the Maghrib and Tarifa in the country of al-Andalus. This strait is called Ziqaq; it is eight miles wide or more; it used to have a bridge that went under water . . . As far as its frontiers toward the qibla and the south, it is the sands that constitute a barrier (hâjiz) between the land of Sudan and the land of the Berbers.24

Ibn Khaldûn is keenly aware that human conception of geography changes. He notes that once upon a time the Maghreb included Egypt and Burqa. But in his time, he notes, Egypt and Burqa are not part of it and the Maghreb starts only from Tripoli: “this was in old times the habitat and land of the Berbers.”25 Ibn Khaldûn also makes a distinction between what he calls Maghrib al-Aqsâ (“midwest”) and Wâd Mulwiya (Moulouya River),26 and also between Maghrib alAwsat, “mostly inhabited by Zenata tribes,”27 and Ifriqiya “all the way to Tripoli”: A vast land, it used to be inhabited by Nafzawa, Bani Yfran, Neffousa, and countless Berber tribes; its capital was Qairawan. These days it is the domain of the Arabs of Sulaym. Bani Yfran and Huwara are under their domination. They adopted a Bedouin way of life and forgot their non-Arab [i.e., Berber] accents and speak Arab languages and adopted Arab customs in all facets of life. Their capital today is Tunis.28

For Ibn Khaldûn, geography is the theater where history unfolds. Despite the fact that, for him, tribes are the motor of historical happenings, several other actors are behind historical events: the oumma or milla (a community of faith, or a community of language, or a community of a people), and bashar (humans, and not in the Enlightenment sense of the abstract Man), and even divine interventions that, unknown, are always 23

24 26

This is a reference to geographer Al-Sharîf Al-Idrissi’s (d. AD 1165) Nuzhat almushtâq fi’khtirâq al-âfâq, commissioned by the Norman king Roger II of Sicily and known as Tabula Rogeriana. Ibn Khaldûn, Kita¯b al-ʿibar, vol. 6, pp. 114–117. 25 Ibid., p. 119. Ibid. 27 Ibid., p. 120. 28 Ibid., p. 120.

Old Configurations

13

present as a driving force beyond the control of man. The tribe is always part of an oumma or milla, whose relation to other tribes that constitute it is always one of domination (ghalaba) and this domination is often masked – that is, made acceptable – by religion or sainthood (dîn aw wilâya). Men are always part of a tribe; they don’t exist outside of it, and they rely on the solidarity of the tribe (ʿasabiya) to carry out actions. However, the tribe as part of the oumma or milla is conditioned by geography, by the climate.29 Hence Ibn Khaldûn pays close attention to the geographical area. It is divided into two parts: Ifriqiya and the Maghrib. Each region is defined not only by its inhabitants but also by their shʿâ’ir, their genealogies, and their languages. As a historian, Ibn Khaldûn does not lose sight of the concept of time that brings change. Therefore, whatever region he discusses, he is aware of the historical change. Everything changes and “everything is perishable,” in his Aristotelian view. Dynasties perish, generations die, and new dynasties, new generations arise – only to live, to die, and to perish too. History is made of series of ruptures, worlds follow each other in a cycle. New ones emerge out of old ones. The task of the historian is to record the product of this disjuncture created in time and space, the “now” produced by the rupture produced by the event. The task of the historian is also to explain the patterns by which these changes and discontinuities happen. And thus Ibn Khaldûn’s own historical enterprise was to record the Maghreb at a moment of complete transformation. To illustrate this transformation, a history of the region was undertaken, and its founding events happened somewhere else, in Arabia. His narrative links the region to a new geography and disconnects it from an old one: that of Rome, with which it was intimately tied, as is evident in Roman historiography.30 At the outset, Ibn Khaldûn defines it geographically: In their [geographers’] view, the Maghrib was an island surrounded by the sea from three directions. In the conception common today amongst the inhabitants of these provinces, [the Maghrib] does not include the province of Egypt or Burqa, but is limited to Tripoli and what is beyond it to the west. And this was in the past the land of the Berbers and their habitat [mawâtinahum].31

29 30

31

I expand here on my article “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary.” See J. D. Fage, ed., The Cambridge History of Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Ibn Khaldûn, Kita¯b al-ʿibar, vol. 6, pp. 118–119.

14

Introduction

One can see that Ibn Khaldûn was well aware that the geography of the Maghreb shifted along with the changing perspectives of its inhabitants.32 Again, for Ibn Khaldûn, geography is always about tribes. Maghrib al-Aqsâ is the habitat of mostly Masamida, and alMaghreb al-Awsat (midwest) is of mostly Zenata, with its capital, Tlemcen.33 For Ibn Khaldûn, there seems to be no Maghrib al-Adnâ, a term that appears much later in the work of Muslim geographers and historians (and that corresponds, mutatis mutandis, to the famous Ifriquiya). Ibn Khaldûn first mentions the locations of Bijaya and Constantine, whose inhabitants are “Zuwâwa, Kutâma, ʿAjîssa, and Huwâra. Today, they are homes to the Arabs except for the unreachable mountains.”34 The land is defined by its landscape (plains, mountains, the Sahara, the Atlantic shore, etc.), and also by its tribal inhabitants. Also, Ibn Khaldûn discusses the different modes of people’s identification: People differentiate one another by genealogy as with the Arabs, Israelites, and Persians. Or they differentiate by look and skin color as with the Negroes, the Ethiopians, the Saqâliba,35 and the Sudanese. Or [they differentiate] by customs, habits, and genealogy, as with Arabs . . . all these change over the ages and never last.36

So identifications were multiple and of course not racial and did not even have what I would like to call an elementary form of racial thinking. In the citation just referenced, Ibn Khaldûn mentions kinship based on affiliation to an ancestor, real or fictitious. He even argues that nasab (kinship genealogy) “is a fictitious matter, it has no truth” (amr wahmi lâ haqîqata lah);37 further, “its function is association and solidification” of identity (naf ʿuh innama huwa fî hadhihi al wusla wa al ‘iltihâm).38 Then, there is what one might call phenotypes, ˙ including skin color, that he notices amongst Ethiopians, the Saqâliba, and the Sudanese. Ibn Khaldûn explains skin color as being a mere result of climate, thus changing with it. The climate affects

32 35 36

Ibid. 33 Ibid., p. 120. 34 Ibid. Saqaliba, the Slavic populations of central and eastern Europe. Ibn Khaldûn, Kita¯b al-ʿibar, vol. 1, p. 91. 37 Ibid., p. 138.

38

Ibid.

Old Configurations

15

a human’s mood but does not seem to affect the facility of thinking.39 Then, there is what one might call culture that is used in addition to kinship. These are not static differentiations, but changing ones, like everything in life. These distinctions do not create hierarchies between people, which are instead created by an ensemble of elements Ibn Khaldûn discusses in a different part of his monumental work: ʿasabiya (tribal solidarity), nasab (kin genealogy), hasab (tribal cultural capital – ˙ i.e., the history of a tribe’s great deeds), and so forth. All of these 40 elements are subject to change as well. Several key geographical names started to change in the fourteenth century. In the chronicles of Ibn ʻIda¯rı¯ al-Murrâkushî, Al-bayân alˉ mughrib fî akhba¯r mulûk al-Andalus wa al-Maghrib, the name Maghrib seems to be extended to the entire region, including the area still known in this century as Ifriqiya. Al-Andalus too seems to be part of the Maghreb of ʻIda¯rı¯.41 ʻIda¯rı¯’s text is essentially a narration of ˉ ˉ events and clearly lacks the sociological dimension that makes the text of Ibn Khaldûn so authoritative, so new, and so informative not only about events but also about the cultural, political, economic, and intellectual dynamics of his time. However, through a close reading of ʻIda¯rı¯ one can detect a geographical and cultural morphology of the ˉ region in his time. For instance, one can see that the succession of Arab conquests of the region had already become naturalized as highly positive events that gave the region its form. From his narration of the founding of dynasties, one can also envision the different religious experiences the region went through and that gave the region a specific religious identity. The Shiʿa identity of the region emerged with the Idrissites; later all of Ifriqiya, including Qayrawan, adopted the Shiʿa doctrine and distinguished themselves from the Sunni (al-sunna wa aljamaʿa).42 But this identity was later masked and outright eliminated in the narratives of the Salafi in colonial times and even, to a certain

39

40 41

42

For Ibn Khaldûn, the climate does affect the mood and states of joy, sadness, etc., which are not determined by the size of the brain, but only by the effect of the climate on the nervous system. See Abd al-Rahma¯n Ibn Khaldûn, ˙ Bayt al-Funûn wa alMuqaddima, ed. Abdessalem Cheddadi. Casablanca: ¯ Adâb, 2005. Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary.” Muhammad Ibn ʻIda¯rı¯ al-Murrâkushî, Al-baya¯n al-muġrib fı¯ akhba¯r mulu¯k al˙ ˉ Andalus wa-al-Maghrib, 2 vols. Beirut: Maktabat Sadir, 1950. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 395.

16

Introduction

degree, those of the nationalists, and thus in the ideology of the nationstate in the region. In any case, the world of Ibn Khaldûn must have undoubtedly changed by the sixteenth century. Several dynasties succeeded one another in the region before the eruption of a new actor unknown to Ibn Khaldûn, the Ottoman Turk under whom the region underwent a drastic change. It had become a periphery whose center was located somewhere else, the Sublime Porte. Its old center, in the far west, was detached from the rest; it developed by itself, mainly under two main strong dynasties, the Saadian (1554–1659) and the Alaouite (1666– present). Only in the sixteenth century do we find another comprehensive view of the region, though in a highly problematic text. Description de l’Afrique by Hassan al-Wazzân (alias Leo Africanus) was used by colonial authors almost systematically during the first few decades of the conquest of Algiers.43 Al-Wazzân too offers a conception of the region that gives us further insight into how it changed over time, and, specifically, in what ways it was transformed by colonial technologies of power throughout the nineteenth century. His book had a colonial career, though far less comprehensive than that of Ibn Khaldûn. An attitude of reserve should be adopted vis-à-vis the narrative of alWazzân. His knowledge translates modern categories that one cannot find in the historical knowledge either of his predecessors in the region or of his successors. He was initiated into various forms of knowledge, as a Renaissance man, and his conception of the region is one of an outsider.44 His narrative was also originally written in Latin and as such was part of an entirely different imaginary. Al-Wazzân had to address his audience not only in their languages but also in their categories of thought in order for them to understand him. His Italian editor, Giovanni Battista Ramusio, as Natalie Davis describes, “edited the text extensively so as to make its author and in some cases his Africa more acceptable to Christian European readers.”45 Davis notices that 43 44

45

Jean Leon l’African, Déscription de l’Afrique, 2 vols. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1980. Abdelkrim Benslim, “Leon L’African à la rencontre de la Renaissance,” Multilinguales 2017 (8). Natalie Zemon Davis, “‘Leo Africanus’ Presents Africato Europeans,” in Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, ed. Joaneath Spicer. Baltimore, MD: Walters Art Museum, 2012, pp. 61–79 at p. 65.

Old Configurations

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“the French, Latin, and English translators made further changes from Ramusio’s edition.”46 Even the terms Africa and Europe themselves are borrowed by him during his stay in Italy.47 Nevertheless, one can still see how the region was apprehended at the time. For instance, al-Wazzân labels the entire population as Africans, a name that was unknown and that is not found in Arab historiography. The term Barbary was also a European term not found in the historiography of the region and has no equivalent in Arabic, the mother tongue of al-Wazzân. Therefore, I will leave this problematic text aside. Let us look at the Ottoman side to see how the region was configured under their control. By the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Turks were masters of most of the region – that is, of an area that corresponds roughly to what we today call Algeria and Tunisia and Libya, with Morocco out of the control of the Sublime Porte. The Ottomans’ knowledge of the area, though not exhaustive, relied on local knowledge.48 What I call local knowledge (borrowed from Clifford Geertz) consists of historiography, literature, jurisprudence, and so forth. Arab historiographers and geographers, especially Ibn Khaldûn, Idrissi, and Ibn Hawqal, constituted the main references for Ottoman knowledge of the area.49 The Ottoman state was neither a historiographic state nor a cartographic state, and less so an ethnographic state even when the social sciences emerged in Europe as important for the construction of empire. The Ottoman Empire was rather a state in the tradition of old empires, with its own specificity, in relying mostly on the army to conquer, but also, innovatively, on the system millet to rule. However, Ottoman bureaucracy neither engaged in this systematic study of the region nor possessed the technologies of power that 46 47

48

49

Ibid. Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth Century Muslim between Worlds. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006, p. 127. Giancarlo Casale, “Seeing the Past: Maps and Ottoman Historical Consciousness,” in Writing History at the Ottoman Courts: Editing the Past, Refashioning the Future, ed. Hakki Erdem Cipa and Emine Fetvaci. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013, pp. 80–99. Also, in this same volume, see Hakan Karateke, “The Challenge of Periodization: New Patterns in Nineteenth Century Ottoman Historiography,” pp. 131–132. On Ibn Khaldûn, see Cornell Fleischer, “Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism, and ‘Ibn Khaldûnism’ in Sixteenth Century Ottoman Letters,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 1983 (18)3–4: 198–220.

18

Introduction

colonial powers invented and monopolized and that made of knowledge an instrument of conquest and rule.50 However, by the eighteenth century, Ottomans were clearly relying also on Europeans for knowledge even of their own “provinces,” as is evident in the fact that European maps with Ottoman scripts (i.e., Arabic) were reproduced, and their very format, the atlas, was also copied.51 The Ottomans did not seem to deploy the systematic investigation inherent to colonial enterprises, and this is mainly because they were still in a stage of imitating Europe in its modes of government as well as in its technological prowess. The key relationship within the state was still that between the suzerain and his subjects across the entirety of the empire. The Ottomans did not develop the technologies of power that make this type of knowledge possible, useful, and even necessary. The idea that one needs this knowledge to exert power and control over populations did not seem to be part of the Ottoman rule. The study of the past, as with Ibn Abi Diyâf,52 was itself for the purpose of ʿibar (example) and hikam (wisdom) and not as an instrumental discipline in the making of ˙ nationhood and statehood; neither was it the basis of a modern governmentality – that is, the management of populations.53 Historiographic writings consisted mainly of chronicles and annals that could be harnessed for political projects pertaining to the ruler’s legitimacy.54 50

51

52

53

54

Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria: The Archives of the Arab Bureau,” History and Anthropology 2008 (19)2: 91–114. Reproduced in Violent Modernity: France in Algeria. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. See, for example, Mostafa Minawi, The Ottoman Scramble for Africa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016, p. 45. Ahmad ibn Abî L-Diyâ, Ithâf ahl al-zamân bi akhbâr mulûk tûnis wa ‘ahd al˙ amân. Tunis: Nashr˙ Kita¯bat al-Dawlah lil-shuʼu¯n al-Thaqa¯fı¯yah wa-al-Ikhba¯r, 1963. “Example” and “wisdom” are only approximate translations of ʿibar and hikam, two concepts that had to be placed within the medieval conceptions of ˙knowledge and political life. Why should history serve as an example? And to whom? And for what purpose? Why should history serve as a means of hikam? ˙ What is the function of hikam? See Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: ˙ The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam. Leiden: Brill, 1970. Also see Abdelmajid Hannoum, “The Muqaddima of Khaldûn,” in Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method Digital Resource, forthcoming. On writing chronicles, see Dimitris Kastristis, “The Historical Epic AhvaliSultan Mehemmed (The Tales of Sultan Mehemet) in the Context of Early Ottoman Historiography,” in Writing History at the Ottoman Courts: Editing the Past, Refashioning the Future, ed. Hakki Erdem Cipa and Emine Fetvaci. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Old Configurations

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Already, by the sixteenth century, these were part of “a project of developing an ideological, theological, and historiographical basis for establishing the Ottoman Sultan as the legitimate heir of the Roman emperors.”55 The conception of history (of which archaeology is a part) as a “science” of the past, one that is politically useful, and even vital since it provides the substance of the nation and the validation of the state, is part of modernity. Ottoman archaeology itself seems to be little more than a domain of European archaeology.56 The famous tanzimat – modern reforms the Ottomans had initiated by the eighteenth century – were efforts directed at modernizing state bureaucracy, especially the army, and making it functional in the face of the technologies being monopolized by Europe.57 Amongst all the ideas Ottoman rulers discussed and pursued, the idea that knowledge is fundamental for conquest and rule does not seem to be present; there was little interest in what was called in Europe military sciences – that is, in modern science. This is the same science Napoleon deployed in Egypt and colonial officers pursued in Algeria. Even in the work of Ibn Abi Diyâf, history remains an auxiliary of religion, not a major tool for building nationhood. However, Ottoman perceptions of the region cannot be identified as local perceptions; the Ottoman elite were not connected with the population, and neither did they integrate local elites in their Ottoman club.58 Already by the eighteenth century what were usually called the “North African provinces” were no longer under the direct control of the Sublime Porte, albeit still under the control of local political Ottoman elites.59 Those who assured the production of knowledge and guaranteed the ideological order, the 55

56

57

58

59

Hakki Erdem Cipa and Emine Fetvaci, eds., Writing History at the Ottoman Courts: Editing the Past, Refashioning the Future. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013, p. 86. Zainab Bahrani and Zeynep Çelik, “Archaeology and Empire,” in Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914, ed. Zainab Bahrani and Zeynep Çelik. Istanbul: Salt, 2011, pp. 13–40 at p. 15. For a brief and general view on the tanzimat, see Albert Hourani, The History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 271–278. Tal Shuval, “The Ottoman Algerian Elite and Its Ideology,” Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 2000 (23): 324. Andrew Hess, “The Forgotten Frontiers: The Ottoman North African Provinces in the Eighteenth Century,” Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, ed. Thomas Naff and Roger Owen. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977, pp. 74–75.

20

Introduction

ulama, were of various backgrounds.60 In the case of Algeria, the educational system was not dependent on the Ottoman state, but on the Islamic institution of habous.61 One can conclude that the local conception of the region, especially amongst the Muslim elite, was the same one we find in the work of Ahmad ibn Khalid al-Nassiri and Ibn Diyâf – an embryo of the nation-state.62

Colonial Modernity and the Violence of Invention Local perceptions of the region were different from outside perceptions – that is, European ones – even in precolonial times. However, with the advent of colonial rule in Algeria, its agents would soon harness technologies of modern power not only to redefine the region but also to invent it as a new entity with a past and a present that frame it and give it its ultimate meaning. Technologies of power not known in the area – consisting of techniques of archaeological excavation and archaeological narratives, modern historical narratives based on translations, material evidence, and comparative historiographies, ethnographic surveys, modern linguistic research, statistics, and other modes of inquiry – were harnessed to produce a practical knowledge of use to the colonies and their metropole. As much as colonialism relied on technological military might, it emerged, from its early beginnings, as an economic enterprise whose reliance on culture was vital and undoubtedly unprecedented. One of the novelties of this type of conquest and rule was not that it sought economic exploitation or even expansionist prestige, but rather it is the fact that modern knowledge became its main instrument of expansion and exploitation. One cannot overstress this cultural dimension of colonial rule. Its use of technologies of power to manage the colonies and their populations had drastic effects that outlasted it. Indeed, in colonial times, the region under consideration underwent significant transformation that shaped it into a new configuration, entirely transformed, and this transformation has lasted to our present day. The power of this transformation was also such that it not only appears 60 61

62

Houari Touati, Entre Dieu et les hommes. Paris: EHESS, 1994, p. 264. Marcel Emerit, “L’état intellectual et moral de l’Algérie en 1830,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine July–September 1954 : 199–212. Abu¯ al-ʻAbba¯s Ahmad ibn Kha¯lid al-Na¯sirı¯, Kita¯b al-Istiqsa¯ li-akhba¯r duwal al˙ ˙ L-Diyâ, Ithâf. Maghrib al-aqsá.˙Casablanca: Dâr al-Kitâb, 1954. Ibn Abî ˙ ˙

Colonial Modernity and the Violence of Invention

21

concrete, self-evident, and natural, but the precolonial past itself was constructed in such a manner as to provide historical justification and greatly contribute to the naturalness of the construction. The idea of this book is to show how the Maghreb was invented in the colonial context by what I call colonial modernity. By colonial modernity, I mean a historical moment in the development of modernity when certain characteristics of modernity changed and became indistinct from colonialism. The historical condition we commonly call modernity was neither exactly the same nor entirely different in each phase of its development from the sixteenth century to the present. This includes the phase I am discussing – namely, the nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century. By colonial modernity, I mean the European project of civilizing the rest of the world, a project seen, presented, articulated, and defended as an obligation and a duty of Europe toward its others. This is a project marked by a strong belief in the idea of progress, in human diversity, and in human biological, intellectual, and moral inequality. It is also a project marked by the prevalence of racial theories. It is a project driven by Europe’s strong belief that it has not only the right but the duty to transform other societies and help them become modern (the idea of the civilizing mission). By colonial modernity, I also mean this very important idea (found in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville and in the writings – and the practice – of Thomas Robert Bugeaud) that knowledge is necessary for conquest and rule. Violence is also necessary, it is true – violence is inherent in the project – but violence is not enough to transform lands and peoples. Indeed, one of the particularities of colonial modernity is its specific combination of the use of knowledge, force, and power to not only destroy and eliminate but also to transform and create. And this act of transformation is what makes modernity legitimate in the colonial order of things.63 When we consider what we call today the Maghreb, we have to make a clear distinction between the body of knowledge Europe had formed regarding the region before its colonial rule, the earlier body of knowledge the Ottoman Turks had formed, the body of local knowledge, and, finally, the body of knowledge Europe formed in and about the region during its phase of colonial rule. Knowledge formed by the Ottoman Turks up to the seventeenth century did not participate in 63

See Hannoum, Violent Modernity.

22

Introduction

what we can call the will to power, meaning its purpose was not to systematically explore the region scientifically, so to speak, so as to use that knowledge to enforce their rule, or to harness it for economic exploitation. Their rule was based on Muslim legitimacy as defenders of the faith and the land against Christian incursions (especially Spanish and Portuguese on the coasts of what we today call Algeria and Morocco) and on a strong army. By the seventeenth century, the two regimes in Tunisia and Algeria were seen as autonomous and were dealt with as such by European powers. Morocco, of course, has never been part of the Ottoman Empire. European knowledge from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth, as abundant as it was, pertained more to a humanistic trend in Europe, what Claude Lévi-Strauss would call humanist modernity even if it still had economic and political interests.64 French maps of that period differ markedly from those of later colonial times. Research has demonstrated that the French knew a good deal about the region through the work of diplomats, merchants, former Christian slaves, and Muslim slaves in Europe. The region seems to have been visualized in more or less a similar fashion throughout the 1600s and 1700s, as shown by a number of unpublished maps. By the 1700s, the region was commonly called Barbarie in Europe. While it was delimited as a single unit, its parts had different names: Etat du Royaume de Fes, Etat du Royaume d’Alger, Etat de Royaume de Tunis, Etat de Royaume de Tripolie.65 Europeans were not strangers to the region and neither was the region strange to them. Before the advent of French colonial rule in Algeria, the region had known European presence, in the coastal cities especially from Mogador to Tangier and to Oran. The Portuguese, Spanish, and even the British succeeded one another along the coast; some of them maintained a longer presence that continues today.66 This presence also allowed an accumulation of knowledge about the 64

65 66

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1976, p. 274. See in Chapter 1, the map by Guillaume Deslile dated 1722. Damião de Góis, Les Portugais au Maroc de 1495 a 1521. Rabat: Felix Moncho, 1937. For the presence of the Spanish, see Fernand Braudel, “Les Espagnoles en Algérie, 1492–1792,” in Histoire et Historiens de l’Algérie, ed. J. Alazard, E. Albertini, and A. Bel. Paris: Alcan, 1931, pp. 231–266. Eloy Martín Corrales, “Les Espagnols au Maroc (1767–1860): le défi de travailler avec l’autre,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 2012 (84): 197–212.

Colonial Modernity and the Violence of Invention

23

region upon which colonial knowledge was built. Clearly, it was not built from scratch but was the result of a long and intense encounter. The age of invention, it seems, related to the power of transformation of colonial modernity. Hence, there is a series of inventions that all happened in the colonial period: the invention of tradition, the invention of the Mediterranean, the invention of Africa, the invention of France, the invention of the Americas, the invention of the land of Israel.67 Colonial modernity was an ideological project of an economic order for which everything had to be reconfigured: geographies, populations, traditions, polities, languages, sexualities, ideas not only in one corner of the globe but in its entirety. The invention of the Maghreb is a case among cases, a local transformation amidst global ones, a reconfiguration of one of a number of pieces from which the global whole is made. These inventions were made by powerful, already global colonial orders, some of them French, others British or Dutch, but all belonging to colonial modernity. The Maghreb was a French colonial invention, which means that the incessant effort to make sense of it, to conceptualize it, to reconfigure it, to describe its geography and trace its contours was mainly the work of French colonial agents, officers, and scholars (often one subsuming the others). France’s imperial power and colonial technologies were matched only by Great Britain and not at all by Spain or Italy. Spanish and Italian efforts were minimal in comparison. National historians, in the aftermath of the so-called independence era, were francophone and engaged, just like their Salafi predecessors, with French colonial authors. Therefore, it is my contention that not only was the invention French but it existed only in a francophone world inherited by authors with mostly francophone training. Hence, the sad observation that French – not Arabic – remains the language of the study of the area, its history, its culture, its population, even its most intimate sexuality. It is surely a sign of enduring coloniality that one can 67

Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Maroula Sinarellis Bourgue et al., eds., L’invention scientifique de la Méditerranée: Egypte, Morée, Algérie. Paris: EHESS, 1998. Mudimbe, Invention of Africa. Hervé Le Bras and Emmanuel Todd, L’invention de la France: Atlas anthropologique et politique. Paris: Gallimard, 2012. Enrique Dussel and Michael Barber, The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of the Other and the Myth of Modernity. New York: Continuum, 1995. Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel. London: Verso, 2012.

24

Introduction

dispense of Arabic or Tamazight or local languages (often called dialects, darija) and rely exclusively on French to engage in examining the region – a practice that can do nothing but perpetuate colonial understandings, categories, discourses, and everything these imply in the present. This characteristic, also found in African studies, is almost unthinkable now in Middle Eastern studies, where the acquisition of languages, be they Arabic, Persian, Turkish, or Hebrew, are conditions for the study of the region. The Maghreb seems to be an exception: how could it not be since some of its main architects, in the colonial period or in the postcolonial one, were cognizant neither of Arabic nor of its other local forms of expression?

On Method Because the word invention is generic and has been used in the titles of a number of books to describe (and sometimes not) the making of countries and people, I would like to specify in what way I use it. The term was made popular by a now-classic work called The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. My use of the term is not generic or random; I use the concept from a phenomenological perspective. By invention, I mean neither a false fabrication against a true order of things nor a distortion of an objective reality. All realities are constructed, and therefore there are various ways to study the invention of the region in its previous historical phases with Islam, the Romans, the Greeks, the Vandals, and so forth. The purpose of this book is to consider the French invention of the region as the Maghreb. By invention, I also do not mean a creation ex nihilo. Rather, by invention I mean a creation out of systems of meaning that existed before the act of invention itself. A textual tradition constitutes semantic fields, and what we call the Maghreb has been constructed by a systematic production of texts, geography, cartography, historiography, archaeology, linguistics, ethnography, and literature that created the very understanding of what is called the Maghreb. This creation was a processing of previous knowledge about the region, textually – namely, in the forms of interpretation and translation – and ethnographically – namely, in the forms of archaeology and fieldwork. This ensemble of texts had the status of science and as such was endowed with great discursive power that made it a source of knowledge for literary work. Literature, and more

On Method

25

specifically fiction, helped propagate the idea of the Maghreb to a large audience in the colonies and in the metropole, then and now. In so doing, literature was also instrumental in creating geographical imaginaries. Since invention is always a reconfiguration of the old, I argue that the invention of the Maghreb (as a region, as a concept, and therefore also as a field of study) has been the work of systematic interpretation of local texts and the result of a colonial encounter between a European population with a specific way of knowing and even a prior knowledge about a region with which they were not unfamiliar. Let us remember that before the arrival of the French, the region had known in modern times the successful colonization of the Spanish, the Portuguese, and even the British from the fifteenth century to 1830.68 Colonialism did not start in 1830, but before, and just as colonialism did not start with the nineteenth century, neither did capitalism – its economic structure. And throughout these centuries of conquest, an intense exchange took place in the region in terms of trade, knowledge, diplomacy, slavery, piracy, and of course war and even occupations. The region after all is part of the Mediterranean, which was the center of the world until the sixteenth century, in Braudel’s view.69 In this sense, and because there is no creation ex nihilo, every invention is necessarily a reinvention, but every (re)invention is sui generis; each has its own history, its own dynamics, its own politics, and its own purposes. This book examines this history, shows the dynamics of French colonial invention, analyzes its politics, and interrogates the purposes of this invention in and beyond the colonial era. I write the history of this invention through texts, or to be more precise, I examine a tradition of texts that despite the different modes of their expression constitute a discursive formation.70 I interrogate their meanings, their categories, and their strategies of persuasion, but also the politics of their production, their use, their transformation, and the ways they shape, transform, change, and articulate colonial imaginaries of space, of history, and of population. As a strategy of analysis, I chose authoritative texts and marginal ones to articulate the 68

69 70

Braudel, “Les Espagnoles en Algérie, 1492–1792.” Góis, Les Portugais au Maroc de 1495 a 1521. Braudel, La Mediterranée et le monde méditerranéen. See Michel Foucault on the concept of discursive formation in L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1969, pp. 44–54.

26

Introduction

conceptions of the region through time, from within colonial and postcolonial institutions, and through different regimes of the production of knowledge – colonial and postcolonial. I purposely chose canonical texts along with marginal ones in order to show continuities and detect discrepancies that are often discursive strategies to open up the horizon of the geographic imagination. Following a long phenomenological tradition from Edmund Husserl to Paul Ricoeur, I maintain that what we call a reality is a perception, the product of an ensemble of texts that constitute a system of meanings in and of itself, the creation of the webs of significance that constitute our reality. However, not all texts are born equal, live equal, or die equal. Some texts are more authoritative than others, some are more powerful for a time than others, some are more convincing than others, and some are more capable of longevity than others. All of them constitute a textual formation, a discursive ensemble, with rules that condition the creation of objects – invented objects that constitute our own social world. It is my contention that these texts (i.e., objects) do not stand by themselves, but are institutionalized, invested with political power that makes them play roles others don’t play, at least not with the same effectiveness. Of course, all texts are born within institutions, and no text can possibly exist outside of them. The texts, which also include maps and archaeological artifacts, I extensively analyze in this book were all produced by powerful colonial institutions and through scientific missions such as the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, Mission scientifique au Maroc, Mission archéologique française à Carthage, and powerful state institutions such as the armée d’Afrique, the Arab Bureau, l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, Mission archéologique française à Carthage, the University of Algiers, and the Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines. Even local texts, such as those of Ibn Khaldûn, al-Idrissi, al-Bakri, Ibn Hawqal, and Ibn ʻIda¯rı¯ were ˉ also appropriated, domesticated, and transformed for colonial use. Also, in the history of this formation that produced the Maghreb, I do not subscribe to the common periodization and especially the all too easy textual separation between medieval, precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial. For instance, medieval and precolonial texts (whether in Arabic or in European languages) have become part of the colonial discursive formation. Colonial institutions not only appropriated local libraries, physically and symbolically, but also entirely transformed them through acts of translation or interpretation in such

On Method

27

a way that their colonial meanings have become part of their overall significance. And, as I have noted, the process of intervention and invention did not start in 1830, but rather much earlier, albeit hesitantly, tentatively, by an emerging Europe expanding beyond its borders. Colonial power, however, was instrumental in incorporating the past and inventing the present. Texts are what we principally have at our disposal to access the past, which is ultimately nothing but our reading of them in the present. Even material objects become narratives, as in the case of archaeology I discuss in Chapter 2. To demonstrate how the Maghreb was constituted as a new geopolitical entity neither African nor Middle Eastern, I will examine a variety of forms of knowledge: maps, geographical treaties, historical narratives, ethnographic accounts, archaeological texts, and literary creations. I place these texts within their institutions, for there is no knowledge without power, and that knowledge is unseparated from the will to power. It is this that I call technologies of colonial power, and by this I mean that colonial modernity relied systematically on new technologies to produce knowledge not only to rule and govern but also to invent and create. Besides the strong belief that knowledge was mandatory for colonization, these technologies of power operated drastic destruction and radical transformations of the land and the populations of the colonies. They destroyed existing realities (themselves creations, for sure), and transformed old realities into new ones; they created their own understandings and their own discourse that they imposed, across time, as the primary understanding and the primary discourse. Technologies of power turned local knowledge (in Arabic and in Berber) into colonial knowledge. They made them new and modern, or, in other words, European. It is a will to knowledge in the Napoleonic tradition that makes science a vital instrument of rule and conquest. Colonial power appropriated what existed before and at the time of its constitution. It also commanded and even conditioned the emergence of a new local knowledge, part and parcel of its discursive dynamics. My examination is not limited to colonial knowledge and neither is it limited to French forms of knowledge. As I have noted before, I also examine local knowledge – to again use Geertz’s expression – that is, knowledge produced, in the past as well as in the colonial present, by local elites to offer competitive interpretations, to create

28

Introduction

their own realities, or to defend old ones.71 However, I do argue, all along, that the power of colonial discourse was such that it commanded local response and it created the social world from within which local elites, even the most trenchant enemies of colonialism, argue and create. Power in colonial settings may have been everywhere, but there was an imbalance of power. Not only did some have more than others and others less, but colonial power regulated counter-power by creating limits to it. Hence every cognitive action of the native was a reaction, and every reaction was conditioned by colonial power and its logic. Thus it perpetuated the same truths it intended to dismantle. Therefore, in this long process of invention, local responses participated in this creation. The Maghreb could not have existed without the colonial and postcolonial engagement of a powerful colonial perception. Despite change and alterations, this perception still shapes the region today. I demonstrate that this invention operates not only within a specific territory, the one called the Maghreb, but also, conjointly, in relation to other territories, West Africa on one hand and Egypt on the other. Egypt was also reconfigured, gradually, within the larger area of the Middle East, and thus was separated from the Maghreb and served to separate the Maghreb. Because the focus of the book is not these inventions, I proceed to show the limits of the Maghreb and, in the process, trace the general configuration of West Africa, the Sahara, and Egypt. By showing the cultural and political processes of these configurations of zones and units, I also hope to show that the lines between them are not natural, but are rather constructs that served purposes, and that these limits (of geography, race, language, histories, etc.), once deconstructed, enable the region and people to open up to a larger human horizon where geography, race, language, and histories are historicized and relativized, and human connectivity is maximized, where nationalism is overcome, and humanism is espoused not as an ideology of an elite, but as a praxis, as a way of life for people. This is a hope of the future, not the present, whose realities we shall endure while striving to change them. For the present, the book offers itself as a history of the colonial and postcolonial configurations of the region we know today as the Maghreb in relation to the Middle East and 71

Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983.

On Method

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Africa. As such, it is a history of a space whose configurations will undoubtedly change in the future as they have changed in the past. The book is made of eight parts – six chapters, this introduction, and an epilogue. If the first three chapters are devoted to colonial knowledge and the last three to local knowledge, this symmetry is only accidental. The reader will undoubtedly see that the two bodies of knowledge interacted in a colonial dynamic that converted the local into the colonial and the colonial into the local. However, in both cases, the colonial, for reasons that will become obvious by the end of the book, was highly hegemonic, in the sense Antonio Gramsci gives to this concept, meaning not only dominant, but also endowed with the great ability to convert, change, last, and outlast other discursive formations. Finally, I adopt the Middle East Studies Association’s system of transliteration except when Arabic names are cited otherwise in precolonial or colonial texts. In this case, I mostly keep the original spellings especially as they are known in French translation (for example, ElBekri and not al-Bakri). All the translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

1

Geographic Imagination and Cartographic Power

Cartographic representation is a potent modern means of spatial visualization. It is what allows us to identify human-made boundaries of space, be they of a country, a region, a city, or the globe. Graphic representation not only makes spatial visualization possible, simple, and natural, but it also effectively shapes geographic imaginaries and allows their conception to be easily recognized and remembered. We know a country when we see its map, and we tend to think about a map when we think of a country. The representation seems almost natural since it operates with a minimal set of signs: drawings, colors, and names. The power of maps derives from this apparent simplicity and also, evidently, from a graphic representation made possible by modern techniques and technologies obeying visual rules and graphic patterns. Yet, the relationship between a map and the geographic entity it refers to is not arbitrary (the way a linguistic sign is), but rather highly motivated in that there is a semiotic relation between the signified (the idea of the map) and the signifier (the ensemble of signs that signify the idea). This relation has the status of science, therefore of accuracy and exactitude: it is mathematical and geometrical, and thus it creates the effects of reality itself to the point that maps are often confused with real locations and real locations seem to exist only through maps. Maps are thus undoubtedly powerful tools of modern states. Colonial powers made extensive use of maps in their numerous conquests, in their countless battles, in tracing borders and frontiers, in appropriating space, and of course in forming new geographical entities that had no existence before. Maps also are texts to be read and interpreted not only by experts but also by anyone who can see them. Maps are designed to visualize a space – a land, a country, a continent, a globe, even a galaxy. They are signifying objects whose signs (often simple despite the complex mathematical and geometrical operations behind their final design) can be deciphered as a text. Maps

30

Geographic Imagination and Cartographic Power

31

are cultural artifacts, produced and reproduced, communicated and propagated, consumed and used by states and by groups for a variety of political ends (to substantiate the nation, to limit and redefine its margins and contours, and as a strategy of persuasion in diplomatic maneuvering, to wage war, to sign peace agreements, etc.). As cultural artifacts, maps are also produced by power and by state institutions such as accredited geographical associations. For even as states have the monopoly over historical production, so do they over cartographic production. Graphic representations are regulated by an array of rules; they are the product of these rules. As such, maps are not only hegemonic constructions but, most importantly, they are also themselves an index of the power that creates them, especially because of the technicalities (themselves a product of science) involved in their making. A map must be created in a precise way to be recognized as legitimate. The greater the power, the greater the graphic hegemony, and the greater the hegemony, the more natural and self-evident the graphic representation appears. The map of the Maghreb is thus a graphic representation, and since the system of the graphic representation of the Maghreb (that is, the Maghreb) is a product of colonial power, the Maghreb itself is not only a French colonial creation but also the product and the field of colonial power. The Maghreb first appeared as a map. Maps produced about the region in colonial times were the product of modern power – that is, of modern technologies that created the simulacra of exactitude required to create the object they represent: the Maghreb. Creation, however, never happens ex nihilo; it is also the transformation of old realties – that is, old creations whose power of creation modern power has rendered ineffective and/or obsolete. Modern colonial power relied, in the case of the Maghreb, on old cartographic traditions – on Arab, Greek, and Roman maps – as it also engaged in its own technical production of maps to reconceptualize the region the way it has remained since the 1830s. This conceptualization of the region was not completed overnight or even over a decade or a year. It was a gradual process subject to rectifications and modifications. It was accomplished piece by piece according to a cultural logic, using categories, negotiating alternative ways of thinking and doing, operating in different colonial circumstances. Complex as it is, this process produced geographical realities with differences and contradictions.

32

Geographic Imagination and Cartographic Power

Some of the differences were minor and some major, but all were accompanied by a plethora of names that culminated in visualizing the region as a new whole defined not only by French colonial power but also in relation to it, as an extension of it, claiming ownership of it in the process. However, it would be incorrect to argue that this work started in colonial times. Modernity preceded colonialism and evidently outlasted it. Modern Europe, and not only France, had keen interest in the world, and not only in the Maghreb. Modern Europe long employed modern technologies to account for the world, to interpret it, and to act on it before proceeding to change it in colonial times. Modern interest in the world manifested itself, from the 1500s onward, in the making of maps and atlases. The region of the Maghreb was at the intersection of different worlds, and its construction necessarily involved not only all the colonial powers (save the Dutch) but also the three continents within which the region was to emerge as a new geopolitical body distinct from its surroundings to the east and west, cut from its southern part, and in a relation of political dependency to its north, where the heart of colonial power lay at a center that directed its transformative power to the rest of the world. In this chapter, I set out to examine the maps that have participated in the creation and visualization of the Maghreb. I take maps as discourses in and of themselves whose aim (and effect) is not only to persuade but also to form geographic imaginaries. Therefore I am not interested in the set of rules that regulate the technical production of maps, but rather in the set of rules that regulate the cultural production of maps.1 Otherwise, this chapter is not about geography as such, neither is it really about the politics of map production, but rather it is a semiotic analysis of maps and the narratives they implicitly or explicitly contain and that are, as I show, part and parcel of the constitution of the map as a signifying object. To say it differently, I take maps as texts and analyze the system of signs that makes them signifiers. I also examine how these maps participate in the making of a cartographic imaginary that not only allows politicians, colonial agents, and military officers to know their locations but also makes the ordinary citizen aware of the existence of an empire and its 1

On the deconstruction of maps, see the influential essay of J. B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map,” Cartographia 1989 (26)2: 1–20.

Before French Hegemony

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geography. Indeed, what I intend to examine is precisely the categories by which maps of the region, and maps related to the region, were constituted, as well as the kinds of cultural representation informing this constitution.

Before French Hegemony By the 1600s, one finds a surprising number of maps of Africa. Their very existence, signed by one of the colonial powers, is indicative of the fact that by that date, not only were European nations already possessors of colonies, but they specifically had their sights on Africa. For the sovereignty of Africa’s many entities of the time, these maps of imperial Europe stood as the Sword of Damocles. They represented the African continent as a single unity whose many pieces they marked not only with names but also with symbols, indicating their primitiveness and/or their savagery, and therefore as ripe for conquest and rule. These symbols of primitiveness, characteristic of what Benjamin Schmidt calls exotic geography, themselves promoted the idea of Europe.2 The globe is now perceived as continents even though within a continent one can see contrasts, divisions, and cleavages, all indicative of political or cultural contrasts even within a single unity as with Africa. But this new reality is characterized by a binary, with Europe on one hand and an exotic world on the other.3 In the 1700s, European cartography, made possible by mathematics, geometry, and astronomy, was cultivated, promulgated, and taught as a useful science by Jesuits, and thus was also the beginning of the institutionalization of knowledge of the region – knowledge that would become the region itself in the European imagination. “In the Jesuit curriculum, students were exposed early to maps and globes and encouraged to make use of them. A core of the science curriculum explored various explanations for the description of the universe.”4

2

3 4

Benjamin Schmidt, Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2015, pp. 17–18. Ibid. Mary Sponberg Pedley, The Commerce of Cartography: Making and Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-Century France and England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 28.

5

https://lib-dbserver.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/africa/maps-continent/1737%20hase.jpg. Last accessed May 25, 2020. Princeton University Library, reproduced with permission.

Map 1 Africa, 1737, by Johann Mathias Hase5

Before French Hegemony

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For instance, in a work by Guillaume Delisle, geographer to the king of France, dated 1722 and dedicated to and made for the usage of the king, one can see the region identified as Barbarie with four political units: Royaume du Maroc, Royaume d’Alger, Royaume de Tunis, and Royaume de Tripoly.6 Egypt is already distinct from this bloc despite the fact that it shares a Mediterranean shore with it, but is not connected to it by the Sahara, also called Desert de Barbarie. It is also clear that the separation between geographical units within the African continent is the result of a political divide (découpage) that obeys specific cultural norms. As Christian Grataloup puts it, “the divide of parts of the world is totally a fact of culture.”7 A geographer to the king takes into consideration political criteria pertaining to dynastical power and royal domains. The world is not divided, in this view, according to racial, colonized, and colonizable geographies, as became the norm in the subsequent century; instead, the world is envisioned according to space ruled by kings, as if the kingdom is the most natural political unit. Louis Marin describes the cartographic order of this same eighteenth century: “The knowledge and science of representation, to demonstrate the truth that its subject declares plainly, flow nonetheless in a social and political hierarchy. The proof of its ‘theoretical’ truth had to be given, they are the recognizable signs; but the economy of these signs in their disposition on the cartographic plane no longer obeys the rules of the order of geometry and reason, but, rather, the norms and values of the order of social and religious tradition.”8 In this political tradition, the kingdom was as natural as nature itself. This political tradition was also religious since the universe itself is a divine kingdom and the king rules only its earthly replica. Hence these maps depict kingdoms and kingless lands – that is, vacant lands. The function of the map in this political imaginary is to consolidate the royal view about royalty. It also seems to be informative about political units within the space and not, as we will see in the colonial era, geographical units projected onto the map and not only separated from one another but opposed to one another using criteria of geometry and race. In other words, one can also read in these maps nascent imperial power, not yet 6

7 8

See map at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8595153t. Last accessed May 14, 2020. Grataloup, L’invention des continents, p. 17. Louis Marin, Portrait of the King. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988, p. 173.

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Geographic Imagination and Cartographic Power

nascent colonial power (the first conditioned the second yet survived it also). As such these maps operated according to European cartographic imaginaries and not, as with colonial maps, according to local and metropolitan imaginaries. Historians and geographers across time have noted the importance of Delisle’s cartographic authorship. For Charles Walckenaer, “Delisle should be regarded as the principal creator of the system of modern geography . . . the globes and the maps of the young Delisle were the object of general admiration and opened up for him the door of the Academy of Sciences that welcomed him in 1702.”9 For G. R. Crone, “Delisle marks the transition to the modern map.”10 And it was JeanBaptiste Bourguignon d’Anville who not only continued this tradition but elevated it to new heights.11 He eliminated fictitious topographies and introduced blanks to signal lack of knowledge instead of filling them with fantastical signs, as we can observe in the previous cartographic tradition. This was considered an important breakthrough, a more practical way of mapping, more realistic, and maybe, in his time, it was also considered more scientific. Admitting ignorance, as in his blanks, was itself a scientific method.12 Maybe because of all these reasons, d’Anville’s map of 1765 could be included in the first volume of the Description de l’Egypte, where one can see Egypt as a distinct country, separated westward by Libya and eastward by the Red Sea.13 D’Anville marked a great shift in cartographic representation in the eighteenth century.14 However, historians distinguish the maps he made of Africa before 1727 and those he made after 1747. In the 9

10

11 12

13

14

Charles Walckenaer, “Delisle (Guillaume),” in Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne; ou, Histoire, par ordre alphabétique, de la vie publique et privée de tous les hommes qui se sont fait remarquer par leurs écrits, leurs actions, leurs talents, leurs vertus ou leurs crimes, vol. 11, ed. Louis-Gabriel Michaud. Paris: Michaud Frères, 1811–1862, p. 4. G. R. Crone, Maps and Their Makers: An Introduction to the History of Cartography, 5th edition. Kent: Archon Books, 1978, p. 89. Ibid. See Junia Ferreira Furtado, “Evolving Ideas: J. B. d’Anville’s Maps of Southern Africa, 1725–1749.” Imago Mundi (69)2 (2017): 202–215. Commission des sciences et arts d’Egypte, Description de l’Egypte ou receuil des observations et des recherches qui ont eté faites en Egypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée français. Paris: Imprimerie imperial, 1809. Lucile Haguet and Catherine Hofmann, eds., Une carrière de géographe au siècle des Lumières. Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2018.

Before French Hegemony

37

maps before 1727, there were no borders for African kingdoms and European colonies. Blank space prevailed.15 After 1747, more borders are traced in the maps, more names are specified, and more information is provided regarding the interior of Africa. Yet the names, the borders, and the overall conception of the northern part called Barbarie remained unchanged in all of these maps from 1727 to 1749. Clearly, European powers had much more knowledge of the geography of northern Africa (including Egypt) than they had of the rest of Africa. Even d’Anville does not seem to have added much. The region called Barbarie in his map of 1749 seems also to be the same as in Johann Mathias Hase’s 1737 map of Africa,16 considered “the first scientific map” of the “dark continent.”17 In this map (as well as in those d’Anville made between 1727 and 1747), Egypt is cut off from Barbary and looks now toward Asia, with which it is connected by the Red Sea. In the tradition of Greek geographers, the modern position of Egypt – as a country between Africa and Asia, looking more toward the latter than toward the former, despite its African setting – is confirmed. In 1738, d’Anville made another map called cartes de la Barbarie et de Nigrite. The map covers two entities, Barbarie and the Nigrite (a name that obviously disappeared from European cartographic language to be replaced in colonial times by pays des noirs or pays des nègres). Here too Egypt is absent, and the desert separates Barbarie and sub-Saharan Africa. If the region called Barbarie appears as distinct, it is because it has been so in Greek and Roman texts. Yet its contents are not the same as in those texts; in this time period, the region meant something different to Christian Europe. Barbarie, by contrast, was constructed, as expressed by its name, as a land of primitiveness, nay, of the absence of law, the spread of plunder and war, and so forth. Meanwhile, Egypt was defined not only by its civilization (sciences, religion, and the law) and its history (at the center of the ancient world, the source of Greek knowledge), but also by its geographic and historical commerce and trade with India. To these distinctions was added the racial distinction, with Egypt having a specific racial composition: “Mamelukes, Turks, Turmen, Arabs, and 15 16 17

Furtado, “Evolving Ideas,” 205–206. Kurt Hassert, Die Erforschung Afrikas, Leipzig: Goldmann, 1943, p. 50. Ruthardt Oehme, “A French World Atlas of the 18th Century: The Atlas General of G. L. Le Rouge.” Imago Mundi 5 (1971): 55–64 at 59.

18

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8595153t. Last accessed May 25, 2020. Bibliothèque nationale de France, used with permission.

Map 2 Africa, 1722, by Guillaume Delisle18

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Coptes.”19 Even among Arabs, there was description of variety.20 I come back to these racial dynamics in the following chapters. The separation between Barbarie and what geographers of this eighteenth century used to call the “countries of the Negroes” (pays des nègres) was also made to appear as natural by what the maps indicate as the Desert de Barbarie. This reinforces the racial separation between the “countries of Barbary” (pays de Barbarie) and the “countries of the Negros” (pays des nègres). In sum, we can even conclude that the general form of the region, with its four major parts, was already known to Europeans, with some parts known more than others thanks to travelers, diplomats, merchants, and even Muslim slaves in Europe. The work of explorers and missionaries was important in inventing the continent called Africa (and others, of course) and in reconfiguring its parts using specific cultural categories of race, civilization, and time. A common map of the eighteenth century not only named the countries within the continent but also indicated with visual images, their specificities according to the European eye: lions, alligators, giraffes, half-naked black men, and men with turbans surrounded by several women to indicate savagery, primitiveness, and polygamous Islam. It was they who initiated what is commonly called physical geography, as they were the first to combine physical geography with human geography and thus announced a contemporary conception of geography.21 For the case at hand, the region did not wait until the 1830s to be mapped – this happened even earlier, long before the scores of maps of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the region was already known to Europeans who had conquered and occupied parts of it from the fourteenth century until the nineteenth, especially from Portugal and Spain. By contrast, the year 1830 brought to the region another imperial power, with more developed technologies of power, some of them tested 19

20

21

M. Le Baron Larrey, “Notice sur la conformation physique des Egyptiens et des différentes races qui habitent en Egypte,” in Description de l’Egypte. Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1812, second volume, p. 1. Edme-FrancoisJomard, “Sur les Arabes de l’Egypte moyenne,” Description de l’Egypte État moderne, tome premier. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1809, pp. 545–575. Also in the same volume, see M. Du Bois-Aymé, “Mémoire sur les tribus arabes des deserts de l’Egypte,” pp. 577–606. Claire Médard, L’Afrique orientale dans les géographies universelles contemporaines. Bordeaux: Centre d’Etudes d’Afrique Noire, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Bordeaux, 1993, p. 24.

22

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84929572/f1.item. Last accessed May 25, 2020. Bibliothèque nationale de France, used with permission.

Map 3 “Barbarie et Nigritie,” 1738, by Guillaume Delisle22

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with marvelous effect in Egypt itself, just a few decades before French troops landed in Algeria. For instance, the work of Walckenaer was published in 1821 and offers an understanding of the region based on his reading of canonical Arab geographers.23 The region seems to have a new name, not Barbary, but Afrique septentrionale.24 Walckenaer offers knowledge both of and about the region. The first consists of information withdrawn and of course translated from Islamic classics on geography such as those of Idrissi, Ibn Hawqal, and Ibn Battouta, but also of European travelers and diplomats such as James Bruce, Louis de Chénier, Jacob Burckhardt, and Jérôme Lalande. Leo Africanus’s work Description de l’Afrique also was a major reference of this body of knowledge. However, the region was of geographical interest not only to the French, but also generally so to Europeans, including the British, who occupied the city of Tangier early on, and to the Spanish, who occupied several cities on the northern African coast. European knowledge of the region, regardless of national origins, was mainly a system of knowledge widely shared in Europe, and it represented the general visions Europeans had of the region – and of the world beyond it. Thus, Thomas Shaw, in an authoritative book of travels, also relied on Ptolemy and Muslim geographers to give an account of the region. The epitomizer of Edrisi, the Nubian Geographer, as he is commonly called, places both the cities and Villages of this Part of Barbary, and those of the more Western and Eastern districts of it, in his Third Climate, without any particular Division into either Kingdoms or Provinces. But Abulfeda, besides giving us in Ptolemy’s Method, the Longitudes and Latitudes of the most considerable Cities, is more full and distinct in his general Division; and that Part of this Country I am now treating of, will take in the whole of what he calls al Maghreb al-Awsat [‫ ]ﺍﻟﻣﻐﺮﺏ ﺍﻷﻮﺴﻃ‬and a portion likewise of what he calls al Magreb al-Acksa [‫ ]ﺍﻟﻣﻐﺮﺏ ﺍﻷﻗﺻﻰ‬Afrikeah. Gramaye, and the more modern Geographers, divide this Kingdom into a great many Provinces, according to the several petty Royalties which at one Time or other it was canton’d into, before and after the Time of the Turkish Conquests. But at present there are only Three, viz. the Province of Tlem-san, to the West; of Titterie, to the South; and of Constantina, to the East of Algiers.25 23

24 25

Charles Walckenaer, Recherches géographiques sur l’Intérieur de l’Afrique septentrionale. Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1821. Ibid. Thomas Shaw, Travels or Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant. Oxford: Printed at the Theatre, 1738, pp. 5–6.

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During the Age of Empire, from the sixteenth century onward, European knowledge was formed and continued to accumulate, and in the process, a precolonial perception of the region was already at work. This formation was the result of travel, explorations, and eruditions, but these travels, explorations, and eruditions themselves were the manifestation of the culture of modernity and its capitalist infrastructure that made these forms of global mobility possible in the first place. On the eve of colonialism, this perception consisted of seeing the region as a whole, as a unit in and of itself, as a land of Islam, most of it part of the Ottoman Empire, but still made distinct by its map, its African location, its frontiers with Egypt, its history, and its relation within the Ottoman Empire and in relation to emerged European empires. Egypt, by contrast, despite its comfortable location in Africa, even in northern Africa, continued to be seen, as in the time of Ptolemy, as part of Asia. It is this paradox, this “indetermination” between Asia and Africa, that seemed to define it more than any topographical construction.26 This indetermination was reproduced in the modern era. JeanBaptiste-Joseph Fourier writes in the introduction to the Description de l’Egypte: Placed between Africa and Asia, and communicating easily with Europe, Egypt occupies the center of the ancient continent. This country presents only great memories; it is the homeland of the arts and conserves innumerable monuments; its principal temples and the places inhabited by its kings still exist; even though its least ancient edifices had already been built by the time of the Trojan War. Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato all went to Egypt to study the sciences, religion, and the laws. Alexander founded an opulent city there, which for a long time enjoyed commercial supremacy and which witnessed Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony, and Augustus deciding between them the fate of Rome and that of the entire world. It is therefore proper for this country to attract the attention of illustrious princes who rule the destiny of nations. No considerable power was ever massed by any nation, whether in the West or in Asia, that did not also turn that nation toward Egypt, which was regarded in some measure as its natural lot.27 26

27

Lucile Haguet, Aegyptus, de l’Égypte de l’Occident: Concept et représentation de l’Égypte dans la cartographie occidentale du XVe au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Universite de Paris IV, Sorbonne, 2007. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993, p. 33.

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With the experience of Napoleon and the mapping of Egypt, cartography entered a new age, the age of high imperial technology. No longer the work of Jesuits or armchair geographers, cartography became also ethnographic, relying not only on “being there” but also on a division of labor, on the use of exact science not only to measure reality, but to reproduce it. It is this technology and this cartographic tradition that was passed on to officers of the Armée d’Afrique in Algeria. Within this tradition, Egypt was also mapped in isolation from its westward region, and looked more toward Syria than toward Libya. In other words, colonial conquest confirmed, solidified, and entrenched the singularity of Egypt as neither Africa nor Asia or, which amounts to the same thing, of Egypt as both Africa and Asia. The western border of Egypt announced Africa, another continent and another people. Geometrical categories were used to create east, west, north, and south (Africa) in combination with national categories, to wit, British Africa, Spanish Africa, French Africa, Portuguese Africa, and Italian Africa. French Africa was situated west and north. It is these delimitations that I now need to examine to demonstrate how the region that is the focus of this book emerged as a French colonial entity by the name of the Maghreb.

Mapping Conquests The occupation of Algiers in 1830 and then the annexation of the country in 1839 created a rupture in the old world map. From 1830 onward, the French settled in Africa. That presence in itself changed the contours and the content of the region in maps drawn by Europeans. From the 1830s on, the maps of the region no longer showed the region as a continuous whole; a discontinuous space was produced by the presence of France. Also, the very presence of the French army allowed the deployment of technologies of power that mapped the region area by area as the conquest of Algeria progressed, and as Algeria was mapped, its contours were traced west, east, and south, to open the possibility of colonization in these directions.28 The presence of France 28

For the subject of mapping Algeria, see Hélène Blais, Mirages de la carte: L’invention de l’Algérie coloniale. Paris: Fayard, 2014. Also see Michel Hefernan, “An Imperial Utopia: French Surveys of North Africa in the Early Colonial Period,” in Maps and Africa, ed. Jeffery Stone. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University African Studies Group, 1994, cited in “L’Afrique

44

Geographic Imagination and Cartographic Power

in Algeria was used as an argument for France to establish itself in Tunisia against Italy, and in Morocco against Spain, and other European powers such as Great Britain, Germany, and Italy. It was as if the occupation of Algeria imposed French expansion eastward and westward in a region already seen as continuous. As Ausone de Chancel put it early in the phase of Algerian colonization: Les deux pieds sur Alger, la France peut demain Sur Fez et sur Tunis abattre chaque matin29 Two feet in Algiers, France can from tomorrow Fall on Fez and Tunis every morrow

The French then operated within Algeria using a visual map of the region from the seventeenth century. At the same time, new maps were made of pieces of the land to be added to other pieces to be conquered and then mapped. Sometimes, the maps preceded the advance of a military regiment, and these maps were often drawn with the help of local assistants whose knowledge of the land was deep and detailed. Mapping the routes and locations of the expeditions by officers of the army, often aided by locals, was of course, intended to make conquest progress and move forward with ease and with as minimal cost as possible. The officers of the army were, by the same token, mapping a country never mapped by modern technologies. The will to knowledge was undoubtedly the will to power. Each mapped piece of land was subjected to conquest and each conquered piece of land entered into the map as a “pacified” land – that is, a French land devoid of its local resistance. Mapping accompanied conquests, and maps were issued after conquests.30 Conquests were pure use of force: utter violence that not only destroyed realities but created new ones via modern technologies of power, chief among them cartography. Yet, this violence relied on cartographic knowledge and in turn produced a subdued land to be mapped “correctly” or “more accurately” and to be added to a list of maps of cities, villages, and areas. However, since mapping is also

29

30

septentrionale après le partage du monde romaine en empire d’Orient et empire d’Occident” Revue Africaine, 1865 1(2): 84. Cited in Adrien-Louis Berbrugger, “L’Afrique septentrionale après le partage du monde romaine en empire d’Orient et empire d’Occident,” Revue Africaine 1856 1(2): 81–88 at 84. Observation based on archival work conducted at Vincennes, Centre Historique des archives, especially GR6MT206868I, GR6MT206B713C3, GR6MT206B27, GR6MT206B713A8, and GR6MT206B40.

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above all a spatial perception, the French (and by extension European powers) had preconceived spatial ideas about the region often found and shared amongst European academies. These preconceived spatial ideas were also made of spatial categories, the region as a unit, and the unit made of parts that constitute its wholeness entirely separated, in European spatial imagination, from what lay to the west, east, and south. As preconceived ideas are themselves not the product of spatial nothingness, the Europeans, including the French, relied on existing spatial conceptions, some of them familiar (Greek and Roman maps), others unfamiliar and thus subject to spatial translation. From the early 1830s, with the savants of the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, maps of the region were presented as those of the whole with frontiers separating Algeria from Morocco, but also Algeria from Mali. Often a Greek map was put in conjunction with the colonial map not only to signify it but also to show the continuity, so instrumental in all colonial ideologies, between the present and the past despite brief Arab and Turkish interruptions. In many ways, colonial savants of this early period relied on two systems of knowledge that each looked different from the other and were almost irreconcilable: Greek and Roman geographical knowledge, including maps, names, and description of towns and places, and Arab geographical knowledge, also with its maps, names, and descriptions of towns and places. This was made possible by the work of translation, which is always a work of converting foreign or unknown categories to familiar and known categories. An example of this is a text by Ernest Carette, a member of the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie. An examination of this text demonstrates that maps and the entire craft of cartography is first and foremost the product of narratives about places.31 Carette’s work, and with it the work of other members, reveals that visual perception is first a textual one. To put it simply, to map an area one needs to know what that area is in time and space. Carette relied on a colossal body of geographic knowledge from different sources, Greek and Roman as well as Arab and European. In his descriptions, Carette gives an idea about what he calls “the oriental part of the African continent.”32 He credits Herodotus for the operational distinction 31

32

Ernest Carette, Recherches sur l’origine et les migrations des principales tribus de l’Afrique septentrionale et particulièrement de l’Algérie. Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1853. Ibid., p. 2.

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between the Tell and the Sahara, “between people who plow and people who herd.”33 Carette himself reproduces this distinction as a defining geographical and demographic feature of Algeria: “The Tell, whose name derives from the Latin word Tellus (cultivable land) is the area bordering the Mediterranean and, as its name suggests, the region of plowing and harvesting.”34 Names in this geographical description were of tantamount importance, as mapping presupposes narratives and narratives presuppose names and naming. The region appears as Africa. But Carette was also interested in human geography; for him, populations are part of the landscape, the way they are in the geographic thinking of Greek and Roman authors: In addition to peoples, countries and cities already mentioned by the first two geographers [Herodotus and Strabo], we see emerging in Strabo new names that the events of the Roman occupation had made famous: Numidians, Moors, Geatuli appeared for the first time.35

In this synthetization of Greek and Roman authors, Carette proceeds by providing a translation of names, or rather a reactivation of old names and their equivalents at the colonial moment. The Libophoenicians are “people that lived in this part of the present Regence of Tunis that was then called, as it is still called since then, Africa, strictly speaking (Afrique proprement dit).”36 He continues to describe “this country confined to the east of Numidia and that covers more or less Constantine, and the latter to Mauritania that included the provinces of Algiers and Oran and the Empire of Morocco.”37 The work of the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie is similar to the work of the Expédition d’Egypte in that individual authors such as Carette are part of a collective of authors providing a coherent vision of the colony. The several translations of Arabic sources can be seen as part and parcel of the same vision since translation, in this colonial context, was proven to be both, a source of knowledge and a new knowledge made up out of the old one. Thus the translation of Ibn Abi Dinar’s 1681 book Kitâb al-munis fi akhbâr ifriqiya wa tûnus, presented by Edmond Pellissier de Reynaud and Abdel Remusat under 33 34

35

Ibid. Ernest Carette, Recherches sur la géographie et le commerce de l’Algérie méridional. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1844, p. 6. Carette, Recherches sur les migrations, p. 3. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.

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the telling title of Histoire de l’Afrique, is in itself a text of the Exploration that confirms and completes its geographical vision.38 To cite the translation itself: The savants understand by Africa the country of Kairouan. Writers made it one of the parts of the world, but do not agree on its limits. Africa is at the center of the Occident. However, what is at the center is always what is best. They say this land was called Africa because it separates EAST from WEST. Ordinarily, it is the best that separates two parts. Others say its name comes from Farouk’-ben-Mesraim. They assure he was a descendant of Kouth, son of Sham, son of Noah. Another opinion indicates Afarik’a derives from Afrik’ich-ben Abr’a-ben-Zi-el-K’ranin who conquered the Occident and built a city. They call this city Afrika, the inhabitants Afarika. Maqrizi maintains this. The name of this conqueror used to be written first as Afrik’is. Arabs changed the ‫[ ﺱ‬sin] to a ‫[ ﺵ‬shin].39

These definitions, despite their uncertainties, were reproduced also in savant explanations of the names. Elisée Reclus starts his discussion of Afrique septentrionale with an entry that echoes the one just cited. Reclus was an armchair geographer and, seeing his universal geography, he was clearly relying exclusively on colonial authors of the period, almost all of them connected to the institution of the army, most of them as officers.40 Reclus separates the region from the rest of Africa to attach it to Europe, from which it was once detached naturally. He then analyzes it in terms of a new category, the Mediterranean.41 Even in translation, the name Africa (already commonly used by colonial authors at this junction to designate an ensemble of countries including Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria) is restricted, as with classical Arab historians and chroniclers, to the region we now commonly call Tunisia. However, a larger definition is also given to a region beyond these three countries. In the translation: Several authors understand by the name Mor’reb [sic] the entire continent that expands from the left bank of the Nile to the coasts of the Ocean. They 38

39 40

41

Histoire de l’Afrique de Moh’ammed-ben-abi-el-Raïni-el K’aïrouâni / traduite de l’arabe par MM. E. Pellissier et Rémusat. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1845. Ibid., pp. 21–22. Elisée Reclus, “L’Afrique septentrionale,” in Nouvelle Geographie Universelle. Paris: Hachette, 1885, p. 1. On the concept of the Mediterranean, see Ruel, “L’invention de la Mediterranée.”

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Geographic Imagination and Cartographic Power

call Africa the part that lies between Barka [Burqa], Tangier, the Mediterranean and the sands at the entrance of the land of the Negroes. For me, I prove that in our epoch we understand by Africa the country that expands from Ouad-et-Tin [Wadi Tin] to Bêdja [Béja].42

A translation is, of course, a process of converting a linguistic sign to another deemed its equivalent; in so doing, it is also putting in use specific categories to account for original categories that do not exist in the language of translation. The description of Ibn Abi Dinar was rendered into geographical categories specific to the nineteenth century. This rendering is an attempt to make intelligible a preexisting and foreign knowledge, and therefore it is an attempt at a domestication of this knowledge that, in the translation, introduces geographical and racial concepts. For instance, the translated definition of the region just provided contains, in addition to new geographical concepts that put the region within the sphere of France (i.e., Mediterranean), racial concepts that separate the region from the rest of Africa. Pays des nègres (countries of the Negroes) is clearly a racial concept not found in the work of Ibn Abi Dinar, who rather uses the concept of bilâd alsudân (the land of Sudan, i.e., Mali).43 Al-bahr al-châmî (the Mediterranean Sea) in the Arab geographical imagination is not the same as the Mediterranean; the first connects the region, via this sea, to the Levant whose name is signified by the sea of the Levant. The Mediterranean is a concept unknown as a noun before the beginning of the nineteenth century when, with Reclus, it came to mean “the sea of junction between three continental masses of Europe, Asia, and Africa, [a junction] between Aryans, Semites, and Berbers.”44 Also in the Arabic text, there is no suggestion of a frontier with bilâd al-sudân: Ifriqiya touches bilâd al-sudân; it suggests that part of bilâd al-sudân is part of it. The French text, by contrast, suggests a frontier of sands between Ifriqiya and the pays des nègres. The geographical separation is reinforced by a racial divide: the Maghreb has a geographical limit, the sands, and a racial limit, blackness.

42

43

44

Histoire de l’Afrique, p. 23. In the footnote, the translator notes, “L’Ouad-etT’în coule à quelques lieux au Sud de Sfax, auprès des ruines de l’antique Thena. C’est le Tanaïs ou Tana de Salluste.” Ibid. Muhammad ibn Abi al-Qa¯sim Ibn Abi Dina¯r , Kitâb al-munis fi akhbâr ifriqiya ˙ wa tûnus. Tunis: Matba`at Dawla Tunsiya, 1869, p. 16. Cited in Ruel, “L’invention de la Méditerranée,” p. 9.

45

Louis-Adrien Berbrugger, Algérie: historiquem pittoresque et monumentale. Paris: Delahaye, 1843–1845. Bibliothèque nationale de France, used with permission.

Map 4 Afrique Française (French Africa), 1843–1854, by Louis-Adrien Bebrugger45

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Geographic Imagination and Cartographic Power

One can see there are three different layers of geographical signification in the initial construction of the region: direct observation, itself shaped by Greek and Roman geographic knowledge; Islamic geographies, themselves translated into French texts using geographical and racial categories of the nineteenth century; and Greek and Roman texts harnessed in understanding the region in its present day. We see these multilayered webs of significance not only in the texts cited earlier in this chapter but also in the rest of the outputs of the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie. In the work of Louis-Adrien Berbrugger, also a member of the Exploration scientifique, it is illustrated from the outset of a voluminous volume by two maps; one pertains to Roman Africa, the second to French Africa.46 In the 1830s and even 1840s, Algeria was perceived as part of that whole found in Greek and Roman texts as Africa (albeit what is meant is only its northern part, but with the definitive exclusion of Egypt). And it is the Roman map that guides the new configuration of the region. In Berbrugger’s early work, the two maps are juxtaposed – Roman Africa and French Africa – to illustrate the common understanding amongst members of the army and the political establishment that it is the same geography, and thus its former owners had come back to claim it. And to claim it, there is the need to first map it and name it. One does not happen without the other. By the time of the arrival of General Thomas Bugeaud, the map of Algeria was already in place, mainly thanks to the work of members of the Exploration scientifique. Algeria, which Bugeaud was mandated to subdue, was only a part of this larger entity. Tunisia, too, was subjected to a scientific exploration. The map of its capital was already in place by 1830, and the exploration not only mapped these geographical pieces, but also mapped the units in a whole, as pieces in a unity, as countries within a region. The work of the Arab Bureau, with the arrival of Bugeaud, set as a goal to map the pieces within the pieces, these small regions within Algeria. This was done systematically in the spirit of geographical reason, and it was also accomplished according to the logic of “military operations.”47 The importance of Algeria, a country in the middle of the region, allowed the officers of the Arab Bureau to not only start mapping the 46 47

Ibid. My own observation of the archives. Also see Blais, Mirages de la carte.

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region from this entity but also in so doing to trace the frontiers that separate it from Morocco, west, and Tunisia, east.48 It also allowed a clear separation between the Tell and the Sahara, and thus between northern Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, a clear-cut separation that has become a defining feature of the continent and of relations with the northern region, part of which is constituted as the Maghreb. While these distinctions were undoubtedly modern, they also made use of local knowledge to confirm or change or reinvent preexisting distinctions that were neither clear-cut nor entirely unchanging. Local knowledge, whether “vernacular” or “savant,” continued to shape the colonial geographic imagination and its cartographic product. Translations of Muslim geographers by Orientalists were also instrumental in the fabrication of this spatial imaginary. It is important to stress again that local geographic and Islamic knowledge was always filtered or rather reinvented as modern knowledge through the work of translation. Consider the important work of Al-Bakri, Al-mughrib fi dhikr bilâd ifriqiya al-maghrib, translated by Orientalist William McGuckin de Slane under the meaningful title of Description de l’Afrique septentrionale.49 As in similar translated texts, the cognitive search of the original text is not the one of the translated text. The geographical categories found in the first are not those employed in the second. Slane uses categories of his time and his milieu: Afrique, which was the most common, as seen previously in the work of the savants of the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie. By 1859, the date of the translation, the region was still under construction. But the translation of this book provided not only a new name, Afrique septentrionale, but also a plethora of names for its parts and cities. This means that geographical knowledge was also constructed gradually and from different vantage points – of the institution, of the army, the university, the government – and by different bodies of producers: Orientalists, military personnel, amateur historians, and so forth. It was also constructed not only by topographers and military officers with different agendas and different approaches but also with the translation of local knowledge converted into colonial texts with Arab authority. 48 49

Blais, Mirages de la carte. Abou-Obeid El-Bekri, Description de l’Afrique septentrionale, trans. William McGuckin de Slane. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1965. First edition, Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1859.

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Sahara: Geographic Limits and Discursive Possibilities In colonial cartography of the eighteenth century, what was called the Desert of Barbary constituted a visual limit between “Barbary” and the “countries of the Negroes,” an empty space, the same way that the Mediterranean appears as the sea wall that separates Europe from Africa, Islam from Christianity, and soon with Napoleon the white man from his racial others. Nineteenth-century cartography inherited this cartographic formation and, of course, by its sheer physical presence built on it. The Sahara in Africa appears indeed more like a limit between worlds, but also a world in and of itself. The Sahara inhabited the European imaginary as a space inhabited by men of evil repute, as far from civilization as the sky from earth, and as dangerous to it as fire to wood.50 The region under consideration (i.e., northern Africa) is bracketed so to speak between civilization (Europe) and Barbary (the desert), between the white man to the north and the black man to the south, but also, perhaps more importantly, between emptiness and not, between infertility and the potential for (colonial) productivity, between resources and scarcity, between life and death. Because the conquest of the region was partial and gradual, the Sahara itself was discursively constructed gradually, first as an entity of this or that colony: the Algerian Sahara, Tunisian Sahara, and Moroccan Sahara (that has been under Spanish rule since 1884). In the process of mapping the region, initially and most decidedly from within Algeria, the Sahara appeared as a wall and a word of sand, as dangerous as it was infertile. The Sahara, however, was an important frontier that helped the cartographic creation of the region.51 Here too, because of the exotic fascination, the desert exerted on the European imagination, the Sahara itself emerged as a topic in and of itself. The point here is not to write the history of the representation of the Sahara, but rather to see how it has emerged as a major marker that separates two major entities: the “countries of the Negroes” (pays des 50

51

Bernard Nantet, L’invention du désert: Archéologie au Sahara. Paris: Payot, 1998, 97. Benjamin Brower, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Blais, Mirages de la carte. See Blais, Mirages de la carte.

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nègres) and “White Africa” (l’Afrique blanche).52 Let us clarify first that the Sahara seemed to be a natural marker of separation in Greek cartography and in Arab geography. Colonial authorities inherited this separation and reproduced it. However, what I would like to examine is the discursive and cartographic mechanisms of this colonial separation. Since the region called the Maghreb was in the process of colonial invention, the frontiers of the Sahara, as well as the Sahara itself, could not be simply reproduced within a colonial cognitive system as “Greek” or “Arab.” That the separation was transported to a new system of knowledge – with its own brand of modern power, its own spatial categories, and its own politics of definition and limitations – undoubtedly makes the separation appear new and novel. In fact, why was there a need to pay attention to a space that seemed bereft of the benefits of colonization? Why question this spatial void? Why and how was this void used at specific moments in the process of reconfiguring colonial space? To answer these questions, I examine the work of three major authors of colonial space; each one marked his time, and thus the geographical cultural production, and thus the remaking of the region at hand in significant ways. First is Ernest Carette, an early architect of colonial cartography, whose work I discussed earlier.53 The second is Eugène Daumas, a high officer of the Arab Bureau whose scholarship shaped colonial understanding of Algeria in ways that outlasted the colonial enterprise itself. And, finally, I also examine the work of a major geographer whose contribution to the creation of the region (as we know it today) was indeed significant: Émile-Félix Gautier. First, Carette changed the common view that made the Sahara a land by itself, isolated, desolate, sterile, and only a buffer zone between the 52

53

For the history of the Sahara, see Nantet, L’invenion du désert. For a history of the Algerian Sahara, see Brower, Desert Named Peace. Jacques Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France. Outre-mer. Paris: Soteca, 2010. Also see Blais, Mirages de la carte. For the Exploration scientifique, its history, its mission, and its members, see Patricia Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria. London: I. B. Tauris, 1995. For all the wealth of information, this book needs to be used with extra care because it unfortunately tends to reproduce colonial categories and understandings it claims to deconstruct. For an examination, see Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Writing Algeria: On the History and Culture of Colonialism,” Maghreb Center Journal 2010 (1) Spring/Summer: 1–19.

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Tell and les pays des noirs. He represented it differently, as a “vast archipelago of oases, each host to an animated group of villages and cities,” consequently also an urban zone.54 Furthermore, instead of a zone of sand, inhabited by a few savages, Carette puts the Sahara in a different imaginary, not exotic, but useful and productive, which meant colonizable. For him, the Sahara is also a zone of vegetation. It is through these massive greeneries made up of vegetation that the distant horizon takes shape with its hot tones, its varied and imposing forms. If we add to the charm of these scenes the abundance of fruits, the freshness of the shadows, we can easily imagine the love the people of the Sahara have for their country.55

Carette attaches the Sahara to the Tell to make it an economically beneficial part of Algeria, but also a defining geographic feature of the region beyond Algeria: The Sahara extends not only to the Regence of Algiers, it also extends to the middle Regence of Tunis and to the Empire of Morocco. In these two states too, the northern zone bears the name of Tell. Consequently, there is a Tell and a Tunisian Sahara, a Tell and an Algerian Sahara, a Tell and a Moroccan Sahara.56

For Carette, there is the Sahara and there is the desert. The separating line between the one and the other is the oasis of Touat. “It is at the beginning of this line that the Sahara ends and the desert proper starts, a vast solitude crossed rather than inhabited, but with a great distance, by the fearful tribe of Touareg that separates the white race from the black race.”57 Carette rethinks the blankness of the Sahara, its sterility, and its colonizability. He populates it, discursively speaking. Not only is the land cultivable, and thus colonizable, but it is also filled with what is most precious for the colonial enterprise: human labor. “The inhabitants of the Tell are mainly farmers. The inhabitants of the Sahara are mainly pastoralists and gardeners.”58 In other words, between “the countries of the Negroes” and the region, there is not a blank, but a human population to be integrated into its geography. Eugène Daumas, director of Arab affairs under General Thomas Bugeaud, confirms the distinction made by Carette and uses similar 54 56

Carette, Recherches sur la géographie et le commerce, p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. 57 Ibid., p. 39. 58 Ibid., p. 6.

55

Ibid., p. 8.

59

“Nouvelle carte du Sahara algérien” dressée par ordre de M. le Maréchal de St. Arnaud . . . d’après les renseignements et sous la direction de M. le Général de Division E. Daumas . . . par C.F. de La Roche. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53102551k/f1.item.zoom. Last accessed May 25, 2020. Bibliothèque nationale de France, used with permission.

Map 5 Algeria, 1853, by Armand-Jacques Leroy de Saint-Arnaud under the direction of Eugène Daumas59

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Map 6 “Algérie divisée par tribus,” 1846, by Ernest Carette and Auguste Warnier60 60

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53087833q/f1.item. Last accessed May 25, 2020. Bibliothèque nationale de France, used with permission.

Sahara: Geographic Limits and Discursive Possibilities

Map 6 (Cont.)

57

61

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53087678v. Last accessed January 9, 2021. Bibliothèque nationale de France, used with permission.

Map 7 The Regence of Tunis, 1843, by Ernest Carette61

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vocabulary: “everywhere, or almost everywhere, [there are] cities and villages; everywhere tents, everywhere life, an exceptional life, it is true, but active, and important to study for the common relations that we will have with it, curious what it would reveal to science.”62 Even though Daumas’s aim is to explore what by that time was referred to as the Algerian Sahara, he indicates nevertheless that such exploration would lead to “penetration” – that is, to expansion into Morocco and Tunisia. In so doing, he also indicates how the Sahara traverses the region and thus ipso facto defines it. However, Daumas goes further than Carette by maintaining that the Sahara not only is unseparated from the Tell, but is dependent on it: “the inhabitants of the Sahara are necessarily dominated by the people who control the Tell.”63 Daumas, like Carette before him, draws attention to the profitability of the Sahara and the absolute necessity to conquer it. But it does not need to be conquered piece by piece, as happened in the Tell, he says. The conquest of the Sahara is easier: “what must be done, what must absolutely be done, is to forcefully occupy the Tell along with the principal passages that constitute the gates of the Sahara.”64 Thus Daumas not only retraces the limits of what he calls “nos possessions,” but also suggests that the Sahara is part of the Tell because of the dependence of the Sahara on the Tell; thus colonizing the Tell is also controlling the Sahara.65 Daumas points out a remarkable fact: the Sahara, despite its dependence, is populated in large part by a sedentary population not belonging to “the Arab race.” He explains this by saying that these populations live in oases that require them to be dedicated to the palm trees that are their sources of livelihood. They are Berber populations pushed by the conquests to the desert. Arabs joined later, but to live as independent nomads in “this immense space.”66 The Sahara is then a space where Arabs and Berbers, the sedentary and the nomadic, live side by side.67 Both Arabs and Berbers depend on the Tell for livelihood. For the Tell is “the granary of the Sahara.”68

62

63 67

Eugène Daumas, Sahara Algérien: Etudes géographiques, statistiques et historiques sur la region au sud des établissements français en Algérie. Algiers: Dubos Frères, 1845, p. vi. Ibid., p. 10. 64 Ibid., p. 11. 65 Ibid., p. ix. 66 Ibid., pp. 7–10. Ibid., p. 125. 68 Ibid., p. 10.

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The Sahara, as portrayed by Daumas, is surely a hybrid space; there are Berbers as well as Arabs, and there are also black Berbers, not slaves and not a separate group, but individuals born from a slave mother and a Berber father. They have as much right as “their legitimate brothers.” “The fact of this constant mélange of the white race and the black race at the frontiers of the Sahara, is a given in science.”69 This, in the view of Daumas, may be due to the fact that the Berbers were pushed south by foreign invasions that forced them to mix. It seems that thus hybridity itself is the mark of this space that is neither here nor there, yet indicates the separation between the “white race” and the “black race.” In other words, in itself it is a marker. But overall, demographically, the Sahara remains part of northern Algeria; the pays des noirs are found beyond it. Building on the work of Carette and Daumas on the Sahara, Berbrugger points out another separation within the Sahara: This geographic frontier is at the same time an ethnographic barrier, it separates our oasisians (Berbers Zenata) from Berbers Sanhaja [who are] generally known by the name Touareg, racial enemies from immemorial time.70

This distinction takes on a discursively fertile valence with ÉmileFélix Gautier, a professional geographer of the University of Algiers. Writing about the Sahara, he opted for the perspective not of poetics but of what he calls “political psychology.”71 By the time of publication of his first book on the Sahara, the Sahara was conquered by force of arms, and not just subordinated – beyond what Daumas suggested and hoped for decades earlier.72 Gautier himself witnessed stages of the conquest of the Algerian Sahara. Later, in 1935, the Moroccan Sahara too was annexed to “French North Africa.” For Gautier, the Sahara is indeed a buffer zone that separates Algeria from what he calls West Africa.73 Indeed, now that the entirety of the region is under French colonial rule, the point for Gautier is not to 69 70

71

72

73

Ibid., p. 125. Louis-Adrien Berbrugger, “Des frontières de l’Algérie,” Revue Africaine 1860 (4)24: 401–417 at 405. Émile-Félix Gautier, La conquête de Sahara: essai de psychologie politique. Paris: Arnold Colin, 1919. For the history of this conquest, see Brower, Desert Named Peace. Also see Frémeaux, Le Sahara et la France. Ibid.

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stress how the Sahara is part of the region, but how it is a buffer zone with West Africa. It is this geography he describes in his book L’Afrique noire occidentale, published in 1935.74 For Gautier, the actual limits of the Sahara, northwestern Sahara, were not the same limits of the Quaternary Sahara. He does not take geography as static but as a living being that changes and is altered (through longue durée, as Fernand Braudel has said, while discussing the same subject, citing Gautier on occasion). It is this long history that Gautier quickly surveys, or at least alludes to, to conclude that “the Quaternary Sahara covered the entire colony of present day Senegal.”75 Of course, for him this is a hypothesis, but an interesting one.76 However, what is most interesting for Gautier is that, at his time, he believes the “Saharan climate” tends to move toward Senegal and French Sudan (i.e., Mali). In 1923, Gautier published his most authoritative text on the Sahara.77 Gautier defines it as covering “the entire northern half of the African continent.”78 He distinguishes, using maps, the western Sahara (also called Sahara Algerian and Tunisian, or just French Sahara), Central Sahara (called Sahara Italian), and eastern or Oriental Sahara; “the dryness of the air can be considered the fundamental phenomenon.”79 Yet Gautier reports the existence, here and there, of snow. “The Sahara is the residence of a white race.”80 Gautier argues that there is no “fixed definition” of the desert. The Sahara is different from, say, the deserts of North America and of the Kalahari because of its steppes. It consists of two parts, the desert proper and the steppes around it. However, azoism (the absence of any form of life) remains its general characteristic. Geographically, it remains a marker between Blacks and Whites: On its surface, the Sahara is virtually a partition between Negroes and Whites. The Maghreb is white, the Soudan is black, without contestation, we can even say virtually without transition, and also without any relations save for drop by drop filtrations.81

What is interesting about this text is also Gautier’s distinction between the Egyptian Sahara and French Sahara. He considers each distinct, “a world by itself.”82 This particularity starts with borders. 74 75 77 79

Émile-Félix Gautier, L’Afrique noire occidentale. Paris: Larose, 1943. Ibid. 76 Ibid., p. 36. Émile-Félix Gautier, Le Sahara. Paris: Payot, 1923. 78 Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 13. 80 Ibid., p. 14. 81 Ibid., p. 27. 82 Ibid., p. 106.

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Surrounded by the sea eastward and northward, one finds in these pages an early formulation of the Mediterranean as elaborated later on by Braudel – himself, like Gautier, a junior member of the University of Algiers. Here, the eastern Mediterranean, the one of Phoenician and Greek marines, joins the tropical oceans. A great seaway connects the human anthills of India and the Far Orient and the cradle of our civilization.83

Map 8 L’Afrique Francaise (French Africa), 1890, by Georges Roland84 83 84

Ibid., p. 108. Economiste (Suppelément) 1890, June 14. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bt v1b84460624. Last accessed May 25, 2020. Bibliothèque nationale de France, used with permission.

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Gautier was rather a human geographer, and thus a sort of anthropologist; geography for him is a science of space and landscapes where men act and react and where history unfolds. Therefore, for him the Oriental part of the Mediterranean, this space shared by the French, is distinguished by its population and its history. For him, This seaway, in high antiquity, was crossed by active trade. At a southwestern point of Arabia, the brokers of commerce were the Himyarites, the ones that give their name to the Red Sea (himyar means red in Arabic), these are the real people whose Queen of Saba, of holy history, is the near legendary representative; they were the Phoenicians of the Indian Ocean, of the country of Poun (Punic) of the hieroglyphs.85

The Egyptian desert, for Gautier, is also defined by the Nile. It is “another unique originality of the Egyptian desert.”86 However, if the Sahara is separated geographically (by the Nile River and the Red Sea), it remains attached to the French Sahara, doesn’t it? Gautier has an answer; against the power of the map, he uses the power of discourse: A first glance at the map gives an incorrect idea of the general form of this desert. We see it limited by the Red Sea on the east and by the Mediterranean on the north. However, one needs to ponder to see that it is less limited on the west side by the emptiness of the desert and by the Libyan erg [pile of dunes].87

Gautier clearly cuts Egypt from Afrique septentrionale, using the strongest language to reinforce a separation that is difficult to make: “such an erg, the most monstrous and most inhuman on the planet, is an obstacle as efficient as the sea, it is more difficult to cross.”88 If there is a point of communication between the two, it is narrow and guarded by “Berber warriors.” By contrast, “The Egyptian desert is a sort of peninsula, it is under a bell jar.”89 The communication between the Egyptian desert and the territory is easy, which explains the long duration and stability of the “Egyptian Empire,” he says. This is an important argument for Gautier, and one he will use extensively to provide a specific history of the region he calls the Maghreb. Therefore, not only does he distinguish the Sahara from the Maghreb in terms of geographic features, but most importantly in terms of human ones (as defined by their physical environment). Thus for him, 85 89

Gautier, Le Sahara, p. 108. Ibid.

86

Ibid.

87

Ibid., p. 112.

88

Ibid., p. 112.

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the Sahara is a historical actor in and of itself; its historical role was of great importance to the South, the land of Blacks, and to the North, the land of Whites. Here, Gautier reaches one of his most important conclusions, one that further separates Afrique septentrionale from Egypt, and also provides it a decisive historical role. In the Egyptian desert, the nomadic presence is insignificant (whereas it is a crucial historical factor in northern Africa): “the great nomadic tribes need immense space; the narrowness of the Egyptian desert constitutes for them already an unfavorable condition.”90 (The role of the nomad in his historical narrative is discussed in more detail later.) What we see in Gautier’s geographical thinking is something different from what has been observed by the late nineteenth century, when the Sahara “served to connect territories of the Empire.”91 With Gautier, the Sahara connects with northern Africa but also separates it from eastern Africa. Using the Sahara in this way solidified the creation of this space called the Maghreb in which human actions created a history that had affected all its parts. For, as we will see later in the historiographic discourse of Gautier, this space, along with its Sahara, was the theater of events that created its unity in the past and in the present. All in all, while the Sahara remained a difficult space to map, it was easier to use as a limit. The region, now constructed as a single unit, was unified by the very presence on the map of this Saharan space that traverses it from east to west and vice versa. The Sahara, integrated within the region, nevertheless constituted its limit and its frontiers, like the Mediterranean itself. Maybe it is for this reason also that Braudel evokes this parallel, “over immense spaces, the sea is as empty as the Sahara.”92 And the Sahara remains, in the European imaginary, this empty space, full of hot air and burning sun, inhabited and inhabitable except by a rare breed of men, between white and black, between civilization and savagery, who can transcend the first and second, albeit possibly fatal for the second. It is the same Sahara that unified the 90 91

92

Ibid., p. 114. Hélène Blais, “Un empire de sable? L’espace saharien et la jonction AlgérieSoudan: l’histoire d’une construction impériale (1830–1930).” In Territoires impériaux. Une histoire spatiale du fait colonial, ed. Hélène Blais, Florence Deprest, and Pierre Singaravélou. Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne, 2011, pp. 237–270 at pp. 256–257. “Sur d’énormes espaces, la mer est aussi vide que le Sahara.” Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde mediterranéen, p. 73.

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region in colonial times, and it is also the same Sahara that disunited it in the postcolonial era.

The Logic of Division A cartographic formation is not intelligible without a narrative whose constitution precedes it. I understand a cartographic formation as the ensemble of maps produced about the region with their limitations, their incompleteness, their corrections, and their focus on this or that region as a part of a global whole it refers to. This ensemble can be or rather is found in archives, in scholarly publications, in public space; they decorate room walls of schools, they are published in newspapers, in atlases, in private collections – that is, they are found everywhere. Their ubiquity reinforces their effects of the real – that is, it makes them really real. Atlases are not just maps whose signs are to be read and deciphered. Atlases are to be looked at: for their physicality, their sheer volume, and the number of their colored maps of the world and its pieces, many of which are not to be called French. Atlases convey colonial power, its full force, and its power of miracles. One of these miracles is precisely the creation of geographies and reshaping of the globe that the reader of the atlas can gaze at with awe. The colonial world was after all a map evident in the very atlas that conveys its meanings with force and elegance. The colonial world is not one, of course, it is not homogeneous, as the atlas itself illustrates. It is made of different cartographic realities, numerous geographies, and several colonial powers possess it. The Maghreb is also a map. Yet, as stated earlier, the graphic representation that signifies the Maghreb is made intelligible only thanks to a narrative formation that is itself dispersed despite or rather because of its overall unity as a formation. A map of Algeria is undoubtedly unintelligible if shown to a Japanese person who has never been told what Algeria is. The same map is doubtless crystal clear if shown to an Algerian citizen or a French student only because both of them have been exposed, to whatever degree, to narratives about Algeria in schools, in the press, in the media, and so forth. It is this idea I would like to examine further in this section to see not how Algeria has become a cartographic formation, but rather how the entire region has become a geographic totality clear, visible, and totally

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understood by those exposed to it – that is, to a large public in France, in the region, and beyond. Between 1902 and 1936, European colonies were already configured in ways that looked the same at the time of decolonization. This means the geography of the world, as we know it by the time of the independence of the last North African country, had already taken form. The region was already neatly separated from the region eastward that we commonly call today the Middle East.93 This division seemed almost natural at the time. Arab geographers, also following Muslim conquests and their politics of historical knowledge associated with a system of taxation, distinguished Ifriqiya from al-Maghrib and alMaghreb from al-Andalus, ethnically and politically. They used geometrical categories of east and west and also tribal categories associated with the concept of the oumma that denotes an ethnicity unseparated from tribal affiliations. The divide between North Africa (also occasionally and vaguely called the Maghreb) was indeed reconfigured as that new bloc that came out of the womb of the Ottoman Empire and that by 1916 became officially the Middle East. The reconfiguration did not posit the two blocs as only two geographical areas, one in the Middle East and the other in northern Africa, but rather as two blocs that constitute two geopolitical bodies: French possessions in North Africa versus British possessions in the Middle East. Human geography defining the first in racial terms as essentially Berber and white, and the second as essentially Arab, also anchored this distinction in the colonial discourse. The separation between North Africa, West Africa, and East Africa (as well as southern Africa) is the product of imperial geopolitics and the fierce rivalry between colonial powers of the time. The Conference of Berlin (1884–1885) represented the first step toward formalization of these blocs.94 Interestingly enough, though not at all surprisingly, “the conference of Berlin [was] opened on a Saturday, November 15, at 2 pm by Prince Bismarck sitting at the head of a horseshoe table. In front of him, there was the great map of de Kiepert.”95

93 94 95

Foliard, Dislocating the Orient. Henri Brunschwig, Le partage de l’Afrique noire. Paris: Flammarion, 1971. Ibid., p. 60.

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British atlases of the nineteenth century give a clear idea about the rules, the principles of mapping, isolating, and separating geographical entities within the continent of Africa.96 The most obvious principle is a national one: Africa was divided into what is first British and what is not: German, Italian, Portuguese, and French. The second principle of division was geometrical and geographical: (1) British West Africa, (2) British South and Central Africa, (3) British East Africa.97 This geographical maneuvering was the work of several geographers using a massive corpus of data that was still incomplete. Claire Médard, in a study of the making of East Africa in the work of universal geographers and more specifically in the work of Elisée Reclus, Fernand Maurette, and Paul Vidal de la Blache, concludes that, despite major differences between these geographers, political criteria were consistently combined with a consideration of human geography.98 Also, colonial interests, and therefore politics, were central to their preoccupations.99 However, it is interesting that while race is considered vital, “religion” seems to be absent in these considerations. But only at first sight. Despite the tremendous importance of race in nineteenth-century Europe and not only France, religion – that is, Christianity, the mother of the modern state – was of no less importance than race. If anything, “theories of race” were changed later on, relativized, but the intensity of religion rarely waned and often intensified, revitalized, including in our postcolonial present. Islam itself has also been racialized, as is evident by the invention of racial religions: “L’islam noir,” “L’islam arabe,” “L’islam berbère.” 96

97

98

99

See Oxford Atlas of British Colonies, Part I, British Africa. 1906. Jasper Stembridge, An Atlas of the British Empire. London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1944. Edward Hertslet, Richard William Brant, and Harry Leslie Sherwood. The Map of Africa by Treaty, vol. 1. London: Harrison and Sons, 1909. Médard, L’Afrique orientale dans les geograpies universelles contemporaines françaises. The support of colonialism was unwavering despite expression of concerns for the “indigènes,” inspired also by the ideals of Saint Simonianism, in the case of Vidal de Blache, or anarchism, in the case of Elisée Reclus. See Vincent Berdoulay, La formation de l’école française de géographie (1870–1914). Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1981. Guilherme Ribeiro, “La géopographie vidalienne et la géopolitique,” Géographie et cultures 2010 (74) 75: 247–262. Also see Federico Ferretti and Philippe Pelletier, “Imperial Science and Heterodox Discourses: Elisée Reclus and French Colonialism,” L’espace géographique 2013 (42)1: 1–14.

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The racializing of Islam was part of the thinking about “religion” in an evolutionist way. In the revolutionary view of Emile Durkheim, religion is a reflection of human development since religion creates the social group.100 Certain forms of the same religions were believed to be attached to certain humans in a specific stage of human development. Thus West Africa was characterized by animism and naturalism, and, when Islam was present, such as in Senegal, it was different from the Islam found in the region of northern Africa; it was an Islam noir. This is not to say that Médard was wrong, but rather to say that race was instrumental even in the perception of religious practices, be it Islam or any other form of African religiosity.101 (More on this in Chapter 3.) The new geopolitical French body was not only defined in geometrical or geographical terms and neither was it defined only in terms of geopolitical ones; ethnographic narrative and historical discourse were instrumental in giving the form of the North African map, a specific French colonial content that sets it apart not only from the British Middle East but also from French Oriental and Occidental Africa(s). And first in terms of color: what was newly called Africa was also called Black Africa. The two terms Black and Africa became almost a pleonasm – hence the urgent need for a new name for North Africa. What distinguishes the descriptions of Reclus from those of Maurette, at the legal information level, is rather the approach or the historical context. It is the context of colonization that guides, to a certain extent, the presentation of east Africa of F. Maurette, beyond the geographical problem of the relation of man to his milieu. It is the same with eastern Africa: are they dependent on their time or on the theoretical choice of the three authors? In the last instance, the historical epoch seems to have a primordial importance considering that Maurette too opted to adopt a historical point of view and rely on the colonial divide of Africa.102

The problem here is that the “theoretical choices of the three authors” were themselves the products of the colonial episteme, 100 101

102

Emile Durkheim, Formes élementaires de la vie religieuse. Paris: Alean, 1912. Even within Islam itself, Ernest Renan argued that Shia Islam that adopts representation and displays impressive imagination is the product of an Aryan mind, the Persian, the same way that Aryan Christianity was reshaped by Aryans despite its Semitic origins. See Ernest Renan, “Islamism and Science,” and his response to Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. Œuvres. Paris. Médard, L’Afrique orientale dans les géograpies universelles contemporaines françaises, p. 98.

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where the choices were surely varied and differ from each other, and where, despite difference and variation, an uncontested and limited number of categories determine the way the “other” is constructed and the way “we” think about “them.” Key categories in European imagination in the age of colonization that determined the creation of land and people were: race, religion, civilization, progress, and geometric geography. Despite different conceptions they may have acquired in successive colonial stages, all were undoubtedly instrumental in the making of human and geographical difference.

Semiotics of the Atlas By 1902, the region was already entirely mapped as a whole and from within its units, despite the fact that Morocco had not yet become part of the French colonial possession. But even without it, the region was already reconfigured with contours and names. If these reconfigurations were the work of geographers and cartographers working from within state institutions, including the army, to be able to make the reconfigurations real and everlasting was to imprint them on minds of people (colonizers and colonized alike) to impose a geographical reality whose constitution was made by colonial interests and also serves colonial goals and ambitions. Perhaps nothing could achieve this goal as well as the atlas. This genre emerged in the sixteenth century as a political tool to delineate territories and by the late eighteenth century was used to substantiate nation-states.103 Colonial interests were manifest early on in atlases, since colonialism was already manifest in the world in the sixteenth century. With the triumph and the astonishing expansion of Europe in the rest of the world, atlases became not only necessary tools to delineate empires but also a necessary genre by which to shape public geographical imaginaries. Large volumes, they often had the national and imperial imprint on them: the Atlas of French Possessions, the Atlas of British Colonies. They represented colonial power at its height – majestic volumes, written in the language of the empire, with modern technology that put the world between the covers of a book, with highly crafted and impressively produced maps of the colonies, and photos of “other 103

James Akerman, “The Structuring of Political Territory in Early Printed Atlases,” Imago Mundi 1995 (47): 138–154.

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people.” The atlas was an imperial invention. Though it emerged in the sixteenth century, it did not become a popular genre until the nineteenth century, in the very age of imperial might and conquest, at the time the globe was reconfigured by colonial power for the first time. Commodified in the age of capitalism, the atlas became also a tool of propagating geographic knowledge related to the nation-state and its attributes – the colonies.104 The atlas offers a cartographic structure, an ensemble of maps that reflect not only the state of the cartographic formation of a certain time but also, of course, the imperial perception of the globe at a given moment. Atlases were also used for pedagogical purposes by Jesuits at a time when geography became an important matter of education, most probably for its use and usefulness for colonial Europe. Consider the atlas by Paul Pelet commissioned by the Ministry of the Colonies and published in 1902.105 Pelet made clear the purpose of mapping in an essay on the value of maps he joins to the atlas: “We can only own a country if we develop it. We can only control its development if its map is made.”106 This atlas announces its topic by the title itself: French colonies. Yet French colonies in world maps or in maps of continents such as Africa or Asia needed to be placed in relation to other European colonies and in relation to countries still independent from the colonial yoke. More specifically, French colonies in Africa are represented in a map drawn by Eugène Letot. The map shows only half of the African continent with a purple line as a marker of a frontier that separates French colonies from other colonies. Morocco is still outside of these lines as an independent country (whose fate was still waiting to be determined by colonial powers of the time) along with other countries such as the Congo and Ethiopia. The adjective French was now part of the name of the continent: French Africa. What is also interesting about this atlas is the division of the world. Imperial power was already a global power, thinking not in regional ways, but in territorial and terrestrial ways. Its interests were 104

105 106

For more on maps, see Mireille Pastoureau, Les atlas français, XVIe–XVIIe siècles. Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 1984. The history of the colonial atlas has yet to be written. Also see Barbara Pretchenik, “The Natural History of the Atlas: Evolution and Extinction,” Cartographica 1985 22(3): 43–59. Ibid. Paul Pelet, Atlas des colonies françaises dressé par ordre du Ministère des colonies. Paris: Armand Colin, 1902, p. 232.

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not only motivated by prestige and intercolonial competition, but they were also driven, chiefly, by economic gains – that is, by the wealth encompassed. The colonies were indeed a source of pride, but also a source of tremendous wealth (natural and human as well). The more a colonial power possesses, the richer it becomes, evidently, and the more it possesses, the more power it accumulates, and the more power it accumulates, the more prestige it gains. Thus prestige is a consequence and not a cause. Pelet himself is clear about this. He writes: Go over again point by point, scientifically, and complete the physical map of our colonies, by making an ethnographic and economic map. This is the [real] work of the geographers, naturalists, geologists that should pave the way of traders, industrialists, and settlers. Before anything, the metropole should benefit. It will the day our settlers themselves produce in our colonies commodities and raw materials they buy today from abroad.107

The division of the world is a fact of culture indeed, but it is also a fact of power. The division of the world translates colonial culture, and how it sees the globe as its domain for the exercise of power, and as a source of wealth. The world, from this atlas, is a domain owned by colonial power, each with its part. France owns Africa. But even the division of Africa itself translates a fact of culture. Colonial thinking is geographical and geometrical at once. It points to its surroundings in terms of geometrical categories: East, West, South, North. It also uses specific categories that may seem today, and maybe even then, natural: globe, continent, islands, Sahara. Thus Africa, whose discovery as a continent also dates to this period, is divided into East, West, South, and North. Whereas in diplomatic documents one frequently finds the term North Africa, in French maps the names are most often those of the countries: Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, in this order. Algeria itself is divided into the Tell and the Sahara (of Algeria and of Tunisia). The atlas provides narratives that constitute a genre in and of themselves: they are a mix of the historical and ethnographic, the economic and geographic; they are panoramic narratives at the service of the maps they contain. Or maybe it is the maps that are at the service of these narratives. For the first alternative, these narratives make the 107

Ibid., p. 3.

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maps understandable, they are about the maps, and they make the readability of the maps possible. In this case, the narrative is part of the map it intends to clarify. If it is the second alternative, then the maps are just auxiliary to the narratives. They provide a visual persuasive device to prove the words of the narrative. But maybe these two alternatives are not exclusive. A map is at the service of the narrative just as much as the narrative is at the service of the map because despite their different semiotic status, maps and narratives are part and parcel of the same signifying object. The categories of division in this text are first geographical and continental: North Africa and West Africa, West Mediterranean. They are also defined in relation to Europe: “Algeria and Tunisia border to the South, in an almost straight line, the western basin of the Mediterranean around which elliptically unfold the coasts of Spain, France, Italy, and Sicily.”108 Behind this categorization, the text is explicit about its racial and religious categories. Even though Morocco was not yet part of the “French possessions,” it figured in the map and in the text mainly because it shares with Tunisia and Algeria the categories of race and of religion. “The indigènes of Algeria (save for the Jews), Arabs, Kabyles, Mozabites, like their brothers of Tunisia (1 500 000) and of Morocco (8 000 000) are all Muslims.”109 In this text, Pelet stresses the racial fabric of the countries. In Algeria, he says, “despite Arab names, the bottom of the race is Berber.”110 In Tunisia, he continues, “by Arabizing, the Berbers absorbed the Arabs.111 Though Pelet makes a distinction already found in Carette between the Tell and the Sahara, he treats the Sahara separately by designating it as “the Algerian Sahara and the Tunisian Sahara.”112 The Sahara seems to be the geographical element that separates the region as such. Its definition indicates this: the “French Sahara has defined political frontiers in the South, at the limit of English Soudan, in the east at the borders of the Libyan desert, and west on the Spanish establishment of the coast of Rio de Oro.”113 The separation of North Africa from West Africa is evidently geographical, but religious and racial categories also seem instrumental.

108 112

Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 17.

109 113

Ibid., p. 10. Ibid.

110

Ibid.

111

Ibid., p. 14.

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Equally significant is the position of the French colony in relation to other European colonies. West Africa extends from the main corniche of the African coast (Cape Verde, Dakar) to the lake of Chad where it joins together with the French Congo, at the center of the continent. It takes up the coasts from the Cap Blanc, on the Atlantic coast of the Sahara, and [the area] beyond Cotonou (Dahomy), deep into the Gulf of Benin. But in this enormous interval of 300 kilometers that follows the convexity of the land, several foreign territories – English colonies (The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast), Portuguese (Guinea), German (Togo), and the Black Republic of Liberia – cut the French coast which is reduced to 1820 kilometers.114

The visual separation, then, between entities that were part of totalities was the result of spatial categories adopted in the nineteenth century: the continent as a scheme, the geometrical categories of North, West, South, and East. And these categories were also used taking into account the centrality of a new category called Europe whose existence is also inseparable from the condition of modernity itself. North Africa emerged, then, as a geographical entity obeying cultural categories as well as geopolitical struggles. The atlas of Pelet clearly shows that the region, by 1902, was still a work in progress whose future was certainly uncertain. Several parts of Africa, including Morocco, were part of ferocious diplomatic maneuvering between colonial powers. He himself stresses the provisional character of colonial geography. Yet, his was considered by the Service Geographique as one of several “essentially official productions.”115 Other atlases appeared, especially as French colonial geography changed with new conquests, but Pelet’s continued to be referred to as the most authoritative of all atlases, including that of Commandant P. Pollacchi, published in 1929, and of G. Grandidier, published in 1934.116 In fact, when the minister of the colonies was asked for a recommendation for an atlas, it was the atlas of Pelet he

114 115

116

Ibid., p. 21. Le Service Géographique, Ministère des colonies. Paris: Challamel, 1906, p. 13. Archives nationales d’Outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence FR Anom 1704 COL 1. Commandant P. Pollacchi, Atlas colonial Français: Colonies, Protectorats et pays sous mandate. Paris: Illustration, 1929. G. Grandidier, Atlas des colonies françaises: Protectorats et téritoires sous mandate de la France. Paris: Société d’Editions Géographiques, Maritimes et colonials, 1934.

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recommended in 1936.117 After all, the book was published by the same ministry.

Conclusion From the time the region appeared in European maps as Barbary to the time that it appeared as North Africa, an entire history of colonial conquest, of diplomatic maneuvering, of the will of politics and the politics of will was imposed tentatively on a region that was before 1830 part and parcel of a complex geography. This geography had shifted over centuries, from a time when the divide between Europe and Africa was not there, mainly because there was no Africa and no Europe, in the sense that continental categories were not yet born. From the time the capital of Al-Andalus was Marrakech, to the time the capital of Algeria became Paris, entire worlds were born and developed, changed, and vanished to be succeeded by others. From the ashes of Ottoman rule, the geography of North Africa was born as a result of colonial conquests, themselves carriers of modern technologies of power capable of enormous transformations. Yet the region that by the turn of the nineteenth century was called North Africa was restricted to Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Other possible components of the region were excluded from this configuration because of colonial interests: Libya was under Italian rule from 1910 until 1943 and Egypt was under British rule from 1882 until 1956. Despite the use of modern technologies of power to restrict, define, and delineate what soon was commonly called “nos possessions en Afrique,” it was the logic of geopolitics that was decisive in this restriction, definition, and delineation. In other words, neither geography nor history decided the region’s new identity. The intense rivalry between colonial powers in Africa and beyond led French authorities to reconfigure their “possessions.” Geography, history, and all other modes of knowledge were the instruments harnessed for geopolitics. The Sahara itself, despite the fact that it traverses the entirety of northern Africa, including Egypt, was considered a defining feature only of the region delimited by the cardinal direction “north,” and not of Egypt. Thus it not only separates Black Africa from this region, but it 117

L’exposition coloniale de Marseille: Le Service géographique du Ministère des colonies. Paris: Challamel, 1906, p. 13.

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also separates northern Africa itself from Egypt. And this is not only because the Sahara in Egypt is less populated and more isolated than the Sahara of the Maghreb, as Gautier maintained. The demography of the French Sahara is not the same as the demography of the Sahara in Egypt. This difference is of tantamount importance. In the view of colonial authors and even national ones, the Sahara was the historical motor of the Maghreb, the force that generated change and produced a series of events themselves producing dynasties and reconfiguring space and people differently each time. The early hesitations, contradictions, and corrections of geographical space from Shaw to Gautier undoubtedly reflect not a homogenous knowledge, but one that is contradictory, conflicting, and also incomplete. Atlases not only served to homogenize this knowledge, as we have seen in the important atlas of Pelet, but also to make it more available, more pedagogical, and more usable. It is indeed the atlases, with their format as coffee-table books and as references at libraries, that constituted the synthesis of cartographic knowledge, made thus available to politicians, students, reporters, researchers, and tourist companies.118 Atlases were after all a depot of cartographic knowledge that shaped the public’s geographic imagination. Atlases present diachronic knowledge, structures of geographic imagination. And thus, to find out how colonial geographies were shaped, viewed, and perceived in the minds of their authors and those of their public, atlases are a good source for such geographic knowledge. Individual maps, meanwhile, constitute visual images that one is exposed to from childhood. They often (if not always) decorate the walls of schools, of administrative offices, and even of homes. This is because geographic knowledge is an essential in the making of the modern citizen.119 The question now is the following: how had history shaped the region as a distinct one in the view of colonial authors? Or to be more exact, how had colonial historians invented the history of the region? To this question, we now turn. 118

119

Maps were also very present in tourist guides that flourished by the turn of the twentieth century. The map of the Maghreb region was presented as a continuous space. See Guide Michelin: Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie. Paris: Bureau d’itinéraires Michelin et Cie., 1920. A theme found in literature such as Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Minneapolis: Lerner Publishing Group, 2015. For a postcolonial example, see the novel by Emmanuel Dongala, Les petits garcons naissent aussi des étoiles. Paris: Editions Le Serpent a plumes, 1998.

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In the process of mapping Algeria, French officers ran into ruins and remains in the unknown territory they were trying to understand. They could only comprehend these traces using known categories to find their meaning in colonial webs of signification. There seem to be two points of reference French officers could immediately identify and identify with: the marabouts and Roman ruins.1 While Islam would become a defining characteristic of the territory (and later, by extension, the entire region beyond Algeria), Roman ruins took on a proportional dimension in the creation of the colony (and again, later, the entire region). This was neither accidental nor just an ideological justification for conquest, as is often affirmed in academe. Power does not justify itself, neither does it need to; it constitutes its own justification. Power is its own raison d’être. The argument of justification is often put forth in this context and in similar colonial ones. But to whom does a colonial power need to justify itself? He who has power, he who is violent in act and bearing – why would he need justification?2 The modern machinery of knowledge combined, within the institution of the army, with technologies of power was conducting not only a work of exploration, a work of discovery, and less so a work of justification, but also an important process of invention, of reconfiguration, of creation, and ultimately of appropriation and ownership. That is to say, this invention was for the inventor or, to be more precise, the invention was the very process by which the colonial state transformed the foreign into the familiar, the remote into the close, the 1 2

Blais, Mirages de la carte, pp. 140–141. “He who can command, he who is by nature ‘master’, he who is violent in act and bearing – what has he to do with contracts?” Nietzsche commented on the modern state in a reference to the social contract put forth by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. See “Genealogy of Morals,” in Basic Writing of Nietzsche. New York: Modern Library, 1992, pp. 437–600 at p. 522.

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disparate into the orderly, the other into the self. Such invention of course does not happen ex nihilo, but rather within a concrete geography, one that is unknown, yet knowable, to be made known by technologies of colonial power with its two inseparable dimensions of production and violence. As the army goes along, it conquers, and as it conquers, it maps, and as it maps, it creates and invents, but according to specific categories and schemes already in use in nineteenth-century France. While Islam was part and parcel of the French imaginary, Rome was the flip side of the coin. While the first was identified by negation, the second was identified by affirmation: the first is “other,” the second is “us.” The two categories existed one within another, not only as that which opposes but also as that which by opposing defines and complements. In the territory later known as Algeria, the French discovered the Roman past in the same way they discovered it in France, and it was important there as it was all over Europe.3 It is important to stress that “social science” was harnessed in the colony the same way it was harnessed in the metropole to invent France – that is, to shape it, to reconfigure it, and eventually to make it a modern nation with a border, a history, a set of politics, and a specific social fabric.4 An important mode of knowledge that emerged in the nineteenth century as the “science of empire” was precisely history, not a humanistic discipline, but rather a science deemed of cardinal importance to understanding the past and thus controlling the present. Colonial historiography was, of course, part and parcel of this discipline even when it was carried out by officers and amateurs. Archaeology is one of the most important disciplines that participates in the creation of modern national identities, and one that states use to substantiate and validate themselves.5 But when we say archaeology a number of things are meant: (i) the discipline that manages, organizes, classifies, considers as relevant (or not) what one calls 3

4 5

Michael Dietler, Archaeologies of Colonialism: Consumption, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Mediterranean France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Bras and Todd, L’invention de la France. Margarita Diaz-Andrew, ed., A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Dietler, Archaeologies of Colonialism. Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practices and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001.

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“findings”; (ii) the retrieval of artifacts left from the past; and (iii) the interpretation of these artifacts. Since these artifacts – as important as they may appear – do not speak for themselves, the archaeologist through acts of interpretation gives them meaning, and thus makes out of the artifacts narratives that become important in these national creations. As Michael Dietler puts it, “Archaeology provides for the popular imagination tangible connections to an identity rooted in the awe-inspiring past. Places and objects can be made into powerfully evocative symbols that serve to authenticate constructed tradition.”6 Because of the extremely important role that archaeology plays in the authentication and even the creation of national identity, it is small wonder that, in modern times, it is a tool to be used and abused, “given that the state is the major owner of the means of production for archaeological excavation, and museum displays have been conditioned by national mythologies for identity.”7 It should be remembered that the French in North Africa, and not only in Algeria, claimed historical rights and not only rights based on conquest. They believed the region was part and parcel of the Roman Empire. They also believed “Arabs” were only invaders, and that if it was not possible to send them “home,” at least one needed to exclude them politically from the colonial setting. Hence the importance for French colonialism of history – part of which is also archaeology, which provides tangible evidence of historical claims, real “facts on the ground,” which cannot be denied and thus cannot even be argued for, as the evidence of the colonial discourse. The first (history) provides narratives about the past; the second (archaeology) provides both narratives of the past and traces of the past. The point here again was less to justify conquest and rule and more to create an entire national system of meanings where the colony could find its place, like a hand in a glove. The point was not, or at least not only, to demonstrate that this parcel of land was French, but rather, and more importantly, to link this piece to the whole, to create a whole out of colonial parts. For this, the Roman past was essential, not only because it created a model of action, as others have maintained,8 but also most importantly, in my 6

7 8

Michael Dietler, “Our Ancestors the Gauls”: Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe,” American Anthropologist 1994 (96)3: 584–605 at 597. Ibid. Marcel Bennabou, “L’impérialisme et l’Afrique du Nord: le modèle romain,” in Sciences de l’homme et conquête coloniale. Constitution et usages des sciences

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opinion, because this model allows the construction of the region not only in relation to France, but as part of it as well. Dietler argues that “the discursive foundation of modern European identity and colonialist ideology and practices were largely grounded in selective interpretations and interpolations of the texts of two ancient colonial powers: Greece and Rome.”9 I argue that the selective interpretations of these texts and traces were also essential not only in the formation of the colonial state, but also for reconfiguring the region in ways that extend beyond the life of the colonial state and its discursive legacies. Furthermore, by reconfiguring the region as such, the idea of France itself had to change to include these parts of Africa, called then the French Empire and today Françafrique. To make these arguments, I analyze a number of archaeological texts from the region, at different points of colonial conquest – namely, from the 1830s to the 1930s. However, colonial knowledge in its various forms has a genealogy rooted in the imperial power of Europe even before the conquest of Algiers. It is these forms of knowledge that I first examine to demonstrate how the region was envisioned before the foundation of colonial rule.

Archaeo-Christian Narratives Again, it is my contention that the region before colonial times was conceived already, albeit reconfigured in modern ways by the colonial technology of power. Christian travelers, diplomats, and even missionaries had ventured into the region, producing an important body of knowledge that existed before the advent of colonial rule. This work – conducted from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, on the

9

humaines en Afrique XIXe–XXe siècles, ed. Daniel Nordman and Jean-Pierre Raison. Paris: Presses de l’École Normale Supérieure, 1980, pp. 15–22. Most recently, see Bonnie Effros, Incidental Archaeologists: French Officers and the Rediscovery of Roman North Africa. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018; Patricia Lorcin, “Rome and France in Africa,” French Historical Studies 2002 (25)2: 295–329; Jacques Frémeaux, “Souvenirs de Rome et présence française au Maghreb:Essai d’investigation,” in Connaissance du Maghreb: Sciences sociales et colonisation, ed. Jean-Claude Vatin. Paris: CNRS, 1984, pp. 29–46. Michael Dietler, “The Archaeology of Colonization and the Colonization of Archaeology: Theoretical Challenges from an Ancient Mediterranean Colonial Encounter,” in The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Gil Stein. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2005, pp. 33–68 at p. 34.

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eve of colonialism – was not professional, in the sense that it was conducted before archaeology developed into a “scientific discipline,” meaning a discipline whose practices and writings obey a number of rules set by the profession itself.10 The interest in archaeology was initially amateurish and reflected an interest in the Christian heritage of the holy land and of early Christianity.11 It was part of what Claude Lévi-Strauss calls Christian humanism.12 Colonial knowledge was not invented from scratch. It was preceded by the tremendous efforts of travelers, traders, diplomats, and missionaries. The work of these travelers and diplomats constituted the important beginnings of the archaeological craft, as testified by the fact that even as late as the 1930s, their work still figured in the bibliography of professional archaeologists, who cited these past “authorities” in their own right. Carthage carried the myth of Christianity as well as the myth of the triumph of Rome over Carthage. The early excavations were carried out in Carthage by archaeologist Charles Ernest Beulé in 1859,13 followed by the work of the Pères Blancs (White Fathers), especially Alfred Louis Delattre.14 Delattre was particularly interested in Christian Carthage. He created the museum he named Musée Lavigerie in 1899 (previously called Musée Saint-Louis, founded in 1875).15 Delattre also contributed to colonial narratives about the Christian dimension of the region and drew especially from the work of Jean Baptiste Évariste Charles Pricot de Sainte-Marie on Carthage as well as the assistance of René Héron Villefosse.16 He published his work in the journal Missions Catholiques and in 1890, he published his 10

11

12 13 14

15

16

On the history of archaeology, see Bruce Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. See Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Faut-Il Brûler l’Orientalisme? On French Scholarship of North Africa,” Cultural Dynamics 2004 (16)1: 72–75. Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, p. 273. Ernest Beulé, Fouilles à Carthage. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1859. Alfred Louis Delattre, “Fouilles de Carthage: Douïmès et la colline dite de Junon,” Bulletin archéologique du comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques 1907: 433–453. Pierre Gandolphe, “Origines et débuts du Musée Lavigerie,” Cahiers de Bysra 1952 (2): 151–178. Also see Joann Freed, “Le père Alfred-Louis Delattre (1850–1932) et les fouilles archéologiques de Carthage,” Histoire et Missions Chrétiennes 2008 (4)8: 67–100. Jean Baptiste Évariste Charles Pricot de Sainte-Marie, La Tunisie chrétienne. Lyon: Bureaux des missions catholiques, 1878. Also, his Mission a Carthage. Angers: Burdin e Cie. 1881.

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reviews in a volume titled Les tombeaux puniques.17 In 1907, he published Le culte de la Sainte-Vierge en Afrique d’après les monuments archéologiques.18 Instead of the clear-cut demarcation of colonial and precolonial, there is indeed a continuity. Europe, and not only France, emerged by the sixteenth century as empires with colonies and with colonial ambitions from which the region as a whole was not immune. Small wonder, then, that the very colonial discursive formation that constructed the region as a French unit is to be found in this important period between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth. Christian views were an essential part of this discursive formation. The proof is precisely that the system of reference of the colonial included both the precolonial (i.e., Thomas Shaw) and the Christian (i.e., Alfred Louis Delattre). It is precisely this Christian concern that remains rooted even in the “secular” colonial discourse and that is responsible for creating a multidimensional relation with the region it created. It claims modernity on one hand and is unable to expel Christian categories on the other. The reason may be that, after all, the two are not to be disassociated. Archaeo-Christian narratives constituted a genre in and of themselves. Even in the midst of the colonial period, Christian narratives of a city such as Carthage were important and played a role in the construction of the region as such.19 After all, for the secular colonial state, Rome was Christian, and Christianity was then, as it is today, the very heritage of the state that it promotes and favors – solemnly at times, and tacitly most of the time. Moreover, archaeo-Christian narratives were also harnessed in the inter-European rivalry over archaeology in the region. It was Cardinal Charles Lavigerie and the White Fathers, especially Delattre, that stood up to German and British competition in Carthage.20 Therefore, despite their auxiliary status and even notwithstanding political tensions with professional (i.e., secular) archaeologists,21 archaeoChristian narratives were important in the process of the invention of the region. To put it bluntly and succinctly, archaeo-Christian narratives 17

18

19

20

Alfred-Louis Delattre, Les tombeaux puniques. Lyon: Imprimerie MouginRusand, 1890. Alfred-Louis Delattre, Le culte de la Sainte-Vierge en Afrique d’après les monuments archéologiques. Paris: Société St. Augustin, 1907. On the role of Christians in Carthage, see Clémentine Gutron, L’archéologie en Tunisie (XIXe–XXe siècles): enjeux généalogiques sur l’antiquité. Paris: Karthala, 2010, pp. 81–86. Ibid., p. 28. 21 On these tensions, see ibid.

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unearthed Christianity from the soil and imposed their depiction of it on the colonial public space. It is important to mention that even though some of this early archaeological work was not written in French, it was still translated, sometimes even in the same year, into French. Some of it was not. What was translated testifies to the fact that European knowledge of “others” was developed as a single discursive formation obeying the same rules, subject to the same constraints, and regulated by the same epistemology. Colonial governmentality, however, made a difference and allowed the creation of smaller discursive formations within a larger one. Hence my argument is that even though French archaeology constituted, along with other forms of knowledge on the region, a discursive formation in and of itself, this was part of European knowledge of “others.” Consider the work of Shaw, Travels or Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant, published in 1738.22 Here too, one can see that the region was perceived as a whole indicated by a name, Barbary, the same name we often find in the maps of the eighteenth century. Archaeological knowledge in this text is clearly not the product of excavation, but rather observation of what lies in front of the eye of the explorer. Yet this knowledge itself relied on historical texts from Muslim sources as well as from classical authors. One can see that already by this time, Arab geographers seemed to be well known among explorers such as Shaw, who relied on them to conceive of a unity that set the area apart from Egypt, yet also to isolate the parts that constitute the whole. For instance, Shaw butted Idrissi and Abulfida (Abû al-Fidâ’) against each other to achieve what he intended to be an accurate knowledge of the area. However, in the discursive economy, Shaw relies even more heavily on Greek geographers, uses Latin names, and seems more interested in what he calls “Ruins.” In his text, the area is caught in an array of names of places familiar to those acquainted with Greek and Roman authors; the region is made to appear in its antique history, and Shaw is keen to describe the traces of Christianity: In examining the Ruins, I have often wondered, that there should remain so many Altars and other Tokenes of the Pagan Idolatry and Superstition; and so very few Crosses or other Monuments of Christianity. As to the latter, how zealous forever the African Church might have been in putting them up, the 22

Shaw, Travels or Observations.

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Saracens have been industrious enough in pulling them down. The Arabs certainly, whenever they attend their Flocks, near any of these Ruins, make it a piece of Devotion as well as Amusement to destroy and obliterate as much of them as they can.23

This is one of the early judgments about local people and their relation to the pre-Islamic past that found its natural place within a colonial ideology and survived colonial times.24 It expresses the same colonial (some would say Orientalist) ideology regarding Muslims’ lack of intellectual curiosity, pitted against the unprecedented curiosity of the Europeans. In other words, it has become a symptom of modernity. The judgment then, as it is now, can be placed within the larger problematic of modernity that claims its interests are universal and considers their absence a sign of the unmodern and the backward. In any case, Shaw’s work is part of an entire trend (“Christian humanism,” to repeat Lévi-Strauss again) that seeks the origins of the Christian European.25 Shaw was interested in anything Christian such as “the several beautiful Churches and other Edifices, in the manner of the Roman Architecture.”26 Left by the Spaniards during their occupation of Oran, these churches and edifices testify to the Christian presence in the region, as their imitation of Roman architecture itself testifies to the presence of Rome. Thus in the case of Spanish traces, Rome, in the past and in modern times, is unseparated from Christianity as Christianity is unseparated from Rome. Shaw’s work continued to be authoritative far beyond the first few decades of colonization. Subsequent colonial authors positioned their own work in relation to Shaw, whom they intended to correct and complete at the same time, turning Shaw into a colonial author in his own right.27 I contend this is not only because Shaw provided information that Europe, and of course France, was in dire need of in a time of conflict over future colonies, but because Shaw infused his body of knowledge (in large part a synthesis of that of previous authors) with 23 24

25 26 27

Ibid., p. xi. See Jocelyne Dakhlia, L’oubli de la cité. Paris: La Découverte, 1990. Also see Gutron L’archéologie en Tunisie. See a critique of this idea in Effros, Incidental Archaeologists, pp. 3–33. See Hannoum, “Faut-Il Brûler l’Orientalisme?” Shaw, Travels or Observations, p. 26. Jean André Peyssonnel, Relation d’un voyage sur les côtes de Barbarie, Fait Par ordre du roi en 1724 et 1725. Published by Dureau de La Malle. Paris: Gide, 1838, pp. xiii–xiv.

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something that coincided with colonial politics from its beginnings to its end – that is, the claim to a historical right in Africa. This historical claim is based on the idea of Roman presence in the region and the Christian legacy it left embedded in its physical sites as well as its symbolic ones. Small wonder that these would be investigated systematically by colonial technologies of power at a time when modern modes of knowledge were being constituted within the metropole and its colonies. Colonial knowledge, whether in the form of archaeology, historiography, or ethnography, depended not only on local knowledge, on forms of precolonial knowledge such as the narratives and maps of Muslim scholars, but also the very technology of power in the form of modern translation, and converted these into colonial knowledge and its categories, perceptions, and ideologies that claim not only European centrality but also European superiority. In other words, colonialism is not only taking and transforming a land, but also taking and converting modes of knowledge and forms of epistemologies that I have elsewhere called the colonial imaginary.28

Archaeology of the Colony Archaeology, as a strategy by which the colony was substantiated and given meaning, was a discourse on traces and also the traces themselves, in need of interpretation, that is, in need of une mise en discours. As such, archaeology too is a formation of a discourse whose genealogies are not to be found in Algeria, but rather in the emergence of archaeology as an important means by which to interrogate the past, and by which to endow the present with meaning that makes the connection, or rather the continuity between past and present tangible and concrete. Such making of a continuity is itself a making of the present. On one hand, one finds archaeology formed around Roman remains in France proper, and on the other hand, one finds archaeology formed in the so-called Orient itself, around Christian traces as well as Egyptian ones.29 As to be expected, the institution of the army was 28 29

Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary.” See Myriam Bacha, “Paul Gauckler, le père Delattre et l’archevêché de Carthage: collaborations scientifiques et affrontements institutionnels,” in Autour du fonds Poinssot, ed. Monique Dondin-Payre, Houchine Jaidi, Sophie SaintAmans, and Meriem Sebaï. Paris: National Institute of Art History, 2017. Also

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initially instrumental in shaping the region’s Roman past and thus making a connection, if not continuity, with the motherland that was France. First was the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, whose work encompassed all aspects of Algeria, with mapping and archaeology as two main strategies of colonial development. Mapping delimited the colony that was Algeria while at the same time, by drawing its frontiers, opening it to its surroundings. Archaeology provided “facts on the ground” that not only attached the colony to France but also made it seem a piece within a whole. For if Roman traces define Algeria, they also define, ipso facto, the region westward and eastward, but not southward. The Exploration scientifique happened within a historical context marked by the recent experience of Napoleon in Egypt. In many ways, the question underlining the research of its archaeologists, several of whom were indeed part of the exploration of Egypt, was: in what way is Algeria different from Egypt? The answer, for them, seemed to be embedded in the question. In fact, since classics were part of the education of the officers of the army, and even constituted by this time the cultural model of Europe, Egypt itself was portrayed in classical Greek texts as part and parcel of Asia.30 The French expedition to Egypt confirmed this or rather inherited it, yet it also invented Egypt in a modern way, in a way that connects it to France, for “the invention of Egypt” is inseparable from its conquest by France.31 Such a conception remained uncontested in colonial times. It even took on a different proportion. In 1939, Emile-Félix Gautier confirms this: “Egypt is at the origin of all the Mediterranean civilization, meaning ultimately the European civilization.”32 Geopolitics were of course also instrumental in the making of the definition. Despite its presence in the Louvre, and thus as an essential tool of shaping the French modern imaginary, Egypt was soon seen as a “British possession,” a perception confirmed and consecrated by diplomatic maneuvers. French authorities, despite or rather because of neighboring British Egypt, had to differentiate it from the new

30 31

32

see Freed, “Le père Alfred-Louis Delattre (1850–1932) et les fouilles archéologiques de Carthage.” Lewis and Wigen, Myths of Continents. Anne Godlewska, “Map, Text and Image. The Mentality of Enlightened Conquerors: A New Look at the Description de l’Égypte,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 1995 (20)1: 5–28. Gautier, L’Afrique blanche, p. 19.

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colony that was Algeria, comfortably sitting in a geography to which the French had already started to lay claim. The proof is precisely that Algeria, not Egypt, was seen as the territory once occupied by Rome. It was in Algeria, not in Egypt, that the French initially excavated, by trial and error, anything that had to be interpreted as Roman – even when in doubt.33 It was Algeria, and not Egypt, that was to be seen at one point as an extension of Rome, and in colonial times as a continuation of France. In many ways, the Exploration scientifique, modeled on the Expedition de l’Egypte, itself inscribed in an eighteenth-century scientific travel tradition of descriptions, had the task to define the area in new terms to highlight what was distinctive about the new colony.34 But the Exploration, like the Expedition, was only the “soft side” of the army. In other words, they were the army deploying its other means of conquest and rule – knowledge as a cultural weapon whose violence can be felt but not seen. By this time, Great Britain was comfortably seated in Egypt and its claim to Rome was no less strident than the claim of France; it was even delegitimizing French claims.35 The Description de l’Egypte constructed that country in pharaonic terms and less in Roman tropes despite the aspirations and the Greco-Roman ideology of Napoleon himself.36 What seemed to have been definitive of Egypt is its own “indigenous past,” attested to by pharaonic objects published in the volumes of the Description de l’Egypte. With the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, Algeria (and its surroundings east and west) emerged as a new geographical entity defined not only by its Roman past but also by the absence of pharaonic objects and traces. French archaeology of this period unearthed Rome from a surface upon which, it was so believed, lay the history of Rome, which was also a history of France. But why was such a far-back historical time significant? Why was it the past, and not the present, that had to provide a definition of the present? By the nineteenth century, the experience of time had drastically changed in Europe; the past, and more specifically the Greco-Roman 33 34

35

36

Effros, Incidental Archaeologists. Boussif Ouasti, “La Description de l’Égypte,” Dix-huitième Siècle 1990 (22): 73–82 at 74. Donald Malcolm Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Ibid. Elliott Colla, Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

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past, had become the model upon which Europe created its identity.37 Western civilization itself claims to be Greco-Roman first and foremost while at the same time its Christian heritage is unquestioned and unquestionable, and thus mostly unspoken. Even in the colony, it was Rome that the archaeologist searched for (and he who searches finds), and there too Christianity was found unseparated from Rome. The Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie was founded on Napoleon’s model of the Expedition d’Egypte – that is, it had a modern imperial project. Even if several of its members had served as young men in Napoleon’s army in Egypt, the goal they set for themselves was different.38 One can even argue that the Egyptian model provided them with lessons in what to replicate and what to avoid. An important way to look at the construction of Algeria is precisely to see how Egypt itself was constructed. Eastward, in Egypt, the British were not justifying the legitimacy of their presence by the Roman past, despite constant and systematic reference to it. They scorned French claims to be the heirs of Rome.39 But in the formation of European nations, whether Great Britain, France, or Germany, the claim to Rome was a means by which to construct, not justify, a nation. A state needs to substantiate itself, to articulate its contours, to provide the substance of its national content.40 The archaeological work of the Exploration scientifique provided such content – “facts on the ground,” as it was explicitly said somewhere else41 – on grounds not yet known and whose destiny was to become part of the grounds for the empire. And this ground was not Egypt: for geopolitical reasons, it was Algeria, and ipso facto, its contours were still undefined eastward, southward, and westward. It is here that facts or rather traces would constitute the material as well as the symbolic culture of the region. This was constituted, again not 37

38

39 40

41

François Hartog. Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et expérience du temps. Paris: Seuil, 2003. For Napoleon in Egypt, see Timothy Michel, Colonizing Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Dietler, “Our Ancestors the Gauls.” Nicholas Dirks, “The Ethnographic State,” in Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 43–60. Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground. Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground.

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for the sake of justification, not for the colony itself, but as part of the very process of creating national culture and history for France. For the existence of the empire constituted an important dimension of European nationalism, and this may also be one of its unique characteristics. In other words, the cultural project that created France extended itself, via the same technologies of power, to make Algeria and gradually the region part and parcel of France. This is substantially different from Great Britain’s situation in Egypt or in Iraq, where the defining feature of colonial archaeology was its “indigenous” subject matter – pharaonic and Mesopotamian, studied via Egyptology and Mesopotamian archaeology.42 Egypt was constructed as part of the ancient Mediterranean world and was thus separated from Africa.43 The Greco-Roman period was of less importance in Egyptology.44 Algeria, already by the first two decades of archaeological research and excavations there, was defined as Roman, not as Berber, and thus it was defined by an absence. The very trope of this absence also tells us that the only civilization that has ever existed is Roman. That is why Algeria, and by extension the region called then northern Africa, was still defined by a local absence of civilization and a foreign presence of civilization. West Africa, by contrast, was defined not only by a total absence of antiquity,45 but also ipso facto by an overabundance of primitiveness. “It was stoneusing hunter-gatherers who were the focus of early archaeological investigations.”46 African archaeology was thus centered around the “Stone Age,” and was of different use to Europeans in that it was supposed to contribute to knowledge of the earliest Europeans.47 Thus, speaking about archaeological ruins in Senegal in 1916, Pierre Jouenne notes that the region extending from the coast of Gambia to

42 43

44

45

46

Trigger, History of Archaeological Thought. Graham Connah, “Archaeological Practice in Africa: A Historical Perspective,” in The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology, ed. Peter Mitchell and Paul Lane. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 15–36 at p. 16. David O’Connor, “Egyptology and Archaeology: An African Perspective,” in A History of African Archaeology, ed. Peter Robertshow. New Hampshire/ London: Heinemann/James Curey, 1990, pp. 236–251 at p. 236. Francois Kense, “Archaeology in Anglophone West Africa,” in A History of African Archaeology, ed. Peter Robertshaw. New Hampshire/London: Heinemann/James Curey, 1990, pp. 137–138. Connah, “Archaeological Practice in Africa,” p. 16. 47 Ibid.

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the Ferlo Desert and from Nioro to the west and from Niani Ouli to the east contains “numerous megalithic monuments.”48 He indeed writes: The European was surprised to find in the Senegalese bush memories of the past proving the existence once upon a time of a race with manners of seeing, feeling, and showing personality comparable to those of his own ancestors. These monuments struck the travelers with their “European” character.49

Such a view puts France in a position to connect its past with a present in the colony of Senegal. But such a connection is different from the one France created and established archaeologically in northern Africa. In West Africa, there is a connection of primitive origins. In northern Africa, there is a connection of civilization that France continues in the present, so it was believed. Roman archaeology made the region much closer to France, or rather its extension in the past and in the present. This characteristic itself separated the region from Egypt, defined archaeologically by its pharaonic past and from West Africa, defined by its primitiveness, also attested to by archaeology.50 Let us consider now how the archaeology of the first few decades not only emerged as a colonial science, but most importantly how it unearthed a past in continuity with the one imagined for France, and in discontinuity with the one in Africa and in the Middle East. Let us be clear, however, that the point here is not to engage in a history of archaeological practices in the colony or to evaluate these practices according to standards of the discipline then and now,51 but rather to show how archaeological knowledge, at this juncture, not only played a major role in unearthing a past but was also instrumental in shaping the region by using Roman history, its narratives, its categories, and ultimately its ideology to reconfigure space and landscape. In the process, the local – that is, Punic, Arab, Islamic, Berber, and other – narratives were minimized, eliminated, or transformed to take on a colonial form. It should be clear also that in my analysis, I take archaeology to be an ensemble of narratives and I analyze them as such 48

49 51

Paul Jouenne, “Les monuments mégalithiques du Sénégal,” in Annuaire et mémoires du comité d’études historiques et scientifiques de l’Afrique occidentale Française. Gorée: Imprimerie du Gouvernement Général, 1916, p. 27. Ibid. 50 Connah, “Archaeological Practice in Africa.” For such a history, see Effros, Incidental Archaeologists. Paul MacKendrick, The North African Stones Speak. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

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to lay bare the mechanisms of their constitution in order to show that they create realities, colonial ones for sure, upon which the empire had to be built and policies made and actions taken. I further show that the creation of a continuous space from the borders of Libya to those of Senegal allowed the creation of a vision of empire and a unified economy of policies. To this end, I would like to illustrate my point by examining the work of Captain Alphonse Delamare, an officer turned archaeologist in the early phase of the colonization of Algeria, who was responsible within the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie for laying bare archaeological “traces” and discourse. In this period of the 1830s and 1840s, I hope to show, this effort was not individual or isolated, but was part and parcel of a strategic archaeology that was to continue throughout the first half of the twentieth century and contribute to creating the region as distinct, clear, and disconnected from Egypt, from the Sahara, and from West Africa. In other words, the aim is to show how archaeology, as part of the technology of modernity, was congruent in its task of creation with other modern modes of knowledge. First of all, let us note that the archaeological endeavor of Delamare, within the Exploration, generated three sets of semiotic objects to be analyzed conjointly despite their distinct status: material objects called antiquities, drawings of these objects, and a discourse of interpretation of these antiquities. For behind the published work of the Exploration, Delamare engaged in a real and sustained effort to offer the metropole material objects to be placed in the Algerian section of the Louvre.52 Needless to say, these three semiotic objects not only support one another and define one another’s meanings, but also contribute to bestowing a constellation of meanings on the state’s definition of itself and of the colony. The transfer of these objects to the metropole also serves to “concretize” the new territory’s belonging to France.53 The majority of Delamare’s work is contained in the volumes of the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie and consists in maps and drawings 52

53

Monique Dondin-Payre, Le Capitaine Delamare: La réussite de l’archéologue romaine au sein de la Commission d’Exploration Scientifique d’Algérie. Paris: Imprimerie Paillart, 1994. Monique Dondin-Payre, “La mise en place de l’archéologie officielle en Algérie XIXe siècle-début XXe siècle,” Aspects de l’archéologie française au XIXe siècle. Actes du colloque international tenu à la Diana à Montbrison, 14 et 15 octobre 1995, éd. P. Jacquet et R. Périchon, Montbrison, 2000 (Recueil de mémoires et documents sur le Forez, 28), pp. 351–400.

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of Rome in the region.54 There is also Delamare’s efforts in the excavation, collection, and transfer of these objects that are also narrated by historians, several of them basing their narration on archives (letters, reports, and correspondence by Delamare and others). In 1912, the highest authority in the field, Stéphane Gsell, testified to the great work of Delamare accomplished with “une conscience vraiment admirable.”55 Delamare, Gsell continues, had collected a large number “of sculptures, bas-reliefs, especially Latin inscriptions that constitute the major part of the African museum of Louvre.”56 Delamare’s second work, consisting of drawings, was published, without text, as the volume on archaeology of the Exploration scientifique.57 Gsell commented on them in 1912. Yet, despite his silent drawings, Delamare published a series of articles pertaining to archaeology; therefore one can say that Delamare interrogated his collections in different venues, mainly in the pages of the Revue Archéologique. It is there, then, that one finds the meanings Delamare wanted to give to the material objects excavated during the 1830s and 1840s. The archaeological work, once again, not only consisted of a discourse that unearthed the past of the colony to display its Roman heritage, but it was also a display of material objects some of which were left on site but preserved, others of which were sent to Algiers, the capital of the colony, to testify on behalf of the Romans in the present, and still others, the most stunning, of which were sent to the Louvre precisely to create the physical connection, which is in itself also a testimony, of the metropole to the colony. The work of LouisAdrien Berbrugger in this regard was remarkable. For this man who dominated the colonial research until 1870, Algeria was only a part of a whole that he names Afrique septentrionale, once under Roman occupation. Berbrugger and his contemporaries often made the parallel between the French now of the region and the Roman then.58 Thus he parallels current (1856) French names of the region with their then Roman names:59 54 55

56 57

58

Commission Scientifique de l’Algérie. Stéphane Gsell, Exploration Scientifique de l’Algérie. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1912, p. III. Ibid. Adolphe Hedwige Delamare, Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, Archéologie. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1850. Berbrugger, “L’Afrique septentrionale,” p. 82. 59 Ibid., p. 81.

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Table 2.1 Names of countries of modern North Africa and their equivalent in Roman times MARCO ALGÉRIE

TUNISIE TRIPOLI

MAURITANIE TINGITANE. á l’Ouest, –MAURITANIE CÉSARIENNE. au centre, – MAURITANIE SITIFIENNE. á l’Est. – NUMIDIE. au Nord, – ZEUGITANE,-OU PROCONSULARE. au Sud ; –BYZACÉNE. TRIPOLITAINE.

I come back in the next chapter to examining the strategy of names and naming in colonial narratives. Here, suffice it to say that Berbrugger traces the geography of the Romans, and thus of the French, and intends to delineate the region from its surroundings: “These four states contain all northern Africa or Berbérie. They are well detached from the rest of the African continent, by the sea and by the sands, that Arab geographers rightly called them, in their ensemble, the island of the Occident.”60 Archaeology from now on serves as an important strategy to isolate the region from the continent, by then called Africa. This isolation is in itself a new identification operated by the creation of webs of colonial meanings bestowed on the past. Or to say it more accurately, since the past is nothing but narratives in past tense, in the colonial present of the region, the historical narrative of Rome dominated and in so doing, the region appears, from now on, as distinct from its African settings where the narrative of Rome is absent and from its eastern settings where the narrative of Rome is overshadowed by other narratives such as the pharaonic and the Mesopotamian. The new area now appears defined by Rome, the way Europe, and a priori France, came to be defined by it as well:61 To preclude the demoralization of the French army in what he described as “primitive” conditions, Berbrugger argued that the colony needed to imitate the conventions of metropolitan society if it was to push inhabitants toward civilization. Libraries and museums were essential institutions for this purpose.62 60 62

Ibid., pp. 81–82. 61 Dietler, “Our Ancestors the Gauls.” Effros, Incidental Archaeologists, p. 117.

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In any case, despite the astonishing diversity of objects “discovered” and turned into pieces of narration that found themselves part and parcel of an archaeological discursive formation, one can conclude that archaeology as a technology of modern power was able to turn the colony topsy-turvy, bring the deep to the surface, and make the surface appear as parasitic habitats, made of foreign, unwanted, and harmful objects – mosques, marabouts, Kasbahs, tribal tents, and seas of deserts. It was indeed as if the colony itself was a tombstone under which lay the remains of a prosperous past that colonial France claimed as its own. What was at the surface – the cities with their streets, mosques, neighborhoods – were transitory vicissitudes generated by a recent Arab conquest. Of course, underground was where one found the authentic depths of the territory’s real self – Roman cities, sites, epigraphs, and statues and statuettes. The past belonged to Rome and thus now to France. Its presence was a tenacious resistance against time. Once again, this is not a question of justification, for there was no crisis of colonial legitimacy; neither was there any need to justify a presence that laid its claim on solid foundations – colonial conquest. That Rome was also France was a means of empire building, and the logic of that building goes beyond the country called Algeria to all parts coveted by France. This work of interpretation, it could be concluded, was waiting to serve in a different context, a post-conquest era marked by colonial triumph, and at the moment also when the colony appeared to have tremendous territorial possibilities to the east and west.

Archaeology and the Historiographic State Colonials’ unmistakable triumph, achieved by 1870, happened in three registers: against the power of the metropole, especially those policies that did not directly serve settlers’ interests, against the military regime perceived as too friendly to the Arabs, and against the Arabs whose presence was deemed illegitimate in a land whose past and present were “Western,” since they themselves were conquerors from the Orient. Ironically, this last victory was accomplished, in its latest phase, against a population that the colonial discourse long constructed as “not Arab” – that is, Kabyle. As a consequence of these three triumphs, which occurred in the wake of one of the most humiliating of French defeats at the hand of Prussia in 1870, the entire landscape of colonial politics in Algeria underwent a drastic transformation from a colony

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ruled by the military to one ruled by the civilians. This not only made the military depend on politics but also made Algeria emerge as a locus of colonial power, where decisions on the colony were made, even against the metropole, and where an entire set of institutions was set up to govern the colony. In this set of institutions, the army was given a marginal place at the expense of other institutions oriented toward a different form of governmentality that relies more heavily on knowledge of the past than on ethnographies of the present. In fact, Algeria, before 1870, was not ruled by a local state that we can define as ethnographic or historiographic, but it was rather ruled by the metropole, with policies that shifted with the vicissitudes of state politics. Or to say it differently, Algeria was not ruled by the European population, but for them, by a power outside of the colony. The decisions about Algeria were taken by the emperor for the immediate interest of the imperial state of which Algeria was only one colony among others. L’armée d’Afrique had then a colonial mandate and functioned with or without Napoleon III as a metropolitan institution implementing policies of the French state. The year 1870 was decisive in creating a colonial state with institutions that not only produced the means of knowing the colony and thus governing it, but also transforming the colony by the power of this very knowledge. I call this the historiographic state. This state is undoubtedly different from the ethnographic state Nicholas Dirks describes, not only by the fact that it relies on knowledge of the past almost exclusively, or at least heavily, but also because it was in a relation of competition, antagonism, but also cooperation with other states, especially in Morocco where ethnographic knowledge was the dominant, but not the exclusive form of colonial knowledge.63 I come back to this issue in Chapter 4, to discuss the operative modes and practices of this ethnographic state.64 Again, by historiographic state I mean that in this context, the colony, Algeria, was endowed with institutions set up for its governance – that is, to manage, organize, classify, and thus govern the land and the people (European settlers as well as local inhabitants). For this, and because of the project of making Algeria part and parcel of the metropole, history emerged at this juncture as a major mode of 63 64

Dirks, “The Ethnographic State.” Edmund Burke III, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam. Berkeley: California University Press, 2014.

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knowledge. For many, not only was the experience of France in Algeria modeled on the past in its Roman version, but the organizing of the army itself, the specter of Rome itself, the roads, the stadiums, the policies, the cities of course, and the figure of the settler himself all gave colonial authorities in the colony, the Roman simulacra. Societies and institutions oriented toward the past – to be modeled on it and also to revive it – were created in this phase, adding to the number of institutions and societies we have seen in the previous section. The University of Algiers emerged at this juncture as an important institution of knowledge and of politics, where the two were intertwined in ways that made them impossible to separate. It should be recalled that military science emerged in this century, the nineteenth, as the science of society whose usefulness, nay, necessity for states and nations, was of tantamount importance. In the context of Algeria, the historiographic state was hegemonic and its functioning could be best seen in the institution of the University of Algiers with monumental figures whose work, importance, and longevity exceeded the immediate colonial moment, to include immortals such as Gsell (a faculty member in the years 1894–1901)65 and later Fernand Braudel (1923–1932). It is the historiographic state, I argue elsewhere, that transformed Algeria into a French territory; it is also this same historiographic state that not only created the semantic foundations of the region called the Maghreb but also, and maybe even more importantly, created the condition of its discursive possibility.66 Archaeology also created a horizon that made colonial authorities already in 1856 believe that Algeria is only a piece within a whole, as attested by these artifacts, these cities, and these histories that traverse the entire area in all directions.67 Hence, not only the archaeological discourse but even its authors defined the area with ease and in ways that unified the archaeological discourse more than any other form of colonial discourse. 65

66

67

Stéphane Gsell was nominated inspecteur des Antiquités d’Algérie and in 1912, he was elected as a professor at the Collège de France. He remained in contact with the academic milieu of Algiers until his death in 1932. See Charles Picard, “Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Stéphane Gsell, membre de l’académie,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 1947 91(1): 24–86. See Abdelmajid Hannoum, “The Historiographic State: How Algeria Once Became French,” History and Anthropology 2008 (19)2: 91–114. Berbrugger, “L’Afrique septentrionale,” p. 82.

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Archaeology itself, and this should be obvious by now, was a “historical science.” It was also a science believed to be instrumental for geography – that is, for a conception of geography. The professionalization of archaeology was marked by the founding in 1880 of L’Ecole Supérieure des Lettres d’Alger, which transformed in 1909 to become Faculté des Lettres, l’Ecole Supérieure des Lettres d’Alger. Commonly known as the University of Algiers, it became an important institution for the production of knowledge on not just Algeria but also beyond it – on the region. This is because the school as an institution of the historiographic state privileged research on the past that led its members, almost ipso facto, to create a narrative in which Algeria was only a piece of a whole. From this date, archaeology was no longer the affair of military officers and amateurs, but became rather regulated. Gsell, under the order of the governor-general, wrote instructions on how to conduct excavations.68 By 1880 and the consolidation of colonial rule in Tunisia, rare was the discourse that stressed just Algeria. Even among the rare ones, the subtext was often, if not always, the idea that Algeria is part of a geographic fabric extending east and west. South, the Sahara served to impose what was considered a “natural” barrier between the region and its sub-Saharan counterpart. Nonetheless, in this crucial phase of the consolidation of colonial rule, the expansion of its power, and the instrumentalization of the historiographic state, the region took a shape that constructed one of its defining features. If officers of the army focused on this or that portion of Algeria to lay bare Roman remains, professional archaeologists embraced the entire region as a totality. The work of Jules Toutain and Gsell marked this period and created not only an archaeological perception of the region but also a framework of archaeological thinking that has lasted until now. Toutain focuses on Tunisia, through which he demonstrates an archaeological continuity. However, he also raises the important issue of indigeneity that was put aside or minimized by archaeologists such as Gsell himself. Toutain gives to Rome only what belongs to Rome: For four centuries, all the countries with coasts on the Mediterranean were Roman provinces. For four centuries, all the shores of this inland sea that the

68

Stéphane Gsell, Instructions pour la conduit des fouilles archéologiques en Algérie. Algiers: Adolphe Jourdan, 1901.

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Romans called Mare nostrum, were subjected to one and the same power, Roman power.69

Yet, for the region Toutain calls Maurétanie: Elsewhere, as in Mauritania, urban life and municipal organization were imported from the outside, thanks to the establishment of the colonies. In this barbaric country occupied by nomadic tribes, the first sedentary inhabitants were Roman soldiers released from service; the first cities were colonies set up especially by Augustus and Claudius on the coast of Igilgili (Djidjelli), Saldae (Bougie), Gunugi (Gouraya), Cartennae (Tenes), Lixus (on the western coast of Morocco), and the inland Thubusuptu or Tupusuctu (Tiklat, near Oued Sahel, southwest Bougie), Zucchabar or Succabar (on the Chelif, southeast of Miliana), among others. The Roman cities did not substitute old indigenous centers; municipal Roman law did not substitute the precedent organization. There was no mixing and no conflict between the new institutions and ancient traditions.70

The archaeological discourse also constantly deploys a strategy of naming. As seen in the citation just referenced, not only is the region claimed in the present by evoking its historical phase in the time of Rome, but the existence of Rome is confirmed, both in the past and in the present: Djidjelli, Bougie, Tenes, and Chelif are nothing but Roman locations with altered names. Mauritania is this same land once inhabited and made prosperous by Rome; it is also Africa, the name used in classical work of Western civilization. Yet, in the same citation, Toutain makes clear that indigenous centers existed, that entire organizations were present before Rome, and, most importantly, that these centers and organizations were neither replaced nor combined with the new. The Romanization of the region – which is in fact the Frenchification of the region via the narrative of Rome – went on unabated in Tunisia. Beyond the work of Toutain, Tunisia had already been excavated via the Exploration scientifique de la Tunisie.71 It was also explored by Ernest Babelon and Salomon Reinach of the Mission archéologique en Tunisie.72 Rome and Christianity were the guiding principles of these explorations. 69

70 71 72

Jules Toutain, Les cités romaines de Tunisie: Essai sur l’histoire de la colonisation romaine dans l’Afrique du Nord. Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1895. Ibid., p. 2. Charles Tissot, La province romaine d’Afrique. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1888. Salomon Reinach and Ernest Babelon, “Recherches archéologiques en Tunisie 1883–1884),” BA/BCTH 1886: 4–40.

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In Tunisia, France seemed to have learned from the many mistakes committed in Algeria. A series of decrees regulating the field were issued that included protecting the sites and creating a museum for conservation. After the treaty of Bardo that established the French Protectorate in Tunisia on May 21, 1881, the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres created in 1882, the Commission d’Afrique du Nord under the presidency of Léon Renier. In 1884, it was replaced by the Commission de publication des découvertes archéologiques faites en Tunisie. With it, archaeological research was institutionalized in the metropole. This institutionalization itself shows France’s attitude to the region as a single bloc attached and subordinated to imperial power in Paris. “The links between Algerian and Tunisian archaeologies were confirmed once again: a shift from one to the other happens almost naturally,” observes Clémentine Gutron.73 With the Protectorate in Morocco in 1912, and despite frictions between the school of Algiers and the school of Rabat, this shift became a real group effort to unearth the pre-Islamic traces of the region, to bring them to the fore, to present them as expressing the real, deep, everlasting self of the region in contrast to the transient, contingent, and superficial character observed upon the arrival of the French: “We can consider this period as the golden age of Tunisian archaeology seeing that it had witnessed a very important scientific production exceeding all productions of other periods.”74 The work of Charles Tissot, undertaken more than thirty years before colonial rule in Tunisia in 1881, by the admission of the author himself, was an important contribution that connected the archaeology of Algeria with the archaeology of Tunisia, and created thus a continuity that was professional as well as ideological, accomplished under the aegis of the Commission. For archaeologists, the entire area, including Morocco, was a single unit; Roman traces confirm this conception. In his book, Tissot makes this clear from the outset:

73 74

Gutron, L’archéologie en Tunisie, p. 28. Sadok Ben Baaziz, “Historique de la recherche archéologique en Tunisie,” in Hommes, Cultures et paysages de l’Antiquité à la période moderne, ed. Isabelle Pimouguet-Pédarros, Monique Clavel-Levêque, and Fatima Ouachour. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013, pp. 57–78.

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Bordered to the north by the Mediterranean, to the west by the Atlantic, to the south and east by the Sahara, the part of northern Africa (Afrique septentrionale), which includes the regency of Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco form, as noted by Ritter, [is] an isolated whole, a sort of quasi island in the large quasi African peninsula. By calling it, in their metaphorical language, Djezirat el-Maghreb, “the island of the West,” the Arabs have only noted a geographic truth.75

Yet, despite the reference to one of the Arab names of the region, the delimitation Tissot makes is different: Geographers of antiquity believed they could attach Egypt to Asia. Modern science, with more reason, considers the part of Africa located between the Mediterranean and the Sahara as an annex to Europe to which, according to all appearances, it was connected to via more than one region and to the prehistoric periods by more than one point. Today, it is certain that the north of Africa, by its fauna as well as by its flora, belongs to this great natural region that received the name of the Mediterranean zone.76

One can see explicitly with Tissot the intention not only to archaeologically define the region but also to delimit its contours, to attach it to Europe, and perhaps more importantly to give it a name. For archaeologists were all too aware that naming is an important strategy of archaeological appropriation. The new name, in archaeological practice of the time, was also in a good number of cases an old name taken from the Greek and Roman lexicon. The archaeological discourse, as articulated by Tissot, also indicated occupation and the existence of indigeneity in Roman times. In other words, it admits the existence of other claims, both local and extralocal (Punic). The archaeological discourse creates loopholes that somehow contradict, to a certain extent, the national narratives that wanted to make the region an extension of France and thus of Europe itself. To admit that “indigenous” populations existed and that others besides Rome brought civilization is to admit two ideas that contradict the colonial discourse and its claim of the civilizing role of Rome. Instead, Rome coexisted with the primitiveness of locals and Punic civilization. Roman North Africa thus does not appear to be all Roman. Duvivier also noted this contradiction: “For all time and in all its aspects, Africa appears to be a country of Rome; this gratuitous 75

Tissot, La province romaine d’Afrique, p. 1.

76

Ibid.

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judgement will likely not be invalidated anytime soon.”77 However, contradictions are part of the system from which they spring and may constitute a potential discursive avenue for others and possibly for the system itself to allow to generate. The region, now called Africa or North Africa, does not in these works appear identical to France. The archaeological discourse of the historiographic state is then fraught with another serious contradiction. Contrary to the archaeological discourse of the officers of the army, in which Rome and Rome alone seemed to reign supreme in the history of the region, in the professional archaeological discourse, troublesome traces of the “other” appear with an ability to subvert the archaeological discourse, and with it the making of the region under French colonial rule. How to tackle this contradiction that seems to have been created by the interpretation of archaeological traces? In this phase, Gsell appears as the ultimate authority on the archaeology of the region. He is the author of an impressive discourse, prolific, extensive, expansive, and even imperialist in a unique way. As Toutain himself said of him, “Gsell is a monument of complete and accurate erudition.”78 Gsell is by himself a name associated with an entire discourse whose importance is attested to not only by its presence in any archaeological discourse on the region but also by the fact that its legacy continues in the present. The early archaeology of French colonialism undoubtedly defined the field; it also created an archaeological formation within which future archaeology developed. But these developments owe their importance not only to the transformation of archaeology from amateur to professional, but also to the emergence of what I have coined in the same context as a historiographic state.79 Colonial archaeology is a field in and of itself. But it was mainly shaped by a man who created the framework that made possible other works in the context of Morocco and Algeria. Stéphane Gsell’s project carried within itself a territorial ambition, North Africa, and not only Algeria where he worked. It is his work that gave substance to the idea of North Africa as an extension of France and thus of Europe itself, despite the presence of 77

78 79

Franciade Fleurus Duvivier, Recherches et notes sur la portion de l’Algerie ausud de Guelma depuis la frontier de Tunis jusqu’qu’au mont Aures compris. Paris: L. Vassal et cie, 1841, p. 65. Toutain, Les cités romaines de Tunisie, p. 318. Hannoum, “Historiographic State.”

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a foreign element: the Arabs. Initially, and for most of his career, Gsell concentrated on Algeria, excavating and interpreting previous finds. From 1902 to 1911, Gsell published the Atlas archéologique de l’Algérie, commissioned by the General Government of Algeria (i.e., the state), and published by the Ministry of War.80 What is most interesting about this publication is not that it is comprehensive in indicating Roman remains across all of Algeria, or in reactivating old names, but that its publication was intended to complete the already existing Atlas archéologique de la Tunisie. This is to say that by the turn of the nineteenth century, the two countries of Algeria and Tunisia were in the process of being mapped archaeologically as a single unit that was once Roman. Again, the idea that the region constituted a unit that France had the ambition to make its own was already expressed by others, including Berbrugger, as discussed earlier in this chapter. But to be considered as an archaeological unit was more than putting facts on the ground, but rather mapping the ground of fact. Moreover, in this atlas, Gsell is comprehensive in mentioning every single publication, even that of Shaw, and every single Roman trace, be it a city, a stadium, and so forth. This unearthing of everything Roman, and only the Roman, was itself part of the drastic transformation the area was subjected to under archaeologists and military officers. It was in 1914 that Gsell undertook the ambitious project to Romanize the ground of the entire region and not only Algeria, and to claim the region as Roman. The studious efforts of Gsell on Algeria culminated in Ancient History of North Africa, published between 1914 and 1930, a time often considered the height of French colonial power.81 The book itself represents this colonial triumph. By now, Morocco was already a Protectorate and the rivalries between France and Great Britain seemed to be a thing of the past. It was Gsell who provided the archaeological semantics supporting the idea of North Africa that later, in 1928, became the Maghreb. The book is about Roman North Africa even though Gsell examines also Punic history and discusses their remains, their divinities, and their impact on an “indigenous” population incapable of creating its own civilization. 80

81

Stéphane Gsell, Atlas archéologique de l’Algérie. Algiers: Adolphe Jourdan, 1911. Stéphane Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord. Paris: Hachette, 1914–1930.

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However, Gsell not only gives greater importance to Rome over Carthage as an occupying power, but he also writes as if the entire history of Carthage was nothing but a prelude to the triumph of Rome.82 “Thus,” he concludes his monumental study, “barely two centuries after the creation, around the ruins of Carthage, of the small province of Africa, Rome extended at last its domination till the shores of the Ocean and beyond the Columns of Hercules.”83 For all the archaeological finds in Algeria, some of which were excavated by Gsell himself, he made an archaeological effort of interpretation. In his work, the region of Algeria became the terrain of three major archaeological traces: “indigenous,” “Punic,” and “Roman.” While making the traces of the indigenous minimal and indicative of a state of primitiveness, he brushes aside the Phoenician traces as less significant even in terms of presence. The Roman past, in the view of Gsell, lives on under and above the soil of what Gsell started calling Latin Africa. We know what good results the Roman conquest had for this country called today Algeria. It was especially in the second and the third parts of the third century that this region could develop, thanks to the peace that reigned. The old Punic and indigenous cities were transformed and enlarged. Elsewhere, especially at the foot of the Aurès, new cities were founded and became prosperous.84

Besides local objects that were not recognized as French, and thus as European and Western, these Roman remains were categorized and written about matter of factly as being the same objects that made France and by extension, mutatis mutandis, Europe. Punic and local traces, ignored in the amateur phase of archaeology, were paid attention to, but as “curiosities,” as Nicholas Thomas has observed in similar colonial contexts.85 But with Gsell, working at the zenith of colonial exploratory science, local objects are no longer curiosities, but rather scientific objects in and of themselves. Gsell turns curiosity into science, and the same “curios” are turned into European objects: Punic and local cities, in his view, have no existence of their own; they have become Roman cities. It is this recognition of other traces that 82 84 85

Ibid., vol. 8. 83 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 287. Stèphane Gsell, Les monuments antiques de l’Algérie. Paris: Thron, 1901, p. 10. Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.

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transforms them into recognizable traces. Rome built the new out of the old. In doing so, the old has no other existence but in the new object. One can see that Gsell pushes Romanization beyond its discursive limits. He not only marginalizes local or Punic objects; he also Romanizes them. Gsell engages in a real imperialist epistemology of archaeology by which an object is not the object that offers itself to perception, it is not an object by its appearance, but rather it is an object falsely presenting itself as something else. It does not speak the truth, but hides it. The archaeologists work to make it speak properly, truthfully, and authentically. These objects, despite appearances, are then placed within a colonial regime of truths. Gsell dominated the field of archaeology; his longevity, his proliferation, his political standing, his academic authority as a professor at the University of Algiers from 1894, as an inspecteur des Antiquités d’Algérie from 1901, and a professor at the Collège de France from 1912, the highest honorary academic position in France, assured his discourse a solid authority with impressive intellectual power that made him the main architect of archaeology of the region. Of course this same discourse allowed him to secure important institutional power. For the historiographic state after all produced Gsell, the name associated with a colossal academic production that made Africa Roman. This very work also stands as a monument to French archaeology, “a monument of complete and accurate erudition,”86 “an irreplaceable pillar of the scientific place of the French school” in the region.87 It has been noted that his work constituted “the basis of all subsequent work in the colony on Roman archaeology.”88 Yet this work itself built on military archaeology and its power of persuasion, which is also the power of shaping a certain colonial imaginary that is itself the result of the institution that made it possible – that is, in the final analysis of the historiographic state. Even outside the context of Algeria, the historiographic state was discursively hegemonic, making archaeologists of the region extend the discourse of Gsell into the adjunct pieces of the colony. Thus, when 86 87

88

Jules Toutain, “Antiquités romaines,” Revue historique 1913 113(2): 318. Monique Dondin-Payre, “Jules Toutain et Stéphane Gsell àl’Ecole française de Rome (1886–1891): une étape décisive pour l’étude du Maghreb,” in Construire l’institution. L’École française de Rome, 1873–1895, ed. Michel Gras and Olivier Poncet (Hrsg.) Rome: École française de Rome, 2014. Lorcin, “Rome and France in Africa,” p. 313.

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Paul Gauckler wrote his book on the archaeology of Tunisia, he started by confirming Gsellian truths. For him, Tunisia is a domain of Roman rule and brilliance. All cities are Roman, even those one may consider otherwise revived, which were built on and reemerged as Roman cities.89 Phoenicians, Berbers, or any other population that had existed left nothing but ruins under ruins, and especially graves. The work of civilization was the work of Rome and Rome alone. Besides, pre-historic or not, Libyan, Phoenician or Libyan-Phoenician, these monuments have only a limited documentary value which is not enough: they are all funerary. Of the people that preceded the Romans in Tunisia, we know, strictly speaking, but the tombs.90

Tombs are, of course, for the dead; monuments – cities, stadiums, arcs, statues, and the like – are works of civilization that defy the length of time. They stand as a living presence to bear witness to the grandeur of Rome that the colonial discourse made the grandeur of France.

The Historiographic State and the Politics of Discourse “The Great Powers are very often expansive powers,” Max Weber said in this same nineteenth century about modern states.91 However, the expansion of a state should not be seen only as the result of “the use or threat of force.” A state is expansionist also culturally by the deployment of means of culture. The state itself relies not only on violence (despite its legitimate monopoly over it). It also relies on culture (that it also monopolizes) in order to found a substance, a legitimacy, and even an existence.92 This ideological expansion can precede territorial conquest and it can also proceed it. In the case at hand, one can surely see that the ideological conquest came after the fact of conquest, but it went beyond it once Algeria was militarily and ideologically subdued. From Algeria, and because of it, an entire ideological conquest of the region was under way, especially with the foundation of the historiographic state. 89 90 91

92

Paul Gauckler, L’archéologie de la Tunisie. Paris: Berger-Levrault et Cie., 1896. Ibid., p. 8. Max Weber, “Structures of Power,” in From Max Weber: Essays on Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 161. Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch: English State Formation As Cultural Revolution. London: Blackwell, 1985. David Lloyd and Paul Thomas, Culture and the State. London: Routledge, 1998.

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By the turn of the nineteenth century, after the triumph of the civilian region and the total annihilation of the so-called Kabyle Revolt, the colonial state emerged stronger than ever, possessing important institutions, some of which could compete with the best of metropolitan institutions. Schools, universities, associations, and societies of politics and culture mushroomed in Algeria. On affairs pertaining to the region itself, the colonial state reigned supreme, and politicians and scholars of the metropole depended on Algiers for knowledge not only on Algeria but also on Tunisia, Morocco, and the Sahara. Algeria emerged as a strong colonial state to reckon with even in the metropole. After the first century of the conquest of Algiers, in 1830, much had changed in the politics, culture, and the state of knowledge of the region and not only the colony that was Algeria. By this time, Tunisia was long part of French colonial rule, and Morocco entered it fully after decades of European maneuvering around it. For a century, archaeological work had built up to a real library of immense volumes, the most important of which were those of Gsell. This is to say that the harnessing of archaeology in the formation of empire and more specifically the remaking of the region as an extension of both Rome and France was mostly a French endeavor. Like maps, the colonial institutions of the historiographic state were numerous, and not separate from both politics and the public. This contrasts with Italian Libya where, despite the tremendous importance of the Rome of Fascist Italy, archaeological work remains limited. As Stefan Altekamp puts it, “The demographic constellation which partly enabled the widespread archaeological activities in Algeria and Tunisia, did not exceed a rudimentary status in Libya.”93 One may also add that Italy, unlike France, was saturated by the presence of Rome in its own territory, and thus archaeologists were too busy with Roman heritage in Italy itself. Meanwhile, the French had the chance to find impressive Roman heritage in northern Africa whose appropriation gave France a right to claim the heritage of Rome, especially in northern Africa. Hence the acute interest in what was big and grandiose, what signified the grandeur of Rome in the region – 93

Stefan Altekamp, “Modelling Roman North Africa: Advances, Obsessions and Deficiencies of Colonial Archaeology in the Maghreb,” in Under Western Eyes: Approches Occidentales de l’archéologie nord-Africaine (XIXè–XXè siècles), Bologna: BraDypUS.net Communicating Cultural Heritage, 2015, p. 30.

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localities and provinces with three cities, Tébessa, Lambaesis, and Timgad, and by 1915, Volubilis.94 The French could thus claim and boast a Roman heritage of significant importance in northern Africa even against Italy itself. These impressive Roman colossal remains in northern Africa strengthened France’s claim to Rome, and these same magnificent remains constituted the region as French. As Albert Ballu puts it when discussing Timgad, the most significant of the three cities: We rarely find anywhere conditions so favorable for the lively and palpable study of the glorious Roman past. In France, in Italy, in Austria, in Turkey, in Africa, and even in Asia Minor, and lastly in all the countries of the Mediterranean, there is surely remarkable antique vestiges, monuments of the highest value. However, these remains are isolated, and thus far nowhere except in Pompeii, we found the equivalent of what Timgad offers us, meaning a complete ensemble, an entire city.95

But Timgad, despite its importance, was only a city within an urban archaeological heritage France now claims. Later, Volubilis too earned the label of Pompeii and was added to the numerous cities that made France appear as a de facto heir of Rome. This presence in this large domain once ruled by Rome made France, and not Italy, look like the almighty Rome of the past. French North Africa was indeed an avatar of Roman Africa. Not even Italy could contest that. Yet colonial archaeologists in Algeria were all too aware of the importance of Roman archaeological remains in Libya and some of them, such as Louis Bertrand, ventured to investigate these remains. However, by the 1930s, Italy too, under Mussolini, showed interest in archaeology that was also harnessed for colonial reasons. Like the French, probably from whom they took the idea of Latinity, the Italians too claimed the idea of Romanity, an idea that did not upset the archaeological pyramid constructed thus far by French archaeologists and that redefined the region by a Roman

94

95

Nabila Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine: Monuments, musées et politique coloniale en Algérie (1830–1930). Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2004, p. 200. Albert Ballu, Guide illustré de Timgad, Antique Thamugadi. Paris: Neurdein Frères, 1915, p. 5, cited in Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine, pp. 205–206.

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glorious past that the present continues and reproduces at the same time.96 Similarly, in northern Morocco, in the Spanish Protectorate, archaeological research was still amateurish and its work was limited, in contrast to French archaeology, which had not only become professional with the foundation of the University of Algiers (also called the School of Algiers) but also had numerous archaeological institutions and organizations that made it even more imperialist.97 One can conclude that between 1830 and 1930, when the region was reconfigured archaeologically as a continuum, Spain had no official interest in archaeology in a region considered small especially in relation to its large territories in Latin America.98 Yet, immediately after the Spanish protectorate, la Junta de Monumentos Arísticos e Históricos was created.99 The interest was clearly in Roman and to a certain extent Punic traces, with a disinterest in the Arab period.100 Consequently, Spanish archaeology, marked by “low quality and quantity,” did not play a role in this colonial endeavor of territorial invention.101 In fact, the excavation of the ruins of Tamuda southwest of the city of Tetouan and later of Lixus near Larache by César Luis de Montalbán y Mazas, interestingly enough published by French archaeologists, just added a physical trace in a field that remained dominantly French.102 As Margarita Diaz-Andrew puts it, “The comparison between the abundant work of Louis Chatelain and the almost complete lack of publications by Montalbán clearly exemplified that the Spanish state was indifferent to the production of published scientific 96

97

98 99

100

101 102

Stefan Altekamp, “The Policy of Monuments: Dealing with Historical Architecture in Libya under Italian Rule 1911–1943,” Historical Studies 1994 (53): 18–35. For a view on Spanish archaeology, see Margarita Diaz-Andrew, “The Archaeology of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco: A Short History,” African Archaeological Review 2015 (32)1: 49–69. Ibid. Fernando Valderama Martínez, “La acción cultural de España en Marruecos,” Boletín de la Asociación Española de Orientalistas 2005 (41): 9–22. Enrique Gozalbes Cravioto, “Los inicios de la investigación española sobre arqueología y arte árabes en Marruecos (1860–1960),” Boletín de la Asociación Española de Orientalistas 2005 (41): 239. Ibid., p. 53. Gozalbes Cravioto, “Los inicios de la investgación española sobre arqueología.” Montalbán did not publish on the topic. See Diaz-Andrew, “Archaeology of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco,” p. 54.

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data and proper curation of archaeological collections.”103 The study of Moreno to Tamuda and his publication of 1922, especially in the midst of the Rif War,104 was a rare instance of the involvement of Spanish universities, at this stage, in the colonial archaeology of Morocco.105 Even after the end of the Rif War, research in the area and the quantity of publications remained scarce, according to Enrique Gozalbes Cravioto.106 This disinterest also touched other modes of knowledge such as anthropology and history. In addition to the indifference of the state, the Rif War, in a small area, might have made the area appear too dangerous for archaeologists. French modernity, with its technology of power, its high claims to the land, its numerous institutions of knowledge, and above all its ambitious geopolitics in the region made France uncontestably hegemonic especially around the mutual agreement reached with its main rival, Great Britain, known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, in 1916. Yet by the 1950s, Spanish archaeology reached maturity especially with the work of Miquel Tarradell.107 This important figure of Spanish archaeology also unequivocally shared “the colonial ethos” of French archaeologists. The West has lost a territory that logically should be its own – the south of the Mediterranean . . . But it is more difficult to understand the failure of the latinidad in Africa Minor. It is too simple to consider that its destiny . . . only changed direction with the Muslim invasion. This was a definitive factor but

103

104

105

106 107

Diaz-Andrew, “The Archaeology of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco,” p. 54. Manuel Gómez Moreno, “Descubrimientos y antigüedades en Tetuán,” Suplemento al numero de 10 noviembre de 1922 de Boletín oficial de la zona de Protectorado español en Marruecos: 5–13. Mustapha Ghottes, “Histoire des fouilles à Tamuda,” in En la orilla africana del Círculo del Estrecho. Historiografía y proyectos actuales, Actas del II Seminario de Especialización en Arqueología (Cádiz, septiembre 2008), ed. Darío Bernal, Baraka Raissouni, José Ramos, Mehdi Zouak, and Manuel Parodi. Madrid: Colección de Monografías del Museo Arqueológico de Tetuán II, 2008, pp. 459–471. Gozalbes Cravioto, “Los inicios de la investigación española,” p. 235. Ghottes, “Histoire des fouilles à Tamuda,” p. 465. See also Nejat Brahmi and Mohcin Cheddad, “Espagnols et Français sur le terrain archéologique marocain (1912–1956),” in Colloque international, Archéologie en péninsule Ibérique. Plus d’un siècle de coopération internationale. Madrid: Casa de Velzquez, November 15–17, in press.

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not the only one. North Africa did not assimilate Latin culture with the depth that other countries within the lines did.108

Archaeological work in Morocco was undertaken even before its diplomatic conquest in 1912 by archaeologists working in Algeria, and thus approaching the country with the same intellectual framework we have seen in the case of Algeria. Charles Tissot, whose work on Algeria and Tunisia we discussed earlier, also undertook excavations in Morocco in 1874, in the area adjunct to Volubilis that was not yet excavated.109 But with the Protectorate, and by orders of Hubert Lyautey, archaeological excavations became subject to state rules and regulations.110 Under Lyautey, and by his order, more excavations were conducted by Lieutenant-Colonel Bouin and his deputy, Louis Chatelain, a member of the Ecole Française de Rome. This work led to the discovery of the Roman city of Volubilis north of the city of Meknes. In addition to the city itself, this visible trace testifies to the presence of Rome, and an entire archaeological narrative was generated around it first by Tissot himself and then by Louis Chatelain within a specific discursive continuity that itself was part of the archaeological discursive tradition that has to define the entire region in terms of Roman archaeology and Roman archaeology alone.111 Indeed, despite the fact that among historians of archaeology, the name of Louis Chatelain is associated with Volubilis, Chatelain himself situates the monument of Volubilis and its narration within an archaeological and narrative tradition that was initiated, at least in colonial France, by Tissot.112 The point here is that, archaeologically, the region from Tunisia to Morocco, from the 1830s to 1930, was constructed as a continuous 108

109

110

111

112

Tarradell, “Investigaciones sobre los romanos en el Marruecos Español,” Arbor 1951 (20): 4, cited in Diaz-Andrew, “The Archaeology of the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco,” p. 60. Charles Tissot, “Recherches sur la géographie comparée de la Maurétanie Tingitane,” Mémoire présenté pardivers savants à l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres de l’Institut de France. Vol. 9, 139–322. Nejat Brahmi, “L’archéologie coloniale en héritage: le cas de Volubilis-Walili,” manuscript. Louis Chatelain, “Les Fouilles de Volubilis (Ksar-Faraoun, Maroc),” Bulletin Archéologique du comité des travaux historiques, 1916: 70–93. Louis Chatelain, Le Maroc des Romains: Etudes sur les centres antique de la Maurétanie occidentale. Paris: Edition de Boccard, 1944.

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land, a single geography isolated by French colonial rule, still separated from other French colonies by a past deemed the French present. Socalled Arab rule from the eighth to the seventeenth century and then Ottoman rule from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century were obliterated as artificial and momentary. Knowledge of archaeology created an imaginary world where Rome reigns and where cities are most visible. This archaeological unit also contrasted eastward where pharaonic, Punic, and Mesopotamian traces define them differently. Whereas this region, later called the Middle East, could well be defined as indigenous, the new entity, later known as the Maghreb, could only be defined as Roman, with Punic and indigenous remains either minimal or too primitive to testify to the presence of any civilization. The Sahara constituted the limits of the Roman, and thus also in the colonial narrative, the line that separates the region from Africa. However, beyond the line one now finds France as a colonial power. In fact, one finds it also in West Africa, on the very frontiers of Morocco. There too the absence of Rome set that region apart from North Africa. Again by this time, and even up to 1950, archaeology in West Africa was marked by “the occupation floors of early human sites,” a concern almost absent in the archaeology of northern Africa.113 However, prior to the celebration of the first century of the occupation of Algiers in 1930, the region whose transformation I am seeking to show had already taken the form recognizable today. Even before the imposition of colonial rule in Morocco in 1912, under the guise of the Protectorate, Morocco was seen as nothing as far as archaeology was concerned other than an extension of the Roman presence seen more strongly in Algeria, Tunisia, or Libya. Even archaeological knowledge of Algeria itself contained an important body of knowledge on Morocco undertaken with the Mission scientifique. Charles Tissot, in many ways, represents by himself this state of knowledge by which the archaeology of Tunisia and of Morocco seem to complement the archaeology of Algeria. He also highlights, by his own work, that a strong historiographic state is also expansionist. The historiographic state was able to reconfigure not only the territory of Algeria as Algeria 113

Augustin Holl, “West African Archaeology: Colonialism and Nationalism,” in A History of African Archaeology, ed. Peter Robertshaw. London: Heinemann, 1990, pp. 296–308 at p. 299.

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but also, maybe even more importantly, the entirety of the region as a distinct unit from within the colony that was Algeria, eastward in a protectorate and westward in a country that had not yet entered the French colonial yoke.

Careers of the Trace Archaeology is both a trace and a narrative.114 As a trace, archaeology testifies to the presence of the past in the now; it is tangible, concrete, and unquestionable in its physical presence though not in its interpretation.115 As a narrative, archaeology is no different from any other historical narrative, not even with the physical presence of the trace. For many historical narratives refer to traces. But archaeology is constituted around these traces as interpretation, and not only as evidence of discourse. Yet the archaeological narrative is not the historical discourse, despite these uncanny similarities. Its narrative may be one, but its trace has always been double. By the oneness of archaeological narrative, I mean that archaeology also develops a discursive formation with rules and constraints, but also with contradictions and limits. The archaeological formation discussed earlier in this chapter constructs the region as historically, profoundly, quasi absolutely Roman. But this archaeological formation itself, despite the fact it constructs its own object, has a reference: it claims to proclaim its status as a scientific discipline. The reference is, in fact, the trace, what archaeologists call the remains – that is, material objects that serve as the support of archaeological interpretation.116 For our purpose, colonial authorities in the countries of the region claimed these not only as “facts on the ground,” but they also claimed them by removing these facts from their ground and putting them in colonial museums in the region and in the metropole. The traces surface in narrative, first in drawings and then more assertively in photographs. The archaeological photograph becomes then the reference, the trace, that the archaeological narrative uses as a support of its own construction. These photographs were of course part of archaeological work that serves as a visual support of argumentation. They naturalize the 114 116

Hannoum, “Historiographic State.” 115 Ibid. For the concept of trace, see Paul Ricoeur, La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Seuil, 2000, pp. 554–562.

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archaeological narrative that speaks for them while giving the impression (and maybe the certitude) that its narrative is its own voice, as if objects speak independent of the archaeologist. Archaeological photos, as well as archaeological drawings, were essential parts of colonial narratives since the expedition of Napoleon. With the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, drawings played an important part along with maps within a visual economy. It is especially within the historiographic state that photography took on an important dimension and has become common currency amongst archaeologists.117 In 1888, Gsell mentions them in instructions on conducting archaeological research:118 At the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, photography has been used frequently to present to the world of scholars of the metropole the work produced by the service of the historic monuments in Algeria and to extol to tourists the beauty of different ancient sites.119

By the end of the nineteenth century, tourism emerged as a capitalist enterprise.120 In addition to the fact that tourism as such is a highly lucrative industry, it is also a great way to advertise the colony in order to attract both settlers and capital from beyond France itself.121 The colonial state thus developed this new industry that gave birth to a new literature or rather a new genre that took the form of guides and newspaper columns, different from the older narratives of travelers and explorers. Tourist guides advertise regions and promise entertainment and learning experiences. They tend to promise future enjoyment by recounting past performance.122 Tourist guides were published about Algeria and Tunisia from the 1840s onward. By 1901, one 117 118 119 120

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Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine, pp. 202–205. Gsell, Instructions pour la conduit des fouilles archéologiques en Algérie. Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine, p. 203. For a history of French colonial tourism, see Collette Zytnicki and Habib Kazdaghli, eds., Le tourisme dans l’Empire français: Politiques, pratiques et imaginaires (XIXè–XXè siècles). Paris: Société française d’histoire des outre-mers, 2009. Also see Collette Zytnicki, Algérie, terre du tourisme, Histoire d’un loisir colonial. Paris: Vendemiaire, 2016. For British tourists, see Kenneth Perkins, “So Near and Yet So Far: British Tourism in Algiers, 1860–1914,” British Abroad since the Eighteenth Century, ed. Martin Farr and Xavier Guégan. New York: Palgrave, 2013, pp. 217–235. For the case of Tunisia, see Adel Manai, “The Origins of Tunisian Tourism,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 2018 (27)1: 49–61. Guide Michelin: Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie. 1920.

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could find a tourist guide about both Tunisia and Algeria, connecting the two countries as part of a French territory in the region, albeit an incomplete one since Morocco was not part of the same tourist narrative, reflecting a political situation.123 The two countries continued to appear as the object of tourist guides. Thus, in 1906, G. Jacqueton, Augustin Bernard, and Gsell authored a guide on Algeria and Tunisia with eleven maps and twenty-three plans.124 The first tourist guide for Morocco, Guides Blues du Maroc, is dated 1919 and was endorsed by the first resident general, Lyautey himself.125 Now that the three countries were part of French Africa, the following year, in 1920, Michelin produced its first comprehensive tourist guide of the Maghreb, with several maps of the region as a whole, along with detailed maps of particular cities, routes, and so forth. The guide offers travel itineraries as well as instructions on routes, hotels, restaurants, and archaeological sites. Written in French, it also makes promises in English, making clear that it seeks customers beyond France: “During my holidays, I traversed the most picturesque roads and I saw everything that was worthwhile.”126 Tourist guides of the Maghreb reinforce the idea that the region is a single unit and yet, despite distance and geographical interruption between it and France, it constitutes a continuous part of the metropole, linked to it by historical connections. To create these connections, tourist guides, such as the one produced by Michelin, deploy several strategies: one is to employ nationalist historical narratives to inform and boost the pride of the would-be tourist. The Michelin guide opens with the conquest of Algiers, accomplished in what it dubs “a glorious century.”127 It also uses a cartographic strategy to define the “single natural region,” despite “artificial political frontiers,” and proves this unity by employing names the region has retained over its long history. The guide informs its reader, as if the names are natural, and not colonial inventions of the moment, just like the conception it refers to: Barbarie, Maghreb, and North Africa.128 The map of the Maghreb 123

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Guides Pratiques Conty. Algérie-Tunisie. Paris: Administration des Guides Conty, Publiés sous le patronage de Chemins de fer des grandes companies de navigations. 1901. G. Jacqueton, Augustin Bernard, and Stéphane Gsell. Guides-Joanne. Algérie et Tunisie. Paris: Hachette, 1906. Guides Bleus du Maroc. Paris: Hachette, 1919. 126 Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. II. 128 Ibid.

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shows a unit without frontiers between its units; it is also shown as an extension of France. The discourse of archaeology cements the connections between the parts and between the unit and France itself. Archaeological sites traverse the region from east to west. As traces, they bear witness to the present. They testify not only to the presence of Rome, but rather to the unquestionable presence of France itself. The archaeological trace is also used as a means to invite the would-be tourist (who may also be a future settler or investor) to take part in a visual performance that connects him in its glory to a past that is his. Indeed, the tourist guide reproduces the official archaeological narrative articulated by Gsell: there is little of primitive times and of Punic civilization, but “Romans have left cities [and] civil, religious, and military edifices,” as did Muslims, the guide says, implying that the time of the Muslims is past and that the time of Rome continues with France. Thus, the French tourist can live the experience of the past in the present. The Michelin guide of 1920 surprisingly does not offer photos of archaeological sites, but it does mention them: Volubilis, Djemilâ, Timgad, Lambèse, Dougga.129 How can one explain the absence of the photos in a guide that seeks to be comprehensive? A first easy explanation is that the guide is not an atlas and thus is not required to include them and bear the associated expense. However, perhaps a more convincing explanation is that given the presence (and even over-presence) of the photos at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, constituting a colonial photographic culture in its own right, their inclusion was not necessary. The guide offers useful and necessary information that cannot be found anywhere else, or at least not as easily. So the photos, we can say, are present in their very absence. Or else why mention Volubilis or Timgad to a reader and expect she will make sense of the reference? The guide offers what the reader cannot know, not what she already (probably) does. It also offers an archaeological education in the form of narratives of Roman sites, with a full-fledged bibliography that includes the work of Gsell, Louis Bertrand, and other historians and archaeologists. Needless to say, other guides may opt for a different strategy and include, here and there, photos of archaeological sites, but without turning the guide into an atlas.130 129 130

Ibid., p. XVIII. Other tourist guides contained photos of some archaeological sites. For instance, Thomas Cook, Cook’s Practical Guide to Algeria and Tunisia. London: Thomas Cook & Son, 1908. Guide du Comité d’Hivernage de Tunis

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The literature of tourism, and more specifically of archaeological tourism, was often presented in newspaper columns written sometimes by renowned archaeologists such as Louis Chatelain. Such columns likely include photos.131 Even though tourist literature uses photos as a form of advertisement to attract tourists, it also participates willynilly in fulfilling the function of a visual education of colonial space and landscape. The photos of Roman sites generate meanings that signify the region as a continuous unit, archaeologically, historically, and politically in the past and thus in the present. The semiotic status of the photos within the narrative of tourism changes drastically. Within a guide or within a press narrative, the photo ceases to be just an evidence of a reality, or a referential photo, or a text on its own.132 The photo exists within the narrative of tourism as a visual citation of an intertextual narrative, part of its fabric. Yet within these narratives, the photos appear natural, familiar, and a déjà vu. It is as if the tourist is spared the task of interpreting the photos.133 The narrative of tourism does the interpreting for him and makes the promise of a visual experience that will increase his cultural capital. His reading of the narrative of tourism only confirms his civilizational beliefs. For after all the tourist is a citizen already schooled in “Western civilization,” already familiar with the national historical narrative; he is already the product of a colonial education. Therefore, he is already familiar with the place of Rome in the French national narrative. Now he can better and more concretely connect Rome to France, the past to the present, use to pleasure, science to tourism, consciously or not – it is just like the air he breathes. The photo is undoubtedly a means of visual education. The narrative of tourism makes him that promise. In so promising, it contributes to the shaping of the geographical imaginary of the reader, whether a future tourist or not, whether a Frenchman or not. Archaeology is an esoteric discipline. However, taken up by the tourist genre, it becomes accessible to the

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et de la Tunisie, 1906. Jacqueton, Bernard, and Gsell, Guides-Joanne. Algérie et Tunisie. Emile Morinaud, “L’organisation du tourisme en Algérie,” Les Annales coloniales November 1921: 1–2. J. J. Desmettre, “Les ruines en Tunisie,” Les Annales coloniales November 1921: 3–4. Louis Chatelain, “Le tourisme archéologique au Maroc,” Les Annales coloniales November 1921: 5–6. Pierluigi Basso Fossali and Maria Giulia Dondera, Sémiotique de la photographie. Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2012. Ibid., p. 25.

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ordinary person and thus participates in the formation of his conception of space – the national one as well as the imperial one. After all, imagining one is not possible without imagining the other. Produced and reproduced separately, selectively, and strategically, photos of archaeological traces were also used in atlases in a complex semiotics where narratives seem to make them intelligible while at the same time they serve the persuasive goals of the narratives. Archaeological photos were also produced in albums and perhaps most importantly for the topic at hand, in newspapers. This is to say that archaeological traces entered the very domain of the public, of the everyday, and of the ordinary, in this age of technological productivity, to use an expression of Walter Benjamin.134 After 1880, “appearances” were recorded “as faithfully as in a mirror.”135 Gisèle Freund argues that photography emerged with the bourgeoisie and that with Louis Philippe I, photography was put at the service of “national sentiments, patriotism, and the veneration of the ruling family.”136 But the power of the photograph seems somehow to exceed the power of its referent, the object to which it owes its existence. Benjamin suggests that sculptures and architecture are more “readily apprehensible” in a photo than in real life.137 He is describing, of course, what was then painting’s main function, the portrait. But one may also suggest that photography ventured into landscape art, sculpture, architecture, and archaeology to be at the service of capitalism – to subject art to capitalist utility. In fact, soon it was to be discovered that sculpture and architecture too could more easily be apprehensible in photos than in real life.138 Photography could amplify reality and thus render science (archaeology) more real, offering a more objective vantage point for scientific application. Albums about the region, including Morocco, still uncolonized,

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137

Walter Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000, pp. 274–298. Ibid., p. 283. Gisèle Freund, La photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle: essai de sociologie et d’esthétique. Paris: La Maison des amis des Livres. A. Monnier, 1936, p. 84. See also Freund, Photographie et société. Paris: Seuil, 1974. Benjamin, “Little History of Photography,” p. 290. 138 Ibid.

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were circulating among the French public, highlighting archaeological remains.139 These photos served to shape the colonial imaginary of an entire generation when turned into postcards, as at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 held in Paris.140 A postcard is, of course, an image in and of itself, separate from any visible narrative save for the title (i.e., “photo de Volubilis”). However, like maps, photos are also images that are rarely readable without narrative. Thus the many photos of Volubilis on postcards carry with them their own narratives. For the French, Volubilis was not only a city to be compared to Pompeii, but it was the “Moroccan Pompeii.”141 These postcards indicate, by and large, the Latinity (and Christianity) of Morocco, they signal the Roman presence in the region, and most importantly, they are also a form of visual knowledge reflecting colonial power. These photos were, after all, taken, produced, and propagated by the colonial administration. They were commodities for visual consumption in the metropole. Like other types of postcards, archaeological photos were to be sent by European residents and tourists to the metropole as proof of a foreign and exotic reality made familiar.142 It is also important to stress at this point that the archaeological creation of the region was a scientific one – that is, it was made possible, produced, and made real by technologies of colonial power. This creation was propagated, used, consumed, and made available to a grand public who otherwise might find archaeological discourse esoteric. Postcards were undoubtedly an important means of creating realities, but no less important were literary narratives, with greater power to shape views and perceptions in aesthetic ways. Literature has indeed the power (and the means) to make what is absent present, its very discourse becoming a vivid memory. Thus from early on, literature, especially fiction, played an important role in propagating archaeological ideas and images 139

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H. M. P. de la Martinière, Album de 34 photos du Maroc. Paris: Société de Géographie de Paris, 1887. Oulebsir, Les usages du patrimoine, p. 20. Eugène Salesses, “La Pompéi marocaine,” La Géographie (March–April): 240–266. Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

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in canonical French works such as those of Gustave Flaubert143 and Albert Camus,144 and also in popular works of the time by Robert Randau and Louis Bertrand.145 The journalistic discourse itself took on a romanticized narrative about archaeologists, precursors to Indiana Jones. The press often published narratives about these “archaeological heroes” who overcame great obstacles in a hostile environment to conduct “scientific work.” In fact, the narratives about explorers were part of the press culture: “For sometime now all we hear about in Paris is explorers, some are departing, others are arriving.”146 These narratives, though personalized, provide the grand public information about archaeological remains, their significance, and their importance to the nation. The example of Henri de la Martinière, the successor of Tissot in Morocco, is a case in point.147 In press narratives, he is the archaeologist as hero. The model upon which Indiana Jones himself was built,148 he appears a Hollywood man in physique and in deeds, “svelte and blond with persuasive and gentle eyes,”149 “devoting his life to cross endless routes across deserts full of obstacles and hazy nights in the uncharted forests,” “escaping the bullets of the Touareg assassins.”150 At the same time, the press narrative about the hero is informative about archaeological remains, about Rome 143

144

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149

Gustave Flaubert, Salammbô. Paris: Gallimard, 1951. See Said, Orientalism. Also see Lisa Lowe, “The Orient As Woman in Flaubert’s ‘Salammbô’ and ‘Voyage en Orient,’” Comparative Literature Studies 1986 (23)1: 44–58. Albert Camus, Noces. Paris: Chariot, 1945. On Camus and Latinité, see Lorcin, “Rome and France in Africa.” On Louis Bertrand, for example, see his novel Le sang des races. Paris: Ollendorff, 1899. For more discussion of Bertrand, see Peter Dunwoodie, “Colonizing Space: Louis Bertrand’s Algeria in Le Sang des Races and Sur les Routes du Sud,” Modern Language Review 2010 (105)4: 998–1014. Also see Lorcin, “Rome and France in Africa.” Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, La Courneuve, Henri de la Martinière. PAAP100/3, Doc 44. The Courrier de la Presse published numerous narratives about this archaeologist hero. “Tout jeune – trente deux ans à peine – svelte et blond, avec des yeux persuasifs et trés doux, les traits réguliers à peine durcis par deux ans de courses perilleuses au pays brulant des fièvres et des embuscades traitresses.” Ministères des Affaires Etrangères, La Courneuve, Henri de la Martinière. PAAP100/3, Doc 45. See also among other documents 44, 46, 47, and 48–67. See Gananath Obeyesekere on the mythical models, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Ministères des Affaires Etrangères, document 45. 150 Ibid., document 45.

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and its presence, and about the entirety of the country.151 The esoteric narrative of archaeology not only permeates photographs, literary works, and press narratives, but was itself turned into a narrative of Roman history. Its effects – in shaping historical imaginaries that make the invention more tangible, more concrete, and more natural – are thus maximized.152

Conclusion I have dealt just with the narrative of archaeology, or of archaeology as knowledge, in order to show how this specialized knowledge that refers to concrete remains and material traces, small and big, is turned into an important means by which colonial meanings are bestowed on a colony. I have avoided the functionalist approach that seeks to understand how knowledge justifies colonial rule and how it is harnessed as power to control and subdue. Instead, I wanted to stress, given the topic at hand, that knowledge, as a system of meaning, and ultimately as a system of colonial culture, was deployed in a systematic way as part of the technology of modernity, to transform and to create, but also to destroy, to conceal, and eventually to invent new realities. Archaeology was able to reveal (or one might say, create), on the ground and in discourse, the “Western,” “European,” and “French” essence that makes this “foreign” land a “home” land. The process deployed had already been applied with marvelous effect in France itself to transform entire areas and regions, into entities that are inseparable from the larger imagined entity called France.153 In the process of this invention, monuments were destroyed, languages were annihilated, lives were changed, and peoples were transformed. As Eugen

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Ibid., document 44 of Le Courrier de la Press (n.d.) titled “Une mission archéologique. – Fouilles au Maroc. – Difficultés de l’exploration, le fanatisme.” For instance, it is the subject of “Jugurtha” that was proposed as a theme for a competition of high school students by the academy of Ardennes that shows how a fourteen-year-old, Arthur Rimbaud, internalized the history of Rome with its racial dynamics. See his poem on Jugurtha in Oeuvres complètes. Paris: Pléiade, 1963, pp. 18–24. For an examination, see Enid Rhods, “Under the Spell of Africa: Poems and Letters of Arthur Rimbaud Inspired by the Dark Continent,” French Review 1971 (44)2: 20–28. Bras and Todd, L’invention de la France.

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Weber puts it, this constituted “a white’s man’s burden of francophonie, whose first conquests were to be right at home.”154 For the case at hand, I aimed to show the acts of creation that are also at the same time acts of destruction. As Altekamp writes, in the case of Libya, “excavations represent a destructive form of intervention.”155 Archaeology not only was carried out, from beginning to end, against a land in an act of total aggression, but it was also carried out as systematic destruction: destruction resulting, we are told, from mistakes of soldiers turned archaeologists, but also from other mistakes, one can assume, resulting from the intentional annihilation, by the same soldiers, of that which does not fit the system of preference. Even when archaeology was professionalized, as we saw with Gsell, archaeology, like other modes of modern knowledge, also eliminated other archaeological possibilities in order to articulate and/or reinforce “visual ideological expression,” to use again an expression of Altekamp’s.156 Part of visualizing the ideological expression is precisely the existence of an archaeological discourse about the region in the form of science. Local populations, as has so often been told, showed no interest in these ruins and sometimes even contributed to their destruction.157 On the ground, archaeologists created a system of preference where the rule of relevance was the code: anything (or at least almost anything) that was not Roman (or not perceived as such), that was not Christian (or not perceived as such), and that was not Greek (or not considered as such) took secondary or no importance at all. Historians

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Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976, p. 37. Stefan Altekamp, “Italian Colonial Archaeology in Libya 1912–1942,” in Archaeology under Dictatorship, ed. Michael L. Galaty and Charles Watkinson. Boston: Springer, 2004, pp. 55–71 at p. 56. Ibid., p. 58. The existence of these ruins centuries after the end of Roman rule testifies rather to the fact that there was an effort of preservation or at the very least, an effort to not destroy. However, for all the archaeological excavation of colonial archaeologists, destruction was part of this process. See Michael Greenhalgh, The Military and Colonial Destruction of the Roman Landscape of North Africa, 1830–1900. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Also see Effros, Incidental Archaeologists.

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have dealt with the destruction of Roman remains, especially the ones deemed less relevant or less aesthetically worthy.158 The destruction was massive.159 If Roman traces were objects of destruction, there must have been far more significant destruction of those archaeological traces that were not Roman. They were less valued because they existed outside the colonial system of reference and preference. The region, however, is defined less by this absence than by the presence made more visible by excavations and by discourse. It is this discourse I opted to analyze to show processes of transformation and creation, the end result of which is a geopolitical area defined by its Roman past and by its present remains. These have given the area, both its geographical and cultural limits and its geographical and cultural continuities. If Libya seems to be a poor parent of the region, it is because it does not fully possess some of these fundamental elements. Its Roman archaeology, then understudied, was present, but somehow the Sahara disconnected it from the region and connected it to Egypt. The point here is that what was laid bare, what was excavated, but also what was narrated created the colonial webs of significance that gave the region a unity and a face remarkably like that of Rome, and for that reason alone, also like France. All of these colonial excavations of objects and words made the region not only perceived as one single geographical unit, even today, but also perceived as part of the metropole, more than Spain, Italy, and definitively more than West Africa. But the “Middle Eastern part” is also part of the perception, the way Carthage was part of the region. But today this is deemed less important by francophone elites and totally refused by Amazigh activists. As the historiographic state turned Algeria into a French territory, it opened up discursive possibilities for a greater colonial territory with its own coherence, logic, and continuity, the same that is now called the Maghreb. In fact, the imperialist nature of the historiographic state deeply affected ethnographic and linguistic practices in Morocco and beyond in ways that make it difficult to speak of an ethnographic state, as may be done for Great Britain in India.160 If there was indeed an ethnographic state in Morocco, it was undoubtedly tributary to the 158

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Effros, Incidental Archaeologists, pp. 78–108. Also see Altekamp, “Italian Colonial Archaeology in Libya.” Greenhalgh, Military and Colonial Destruction of the Roman Landscape. Effros, Incidental Archaeologists. Dirks, “The Ethnographic State.”

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historiographic state in Algeria, and thus helped to shape colonial scholarship in the region and to construct the entirety of the region discursively in such ways as these constructions appear quasi natural to researchers even today. In other words, the discursive creation of the region, its cognitive reconfiguration, its cartographic contours, its system of names, became a real geographic creation whose configuration is imposed, by the power of discursive representation, as an unquestionable reality. Behind this is the positivist idea that realities exist outside of us, that they are not constructions of our mind. We tend to forget that is what they are. But as long as we forget that, the created reality becomes real.

3

Language, Race, and Territory

In the nineteenth century, history as a discipline proved itself of crucial importance in creating national identities, and imperial ones as well. The hegemony of the historiographic state not only touched Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia but also reached beyond their borders to Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa. Despite, or rather because of, the work of historical narratives to create the connections and disconnections that would invent and isolate the area of the Maghreb as distinct, other modes of modern knowledge were also highly necessary. Colonial agents required various technologies of power to account for the immediate social life spread out before their eyes – to see it, to articulate it, to substantiate it, and to validate it. One mode of knowledge put in use to account for the colonial present was more concrete, more pragmatic, and even more scientific than history; this was sociology, broadly understood to include practically all the domains of what we today call social science.1 It was understood as a science of customs and manners, of language and communication. It had already been harnessed in Algeria; it became instrumental in Morocco and in the rest of Africa. Race became a key concept for understanding societies and their development. For this reason, it also became a structuring principle of historical narratives. The new science, sociology, tackled race in different ways, especially at a time when colonial administrations were struggling to identify, categorize, and manage the “native population.” Sociology was the science of the concrete, the identifiable, the tangible, and in short of the social world in the colony. Small wonder that sociology tackled the question of race not to solve it as an 1

This was also sociology in the context of the Durkheimian school, an “imperialist science” that covers society in the present and the domain of history itself. See Lucette Valensi, “Le Maghreb vu du Centre: Sur sa place dans l’école sociologique française,” in Connaissances du Maghreb, ed. Jean-Claude Vatin. Paris: CNRS, 1984, pp. 227–247.

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intellectual problem but as a political problem, and even as a geopolitical one as well. Sociology also tackled the problem of population in terms of language, and therefore altered the conception of race. What do people speak? Who speaks what, and what is the relation of their speech to who they are and where they are? These were among the key questions that colonials in several parts of the African continent posed and tackled from several angles. If missionaries tackled the issue of language as an issue of the church, military officers, public servants, and colonial researchers tackled it for the colonial state, to enable the state’s functioning, and to create parts within a whole and invent a whole out of parts. It is this process that I examine in this chapter by looking at the role language played in defining the concept of race – that is, the concept of the colonial populations and their place on the general colonial map. Since the examination of language, as we shall see, is also an examination of linguistic and racial localities, I also look at how this examination isolated specific spaces for specific racial populations, and how the isolation of these specific pieces of space created larger linguistic and racial spaces that coincide, more or less, with the cartographic and archaeological creations we previously examined.

Race, Not from a Distance The theories of race put forward by Arthur de Gobineau and that dominated Europe and survived beyond the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century appear clear and clear-cut. These offer views on human diversity as well as on human inequality. The world of Gobineau is inhabited by humans and human beasts. These last possess “the shared structure of the monkey” with the West African race. Yet, as beastly as they appear to him from a distance, he sees the inhabitants of the New World, from an even further distance, as “absolutely hideous.”2 He prefers what is closest to him, what is most familiar, his fellow Europeans, whom he places at the peak of the racial hierarchy: Not only are these peoples more beautiful than the rest of mankind, which is I confess, a pestilent congregation of ugliness; not only they had the glory of 2

Arthur Gobineau, Inequality of Human Races. New York: H. Fertig, 1967, p. 107.

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giving the world such admirable types as Venus, an Apollo, and the Farnese Hercules; but also there is a visible hierarchy of beauty established from ancient times even among themselves, and in this natural aristocracy the Europeans are the most eminent, by their grace of outline and strength of muscular development.3

Yet the racial world of Gobineau is not binary, even if it seems so. Between the first group of humans and the second group of beastly men he finds another group that shares no physical or moral qualities with either. It is a third group, a product of intermixing. This is “the Semite race,” a mixture of White and Black, a living warning of the danger of mixing and how it creates a monstrosity, a human anomaly. Transcending the racial binary does not make Gobineau offer a complex picture of human diversity or allow him to nuance his views. On the contrary, it is this category of a “hybrid race” that makes the theory of Gobineau dangerous. As Claude Lévi-Strauss notes, it is not the idea of racial diversity that was problematic, it is rather the idea of degeneration at the heart of it.4 The idea of the danger of intermixing, as forcefully articulated by Gobineau, was largely espoused by colonials, probably before his birth. In the colony of Algeria, not only was the racial diversity astonishing, but intermixing itself was widely practiced among people from different tribal, regional, and even religious affiliations. Here, the demographic condition was complex and diverse, and it posed serious challenges to the easy, clear-cut theories of race that dominated Europe, such as those of Gobineau. Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited Algeria in 1841, noted “a prodigious mélange of races and customs: Arabs, Kabyles, Moors, Negro, Mahonais [sic], and French.5 Each of these races that agitate together seem to be in a space much too narrow to contain it, [each] speaks a language, wears [specific] clothing, and has different morals.”6 This racial diversity was also noted around the same time, in 1843, by Louis-Adrien Berbrugger. He viewed the country as inhabited mostly by a “Semite race.” This “Semite race” is itself diverse; it is 3 4 5

6

Ibid., pp. 107–108. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Race et histoire. Paris: UNESCO, 1952. Mahonais may be only a typo for the term Mahomais, a variation of the French term Mahometans – that is, Muslims. But why would Tocqueville consider them a race? The term “race” may have been used loosely to mean also “type.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres, vol. 5. Paris: Gallimard, 1951, p. 191.

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made of Jews, Turks, Moors, Coloughli [Kouloughlis], Berbers, and Arabs. Berbrugger gives a description of each. These “racial types” are not equal morally or even physically, and some of them are astonishingly diverse, such as the Turks.7 Racial representation constructed these populations as different biologically (and consequently morally), as antagonistic to one another, and as biologically, intellectually unequal – and all of them are inferior in their relations to Europeans. However, what is interesting about this early racial representation is the diversity of populations it shows. And maybe the reality was even more diverse than Tocqueville and Berbrugger could imagine. Yet, over the following decade, in the 1850s, this racial diversity quickly disappeared – and forever – to be replaced by one dichotomy, of Arabs versus Berbers. The revival of the military institution of the Arab Bureau in 1939 was instrumental in creating a new figuration of Algeria and its population. This same racial model was later imported to Morocco by the avatar institution of the Arab Bureau, called Service des Affaires Indigènes.8 In the work of Eugène Daumas, CésaireAntoine Fabre, Charles Richard, and Adolphe Hanouteau, to mention just the most authoritative, the Berber emerged as a new category of the colonial discourse, with a pure racial identity, a pure language, a pure territory, and with qualities that set him in total opposition against the Arabs. In colonial narratives of the Arab Bureau are Arabs on one hand and Berbers on the other. The two groups are perfectly distinct from each other, as if centuries of coexistence did not cause any intermixing and thus any redefinition of their racial identity. The Berber was constituted as the only original inhabitant of the land, with a white skin color, an indifference to Islam, and an open animosity to the Arab. The Arab was constituted as an invader, domineering, dark skinned, and fanatical.9 Representations that contradict this one, such as those of Ismael Urbain and Edmond Pellissier de Reynaud, were marginalized and even eliminated as inaccurate or fallacious.10 7

8

9 10

For a more detailed analysis of Louis-Adrien Berbrugger’s racial representations of the population of Algeria, see Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Notes on the (Post) Colonial in the Maghreb,” Critique of Anthropology 2009 (3): 324–344. See Vincent Monteuil, “Les bureaux arabes au Maghreb,” Esprit 1961 (300)11: 575–606. See Hannoum, “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.” On Ismael Urbain, see Hannoum, “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.” Also see Edmund Burke III, “Two Critics of French Rule in Algeria: Ismael

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This “biological” conception of race was important and can also be seen in the work of those colonials used to separate the frontiers of the Sahara from the region of the Maghreb. The biological conception was easy to use to separate the population living at the border between the region and the Sahara, since it entailed the color of skin. Thus, in 1916, Paul Marty, a high officer who had long served in Algeria, defined the category: We can transfer a Moor from Trarza to Kiffa, north of Adrar or in the Azawad, without him feeling out of place; the event justifies the thesis. First, because we find many Moors living out of their factions in faraway tribes without the intent to ever come back or [at least] not before a long period of time. We do not find these conditions in a black country. This also forces us to observe that the nomadization of razzia [raids], which are the very life of the Moors, takes them everywhere in the Sahara without a concern for the artificial frontiers we were able to establish.11

Thus, even as the Sahara geographically distinguishes western Africa (pays des noirs) from the region, it also reinforces the racial separation between the two: The Moorish Sahara all the way to the high Adrar was populated by an undetermined black population, by the name of Bafour in the Moorish traditions, until the end of the tenth century. They were expulsed during the eleventh century by the grand movement of political and religious expansion that made Berber tribes (Lemtouna and Sanhaja) leave their zone of habitat (situated then between Segua and Sous). This transformation is known in history by the name of the Almoravid Empire.12

However, in a region with an astonishing diversity of colors, how was blackness constructed in relation to other people with different shades? What is black in the understanding of colonials of this period? Who is Black? How is black, black? How much black is black? ÉmileFélix Gautier provides the answer, summing up the views of colonial anthropologists:

11

12

Urbain and Frantz Fanon,” in Franco-Arab Encounters, ed. Carl Brown and Mathew Gordon. Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1996, pp. 329–344. Paul Marty, “Considérations sur l’unité des pays maures de l’Afrique occidentale française,” Annuaire et mémoires du comite d’Etudes Historiques et scientifiques 1916, p. 263. Ibid.

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Individually, the Negro is well-known. Anthropologists have made a catalogue of his characteristics: black skin, flat nose, thick lips, salient jaws, wolf-like hair “like pepper seeds,” [sic] well-built body, muscular, elegant, bronze statue like, etc. Of course, this schematic picture has countless variations, but does not prevent the unity of the type. Everybody easily pictures a Negro. It is one of the most individualized races that exist. These characteristics are precisely more pronounced in West Africa than in eastern Africa which is more mixed.13

From this racial point of view, West Africa is more African than the continent’s eastern part, where the Negro has mixed with other groups. Blackness in this modern view is what characterizes Africa most. West Africa is more black, more preserved, and thus more authentic. This also means the African continent itself was not invented as a homogeneous continent, but rather as blocs that obey the rules of geopolitical interests, including their racial criteria, with blackness as the continent’s authentic essence. Blackness itself has become an index of this new continent’s invention, and blackness is an index of the most elementary primitiveness. Wherever there is less blackness, there is mixing, and wherever there is an absence of blackness, there is a presence of intruders and conquerors. For in the racial world, races are not only exclusive, but their relation is always one of domination. One also finds this idea in the work of Berbrugger. The Jews are dominated by the Muslims, hence their submissive demeanor and their deceitfulness. The Turks dominate, hence their honesty even when they practice trade and commerce. The Arabs dominate the countryside, hence their noble postures, and so forth. The Berbers are dominated, hence their disdain for the Arabs. The concept of racial domination is undoubtedly modern. In the work of Ibn Khaldûn, by contrast, domination is the result of tribal solidarity; it is the presence of the factors of hasab (tribal nobility), nasab (kin genealogy), ʿadad (number, size), and dîn (religious affiliation). It is also a contingency.14 It is born only to die. Humans are subject to the rules of history, not to biological rules that make some people inherently superior and others inherently inferior. Yet, in the construction of the region, the idea of racial hierarchy has undoubtedly survived colonialism. One finds its dynamics playing out in the 1840s between Arabs and Berbers and 13 14

Gautier, L’Afrique noire occidentale, p. 85. Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary.”

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between Arabs and Berbers and Blacks. The rest of the groups Tocqueville and Berbrugger noticed have disappeared from the demographic landscape. It does not mean they no longer exist in real life, it only means they are no longer seen by those whose views are shaped by the long, powerful colonial discourse. As a consequence, racial diversity is no longer the object of discourse – colonial or national.

Language and Race One of the characteristics of the discourse of modernity is its constant self-critique, self-questioning, and thus self-correction to the point that such discourse appears as a system of truths as well as a system of errors. This critique, always carried out from within and always rejecting those coming from without, allows it to not only readapt and reform but also to maintain itself and thus to be preserved from epistemic destruction. Colonial modernity, a stage and a turn in the history of modernity, has always deployed itself not only as a curious intellectual pursuit in search of truth but also as a discursive practice in search of error – its own as well as that of others. The discourse of race that emerged full-fledged as a discourse of colonial modernity is a good example. This discourse has always presented itself as a discourse of multiple truths about what race is and what human diversity is made of. By the turn of the end of the twentieth century, it seemed willing to abandon the primordially given ideology of race in favor of a new, emerging discourse on human collectivities. Racial thinking was shifting from being biological to being linguistic. The study of language, not philology, and not as interested in the etymology of words so much as the structures of their phrases, was revealed to be an important turn in modernity in this colonial period. Language, then, was revealed to show movements of people, patterns of migration, and interchange at the intersections of borders, as well as the mental and cognitive structures of people. It was thus important for the study of human groups, their mixing, their relation to one another in terms of domination and subordination, or in terms of trade and exchange, and the values of their civilizations (or lack thereof). Therefore, such study could not but alter the conception of race as biological. The development of historical linguistics in Europe, with the great discovery of language families, had significant impact on the concept of race. By the end of the nineteenth century, one clearly notices not the

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replacement of race with language, but rather the value assigned to language in the study of populations in ways that unsettle the concept of race without, however, making it obsolete. Race and racial thinking continued to be instrumental beyond the nineteenth century and even beyond the twentieth century, as much research on race in France and beyond has demonstrated. But language was added to the definition of a racial group. And even as the concept of race separates groups of humans (a separation that presupposes hierarchy and conflict), the definition of a language too presupposes boundaries and opposition to other languages.15 In Africa – save for its northern part but not its borders – the study of language was mainly carried out by missionaries, whose enterprise had as a goal conversion and the translation of the Bible into African languages. Their study appeared worthwhile and rigorous to the point that there was – and perhaps in the domain of linguistics more than in any other domain – a real exchange and borrowing between, and even a convergence of the enterprise of the church and the secular enterprises of the army and the merchants. There was also greater exchange and borrowing between European nations (or empires) in the domain of linguistics than in any other we now include in the social sciences. This study of language, whether conducted by the church or the army or merchant traders, willingly or unwillingly led to the unsettling of the major question of race in colonial epistemology. Unlike in the rest of Africa (and even in the Levant), where the study of language was chiefly the monopoly of missionaries, in Algeria and beyond in Tunisia and later in Morocco, this study was the chief concern of the armée, and more specifically the Arab Bureau in Algeria and the Affaires Indigènes in Morocco.16 But missionaries were not legion; several (such as Charles de Foucauld and Gustave Huyghe) contributed to the study of language by making dictionaries and grammars.17 In the case of Algeria, a military officer of the Arab Bureau, Adolphe Hanoteau, was a pioneer. He was able to study Kabyle (the style of Berber spoken in eastern Algeria) 15

16

17

Judith Irvine and Susan Gal, “Language Ideology and Language Differentiation,” in Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Politics, and Identities, ed. Paul Krosrity. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, 2000, p. 35. Judith Irvine, “Subjected Words: African Linguistics and the Colonial Encounter,” Language and Communication 2008 (28)4: 323–343. Père G. Huyghe, Dictionnaire Kabyle-Français. Algiers: Adolphe Jourdan, 1901.

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and to write a grammar and a dictionary.18 Most importantly for our case, Hanoteau was also able to map Berber all over Algeria in an attempt to identify a population (or rather race, i.e., Berbers) by location. And in locating Berber, Hanoteau was also identifying where it had been, as he thought, displaced by Arabic.19 However, Hanoteau stresses the novel fact that his map indicates: “This map is not an ethnographic map, it is only designed to show the parts of the Algerian soil where Berber nationality [sic] has lived long enough to conserve its language.”20 He displays a real ethnographic prudence when he maintains that there are Arab tribes that adopted the Berber language while Berber tribes adopted Arabic. Thus, there is a real mixing that constitutes a real challenge for science; Hanoteau warns, “the elements of this mixing can be isolated and classified only after long and detailed studies about which we possess only rudimentary data.”21 In this section, I intend to show how the study of African languages was itself the instrument of creating geographical entities, racial identities, and linguistic units, and that these processes contributed to creating the continent of Africa as it is today, with its northern part in distinct isolation from the rest. We have seen how racial ideologies contributed to this process. We turn now to how language ideologies themselves nuanced, solidified, and confirmed the creation of units versus the whole of the African continent. The perspective of “language ideologies” I espouse here is the same adopted and championed by linguistic scholars such as Judith Irvine and Susan Gal, who argue that “the ways these languages [of Senegal, particularly Fula, Wolof, and Seerer] were identified, delimited, and mapped, the ways their relationships were interpreted, and even the ways they were described in grammar and dictionaries were all heavily influenced by an ideology of racial and national essences.”22 Throughout the nineteenth century, the study of languages was no longer the monopoly of missionaries. Linguistics had achieved autonomy, though not to the level of “scientificity” that would make it a leading science (une science pilote) among the social sciences, with Ferdinand de Saussure. Philologists, lexicographers, military officers, 18

19 22

Adolphe Hanoteau, Essai De Grammaire De La Langue Tamachek’: Renfermant Les Principes Du Langage Parlé Par Les Imouchar’ Ou Touareg. Algiers: Adolphe Jordan, 1896. Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 281. 21 Ibid. Irvine and Gal, “Language Ideology and Language Differentiation,” p. 47.

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geographers, and public servants throughout Europe had accumulated a colossal amount of knowledge about human languages – and not only those of Africans – that they mapped.23 Africa emerged as an area with its own specific languages not found anywhere else. This knowledge may not have had the consensus of linguistics, but it surely contributed to the creation of the continent of Africa itself with its parts and divisions also justified based on linguistic logics. Within the continent, Arabic seemed to dominate the north and only the north. Berber seemed to coexist with it in a relation of subordination despite its “indigenous” status. At the border of the Sahara, both Berber and Arabic dominated other African languages. But Egypt seemed to be a distinct unit with its indigenous language believed to be extinct. Geographically it was connected, as then believed, with Asia, the presence of an Asian language in its territory further reinforcing the belief that Egypt was part of Asia.24 It was an Orientalist arabisant, Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis,25 who wrote the first Berber dictionary (1788) and the first Berber grammar, published posthumously in 1844 at the request of the Société de Geographie with the assistance of the Ministries of War and Commerce.26 The manuscript was handed to the Royal Library by Constantin-François Volney after 1890. Set apart from colonial dictionaries, this one has a different ideology. First, it acknowledges from the outset the intimate connection between Arabic and Berber, in which “all the words pertaining to arts and to religion are borrowed from Arabic.”27 Venture de Paradis continues, “they also borrow from Arabic the epithets they lack.”28 Arabic, which defined the region of the Levant (later called the Middle East) along with Egypt, was the monopoly of metropolitan Orientalists – Silvestre de Sacy and his students.29 It was presumed to be the language spoken by “Arabs” in the region of northern Africa and even at the border of the Sahara. Opinions that Arabic was a Semitic 23

24 25

26

27

See Robert Cust, A Sketch of the Modern Languages of Africa. London: Trubner, 1883. Also see F. W. H. Migeod, The Languages of West Africa, 2 vols. London: Trubner, 1911–1913. There was also another view, that Arabic itself originated in Africa. On Venture de Paradis, see Daniel Reig, Homo Orientaliste. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1988. Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis, Grammaire et dictionnaire abrégés de la langue berbère. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1844. Ibid., p. xviii. 28 Ibid., p. xviii. 29 See Reig’s erudite Homo Orientaliste.

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language originating from Africa were also circulating, but were ignored by Orientalists who studied Arabic in relation to other Semitic languages, especially in the Levant.30 But unlike the ideological vacuum surrounding African languages, Arabic was the focus of an impressive array of language studies (grammars, dictionaries, philological treatises) and a well-developed language ideology difficult to contest even by Orientalists.31 Like these African languages, Arabic was constructed according to a colonial ideology of race and with disregard for both multiculturalism and particularism. In short, Arabic was presumed to be the language of Arabs, and thus an alien language to Africa. But Arabic had already been normalized and institutionalized as a language of civilization. Missionaries had created bilingual dictionaries and textbooks of Arabic grammar.32 Though these were addressed mainly to a French public, and a fortiori, Catholics interested in conversions, secular interests were also manifest in them. Of these, perhaps the most significant was that of making Arabic translatable – that is, transformable – and by the same token of helping the “Orientals interested in learning French.”33 For instance, the dictionary of Jean-Baptist Belot, Dictionnaire-Français-Arabe, excludes and reduces the number of vocabularies pertaining to Islam as a faith and favors “expressions relative to private and social rapports [and] terms specific to administrative and judicial relations.”34 By contrast, Berber had to be constructed, normalized, and institutionalized by colonial powers. In other words, it had to be colonized in ways Arabic could not. By colonized, I mean its construction was done by missionaries and military officers whose racial vision was integral to their views of the language. Berber was constructed as opposed to Arabic, and in a relation of subordination to both Arabic and French. Its makers had a modern, Eurocentric conception of language that made them overlook the specificities, the intermingling of local languages, and the historicity of African languages. This might be contrasted with the medieval, Arabic conception of language, as we find it 30 31

32

33

34

For the African origins of Arabic, see Irvine, “Subjected Words.” See Daniel Reig, “Dictionnaire et idéologie dans la culture arabe,” Studia Islamica 1993 (78): 63–97. See Henri Fleisch, “Les Pères Cuche, Belot et Hava de diconnaires arabes,” Arabica 1963 10(1): 56–63. Jean-Baptist Belot, Dictionnaire-Français-Arabe. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1890, p. v. Ibid., pp. v–vi.

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in the work of Ibn Khaldûn, who offers a much more ethnographic and thus more sociolinguistic conception of language. Ibn Khaldûn used two concepts that may seem synonymous at first, but they are not. One is the concept of lisân (speech); the other is the concept of lughat (language).35 Both lisân and lughat change as a result of the passage of time and the geographical location of a population and its contact with other, non-Arabic speaker communities. For Ibn Khaldûn, lughat is similar to the Saussurian concept of langue; it is langue in abstract, it is virtual. Hence to say “the Arabic language” means the entire system of signs that constitute Arabic: Lughat ahl almaghrib wa amsâruh, lughat ahl-machriq wa amsâruh, lughat ahl alandalus wa amsâruh (“the language of the people of the Maghrib and its provinces, the language of the people of the Levant and its provinces, the language of the people of Andalus and its provinces”).36 Lughat is the language spoken and written by a jîl (generation) of Arabs (or Berbers, but Ibn Khaldûn does not seem to have known any Berber language despite a few comments on pronunciations here and there). The language of science, of sharia, in short of Islamic learning, is the language of the Quran; it is what Ibn Khaldûn calls the language of Mudar.37 However, language for Ibn Khaldûn seems to be a living thing, not a static or fixed object, as in the work of Arab grammarians and philologists. By contrast lisân is what people speak, it is the actualization of lughat, it is lughat in practice, it is the Saussurian concept of language – it is Arabic in speech and in writing. As a living thing, people’s speech (language in context) too is subject to the law of change caused by the passing of time and of successions of jîl. This is what Ibn Khaldûn calls al-buʿd ʿani al-lisân (“distance from the tongue”).38

35 37

38

Ibn Khaldûn, Muqaddima, pp. 252–258. 36 Ibid, p. 303. Mudar is the language of a larger pre-Islamic tribe that the Prophet Mohamed belonged to. Therefore it is a pre-Islamic language that constitutes the language of the Quran, and thus it is considered the Arabic language par excellence. In modern times, Taha Hussein, himself a scholar of Ibn Khaldûn, also questioned the purity of this language not only in subsequent periods closer to Islam, but even in the time of Islam itself: “Who can claim that the Quran used all vocabularies (alfâz) that were common and of familiar [use] among the Mudar [tribes] at the time˙ of the Prophet?” Taha Hussein, Fî al-adab al-jâhili. Cairo: Hindawi Press, [1926] 2012, p. 222. Ibn Khaldûn, Muqaddima, p. 257.

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Ibn Khaldûn also identifies a major factor of transformation: ikhtilât. We could call this “language contact,” using a modern linguis˙ tic concept. A lughat (language) changes in practice – that is, when it becomes lisân (speech) – and comes in contact with other forms of speech (in this case, non-Arabic ones). This change, for the case of Arabic in Ibn Khaldûn’s time, is a consequence of time (buʿd) and of contact (ikhtilât) with non-Arabness (ʿujmâʾ): al-buʿd ʿani al-lisân ˙ innamâ huwa bi mukhâlatati al-ʿujma (“the distance from the [Arabic] ˙ language is because of mixing with non-Arabic”).39 And the result is a malakat mumtazija (a hybrid habitus).40 Thus the differences among languages in his time are due to contact with other languages. Again, Ibn Khaldûn identifies three types of lisân (speech) in his time. One is in Ifriqiya and the Maghrib, where contact with Berbers was so strong that Berber “dominated the Arabic tongue” and resulted in the birth of another language, “a hybrid language” (lughat mumtazija).41 Likewise, in the Levant (mashriq), the lughat got so corrupted that it became another language as a result of contact with the Persians and the Turks. Similarly, because of their contact with Galicians and Francs, the people of Andalusia have another specific language, lughat ukhra.42 These formations of the fourteenth-century scholar do not express any of the linguistic purity found in colonial understanding of local languages. Also, they describe a complex linguistic reality not reflected in the work of Arab medieval grammarians and colonial lexicographers. They express the viewpoint of a man who lived in the Andalus, in the Maghreb, and in the Levant, not as a grammarian, but as a sociologist very interested in the phenomenon of change: change of dynasties, of tribes, of nations, of languages, of religious practices, and so forth. If this was the linguistic reality in fourteenth-century Ifriqiya and the Maghreb, by the nineteenth century, the language contact must have become more profound, more diverse, more intermixed in both Arabic and Berber. Five centuries must have introduced more changes in the grammar, syntax, and lexicon of these spoken languages. Also, time seems hopeless in eradicating all the additions a language acquires from its old contacts. Communities of speakers (then as now) not only spoke one or the other, but they spoke one and the other all at once. Modern Berber is profoundly Arabized, the same way that “Maghrebi Arabic” 39

Ibid.

40

Ibid.

41

Ibid.

42

Ibid.

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is deeply Berberized (in its vocabulary as well as in its syntax). In the geography of language, in the area extending from central Morocco to Libya, there are varieties of ways of speaking that were (and are) distinct from one another. Yet these differences were sacrificed in the attempt to construct Berber as a single language. Arabic too was constructed as such. In these constructions, it is not similarities that define Berber or Arabic, but differences that make them opposed to each other. Modern linguistics stressed difference over similitude. Berber emerged then as a separate language (despite its impressive varieties) opposed to Arabic (also despite its impressive varieties). Language ideology set them at opposite poles, in accordance with the ideology of domination that constitutes an epistemic principle of nineteenth-century race studies. Even in one country, say Morocco, the spoken “Arabic” is different from region to region and even from ethnic group to ethnic group. To argue that spoken Arabic in Morocco is one but not the other is to produce the same myth of the purity of Arabic – or of Berber. Colonial dictionaries and grammar treaties, from those of Adolphe Hanoteau in Algeria to those of Henri Laoust in Morocco, treat varieties of Berber as “dialects” or even “subdialects,” two concepts absent in the ethnographic lexicon of Ibn Khaldûn.43 For Ibn Khaldûn, these are languages in their own right. He does not devalue them as “dialects,” but, according to his conception of language (different from those of Arab lexicographers and grammarians interested in linguistic norms), these are languages that change over time as a result of contact with other languages. There was (and still is) a mixing of languages that includes forms of Arabic, forms of Berber, of Turkish, and even of languages that are no longer spoken (in a distinct way). For instance, both Punic and Latin left an imprint on the spoken languages of the population of the region. But the colonial ideology of racial difference made Berber a pure language distinct from all others, particularly Arabic, despite the fact that on a practical level those who speak Arabic in the region also use Berber’s grammatical forms and also borrow from its lexicon. (And, of course, vice versa.) From a Whorfian perspective, such mixing also implies the fact that 43

Emile Loaust, Etudes sur le dialecte berbère du Chenoua. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1912. Also by Loaust see Mots et choses berbères: notes de linguistique et d’ethnographie, dialectes du Maroc. Paris: Challamel, 1920.

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Amazigh, or the “Algerian dialect” of Berber, contains hybrid categories of thought. Colonial linguists constructed Berber as a single language that crosses northern Africa from central Morocco to Libya. But the various “Berber languages” are as distinct from one another as Hebrew from Arabic and as Arabic from Aramaic. Whereas Arabic remained an expertise of Orientalists (and especially in the metropole, including students of deSacy), military officers and public servants seem to have found a new unexplored territory: the study of Berber and African studies.44 In the case of Algeria, the study of language by itself did not unsettle the question of race; if anything, it reinforced this, as with the work of Adolphe Hanouteau, Aristide Horace Letourneux, and Emile Masqueray.45 But it was the confrontation between the study of language and the study of race that created new understandings of both. Arabic was already the monopoly of Orientalists; with students of deSacy, it remained limited to the domain of philology with a focus on major Islamic texts.46 The study of Berber, meanwhile, was a new field emerging from the conquest of Algiers and pioneered by officers of the Arab Bureau. With the founding of the University of Algiers, the study of regional languages found its place, given the importance of languages in defining races. By the turn of the twentieth century, Gautier and Edmund Doutté had published the results of a linguistic investigation carried out in Algeria, a geography of Berber entitled Enquête de la dispersion de la langue berbère en Algérie.47 In colonial discourse on language, Berber is always positioned toward Arabic in a relation of antagonism, with Arabic dominating Berber. Arabic too does not exist in the region without this relation. And this relation provides a linguistic identification to the region. In Egypt, such a relation does not exist. Arabic reigns supreme without the linguistic antagonism of another local language. The study by Gautier and Doutté was commissioned by the governor-general of Algeria, as were many colonial studies about the region. The aim set by the governor was “to fix as exactly as possible 44

45

46 47

See René Basset, Rapport sur les études berbères, éthiopiennes et arabes 1887–1891. Woking: Oriental University Institute, 1892. Adolph Hanoteau and Aristide Letourneux, Kaybles et les coutumes kabyles. Paris: Challamel, 3 vols. 1893. For the history of the Arabic language in France, see Reig, Homo Orientalist. Émile-Félix Gautier and Edmond Doutté, Enquête de la dispersion de la langue berbère en Algérie. Algiers: Adolphe Jourdan.

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the regions where [the] Berber language is spoken.”48 The declared utility of this study was to identify “linguistic frontiers” and to see “if Berber declines and in what proportion.”49 The result was clearly a cartography of the Berber language, a language characterized as proto-Semite. The study is inscribed in the linguistic tradition Hanouteau pioneered. From the outset, one notices a change in the analytical language of Gautier and Doutté: the population of Algeria is not labeled in racial terms as Berbers and Arabs, but in ethno-linguistic terms as berberophones (Berber speakers) and arabophones (Arab speakers).50 However, the authors do not distinguish between berberophones and Berbères non berberophones; this would be “absurd” in their view since “the question of race is something distinct from the question of language.”51 Hence this important conclusion for the question of race in colonial Algeria: “It is impossible to distinguish Berbers and Arabs amongst the Arab speakers.”52 However, the authors do not draw the opposite (and logical) conclusion, which would be the impossibility of distinguishing Arabs and Berbers among Berber speakers. Such a conclusion is a slippery slope for colonial authors, one that would lead to a rejection of the race theory upon which the entire colonial ideology was founded and that uses the Arab versus Berber duality as one of its structuring principles. If language is determinant, there are only linguistic communities, not racial communities – a thesis close to the idea advocated much later, in 1952, by Claude Lévi-Strauss that there are only cultural communities, not racial communities, since language itself, like culture, is always not only hybrid but also changing and shifting.53 After all, colonial reason had limits and constraints beyond which it could not venture, at least not without colonial consequences. Yet the authors could still argue that: We do not trust in any way these arbitrary distinctions between Arabs and Berbers. Language aside, there is no criterion that is likely to serve as the basis for this distinction.54

And in the footnote, the authors add that “the anthropological distinction between Arabs and Berbers is a question under consideration.”55 Gautier sums up the result of this research again in a single-author publication in 1913 under the title: “On the Dispersion 48 53

Ibid., p. 3. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., p. 5. Lévi-Strauss, Race et histoire. 54 Ibid.

51

Ibid., p. 8, footnote 1. Ibid.

55

52

Ibid.

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of Berber Language.”56 He first makes the distinction between Berber and Arabic, but draws attention to a conflict that is seemingly linguistic but is in fact racial, in his view: Berber language has no unity, no literature, no grammar, no dictionary, and no alphabets. And there is no official measure in the world that can give this patois what it needs. That it is not in a position to combat Arabic, which is a real language, this does not need to be explained. The strange phenomenon is that the combat that started dozens of centuries before, is far from its end. This is testimony to how long it takes for social reactions to occur in this country.57

Gautier relies on archaeology, especially the work of Stéphane Gsell, his colleague at the University of Algiers, to trace the presence (and absence) of Berber. Berber exists, in his view, in the region corresponding to the frontiers of the Roman Empire (the limes) and beyond it. “The limes left outside of the Empire all the southwestern half of Algeria, the high plateaus of Algiers and Oran with the Saharan Atlas, and even the edge of the Tell of Oran.”58 Arabic, by contrast, exists in the area called “the central Maghreb.” Using statistics, he states that “36 549 indigenes abandoned their Berber language last century. We predict 30 959 others will do the same during the coming century. In our time, Berber lost over 60 000 [speakers] annually.”59 This linguistic struggle for survival is what marks the region, not the race struggle we find in previous narratives such as that of Mercier. But the region, and not only Algeria, is not marked only by the ArabicBerber dichotomy, but most importantly, as with race, the struggle of Berber versus Arabic versus French, with the latter set apart as a language of civilization and progress. French was undoubtedly forcing Arabic to retreat, according to Gautier: French certainly takes vis-à-vis Arabic the position Arabic takes vis-à-vis Berber. Literary Arabic itself is not a tool to sustain the competition with a modern European language. Anyway, it is a dead language, a sort of Latin, the only living language is vulgar Arabic, which takes more and more the form of a patois.60

56

57

Émile-Félix Gautier, “Répartition de la langue berbère en Algérie,” Annales de Geéographie 1913 (22)123: 255–266. Ibid., p. 259. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., p. 257. 60 Ibid., p. 265.

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One can see in this examination, meant initially to locate the Berber language and estimate its retreat in relation to Arabic, that the issue of language is posited in ways that not only further define the region beyond Algeria but also bolster French as the language of modernity (i.e., of progress, science, and civilization). Meanwhile, the question of Arabic in Egypt and by extension of the region to become, after World War I, the Arab Middle East, was posited only briefly in relation to spoken Arabic (ʿâmmiya).61 In the region to soon become the Maghreb, Arabic was posited in relation to Berber as a domineering, oppressive, and exclusive language, and in relation to French as a language of the past that left Arabic with the status of Latin, a dead language. In other words, it is not Arabic itself that defines Algeria and by extension the region to be called the Maghreb, but the complex linguistic relations absent elsewhere – that is, the relation of Arabic to the Berber it dominates and to the French it is in the process of being dominated by. At the same time, the issue of race, even in the discourse of Gautier, cannot be separated from the issue of language, not only because in his treatment he “racializes” both Arabic and Berber, but also because Arabic remains in his discourse the language of Arabs. Arabs imposed their language, the way they also imposed their lifestyle, nomadism, on a population known as Berbers. In the colonial discourse of Gautier and his contemporaries, language is racialized. And given the state of colonial knowledge, it could not be otherwise. This colonial attitude toward Arabic would be used later, with the rise of Arab nationalism in the Levant, to define what an Arab is. In this definition, language was (is) considered a defining feature of an Arab. It is this definition that associates the population of the Maghreb region with the Middle East and would not make an exception of the Berber population since they too are largely Arabic speakers. Here, one may well interrupt and object: I may well understand your attempt at trying to create a connection between race and language and between language and the creation of geographical units. But in trying to do so, you construct a case against colonials by presenting their efforts at making dictionaries, grammar studies, and treatises on language as merely ideological, while you overlook the fact that these 61

Abbas Mahmood Al-Aqqad, “Al-fasiha wa al ʿâmiya,” in Saâ ʿat bayna alkutub. Cairo: [1927] Hindawi, 2014. Taha Hussein, “Al-fasiha wa al ʿâmiya.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCIcx1WsQ9o. Last accessed August 24, 2020.

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efforts saved Berber from loss or at least from further endangerment. In other terms, you disregard their intellectual efforts. Even if their work was in service of colonial ambitions, so what? Every work is in service of a power; one may even say every work is in the service of an ideological case, no matter what, and that includes yours. But the truth of the matter, the one you ignore, is that without colonial scholars and their impressive efforts, these dictionaries, grammars, and linguistic treatises that are “cultural products,” as you say, would not exist. That would be a real loss, wouldn’t it? These same colonial scholars, whether missionaries or military officers – whom you critique as serving geopolitical interests and being involved, by their own research, in the politics of empire – saved the Berber language and even culture, and also restored the pride of the population in the region. Yet, instead of pointing out to us how they have contributed to resuscitating the Berber language (and also other languages in Africa), you say nothing. You also seem to be interested only in those colonials who treated African languages as inferiors. But what about those, such as Jean Dar and JacquesFrançois Roger, whom you do not even mention, yet alone examine how their work offers different views of African languages, views that clearly express so much humanism, and so much respect for those African languages, which are, as they persuasively argue, reflective of a high degree of intelligence and a great aptitude for creativity and thus civilization?62 They too made dictionaries and grammars. And I am sure there are others. But you ignore them to make a better case, don’t you?

Let me now address these objections. The service of colonials to Berber (and generally African oral languages) is questionable, to say the least. There is no doubt that colonial efforts at studying languages and creating written means for them are impressive. It is undoubtedly true that the results of this linguistic research, these same dictionaries and linguistic treaties, are indeed cultural products. However, my goal is to show how language nuanced the concept of race and how the first and the second were harnessed in creating geographical and cultural particularities. But Hanoteau, Gautier, and Laoust were not thinking about saving the language of the Berbers as much as they were thinking about learning these languages themselves in order to facilitate trade, conversion, and giving orders to the “natives” in their own languages. They wanted 62

Jean Dar, Dictionnaire français-wolof et francais-bambara, suivi du dictionnaire wolof-français. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1825. Jacques-François Roger, Recherches philoosphiques sur la langue ouolofe, suivies d’un vocabulaire abreégé français-ouolof. Paris: Dondey-Dupre, 1829.

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to free themselves from linguistic dependency on native interpreters they clearly mistrusted, as Louis -Léon Faidherbe occasionally expressed.63 This objection postulates something highly debatable, which is the idea that the written is superior to the oral, that the written saves and the oral endangers, causing causes loss and disappearance. Nothing is further from the truth. Latin was a highly written language, institutionalized in churches, monasteries, and courts, yet it died. Berber was an oral language, yet by the time of the arrival of the French, populations spread across vast areas spoke the language in ways, of which the written dictionaries and grammars could offer only a reductive glimpse. Even after eleven centuries, Berber languages and cultures were astonishingly alive at the time of the arrival of the French. If they had survived that long, there was no reason they would not have continued to the present. Actually, the life of Berber languages in the region today is still oral almost in totality, and there is no evidence of it waning, and this is not due to colonial dictionaries and grammars, since people in these regions have no access to them and do not even need them to continue practicing their languages the way they have for hundreds of years. The Berber-speaking populations, then and now, did not need the French to have pride in their language and culture. The proof is exactly that these languages and cultures flourished in coexistence, as they took from Arabic as much as “spoken Arabic” took from them, in a process that continues even today. Orality can guarantee the longevity of a language and a culture, while a language’s inscription does not protect it from death. If Berber languages depended on colonial texts to survive, we would have only reduced versions of them. But the richness of these languages today defies the reductionism of colonial dictionaries, grammars, and lexicographic treatises. The point I also want to make is that the efforts of colonials reduced these languages and created relations that did not exist – one with Arabic, assumed to be a hegemonic language, and one with French, presumed to be a superior language. It is these relations that endangered both Arabic and Berber and still do. It is also these relations that continue to linguistically define the Maghreb of the present. My neglect of scholars such as Dar and Roger is justified by the fact that they did not fit the dominant trend 63

See Louis-Léon Faidherbe, Le Sénégal: La France dans l’Afrique occidentale. Paris: Hachette, 1889, p. 569 and passim. The treason of native interpreters was a real concern for Faidherbe, who wanted France to train its own interpreters, “natives,” to be dedicated to the “cause of France.”

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and had a marginal position in the social and political fields of their time.64 As schoolteachers, their linguistic discourse could not have the effect of the linguistic discourse of the governor of Senegal, the same Faidherbe whose work I examine now. But there is always a doxa, constituted for political, cultural, and economic reasons, and there is the marginal, the unacceptable, the heretical discourse whether about race or whatever topic. The more serious the topic, the more robust is the doxa. I am interested in the discourse that participates in creating the racial vision of language congruent with dominant racial ideologies. I am interested in the doxa, with its power dynamics that create social realities. I am interested in the marginal only when it threatens the doxa – that is, when it has effects. I am also interested in those linguistic discourses that created the connections between regions and those that created disconnections between others, but not with the discourses that were not part of this project. In linguistics too are dominant trends and marginal ones, the orthodox and heretical. The Maghreb, whose construction I am examining, was constructed by a hegemonic discourse that survives to this day. As Joseph Errington put it once, “actions of colonial agents outran their own intent, and colonial linguistic work likewise had uses and effects beyond those foreseen or intended by its authors.”65 Nevertheless, if language was able to create strong connections, it was also able to “naturally” separate the region of northern Africa from the rest of Africa. Arabic was present, as a language in use, only in northern Africa and the Middle East. For the rest of Africa, it is absent or almost so. It can be found at the border as a result of an Arab and/or Berber push for domination in Black Africa. Yet Africa and its disconnection was not only defined by this absence but also, like race, with which it has become now associated, by the presence of “African languages.”

64

65

On the contribution of these two authors, see Judith Irvine, “Mastering African Languages: The Politics of Linguistics in Nineteenth-Century Senegal,” Social Analysis 1993 (33): 27–46. Also by the same author see “Genres and Conquests: From Literature to Science in African Linguistics,” in Verbal Art across Cultures: The Aesthetics and Proto-Aesthetic, ed. Hubert Knoblauch, Helga Kotthoff. Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 2001, pp. 63–90. Joseph Errington, “Colonial Linguistics,” Annual Review of Anthropology 2001 (30): 20.

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In the 1870s, Louis-Léon Faidherbe, governor of Senegal and later president of the Anthropological Society in Paris,66 published a study on the Peul language.67 His interest in this language lay not only in its dominance in Central Africa but also in its “remarkable linguistic characteristics.”68 Using the ideas of Ernst Höckel and Friedrich Müller on language and race, Faidherbe believes in the relation between language and civilization and between language and “the nature of hair.” Höckel, as cited by Faidherbe, distinguishes between “ulotriche” (laineux, woollike) that includes, among several races, “negros,” and “lissotriche” (straight hair) that includes, among many, Mediterranean people (among whom are Caucasians and Semites). Faidherbe, observing the curly hair of Peuls, concludes that they are a mixed race from migration from the Orient and from “Negros.” In their physique, “agreeable from a European point of view,” they are superior to the Negros and more intelligent than them.69 “The inferiority of the Negros is caused by the relatively weak volume of their brain.” And this inferiority lies in their “lack of foresight, coherence of thoughts, the active might of the will. This is why they can be enslaved.”70 The Arabs, by contrast, cannot be enslaved, he argues. Also, when the Peuls are enslaved, they will “surely run away.” The Peuls are the first to convert to Islam. They are also associated with Wolofs and Sereres. The Peul language, according to Faidherbe, is distinct, especially phonetically. “The absence of kha, in this guttural language, which is so difficult to pronounce by the French and which is common in Arabic, Berber, and Malinke makes a noticeable distinction between Peul and the other spoken languages around it.”71 Faidherbe then establishes a systematic connection between race (characterized by phenotypes) and language. If races are mixed and give birth to a different breed, so do languages. As Judith Irvine puts it, “for 19th-century linguists, missionaries, and colonial administrators it was a common assumption that language was the index of ethnic distinctiveness – that Africans, and all other human beings for that matter, had exclusive cultural identities, grounded in linguistic difference.”72

66

67 68 72

See Leland Barrows, “Faidherbe and Senegal: A Critical Discussion,” African Studies Review 1976 (19)1: 95–117. Louis-Léon Faidherbe, Essai sur la langue Poul. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1875. Ibid., p. 3. 69 Ibid., p. 13. 70 Ibid., p. 14. 71 Ibid., p. 21. Irvine, “Subjected Words,” p. 337.

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Therefore, what one finds on the border of the Sahara is not only mixed races, paganized “Islam,” but also mixed languages. But the mix is of less quality than the original, whether racially or linguistically. This mixing is ideologically interpreted, as in the case between Serer and Wolof, as “less versus more thoroughly penetrated by Islam.”73 Peul is not the only “race” at the border, albeit a dominant one, according to Faidherbe. In 1888, inspired by the work of Faidherbe, Louis-Gustave Binger published a study on the language of Bambara.74 He too makes the connection between race and language. From the outset, he conveys to his reader that “the majority of historians agree that there are two distinct races in West Soudan: the Peul race and the Mandinka race.”75 Like Faidherbe, Binger provides a cartography not only of the Bambara language but also of Peul. Faidherbe provides a topography of these languages and shows that Arabic has an entirely different one. As Judith Irvine puts it, “according to traditional analyses of Arabic’s linguistic history, Arabic emerged as part of a Northwest Semitic language family, along with Aramaic, Phoenician, and biblical Hebrew. Because of the Biblical-era connection with the Near East, Northwest Semitic was presumed to have originated in that region.”76 Therefore, Arabic, like the Arab himself, was considered in the colonial context as alien to Algeria (and by extension to northern Africa). On the level of, first, form, the construction of these languages – Wolof, Hassaniya Arabic, Soninke, and Serer – itself signifies the linguistic definition of Senegal.77 But these languages themselves, in the view of the colonial lexicographer and translator, are not ideologically equal. They do not have the same status, the same value, or the same merit. The value of each is determined by the “race” that speaks it. But taken together, these languages also constitute a unit called Senegal. One can indeed conclude that the linguistic map Faidherbe provided sets Senegal apart from its southern neighbors and from its northern neighbors, where Arabic and Berber constitute a linguistic entity distinct from the entirety of West Africa and from the entirety of the Levant. 73 74 75 77

Irvine and Gal, “Language Ideology and Language Differentiation,” p. 58. Louis-Gustave Binger, Essai sur langue Bambara. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1886. Ibid., p. 1. 76 Irvine, “Subjected Words.” Louis-Léon Faidherbe, Langues sénégalaises: wolof, arabe-hassania, soninkr, serere. Paris: Leroux, 1887.

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Faidherbe states in his book that its purpose is to be useful for European travelers and merchants so they can quickly communicate with the natives. That may be the case, but the dictionary itself, by its selection, and by its translation of what has been selected, also expresses an ideology that not only isolates, or justifies the isolation, of an area in a new configuration, and in apposition and opposition to other linguistic units (corresponding to racial units that are themselves an expression of territory), but also, in the French colonial context, places them in relation to a power that expresses them, and puts them all in a position of subordination and dependency. Faidherbe also pays attention to the language(s) spoken at Senegal and its border. They speak two languages, he notices, “klam el arab” and “klam ezzenga.” The first is Arabic and is “quasi-identical,” in his view, with the Arabic spoken in Algeria; the second is a “Berber dialect” quasi-identical with “the Chellou[h] of the south of Morocco.” Faidherbe notices a linguistic continuity across “Afrique septentrionale.” Arabic and Berber, then, define the region: From the Mediterranean at 15 degrees latitude and from the Atlantic Ocean to the great desert of Libya, you cross Africa in all directions, and what languages do you find? Arabic and Berber; everything is just that and nothing but that.78

The existence of other visions on language (as well as on race itself) remained marginal especially in light of highly authoritative scholars who were also highly authoritative politicians and military officers. Also, Faidherbe admits the existence of linguistic influences, but he argues that this is just a phenomenon of the border. “You penetrate in the country, you realize that tribes have conserved their languages almost pure from all other foreign mixing.”79 The ideology of the “purity” of African languages was commonly shared among scholars of Africa.80 Berber dictionaries, language textbooks, and linguistic treaties mushroomed by the turn of the twentieth century. These should not be looked at as only an effort of colonial agents to learn and teach 78

79 80

Louis-Leon Faidherbe, “Les Berbres et les Arabes ds bords du Sénégal,” Bulletin de la societe geographique February 1854: 89–112 at 93. Ibid. See Irvine, “Mastering African Languages.” Also see Errington, “Colonial Linguistics,” p. 27.

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“native languages,” so that communication with “natives” will be easier, more effective, and increasingly independent of native interpreters. Instead, these were themselves “cultural objects” carrying conceptions about language, people, their relations, and their locations – original or adoptive. As Daniel Reig argued a long time ago in an article that announced the linguistic trend of language ideologies, “the object of the dictionary is language, and through it culture, and beyond culture, it is about the society that speaks this language.”81 But, in the case of colonial dictionaries of other languages, one can say that the object of the colonial (often a bilingual dictionary) expresses the ways the colonial sees the subject society, thinks about it, and articulates that seeing and thinking in his own language. Therefore, within the dictionary itself, French has primacy, and the other language is subordinate, at the will of the colonial lexicographer. This will is called power – power that allows the colonial to subject another language, and thus another society, to his interpretation. This interpretation becomes part of a hegemonic discourse difficult to challenge. In other words, the colonial in the colonial situation is endowed with the power of creation, of invention, and of transformation that contributes to reinventing society itself. Colonial dictionaries are abundant in the colonial world. And so are grammars and dictionaries, and dialogues that are also made possible by colonial ideologies that constitute them as “cultural objects” of their own colonial making. Therefore, their existence should not be looked at as only an intellectual effort to understand the other, but a colonial will to transform what is most intimate about the other, his language, the expression of his being, of his dreams, of everything that constitutes his world. Consider the Manuel de Berbère marocain by Capitain Justinard.82 This is not just a dictionary that explains Berber words and the things they signify, but rather involves a process of deciding first what the Berber language is and thus, ipso facto, creating the “Berber fact,” as conceived by Justinard himself. A dictionary, according to Daniel Reig, is “a tool of cultural normalization that hence institutes the linguistic truth (un vrai linguistique).”83 This normalization goes of course beyond the colonial context of Algeria, deep into Morocco, to continue 81 82

83

Reig, “Dictionnaire et idéologie dans la culture arabe,” 67. Capitain Léopold Victor Justinard, Manuel de Berbère marocain. Paris : E. Guilmoto: Librairie Orientale & Américaine, 1914. Ibid., p. 71.

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the work of those who worked in Algeria, since the geographical and racial conceptions that emerged postulated a continuity in language, in race, and therefore also in territory between the units under French colonial rule. Whether with Faidherbe or with Doutté, with Gautier or with Justinard and Emile Laoust, the colonial study of language was intimately associated with race, even when the languages were mixed with other(s). The region of northern Africa was disconnected from its neighbors and connected, albeit not entirely, with Egypt, with whom it shares only Arabic – a language of conquest and not an “indigenous language.” As Judith Irvine notices about colonial linguistics in West Africa: Language, ethnicity, and territory were supposed to coincide, and to define population units on an administratively manageable scale – not too small, and not too large. Whatever shapes African societies had taken previously, and however variable or multifarious their populations’ ways of speaking, the moment of colonization is when they were given that particular inflection that turns cultural traditions and genealogies into “ethnicity,” turns linguistic practices into named “languages” corresponding (supposedly) to ethnic groups, and interprets multilingualism as a secondary effect.84

However, by this time, Berber was classified as a Hamitic language and thus associated in the work of Carl Meinhof with languages from north, east, west, and south Africa (in the grouping that includes Ful, Hausa, Bedauye, Somali, Masai, Nama Huttentot, and what he calls “shilh,” spoken in Morocco and “selected as typical of the Berber group”).85 This classification was appropriated by Marcel Cohen in 1924, but was contested, even outright rejected, by André Basset, who states, “also, and following with great attention all these studies, we should consider this as a hypothesis only and in fact, Berber remains always an isolated language.”86 Edward Sapir, in his review, also contested Meinhof’s

84 85

86

Ibid. Edward Sapir, “Review Carl Meinhof, Die Sprachen der Hamiten,” Current Anthropological Literature 1913 (2): 21–27 at 23. André Basset, “La parenté linguistique et le berbère,” Revue Africaine 1935 (76): 357–359 at 359.

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classification.87And by the 1950s, the term Hamitic was gradually replaced by the term Afro-Asiatic.88 This new paradigm consisting in connections between language, race, and territory takes the issue of race in Morocco into an entirely different direction. In this new reconfiguration of the race issue, two territories emerge in the new colonial conception of this part of northern Africa, a new conception that does not exclude what has been established in Algeria, but only presents Morocco as a different variant of the same question – the question of Arabs and Berbers. In Morocco, the question became one of language in relation to space, and space in relation to race. Linguistics, as we can see, was undoubtedly instrumental in shifting the geography of race. Racial theory, which saw in race a biological tool of describing and analyzing collectivities, saw in the emergence of language studies a way to shine a stronger light on these collectivities, their histories, their cognitive structures, and their mental universe – as revealed by the use of their language. For the case at hand, it was the study of language (in its philological form) that allowed the critique of the ideology of race, especially in an era of nationalism (for the case of France, post 1870) when race itself no longer appeared to have a comprehensive explanatory power though it continued to form the subconscious culture of Europe. The proof is precisely the fact that the emerging geographical unit was (and is) perceived in terms of race, making it “white,” in a “Black continent.” “The realm of the negro is well known and perfectly defined,” Gautier wrote in 1934.89 “It is the entirety of the African continent, south of the Sahara. Outside of this realm per se, we practically do not find him.”90 The “Sahara put a brutal separation, without transition, between white and black.”91 But opposing this realm to the north in terms of religion only reinforces the demarcation. However, as we will see later, it is race that defines Africa in relation to the Maghreb. Linguistics gave an impetus to racial thinking while at the same time adjusting borders and reinforcing units as conquest advanced by the turn of the twentieth century.

87

88 91

Joseph Greenberg, “Africa As a Linguistic Area,” in Continuity and Change in African Cultures, ed. William R. Bascom and Melville Herskovis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 15–27. Ibid. 89 Gautier, L’Afrique noire occidentale, p. 85. 90 Ibid., p. 85. Ibid., p. 93.

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Race and Territory With the de facto conquest of Morocco in 1912, the geography of the new region started to reach its political completion. The cultural creation of the region had taken a new turn – an important one that affected not only Morocco but also surrounding countries in the African continent, and therefore on the overall dynamics of the French empire itself. As Eugène Etienne writes, “only in Morocco – the part that complements the countries that we already dominate in the North-West Africa – we find the possibility of extending our ethnic and linguistic domain.”92 Institutions, along with the discourse that makes them possible, do not end abruptly without leaving any trace of their existence. They rather transform and continue to operate by adapting to the different circumstances in which they find themselves. The mode of knowing of the Arab Bureau, ethnography, had become undoubtedly marginal within Algeria, but continued to be carried out by men who shared the vision of the Arab Bureau and who even attempted to reconcile the conflicting views of the civilian regimes and the Arab Bureau. The officers of the Arab Bureau and those who shared their vision soon found an opportunity to pursue ethnographic (sociological) research in the Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, an institution that can be considered an avatar of the Arab Bureau. Meanwhile, the mission’s work was prepared and in fact framed in terms set by another important source of influence, Charles de Foucauld. Foucauld arrived from Algeria to Morocco, disguised as a Jew, in 1888. A learned man, he acquired a great familiarity with ethnographic work undertaken by members of the Arab Bureau. Like his colonial contemporaries in Algeria, he presumed to be no different. Thus, de Foucauld attempted to understand Morocco using the same colonial framework previously discussed. De Foucauld extended but also set in place new themes that were to be investigated, discussed, and repeated in the general colonial discourse on Morocco. De Foucauld arrived in Morocco in 1883 not so much with a racial mindset as with a nationalist one. By the 1880s, race thinking in Algeria had retreated in favor of nation thinking. Unlike the situation in 1830, when the French approached Algeria with racial lenses, seeing the 92

Eugène Etienne, “La question marocaine,” Renseignements coloniaux July 1903 (1): 177–197 at 77.

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population as divided into “racial types,” after 1882, when French historian Ernest Renan delivered his famous lecture “What Is a Nation?” nationhood increasingly became the major category by which countries were approached, understood, and categorized.93 Race thinking did not disappear, of course, but somehow it became less predominant than nation thinking. Or, to be more precise, a new layer called nationalism was added to it. In 1830, the question was: what races inhabit Algeria? After 1882, the question became: does this country constitute a nation? Nationhood was the hallmark of civilization and its absence was the unmistakable mark of barbarism. “The concept of nation is ours,” Renan proudly said.94 It was believed that those, then, who do not live in nations, live in a state of anarchy and barbarism. Nationhood implied unity, homogeneity, and organization; its absence implied divisions, chaos, and anarchy. The first ensures peace, the second triggers war. But whether in peace or at war, nationhood also entailed two important concepts instrumental in European politics: the state and territory. The two concepts were interconnected, for territory was considered the prerequisite for a state and the state implied a territory.95 In the view of Max Weber, the state is “a compulsory association which organizes domination.”96 And such domination can happen only within a territory “by the legitimate use of physical force.”97 What was meant by this “territory” is a modern conception consisting in the belief in a “political unit.” As Jean Gottmann argues, “territory is a compartment of space politically distinct from what surrounds it”;98 this territory, he continues, “defines the physical existence of this juridical, administrative, and political entity.”99 In European history (and its political thought), territory took on different conceptions, especially after the French and American Revolutions established “a particular relationship between a people and its territory.” Before the nineteenth century, such a relation did not exist in 93 94 95

96

97 99

Ernest Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” in Œuvres. Paris: C. Levy, 1947. Ibid. Janet Gottmann, La politique des états et leur géographie. Paris: Armand Colin, 1952, p. 70. Max Weber, “Politics As a Vocation,” in Essays on Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964, pp. 77–128 at p. 82. Ibid., p. 83. 98 Gottman, La politique des états et leur géographie, p. 70. Ibid. See also by the same author “The Evolution of the Concept of Territory,” Social Science Information 1975 (14)3–4: 34.

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a country such as Morocco, marked rather by the primary relationship between the suzerain and his people, in the relationship between râʽî and raʽiya.100 Therefore, one can say that allegiance governs this relation for the preservation of the oumma, and the cement of this preservation is taxation. The relationship of people to territory was introduced in Morocco by the nineteenth century, as is evident in a letter of Hassan I responding to ongoing negotiations between France, Great Britain, and Spain with tribes in the region of Sous over the possible building of a port at the Canary Islands and possible damage to the port of the city of Essaouira.101 Hassan I protests the British negotiation with tribes (supposedly outside the realm of his political control and the jurisdiction) in the area of Sous, where agents of the makhzen (mkhazniya) were absent. Yet, he refers to the population as raʽiya and orders Donald McKenzie not to engage in negotiations with the population until Hassan I comes to the region of Houz, which is next to Sous (implying that negotiation can happen between him and European powers). As far as the people of Sous, they are explicitly referred to as raʽiya. “Inform him [McKenzie], we govern the people there (nasûsu al-ra`iya hunâk) in order to rally them to negotiate with them [English state, dawlat al-nagliz] regarding the port.”102 He also instructs the messenger that “if they ask you about Agadir, tell them it is a dashra [a small village of no significance], seated on a rock surrounded by a forest, in the midst of Idhawtan tribes; they are mountaineers, not subject to a jurisdiction (la tanâluhum al ahkâm), which does not benefit them and is of no interest to them (la yahsul lahum bihi al gharad.”103 Clearly, Hassan I reclaims the population of the area as his subjects (raʽiya) while at the same time acknowledging (in a private document) that the area in question is not covered under his jurisdiction. There is, then, the person of the sultan and there is the jurisdiction of the makhzen. The absence of the makhzen, as the letter indicates, does not imply that the area lies outside the makhzen’s sphere of power. This is evident in his prohibiting the Europeans from conducting negotiations with his subjects (raʽiya) in the area outside of the jurisdiction of 100

101

102

Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Hassan I, “Letter 1220,” in Al-wathâ’iq: majmuʿa dawriya tusdiruha alwatha’iq al malakiya. Rabat: Imprimerie Royale, 2000, 238–241. Ibid., p. 240. 103 Ibid.

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the makhzen. Only the sultan, by virtue of his status as a râʽî, can conduct such negotiations. An interesting conception of sovereignty can be detected in this letter: there is sovereignty on one hand and there is jurisdiction on the other. A region outside the jurisdiction of the sultan (because it lacks collective benefits) can still be under his sovereignty. In other terms, an absence of jurisdiction does not mean an absence of sovereignty. The official travels of Hassan I, called mahalla, show that the sultan embodies sovereignty.104 Therefore, in this precolonial Morocco, conceptions of territory were different, and so was the conception of population, hence its name, raʽiya. Europeans could see that the sultan did not control all the area he was supposed to control. This was by no means unique to Morocco; the same western powers found themselves in similar situations despite the existence of modern states capable, with their technologies of power and with their modern state institutions, to exert real and effective control over a territory – if that were ever possible. In the case of Morocco, colonial powers sought to negotiate with the sultan whenever possible – that is, most of the time. They also sought to conduct what I call the politics of the “soft belly” and maneuver whenever possible in the territory of the sultan. The letter of the sultan itself is a political maneuver to counter tactics aimed at him by being conducted in a territory where his jurisdiction (ahkâm) and his force (mkhazniya) are absent. De Foucauld, on the other hand, approached Morocco with the mindset of nationhood, or generally with the mindset of a Frenchman with specific conceptions of what constitutes a territory, a population, a nation, and even sovereignty. These are cultural conceptions that predispose one to construct reality accordingly. By the very end of the nineteenth century, and the invention of nationhood as a polity, the concept of territory itself witnessed a radical transformation that affected politicians, colonial officers, and missionaries in and outside of the metropole.105 (It is also interesting that this man was also a linguist in his own right and an author of a bilingual dictionary on Touareg that was published posthumously.106) 104

105 106

See Joclyne Dakhliya, “Dans la mouvance du prince: la symbolique du pouvoir itinérant au Maghreb,” Annales: Histoire et Sciences Sociales 1988 (43)3: 735–760. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1992. Charles de Foucauld, Dictionnaire Francais-Touareg. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale de France, 1952.

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The perceived absence of the bond of nationhood in Morocco made de Foucauld see a fracture in Moroccan society (whose bonds were plural and multiple). In his work Reconnaissance au Maroc, de Foucauld makes a distinction that will mark the discourse on Morocco and distinguish it from that on Algeria: There is a portion in Morocco where one can travel without disguise, but it is small. The country is divided into two parts: one is subjugated to the Sultan in an effective manner (blad al-makhzen) where Europeans circulate overtly and safely; the other, four or five times larger, is peopled with unsubjugated or independent tribes (blad as-siba) where no one travels safely and where all Europeans cannot get in without being disguised.107

This situation was noticed in the 1700s by Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis, who, despite his interest in languages, did not use the term siba. “In the Empire of Morocco, and especially in the kingdom of Sous, there are very powerful Berber tribes capable of defending themselves against the armies of the Emperor.”108 Venture de Paradis notices the same thing in the mountains of Tunisia and Algeria, of populations he calls Caibles or Gibalis: “Turks never penetrate in these mountains and the populations found there do not pay tribute [taxes] to the government except when famine or other convenient reasons oblige them to come down.”109 De Foucauld calls this situation siba, a name most likely conveyed to him locally that gives the dichotomy a definition marked by his own, French, conception of political space.110 Modernity, as it is expressed in the work of Machiavelli as analyzed by Michel Foucault, also invented the concept of territory as an essential element of sovereignty, since it involved, according to Foucault, the control of population.111 Elsewhere, Foucault notes that “without a doubt, territory is a geographical notion, but first it is a juridicopolitical notion: the area controlled by a certain type of power.”112 Within the concept of territory itself, one finds other notions such as 107

108 110

111

112

Charles de Foucauld, Reconnaissance au Maroc: 1883–1884. Paris: Challamel, 1888. Venture de Paradis, Abrégés de la langue Berbère, p. xix. 109 Ibid., p. xx. See J. H. W. Verzijl, International Law in Historical Perspectives, vol. 3, State Territory. Leyden: Brill, 1970. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2007, p. 97. Michel Foucault, Dits et Ecrits, vol. 3. Paris: Gallimard, 1994, p. 32.

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domain, region, and horizon. For our case, it is the concept of region that is relevant since what was perceived as bled as-siba was considered a region of dissidence and thus escapes the sovereignty of the sultan. “Region,” again according to Foucault, is “a fiscal, administrative, and military notion.”113 To this notion one can add the notion of “cession” that also affects the legal conception of territory. Cession here is understood as a transfer of “competencies” by the “ceding State.”114 If territorial sovereignty has been defined as “a local sphere of competence,” I think it is more appropriate to define it as “a local sphere of performances.” 115 This is not only because a state performs a number of functions within its territory, but also because its territory is a sphere of its performance, including the signs of its presence, the display of its symbolic power, as in the case of shows and parades (as studied by Clifford Geertz116). In other words, the very presence of territorial sovereignty is in itself a state performance and vice versa. Neither in colonial ethnography nor in precolonial Moroccan historiography does one find this contemporary concept of infisâl (cession) used either as an accusation or a fact. Cession does entail the presence of a concentrated power. It entails not a transferring or a ceding, but a decision by a political power within the region that claims it as a territory and cedes (or recedes) from (and against the will of). Siba (as defined by de Foucauld) and the absence of ahkâm and of mkhazniya (as stated in the letter of Hassan I) points not only to an absence of a concentrated political power but also to a political disorder. In this sphere, regardless of its name, state performance is absent. But state performance was not what defined political sovereignty in precolonial Morocco. Consider a letter given to archaeologist Henri de La Martinière by Hassan I on June 16, 1884, in order to facilitate his movement in the country. Hassan I warns the traveler of the hostile tribes, including “Zair and Zemmour, and Ait Youssi and others in the countries of the Berbers.” Not only is the term siba absent, but these locations are considered “dangerous.”117 A dangerous 113 115 116

117

Ibid. 114 Verzijl, International Law in Historical Perspective, pp. 11–12. Ranitzky cited by ibid., p. 11. Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. PAAP100/3, document 121 translation doc. 122. Mission archaeologique en Tingitane, Correspondance – Press. Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Centre des Archives Dimplomatique de La Courneuve.

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territory for “foreigners” does not exclude the fact that it is within the political and spiritual domain of the makhzen. Since according to de Foucauld’s description, the siba is a land that does not pay taxes, it was outside of the sultan’s sovereignty. But at no time did de Foucauld or his successors argue that the siba is a territory in and of itself, since bled as-siba consists of a fragmented region, not a politically unified territory. Foucauld also expresses, in the same definition of the dichotomy, the issue of security – “no one travels safely,” as implicitly opposed to makhzen, “where one travels safely.” We saw that with the letter of Hassan I, the area considered outside the ahkâm is not to be interpreted as the absence of law but rather the absence of its application. And therefore, the very fact that Hassan I orders the raʽiya not to negotiate with Europeans entails a conception of territory and sovereignty different from the ones de Foucauld and his colonial successors had in mind. The point here is not to be functionalist and argue for the ideological purpose of this dichotomy, but rather to see that the dichotomy itself constituted the territorial imaginary of French colonials and therefore it displaced, without eliminating altogether, the thorny issue of race. Since the concept of race was under constant critique, especially by biologists and anthropologists, the concept of territory with its flipside, the concept of population, was seen as constant, as given, as permanent as long as its political frame was in place – that is, the nation, the horizon of which seemed then limitless. But for de Foucauld, the dichotomy is much more refined than in the work of those who came after him. The bled as-siba, which is in fact the object of his observation, is not homogeneous. On the contrary, it is very fragmented. The general characterization is that the bled as-siba is opposed to the bled al-makhzen. And even in this characterization, de Foucauld introduces nuances. Sometimes the relation between bled assiba and bled al-makhzen is openly hostile. Sometimes the relation is amicable because it is mediated by the marabouts who visit the sultan in his capital and receive gifts. Sometimes the relation is on the limits, when tribes that have been recently subjugated are self-governed despite the presence of the qaid, a figure of the makhzen, who in this instance has no authority or power. The word siba does not exist in the historiography of the region and seems also absent from political writings of the period. In Moroccan dialect, siba is a common term for a situation of social and political

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upheaval. More commonly it is used even to describe a rebellious child (sâyib). The concept of siba involves, then, disorder (because of the absence of rules) and insecurity (because of the absence of apparatuses of security).118 So, the region was perceived as “ungoverned” according to specific modern (i.e., capitalist) schemas. This means that Morocco, then, had notions of sovereignty, territory, and regions different from those colonials brought. With the invention of the siba–makhzen dichotomy, colonial ethnographers such as de Foucauld must have also made recourse to translation. Since perception is cultural and regulated with national categories, de Foucauld translated the absence of ahkâm and mkhazniya (i.e., the apparatuses of security) into a concept he encountered during his travels in Morocco. However, in his writing, the dichotomy of bled as-siba versus bled al-makhzen is not opposed in territorial terms only, but in cultural and linguistic terms as well. Even though it is diverse, the bled as-siba is mostly Berber. De Foucauld may be the first one to give a cultural and linguistic definition to the term Berber, widely accepted as a racial category by the officers of the Arab Bureau. The bled as-siba, according to de Foucauld, is where Tamazirt is largely spoken despite the fact that Arabic is not absent. It is also a territory, where a sedentary lifestyle is predominant despite the presence of nomads. The bled as-siba is also a territory where religious feelings are weak even among the Arab nomads and despite the abundance of the marabouts and aguram (saints, holy men). The opposition is thus not clear and one wonders whether it is really an opposition. The bled as-siba seems like a mosaic of small units that oppose one another more than they oppose the bled al-makhzen – to the point that one even finds a faction of one tribe belonging to the bled as-siba and another faction of the same tribe belonging to the bled almakhzen. Within the bled as-siba, de Foucauld notes the existence of three regimes of power. The first one is what he calls the absolute democratic regime, where power is oligarchic but not personal. The second is the despotic regime, where an ambitious person takes over yet remains observant of tribal tradition. However, his power is only temporary. The third regime of power is the despotic one that is dependent on the makhzen, and therefore, by virtue of this dependency, we can say it is an extension of the makhzen. 118

Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, p. 108.

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However, despite the nuances, or maybe even because of them, de Foucauld conveys forcefully that the country does not only lack division but also has deep fractures even within each unit, be it bled as-siba or bled al-makhzen. Neither one is unified, both are fractured, and it is this fracture that demonstrates not only the absence of nationhood, but rather the lack of its possibility, and the ubiquity of the specter of war. The racial division of Arab versus Berber still constitutes the basis of de Foucauld’s thinking but its main new categories are territorial. It is as if these divisions of territories, with their anarchies, even within the territory of bled al-makhzen, beg for colonization – that is, for a work of civilization for reunification that can only proceed through pacification (which means, literarily, war). By the early twentieth century, Morocco, not yet formally colonized, was already on France’s colonial agenda. Its conquest was deemed crucial to secure the colonization of Algeria and to complete the French empire. In June 1903, Eugène Etienne, vice president of the Chambre des Deputés, gave a speech at the Colonial Union in which he said: “The day when the Moroccan question will be solved, I say it publically, France will [then] achieve in Africa its colonial work. I think it will no longer need to claim any other territories, with few exceptions. Its empire will be large enough to satisfy its activity.”119 Comité de l’Afrique Française, along with the Comité du Maroc, was founded, thanks to the support of many politicians and the generosity of banks, to advocate, propagate, and acquire more knowledge about Morocco as a prelude to its conquest.120 Ethnographic expeditions were sent one after the other attempting a penetration of Morocco to know it, to categorize it, and to map it. The most important of these were made by René de Segonzac and his team. They focused more on the bled as-siba, they brought more knowledge about various regions, and they preserved the framework de Foucauld had set in place. Further, their studies, published as ethnographic monographs, resemble more the diaries of travelers than systematic ethnographic research. Thus, it is that Jacques Berque noted that de Foucauld’s exploratory work “eclipsed all those that came after, even those of de Segonzac, des

119 120

Etienne, Renseignements coloniaux, p. 77. On the Comité de l’Afrique Française and the Comité du Maroc, see Burke, Ethnographic State, pp. 939–998.

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Brives, and Doutté.”121 Let us stop at the example of Doutté, since he offers a different view not common in his time among his peers. Doutté associated himself with the school of Emile Durkheim,122 but in it, he was marginal both because of his lack of credentials – he was not a Normalian123 – and because of the total loyalty Durkheim’s team required of its adherents. Doutté had half loyalty to the Mission Scientifique du Maroc and the other half to the school of Durkheim, meaning he was committed to neither. Moreover, as a colonial scholar, he went against the grain and attempted to reverse the foundation of colonial knowledge, its dichotomy of Arabs versus Berber. In 1901, he wrote: In Morocco as well as in Algeria the ethnic division with the indigenous populations between “Arabs” and “Berbers” is a useless division. For there is no criterion found in this division. First of all, it is very doubtful that there is a Berber race. The Ethnographic research accomplished in this direction has revealed that there are among the so called “Berbers” a great variety of types . . . these types that are all considered entirely Berbers are no more similar to each other than each of them to the so called “Arab type.”124

We can see that Doutté reproduces an old yet marginalized discourse defended early on by unorthodox colonial scholars in Algeria, most notably Ismael Urbain.125 Reproducing it in the context of Morocco is also reproducing its discursive marginality. The construct of the Berber was fundamental to French knowledge of North Africa. Doutté pushes the limits of the orthodox colonial discourse further by attacking the positivism of his time. In 1914, he wrote: It is difficult for a Christian to judge a Muslim; the racial prejudice blinds us unwillingly. It make [us] see their piety degenerated into fanaticism, their

121

122 123

124

125

Jacques Berque, “Vignt ans de sociologie maghrébine,” Annales: Economies, Societes, Civilisations, 1956 (11)3: 296–324. See Valensi, “Le Maghreb vu du Centre.” Graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, a postgraduate elite school founded by Napoleon Bonaparte with the official intent to produce the highest elites of French society in all domains. Its prestige has not diminished to this day. Edmund Doutté, “Une mission d’études au Maroc,” Renseignements coloniaux 1901 (8): 166. Hannoum, “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.” Also see Burke, “Two Critics of French Rule in Algeria.”

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asceticism into laziness, their aloofness into indifference, their resignation into fatalism, their solidarity into partisanship.126

Let us be clear: one cannot invent anything one wants, neither can one defend any thesis one wishes, let alone change the direction of colonial research or question its foundations. Rather, the colonial discourse contains rules that have to be observed, that cannot be transgressed, at least without serious consequences, the most common and the most immediate of them being exclusion, which translates as a marginal position in the field where competition for prestige, authority, and power is fierce and where most people would not be as adventurous or as uncompromising as Doutté. Colonial knowledge was indeed heterogeneous and even conflictual, but there was always an orthodoxy imposed on the public and the policy makers. It is this discursive orthodoxy that I am interested in because it is the one that shaped policies and even outlasted colonialism. For the case of Morocco, this orthodoxy was represented by Robert Montagne, a dominant figure in his time, and one with a postcolonial discursive continuity still found today in French postcolonial discourse on Morocco.127 Suffice it to say that even Jacques Berque and Ernest Gellner are situated within his discursive continuity, the first in his early rural sociological work, the second in his anthropological work, Saints of the Atlas.128 By the time of the signing of the Treaty of Fez that established the Protectorate in 1912, Hubert Lyautey, a general who had already served in Madagascar and then in Algeria, decided to revive the Arab Bureau tradition and to encourage its ethnographic mode. He immediately set up a new team; all of its members were part of the Mission Scientifique du Maroc and thus all of them shared his colonial vision. To mark the beginning of a new phase in the colonial rule in Morocco, he renamed the Berber Archives Hespéris and founded a Moroccan institute, the Institut des Hautes-Etudes de Rabat, in 1920 (that became the University Mohammed V in 1956).129 126 127

128

129

Edmond Doutté, En Tribu. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1914, p. 436. On the importance of this sociologist, see Ernest Gellner. See also François Pouillon and Daniel Rivet, eds., La sociologie musulmane de Robert Montagne. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1999. See Abdelmajid Hannoum, “L’auteur comme authorité en ethnographie coloniale: Le cas de Robert Montagne,” in ibid., pp. 249–264. See Bulletin de l’Institut des Hautes Etudes Maocaines. Paris: Emile Larose, 1920. For the role Lyautey played in the production of knowledge, see

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Lyautey did not think of himself as only an administrator, but also as a thinker of colonization, and even as a scholar in his own right – in a long tradition inaugurated by Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt and confirmed by Bugeaud in Algeria. Lyautey too surrounded himself with a team of scholars, mostly sociologists and ethnographers, to record Morocco and thus to make knowledge an instrument of colonization. One of those early recruits, the one with a lasting impact on the state of colonial knowledge (and thus politics) was a young man by the name of Robert Montagne. The relation between Lyautey and Montagne is reminiscent of the relation between Bugeaud and Daumas in Algeria, except that Montagne’s career lasted for almost the entirety of colonial Morocco, when he was as prolific in scholarship as he was militantly political. Montagne’s beginnings were usual, meaning modest and unfocused. He seemed to timidly duplicate the objects discussed by senior scholars of Hespéris related to jurisprudence and folklore. Soon he seemed to become interested, again rather timidly, in ethnography, carried out at that time by Laoust and Justinard and more specifically by an interesting yet relatively obscure figure by the name of Frédéric de la Chapelle.130 La Chapelle was an agent of information. He did not seem to have a clear political affiliation; he frequented various colonial political and academic circles. Yet his interest seemed clear: it was the south of Morocco and more specifically the political life of the Berber population. His articles were published in different journals and magazines, without discrimination. Already by 1926, he had published a piece in which one finds all the objects developed later by Montagne.131 The article resembles an agent report. La Chapelle sketches the political situation in the south and discusses three distinct political formations. There is a zone, according to him, administered by the makhzen, where taxation seems to be a sign of obedience to the sultan. There is a region ruled by a powerful chief with more or less great autonomy despite his

130

131

Daniel Rivet, Lyautey et l’institution du Protectorat au Maroc, 1912–1925. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988. Paul Rabinow, French Modern. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. Burke, Ethnographic State. See Hannoum, “L’auteur comme authorité en ethnographie coloniale,” pp. 250–251. Frédéric La Chapelle, “Un grand Caïdat du Sud marocain,” Renseignements coloniaux 1927: 372–386.

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greater or lesser dependency on the makhzen. There is, last, a zone where the autonomy of the chief is greater if not total. Being an agent reporter, La Chapelle notes all along the attitude, hostile or amicable, of such-and-such chief toward France, thus suggesting the location of friends and foes in the region. It is also in this article that La Chapelle notes the importance of the leff in the political life of the Berbers. “The leff,” he writes, “is a commonplace alliance between small states that compose the Chleuh society”; he adds that “the composition of the leffs and the clans is at the base of all the political activities of the mountaineers.” However, La Chapelle does not analyze this political alliance or turn it into a political concept able to account for the political organization of Berber society. Yet, he opens up that possibility: “it remains interesting to study these constant links of alliances among the fractions” of Berber society. One can see how the Berber had become a fact and constituted henceforth a subconscious concept that no one seemed to question. La Chapelle continues to draw attention to what seemed to be a novel aspect of Berber society, the system of alliances that had been paid scant attention. In 1928, in a more sociological essay, he explains how the government of Aït Arbin passed from a political entity, that of the autonomous political chief, to another, that of the dependent political chief; he thus explains how the Aït Arbin passed from autonomy to dependency.132 Here again he stresses the importance of the leff as a political organization, yet raises for the first time the question of the function of this alliance in the political life of the Berbers. He perceives the leff as having a destructive function: “It is a permanent cause of upheaval.”133 La Chapelle never became a recognized researcher. Most probably, he himself did not think he was a researcher. He perceived himself as a colonial agent and presented his work as that of renseignement (spy information). This is why he never published a book and he never attempted to turn the leff into an explicative theory, and maybe for these reasons he is often forgotten in the history of colonial knowledge. Montagne found his inspiration in the work of La Chapelle. By 1927, Montagne had reoriented his research toward the political 132

133

Frédéric La Chapelle, “Les tribus de haute montagne de l’Atlas occidental,” Revue des Etudes Islamique 1928. Ibid., p. 347.

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organization of Berber society and paid close attention to the same leff to which La Chapelle drew attention. Discussing the case of the Amghar of the Grand-Atlas, Montagne gives his first formulation.134 The leff, he says, is the link between the faction and the outside world. By conciliating two definitions, seemingly contradictory – that of La Chapelle, who sees the leff as having a destructive function, and that of Masqueray, who sees it as having a stabilizing function135 – Montagne shows the two sides of the coin, so to speak: “The leffs, he writes, which are like a system of permanent assurance against the risk of destruction in the face of a hereditary enemy, are at the same time sometimes a means of pacification of the inside.”136 It is clear, then, that neither the theory of the leff nor the division of bled as-siba and bled al-makhzen were novel objects of colonial scholarship. They had already been constructed as objects of discourse and discussed by colonial scholars. Yet Montagne found in these objects a new direction for colonial scholarship and for colonial politics, a way to see how to operate in this tissue that seemed to be a bit more complex than the Algerian reality. The discussion of these timely subjects made Montagne gain some notoriety among the members of Hepéris, what later would be known as the School of Rabat (as opposed to the University of Algiers, discussed in previous chapters). It is only by the publication of his first and major book, Les Berbères et le Makhzen, that Montagne gained the name so familiar to us today.137 For it was thanks to it that Montagne has become a (if not the) major author of colonial North Africa. Ernest Gellner enthusiastically names him the modern continuation of Ibn Khaldûn,138 which may seem interesting at first sight only because the remark is so general that it applies to most scholars of North Africa, whether colonial or national, especially since Khaldûn is omnipresent in all their scholarship. But he does not explain the continuity between the work of Ibn Khaldûn, a sociologist of the state, and Montagne, a sociologist of the siba (absence of the state). 134

135

136 137 138

Robert Montagne, “L’Aghbar et les Hautes Vallées du Grand Atlas,” Hespéris 1927: 1–32. Emile Masqueray, La formation des cités. Aix-en-Provence: EDISUD, 1983, p. 119. First edition, Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1886. Montagne, “L’Aghbar et les Hautes Vallées du Grand Atlas,” p. 17. Robert Montagne, Les Berbères et le Makhzen. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1930. Ernest Gellner, “The Sociology of Robert Montagne 1893–1954,” in Muslim Society Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 187.

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Note that Ibn Khaldûn in colonial research is on one hand, the author of a colonial text, Histoire des Berbères, that has served as the foundation of colonial knowledge on the region (for his text generated other texts in the form of arguments, counterarguments, reviews, commentaries, and so forth).139 On the other hand, Ibn Khaldûn is also an epistemic subject, a historian with a theoretical arsenal on the practice of history, on dynastical power, on tribal sociology, on crafts of his time, on education, on grammar, on poetry, and so forth. His text has been used occasionally, especially by the then emerging sociology of the school of Durkheim, and in the colonial context, by Robert Montagne. Montagne did not just repeat or reuse Ibn Khaldûn’s thesis or concept on this or that sociological issue, like Durkheim with his concept of solidarity, but rather he was able to explode the discontinued – that is, the discursively unexplored parts of Ibn Khaldûn’s text, the issues Ibn Khaldûn left out because they were not relevant in his time. Montagne was undoubtedly conscious of the fact that he was tackling a discontinuity in Ibn Khaldûn’s work. He wrote: Ibn Khaldûn, the only writer of North Africa who sought to penetrate the interior life of this country, has often expressed in his work the sentiment of melancholy inspired in him by this fragility of kingdoms and empires. However, he has not consented to explain to us with enough precision the play of interior forces that were unified sometimes to make them and sometimes to destroy them.140

It is well known that at the center of Ibn Khaldûn’s work is Berber dynasties and the formation of dynastic power, its development, its dissolution, and its succession. Ibn Khaldûn sought to understand the emergence of dynastical power, its dynamics, and eventually its weakening and how, in a cyclic process, the dynastic power is eliminated to be replaced by another one that too is subject to the same rules of emergence and fall.141 Espousing the clear-cut dichotomy of bled as-siba and bled almakhzen, Montagne considers that Arab authors, including of course Ibn Khaldûn, explain only a part of the history and society of the Maghreb, the one related to bled al-makhzen. The other side of the dichotomy, bled as-siba, no less important, remains unexplored. It is in 139 140 141

See Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary.” Montagne, Les Berbères et le Makhzen, p. vii. Ibn Khaldûn, Muqaddima.

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fact this aspect that Montagne attempts to explain, and he does so in relation to the other side of the dichotomy, bled al-makhzen. He writes: One should examine the conditions where the authority of the Sultan on Berber republics has developed and was established, distinguished by what insensible transitions a personal power founded on an unlimited and tyrannical force by nature, was born, grown, and exerted inside a country that is traditionally hostile to the government of one chief until the moment when dynastical crises or revolts give back to the bled as-siba its freedom.142

To use Weberian language, the enterprise of Montagne is centered not on power as such – that is, the territory of the makhzen where the so-called Arab and Islamic will is imposed successfully by force, but rather on the territory of counter-power, where the same will was unsuccessful in imposing itself and remains thus outside of that sphere, foreign and unwanted. Montagne has sought to understand the success of this resistance. Or, to say the same thing differently, he thought to account for the bases of the counter-power and explain what constitutes it as such. For Montagne, the question was, how is a territory that escapes state power still mapped as a state territory? How is an ungoverned region, with the absence of central power, still functional? In other words, why does a region of insecurity not plunge into total disorder? Why is bled as-siba not really a siba?143 It is here that Montagne develops the leff as a concept with tremendous explanatory power. For Montagne, the leff as a category is necessary for understanding the entire Berber society in the past and in the present. The leff explains how the siba is opposed to the makhzen and how dynasties are born from within the first to eradicate and substitute the second: There is established . . . among all the cantons systems of alliances organized in such a way as to constitute in the entire region two opposed leagues whose efforts balance each other. This institution, that we label the leff and whose importance we will discuss soon, as a consequence limits the expansion of groups that are too active and establishes among all of them a sort of balance. 142 143

Montagne, Les Berbères et le Makhzen, p. 5. A long time ago Hobbes argued that without a “common power” (i.e., state), warre reigns. Thomas Hobbes, “Of the Natural Condition of Mankind,” in Leviathan. New York: Penguin Books, 2017, pp. 182–188. Clearly, the case of siba land unsettles an important idea of the Enlightenment regarding the nature of man and the necessity of the state.

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Surely it is thanks to its conservational effects that we [still] witness in the Haute Atlas the presence of a great number of tribes and fractions from the time of the Almohads.144

Thus the concept of leff is opposed (and complemented at the same time) by the concept of ʿasabiya. The leff is restrictive; its destructive function – that is, its ability to generate war in the entire country – makes it paradoxically pacific. Thus understood, the leff becomes a concept that explains why a tribe fails to become a dynasty. By contrast, the ʿasabiya is a productive force; it explains how a tribe becomes a dynasty. For the ʿasabiya, backed by religion, is integrative; it assimilates its adherents. The leff is a system of oppositions. By contrast, the ʿasabiya is a system of tribal adhesion. Yet, while the leff is a system of alliance, its function is mainly exclusive. By contrast, the ʿasabiya is adhesive: it seeks to include all possible oppositions to strengthen the initial ʿasabiya of the tribe. But it does so only by use of religion (din aw wilaya), says Ibn Khaldûn. The leff, on the contrary, becomes weak and disappears with the interference of religion. This discourse, though about Morocco, is inscribed in the discourse about Algeria, and is thus part and parcel of the same discursive formation. First, the Arab versus Berber dichotomy is now a selfevident truth that no longer needs to be defined, discussed, or even articulated. It is presupposed in the narrative, and is thus most unlikely to be questioned. Second, despite the focus on the concept of leff as a category of analysis, the discourse Montagne articulated has striking similarities with the one of the School of Algiers, and more specifically Masqueray, who gave it its latest formulation.145 Yet, the discourse of Montagne has nuances despite the fact that it has as its toile du fond the colonial dichotomy of Berbers, located mostly in the bled as-siba, and Arabs, located mostly in the bled al-makhzen. Yet, like the discourse of La Chapelle, his is openly politically informative – the aim seems to be to provide the colonial administration with that which it can use for ruling various localities. In other words, in the work of Montagne, Morocco seems to be a mosaic of people, cultures, and polities. Thus in it, one can see the preoccupations of the colonial administration that consists in identifying the fabric of Moroccan society, so that adequate 144 145

Ibid. Masqueray found the same type of alliances in Algeria, but under the name of coff. See La formation des cités.

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dosages of “oil drops” can be administered – this oil can be invisible (culture, especially in the land believed to be of the makhzen) or inflammatory (brute force, especially in the land believed to be of the siba).

Conclusion Race, as we have seen, was an important category by which the history of the population of the Maghreb region was constructed. And this racial construction was instrumental in defining the past (that is, the present) of the region in a specific way that made it distinct and therefore different from western Africa (defined as Black) and from the Levant (defined as Arab). Needless to say, it also made regions within a specific country (say, Algeria) distinct from one another in antagonistic ways based on racial dynamics perceived by colonials. But the divisions within a country and even within the entirety of the region were internal, meaning populations were still connected to one another according to racial rules of affinity and enmity (in relation to Europeans, who became part of that human geography). A racial grammar was then set in place in the region to order it, to comprehend it, to give it meaning, and of course to control it and eventually govern it. These racial categories were not static, but rather highly dynamic. This has changed over the course of colonial modernity and its chains of reason. In the context of our region, the questions changed at each stage of colonial modernity. First, they were simple: What do they look like? What do they speak? Where do they live? And “they” were, of course, always the “others” that colonial modernity defined first biologically – that is, in terms of skin color and phenotypes, a definition that also entails intellectual and moral characteristics. It also defined them linguistically, in terms of a language constructed by colonials themselves out of a variety of ways of speaking, that translate the cognitive universe of the population, their so-called mentality. And last, the others were defined in terms of cultural specificities – that is, culturally, in their relation to the environment, and politically, in their relation to a central power, be it that of a sultan or a chief. Needless to say, the resulting definitions were meant to figure “them” out, to control them, to fix them, and to exert colonial power over them in their linguistic, cultural, and political aspects. This is to say that the

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“native” was caught in colonial webs of power that left him most of the time with a quasi-zero degree of power. He rebelled only when he deemed it absolutely necessary, and his “revolts” were only demonstrations of his minimal power since he was always crushed. Otherwise his daily negotiations were transactions in which he always lost and paid the full price from his own humanity. But the dynamics of racial definitions also had effects beyond what was intended. In our context, the Berber language was soon discovered to be part of the Hamitic language family, an African family. Arabic, by contrast, was considered, by and large, a Semitic language, originating not only in the east, but imported to the region. In this conception, Arabic was defined in relation to Berber, the same way racial Berbers were defined in relation to racial Arabs, as exclusive, hostile, and adversary: a dominant race and a subjugated race. However, the study of Berber also allowed colonial researchers to rethink the “distribution” of the population, and therefore discover that some “Arabs” spoke Berber, and all Berbers spoke “Arabic.” These language dynamics defined the region not only in relation to western and central Africa, where various languages were considered, but even eastward, where Arabic reigned supreme and was long defined in relation to its history by Orientalists. Bilingual Arabic dictionaries were meant to not only create linguistic competencies to free communication from the intermediary of the interpreter but also to redefine Arabic in relation to French and subordinate the first to the second. From now on, the territory became part of the definition of population, and ipso facto a different conception of race emerged. Race is then two things intimately intertwined: on one hand, a population speaks a specific language either because that population moved from a specific place (Arabia) to another (the Maghreb region) – and thus the presence of Arabic is associated with the mobility and the conquests of Arabs. Or, a population speaks a specific language (Arabic) because it was imported to it as a consequence of conquest. But, there are also those who speak a specific language (Berber and/or Arabic) either because of demographic pressure and population movement (over borders between our region and west and central Africa), or because this language has always been present, or at least efforts to trace its origins have been inconclusive (Berber). Therefore, race in this new conception was associated with language and with a territory. The dichotomy of siba/makhzen that seems to be unique to Morocco was

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only the result of the development of the concept of race at the turn of the twentieth century. But behind this dichotomy, there are Berbers (Berber speakers even if some of them may be originally Arab), and then there are Arabs (Arabic speakers, and the colonial discourse did not dare to conclude from here that some Berbers may also be only Arabic speakers). However, the essential in these nuances remains untouched and firm: there are Arabs and Berbers in Africa whose relation is antagonistic and part of this antagonism is precisely that some Berbers also speak Arabic and only Arabic. Arabic is the language that is associated with a race (Arabs) and may be adopted by others in a racial dynamic as part of the dominant/ subjected racial relations so inherent in colonial ideologies. This linguistic (racial) relation was complicated (and for colonial authors such as Gautier) bettered (for the sake of the colonial enterprise) by the now dominant presence of French. The dominance of French also changed the linguistic map of the region and participated in defining it – then and now.

4

Naming and Historical Narratives

The distinctions I have made between forms of colonial knowledge such as archaeology and cartography were made for analytical purposes only, in order to see how each form was constituted and how it participated in the making of perceptions and the shaping of colonial imaginaries that allow representation to become naturalized. However, on a practical level, these forms of knowledge not only coexisted and completed one another but they also technically could not (and cannot) be separated. Archaeology is impossible without an interpretation that takes the form of a narrative of the past – that is, a historical narrative. Likewise, maps cannot speak for themselves; they make sense only through an act of interpretation – that is, again, through a historical narrative, without which they are unintelligible. Further, the division of intellectual labor so often seen in academic and corporate spheres today was not common in colonial times. In the early formation of this knowledge, it was mainly the military officer who transformed himself into a researcher, often wearing different hats – archaeologist, historian, ethnographer, geographer. Since knowledge was proven instrumental to conquest during the colonial enterprise, from the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, the military officer became a researcher in his own right and a sort of bricoleur who could map, excavate, observe, translate, interpret, and write – in short, produce – knowledge for the institution that assured both the duty of order (violence, i.e., pure use of force) and the duty of knowledge (in itself a form of violence, a symbolic one, that not only justifies the first but also destroys preexisting historical and social realities that it replaces with its own). History in this particular context means something specific. Throughout the nineteenth century, the historical sciences encompassed several disciplines called the military sciences (sciences militaires) and, later, the sciences of man (sciences de l’homme). These

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disciplines deal with not only the past but also the present and future. In this chapter, I examine historical narratives, meaning narratives about the past whose reference is not the trace or the map, but rather is physically absent, its existence assumed to be in texts. These texts, as I show in the first section, refer to names, they narrate names, or, to use the expression of Michel de Certeau, they “turn space into a name.”1 History, in this context and in all others, also means the interpretation of past events, or to be more precise, events that are themselves narratives. As such, these narratives are conditioned by institutional rules – that is, power. Since these narratives lend themselves to different interpretations, the act of interpretation itself is diachronically polysemic and synchronically infinite because time is infinite. Therefore, history, as a narration is multiple in its meanings and limitless in its interpretations. Its focus is the past along the axis of time, its narration is in the present, and it anticipates the future. Yet, despite its multiplicity and infinitude, only a limited number of interpretations are allowed it at a given moment, and only a certain range of topics is deemed vital, or at least important, and thus worthy of real attention. Therefore, as colonials were in the presence of a long and welldocumented precolonial history in the region, they made a choice according to the rule of “relevance,” weighing the importance of certain narratives to the colonial enterprise, whose political present was the entirety of the period from 1830 to 1962. This is how two episodes of history acquired an almost absolute importance for the colonial enterprise: the phase called Roman/Byzantine (from the eighth century bce to the seventh century ce), and the phase called Arab (roughly from the seventh to the nineteenth centuries ce). These two periods refer to each other: the Arab to the Roman and the Roman to the Arab. An entire colonial narrative emerged that presumes that the “Roman period” ended with Arab domination and the “Arab period” ended with French occupation. The study – that is, the reinterpretation and the reinvention – of these two periods gave the region a new identity in the colonial era. And a new name, Maghreb, announced this identity.2 1

2

Michel de Certeau, “Introduction,” in Jules Verne, Les grands navigateurs du XVIIè siècle. Paris: Ramsay, 1977, p. IX. Abdelmajid Hannoum, “De l’historiographie coloniale à l’historicisme national; ou comment le Maghreb fut inventé,” Hespéris-Tamuda 2013 (XLVIII): 59–79.

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My aim in this chapter is to examine how colonial historiography participated in the creation of the Maghreb, both the name itself and what it refers to – that is, the constellations of meaning that constituted, in the minds of the French people of the colonial time, the idea of the Maghreb. It is my contention that this invention happened early on and progressively, first in the specific context of Algeria, and later, by the logic of colonial historical interpretation, in the rest of the region. Thus, if this chapter refers most often to colonial Algeria, it is because this colony was the French laboratory for the region. It is indeed in Algeria that the Maghreb was invented, and it was also in Algeria that the architects of the colonization of Tunisia and Morocco acquired their skills and their experiences.3 However, it is important to stress that military officers, politicians, and agents and ideologues of colonization were acutely aware of the fact that they operated in a space that – despite its differences, borders, and even contrasts – was continuous. Colonial governmentality was in itself the political evidence of this unity.4 It provided us the expression of its imagining as a historical totality.

Turning Space into a Name A map cannot exist without a name. A map is the graphic representation of a name, its image, its visual idea – it is even the name it represents. As a graphic representation, a map is not false or true. It is a system of signs that constructs its own truth (say, this country, or this city, or this road). It can be claimed false only in relation to another map regulated by greater cartographic power (power of a scientific community, power of a state institution, etc.). Therefore, it is the cartographic construction of a name that a map targets. I would like here to identify some patterns of naming that led to the final adoption of the name of the Maghreb. This is not a genealogy of a name as much as it is an exploration of the politics of naming. For 3

4

The most well known of them is undoubtedly Hurbert Lyautey, who served first in Algeria and then in Morocco. For his work, see Daniel Rivet, Lyautey et l’institution du Protectorat français au Maroc 1912–1925. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988. Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989. Burke, Ethnographic State. For colonial governmentality in Algeria, see Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Gouvernementalité coloniale et la naissance du Khaldunisme,” in Figures d’Ibn Khaldûn, ed. Houari Touati. Algiers: Belles Impressions, 2010, pp. 151–160.

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naming is not only part of a strategy of knowing but also, more importantly, of appropriating, of transforming, and ultimately of inventing. The mere fact of the need to name something implies an interest in the thing.5 To name something is to take possession of it, and this taking possession happens within larger dynamics of geopolitics that, as we will see, define not only what is shared (among colonial powers) but also what is not shared, what is individual and national, and what is transnational. However, naming something is not only taking possession of it but also transforming it, inventing it, by the very act of possession. Maybe it is for this reason that “a name signifies a certain kind of particularity . . . it is a semiotic cornerstone in the foundational effects of the nation.”6 If this is so for the nation, it is also so, and maybe to a greater extent, for the colony that turns the nation into an empire. Maybe that is why the name of the region, despite colonial ownership, often denoted foreignness. Yet, despite the foreignness of the name, there is a set of names applied to locations in the region that denote “European-ness” – that is, Rome and Greece as constitutive of Europe, and more specifically France, as we have previously seen. We also have seen how the name Barbary, also conspicuously foreign, dominated maps from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. This is reflected in the copious travel literature of the period that named the region Barbarie or Côtes de Barbarie.7 In the European imagination of the period, the name Barbary, a derivative of Greek naming, referred to a region equated with a lack of rights and hospitality and characterized by an utter hostility especially toward the “Europeans” and the “Christians.” The name itself negates the new values of the Enlightenment. To enlightened Europe, the Mediterranean Sea separated the civilized from the barbaric, or Europe from its others. It was in accordance with this geographical imagining that Immanuel Kant wrote about a “Barbary Coast” whose inhabitants were inhospitable and acted against “natural laws.”8 Barbary is the land of hostile tribes and dangerous corsairs. 5

6

7 8

Farhang Zabeeh, What Is in a Name? The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968, pp. 66–67. Jacqueline Stevens, Reproducing the State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999, p. 150. See Peyssonnel, Relation d’un voyage sur les cotes de Barbarie. Immanuel Kant, Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 106.

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The name continued to be used during the early years of the conquest of Algiers. Then the name Barbary morphed into a similar, yet different name: Berbérie.9 The name Barbary, signifying barbarism, indicated the land of a race (and, notably, not of a civilization).10 However, Barbary was a land imagined to be part and parcel of Africa and thus opposed to Europe, as savagery is to civilization. By contrast, Berbérie was constructed in colonial times as the land of the Berbers, disconnected from Arabia (and by extension the Levant) and even disconnected from Africa itself. Yet, it is racially connected to Europe in terms of both its whiteness and its religiosity. For early on in the 1840s and 1850s, officers of the Arab Bureau constructed the Berber as white and Christian with European origins that explain both the first and the second.11 The constructions became authoritative as later ethnographers, impregnated with the racial ideas of the Arab Bureau, imported the model to Morocco, first to the Rif region, and created a racial understanding of that place similar to the one found in Algeria.12 French authorities had interest in the Rif because it was “always a region of the Kingdom of Fes,” in the words of Edouard Michaux-Bellaire.13 Nonetheless, on a map, the region could be still seen comfortably sitting within a continent by then commonly called Africa. Throughout the 1600s, the name Afrique was already in widespread use and seemed indeed to refer to the entire continent, and not just to the area commonly called by Arab geographers Ifriqiya, whose designation was generally limited to what became known later as La Régence de Tunis. From early on, and already with Thomas Shaw in 1738, the 9

10

11

12

13

The name did not entirely disappear, however. In 1926, it was still in use, but more in publications designed for the grand public and that were part of the Orientalist literature. See, for instance, E. Alexander Powell, In Barbary. New York: Century, 1926. See Stuart Elden and Eduardo Mendieta, eds., Reading Kant’s Geography. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011. See Abdelmajid Hannoum on the construction of the Berbers as white, “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.” On the Rif region, see Henri de La Martinière and Napoléon Lacroix, “Régions limitrophes de la frontière algérienne. Le Rif. Les Djebala,” in Documents pour servir à l’étude du Nord-Ouest africain. Algiers: Gouvernement général de l’Algérie, 1894–1897. See Anonymous, “Le Makhzen et le Rif,” Rensignements coloniaux 1925: 453–455. Cited in Anonymous, “Le Makhzen et le Rif,” p. 453.

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names Africa and Barbary became interchangeable for a region neatly defined:14 The country of the Algerines, commonly called the Kingdom of Algiers, has, since it became subject to the Turks, been one of the most considerable Districts of that Part of Africa, which the later Ages have known by the name of Barbary. It is bounded to the West, with Twunt, and the Mountains of Trara; to the South, with the Sahara, or Desert; to the East, with the River Zaine, the ancient Tusca, and to the North, with the Mediterranean Sea.15 (italics in the text)

Europeans called the region Barbary despite the fact that they were aware of the names of its specific parts taken from Greek and Latin authors such as Ptolemy and from Muslim geographers such as Idrissi and Aboulfeda (Abû al-Fidâ’). Thus, Shaw states from the outset the topic of his book: The Epitomizer of Edrisi, the Nubian Geographer as he is commonly called, places both the Cities and Villages of this Part of Barbary, and those of the more Western and Eastern Districts of it, in his Third Climate, without any particular Division into either Kingdoms or Provinces. But Abulfeda, besides given us in Ptolemy’s Method, the Longitudes and Latitudes of the most considerable Cities, is more full and distinct in his general Division, and that Part of this Country I am now treating of, will take in the whole of what he calls al Maghreb al-Awsat [‫ ]ﺍﻟﻣﻐﺮﺏ ﺍﻷﻮﺴﻃ‬and a Portion likewise of both his al Maghreb al-Acksa [‫ ]ﺍﻟﻣﻐﺮﺏ ﺍﻷﻗﺻﻰ‬and [‫ ]ﺍﻓﺮﯾﻗﯾﻪ‬Afrikeah.16 (Arabic in the text)

Seeing Shaw’s bibliography and his system of references, it is clear that by the 1700s, Europeans already possessed an impressive geographic knowledge of the region. Yet, this knowledge was mostly bookish and was mixed with Greek geographic knowledge of the region. It reflected both an emerging identification with Greeks and emerging tropes of exoticism.17 European naming in the two centuries before the conquest of Algiers indicated imperial power capable of defining and naming any region in the world. The plethora of names, new and old, we find in maps and even in historical and travel literature implies the expansion of the European geographical imagination. By the conquest of Algiers, imperial interests had already become global. As it did on paper with its maps, Europe was able to reach every corner 14 17

Shaw, Travels or Observations, p. 5. 15 Ibid., p. 3. 16 Ibid., p. 5. On the topic of geography and exoticism, see Schmidt, Inventing Exoticism.

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of the world through trade and commerce, conquest and invasion.18 With the conquest of Algiers, it was time to give the region a new name. This naming reflects the reality of conquest and rule – that is, ultimately, one of possession and ownership. Of the necessity of naming, colonials were well aware; early on, in 1841, General Duvivier noted that “people who discover or conquer a new country, always impose on it a new name.”19 Thus Barbary had to be replaced by a name or names indicating familiarity and even the presence, in the past as well as in the present, of civilization. This was not difficult, as the age of imperialism itself revived the memories of Rome and of Greece. A whole repertoire of names was brought forth to harken back to the antiquity so important to the European imagination of the age of imperialism. For instance, both Shaw and Chénier use Roman names to identify not only the entirety of the region called Mauritania but also specific cities, regions, or countries inside it. In fact, at this time old Roman names were used to locate and identify new names. Consider the naming of Louis de Chénier: In the first centuries Mauritania was a considerable part of Libya, but having been divided later into Tingitaine & Cesarienne, Mauritania Tingitania conserved, by usage, this name. The Malva, Mulluvia, or Mullucha river that separates today the Kingdom of Algiers from the one of Morocco separated also [then] the Tingitaine & Cesarienne from Mauritania Tingitania. From a little distance of Mulluvia, there was, a long time ago, a city by the name Molochat. Following the west coast there is Ryssadirium of a long time ago which we supposed to be today in the location of Melilla.20

The old names not only enabled the modern traveler to identify the old spaces familiar in the bookish culture of France (and, by extension, of the rest of Europe) but also prepared him or her to create important connections in the French historical narrative between the present and the past, between the colonial and the ancient, between France and Rome. This connection was of the utmost importance because it 18

19

20

For European adventures, see Marc Ferro, ed., Le livre noir du colonialism: XVè–XXIè siècle: de l’exterimination à la repentence. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2003. General Duvivier, Recherches et Notes sur la portion de l’Algérie au sud de Guelma. Paris: Imprimerie de L. Vassal, 1841, p. 57. Louis de Chénier, Recherches historiques sur les Maures et Histoire de l’Empire de Maroc. Paris: Polytype, 1787, t. 1, p. 69.

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facilitated the reconfiguration of the region in relation to the new power dynamics of colonization that itself created a relation of ownership and appropriation. After the conquest of Algiers in 1830, the colonial enterprise approached the region as an unexplored terrain in need of investigation. To this end, two modes of knowledge were harnessed: direct observation and the creation of archives in an effort to build knowledge. The goal of this knowledge was to guide colonization. It is important to stress the newness of this approach, which put knowledge at the service of occupation. From the beginning, colonial conquest, according to the views of military officers such as Thomas Bugeaud and Christophe Lamorcière or colonial ideologues such as Alexis de Tocqueville, was only a means for ideological conquest, making knowledge a sine qua non of the colonial enterprise.21 By 1839, an enterprise for colonial knowledge was created on the model of the Expédition d’Egypte.22 It also had a similar name: L’Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie.23 Its members had as a mission to make an inventory of the country: statistics of the populations, maps of regions, histories of the tribes, etc. Early on, in the 1830s, Ernest Carette named the region Afrique septentrionale, a name Louis-Adrien Berbrugger also used. Both authors also use, almost accidently, the name Maghreb (spelled Moreb by Carette and Magreb by Berbrugger).24 Carette is among the early colonial authors to define the region, giving it several names that included nord de l’Afrique.25 He writes, “we can say in truth the Afrique septentrionale is a large island whose borders are clearly circumscribed by the Mediterranean, the desert, and the Ocean.”26 Émilien Jean Renou, also a member of the Commission Scientifique, writes in the same volume as Carette, “the country whose description we provided is inhabited by tribes that belong to two different populations: one is Berber which inhabited it alone originally; the other is Arab that spread only after it had invaded all the Mor’reb.”27 21 22 24 25 26

27

See Hannoum, “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.” See Said, Orientalism. 23 On this, see Lorcin, Imperial Identities. Berbrugger, “Des frontièrs de l’Algérie,” p. 404. Carette, Recherches sur les origines des migrations, p. 2. Carette, Recherches sur la géographie et le commerce de l’Algérie méridionale, pp. 39–40. Émilien Jean Renou, Notice géographique sur une partie de l’Afrique septentrionale. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1844, p. 340.

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After the official annexing of Algeria to France in 1839, this institution soon developed into another: les Bureaux Arabes, a military institution in charge of establishing order in and acquiring knowledge of the region. The officers of the Arab Bureau made more systematic and more comprehensive inventories and produced a body of ethnographic knowledge based on the close participation of local populations. The bureau was indeed constituted both as a governing body and as a thinking machine. The colonial state of Algeria thus became an ethnographic state.28 The ethnographic state, again in the view of anthropologist Nicholas Dirks, is a state that relies essentially on an investigation of the field to collect necessary information pertaining to the population it intends to govern. The goal is to be constituted as a state mechanism that has as its substance and its validation its own ethnographic knowledge.29 One can certainly say that this modality is a necessity for all modern states, and a fortiori colonial states, given the fact that knowledge in modern states is a vital instrument of power.30 However, a state may favor an ethnographic mode at one point or a historic mode at another, depending on strategic aspirations (though colonial states tend to be ethnographic before converting to a historiographic mode). In Algeria, in a relatively short time between 1841 and 1870, the Arab Bureau was able to build impressive ethnographic archives upon which the entire colonial knowledge of the region was built. Whereas for early observers the population was diverse, as it was made of Arabs, Berbers, Kabyles, Blacks, Turks, Israelites, and Koulouglis,31 this diversity soon disappeared in the ethnographic work of the officers of the Arab Bureau, to be replaced by an opposition between Arabs and Berbers. However, at least until 1871, one could still hear heretical views that critique this division and call for rethinking it. Different interpretations too contested the very definitions of Arabs and Berbers. But such views were marginalized and eclipsed by the dominant interpretations of the officers of the Arab Bureau, who made the dichotomy a focal point of their discourse.32 Indeed, by 1850 the common 28 29 30

31 32

See Hannoum, “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.” Dirks, “The Ethnographic State.” See Philip Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State,” Historical Sociology 1988 (1)1: 58–89. Tocqueville, Oeuvres, p. 191. Hannoum, “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria.”

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understanding was that the country now called Algeria was inhabited by two antagonistic populations: Arabs and Berbers. They were considered races who had opposed each other historically. Their relations to France also differed. The Berbers, because of their presumed light skin and their supposed superficial attachment to Islam, were considered primitive Europeans. Their racial condition as well as their cultural retardation called for European colonization. The Arabs, as conquerors of a Berber land, were perceived as the same Muslims who had historically opposed Christian Europe and put an end to Roman rule in the region. However, it is important to stress that in the discourse of the Arab Bureau, how the Arab is constructed cannot be separated from the Berber. To say this differently, and maybe more clearly, not only is the Arab defined in relation to the Berber and vice versa, but the very category of Arab nests within the category of Berber, as does White into Black, even as the category of Berber is inhabited by the category of Arab. Therefore, the Arab of the Maghreb from early on emerged as different from the Arab of the Levant, especially Egypt. In the Description de l’Egypte are different types of Arabs, who seem to be defined first by the environment, “Sur les tribus Arabes des desérts de l’Egypte”33 and “Sur les Arabes de l’Egypte moyenne,”34 and then by their economic activities, as we find in the studies of M. Du BoisAymé and Jomard. The approach is a Saint Simonian, materialist approach that stresses the economy and takes it as conditioning the superstructure (i.e., modes of life). For instance, for the “Arabs of Middle Egypt,” Jomard is nuanced, and in addition to the fact that he takes the tribe as a unit of analysis, he warns that his description applies only to these specific tribes. Based not on a preexisting literature, but on his direct contact with the tribes, “accompanied by horsemen from these tribes” or even “camping among them,” Jomard conducts a sort of ethnographic fieldwork avant la lettre, and provides a context supported by vignettes. He describes “characters and customs” as well as the political structure of the tribes, their social organization, and their ways of life as conducted in war and in peace. Bois-Aymé approaches “the Arabs of the desert” in the 33

34

Aimé Du Bois-Aymé, “Mémoire sur les tribus arabes des déserts de l’Egypte,” in Description de l’Egypte: État moderne, tome premier. Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1809, pp. 570–606. Jomard, “Sur les Arabes de l’Egypte moyenne.”

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same manner.35 In his description, the Arabs of the desert have a life determined by the ungenerosity of the land. Hence their mode of life as “Arabes errants” (nomads) is interpreted far differently than by Gautier. They are not “les grands tribus chameliers” who wage war against urban life and indulge in unnecessary destruction; on the contrary, they are sedentary tribes who were chased from their lands and resorted to the harsh life of the desert. Here and there, Bois-Aymé, like Jomard, cites an incident of war, or aggression, or theft, but also of generosity toward others, including the French. These events, as both authors describe them, seem to be context specific; each reveals a side of the tribe or even of a faction of the tribe, but is not taken as general or timeless. In other words, war and generosity are triggered by material causes. They are not set by cultural norms. We are far from the highly negative and essentialist descriptions found in literary Orientalism, especially in the work of creative writers such as Edward Lane, Gustave Flaubert, FrançoisRené Chateaubriand, and the like.36 That said, by the end of the nineteenth century, a different depiction of the Arab emerges, especially in the arts and fiction, as Europe’s exterior other. This fictional Arab’s opposite is typically the (Christian) European. But in the region under examination, the opposition is mediated via a third party, the Berber, even when the themes and tropes of these representations are Orientalist and not based on direct contact but on old bits of hearsay found in the Christian archives. Since the Berber is a primitive European, in the colonial discourse, he opposes his conqueror not only politically, because of an old conquest, but also racially, which is the reason for this conquest. The European (also Christian) is undoubtedly part of this racial dichotomy.37 The reasons for these differences in representation between the Maghreb and Egypt have to do not only with differences in the colonial rule that the region and Egypt experienced, but also with the cognitive experiences these differences engendered. In the region, colonial rule was longer, more direct than in Egypt and the ambition itself was more grandiose – to make the region part of France, as it used to be in Roman times. In Egypt, the indirect rule and the presence of a native 35 36

37

Du Bois-Aymé, “Mémoire sur les tribus arabes des déserts de l’Egypte.” Said, Orientalism. Timothy Mitchel, Colonizing Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. See Hannoum, “Faut-il Brûler l’Orientalisme?”

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Westernized elite, convinced by the ideals of Arab nationalism and Islam, created a resistance to colonial representation. One of the main responsibilities of the officers of the Arab Bureau was the writing of an annual report about the region under their administration. Thus their writings focus not on the entirety of a country, and less so on the region as a whole, but only on a specific area under the command of a high officer: Grande Kabylie, Petite Kabylie, Djardjoura, Aurès, Chaouia, Sahara, and so forth. In other words, in this process of ethnographic investigation, the parts were named one by one, and defined as colonization advanced. And as colonization advanced, even smaller parts had to be named.38 However, the ensemble of these parts remained to be defined. The gaze of the officers was not panoramic and of course, was not historical. This is a characteristic of the ethnographic narrative: it relies on the particular, the part, and the now, and is often little concerned with larger narratives of the whole. The officers of the Arab Bureau could only see Algeria as an administrative unit, and beyond Algeria, they could only sense the vastness communicated to them by historical narratives in the work of Ernest Carette and later of William De Slane on the history of the Berbers. In 1899, Alfred Le Chatelier uses the name Maghreb; he also uses the name North Africa interchangeably. To distinguish the Maghreb from Egypt, he says, “after having been formed, for a time, as an annex of Egypt, the Maghreb was constituted first as a distinct government. It was soon divided into several independent states, the most important of which were the Aghlabids of Kairouan and the Idrissites of Fes, representing the supremacy of the Arab race to which their dynasties belonged.”39 These names mainly result from the translation of Arabic historiography, but, as we have seen, other strategies of naming relied on Greek and Roman sources. Thus the first name used by military officers, by archaeologists, and by politicians to designate the entire area that was perceived as a single unit despite being made up of several parts was Africa. This is by no means surprising, for this name is found in Greek and Roman sources with which the officers and archaeologists were 38 39

Hannoum, “Historiographic State.” Alfred Le Chatelier, L’Islam dans l’Afrique occidentale. Paris: Steinhell, 1899, pp. 40–41.

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familiar. In fact, as we have seen, the early colonial maps were modeled on Ptolemy, who also refers to the region as Africa. Gsell suggests the name is derivative from the name Afer about which different hypotheses exist, putting into question whether it is originally Latin or Semitic. He prudently concludes that “it is better to admit our ignorance of the origin of this name [Afer] and consequently of Africa.”40 Yet he argues that the name Africa, whose origins are unknown, was used by the “indigenous” people and by the people of Carthage or by both.41 Gsell also affirms that the official name Africa is an abbreviation of provincial Africa in 46 bce to designate the area created by Caesar. When Caesar annexed the kingdom of Juba I, it was called Africa nova.42 Gsell concludes: Administratively, Africa had a limit, in the West, the lower course of Ampsaga (Oued el Kebir) that flows into the Mediterranean near Cap Bougaroun, the Metagonium of the ancients. At the Southeast, the limits of Africa were fixed by the Autels of Philenes, at the bottom of the grand Syrte. Afri was the name given by the residents to the province of Africa, the one of 146 bc and then, the one more vast, of the Empire.43

Gsell also maintains that “besides this administrative use of the term Africa applied to the ensemble of Afrique septentrionale, in the land of Whites by opposition to Aethiopia, the land of Blacks, this usage is very rare.”44 However, Gsell also notes that the name Africa, with the Greeks, was “commonly” used to designate the entire continent, “Blacks as well as Whites.”45 Was the name Africa borrowed from the name of the north and applied to the entire continent? Or was it rather borrowed from the continent and applied to the Roman provinces north of the continent? Gsell argues it is rather the latter. But where does Africa end? Greeks and Roman differ on the eastern limit of Africa. For some authors, it is the Nile, for others it is at “the isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.” For others, “Africa ends at the frontiers of western Egypt.”46 In the work of Charles Tissot too names were used strategically to define and separate. Thus, following an established tradition of naming, Tissot uses Greek and Roman names to identify parts of the region that colonialism saw as a single unit: Mauretanie Tangitaine (Ptolemy), Numedie, and Proconcul. Tissot also provides Roman names and their 40 42

Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord, vol. 7, p. 4. 41 Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. 43 Ibid., pp. 5–6. 44 Ibid., p. 6. 45 Ibid., p. 7. 46 Ibid.

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local equivalents. He writes, “The central Maghreb is the equivalent of Mauretania Caesariensis, of the Maghreb el-Aksa which represents Tingitaine.”47 Tissot concludes, “we see there is an uninterrupted tradition, a limit indicated by the force of things. This limit has not varied in antiquity, neither in the Arab or Berber Middle Ages [sic]), nor in the modern epoch.”48 Tissot not only uses the old to invent the new but also attempts to convince his readers that the new is the old. The continuity he attempts to create between the region in its older epochs and in its modern times is reflective of the ideological continuity colonialism had established between antiquity and modernity, between Rome and France. Gsell wrote at a time when the region was being reconfigured and when a plethora of names were used to designate it. But in his publications, he clearly favors the name Afrique antique which, ipso facto, evokes Rome, itself evoking France, its supposed heir. However, because of the intense power of the ideology of Romanization, ubiquitous in state institutions, it was most common to use the name Afrique to designate the entire region. Early on, colonial authors and administrators used specifics to describe the region, even as colonial powers disputed parts of this new continent. Thus, the name Afrique septetrionale was common, as differentiated from Afrique de l’Ouest, used to refer to the population living west of the continent in an area also under French colonial rule. We will see how these geographical categories, used to divide space, were gradually replaced by other, racial categories that imposed color as a major criterion to distinguish parts of the continent and, ultimately, divisions imposed by geopolitics. But first let us see how historical narratives not only used these names but also, because they were narratives, entrenched them in colonial imaginaries.

Ibn Khaldûn, a Colonial Author Arabic sources as local knowledge in the form of chronicles, geographies, legal treaties, Quranic studies, and historiography were of vital interest to the colonial enterprise by the time of the conquest. Immediately after the conquest, William de Slane, an Irish student of 47

48

Tissot, “Recherches sur la géographie comparée de la Mauretanie Tingitane,” p. 144. Ibid., p. 144.

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Isaac de Sacy, was dispatched to inquire into the state of Arabic manuscripts in the new colony.49 De Slane enumerates the number of manuscripts in the bibliothèque d’Alger, estimating them to be 107. De Slane stresses the importance of these manuscripts pertaining to “treaties on religion and Muslim jurisprudence.”50 However, he notices that “works of history, and scientific and literary works, are rare.” De Slane gives in fine detail an annotated bibliography of the library of Algiers and another library he visited in Constantine. What is most surprising in this list is that the work that became foundational for French historical knowledge of the region is not there. Ibn Khaldûn’s three volumes on the history of the Arabs and the Berbers does not seem to be among the books De Slane catalogued in colonial Algeria. However, it is this work of history, I argue, that greatly contributed to reconfiguring the region – but in translation, direct and indirect. While Ernest Carette used Ibn Khaldûn extensively in his history of tribes in Algeria, De Slane’s translation of the three-volume history, under the title of L’Histoire des Berbères, became the source of colonial knowledge on the area. Ibn Khaldûn, as translated by De Slane, is undoubtedly a colonial author whose importance for colonial (and even later national) knowledge of the region is instrumental. By the word author, I mean the “author function,” as Foucault calls it, meaning he authored not only his own work but also “the possibility of other texts”51 – and one of these possibilities is precisely L’Histoire des Berbères. Ibn Khaldûn, as a colonial author, is undoubtedly a major one whose discourse (of course French) generated a plethora of narratives, images, and categories whose history, despite the old and acute interest in Ibn Khaldûn, has not yet been written. Here, it will suffice for me to explain how Ibn Khaldûn’s discourse generated racial categories (i.e., of Arabs versus Berbers) and a narrative of a quest that, according to this colonial Khaldûnian discourse, governed the history of the region. 49

50 51

William de Slane, Rapport addressé à Monsieur le Ministre de l’instruction publique par Monsieur le Baron de Salne chargé d’une mission scientifique en Algérie suivi du catalogue des manuscrits arabes les plus importants de la bibliothèque d’Alger et de la bibliothèque de Cid-Hammouda â Constantine. 1846. Ibid. Michel Foucault, “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?” Bulletin de la Philosophie Française de la Philosophie 1969 64: 73–104.

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To give an example, when Ibn Khaldûn speaks of jîl al-barbar, De Slane translates the concept as “the Berber race.” However, Ibn Khaldûn is specific and nuanced in his use of the concept of jîl; he refers to a group as the al-jîl al-awwal (first jîl), al-jîl al-th-thânni (second jîl), and so forth. Ibn Khaldûn also uses the same concept when speaking of Arabs. The concept of jîl that we can translate as “generation” does not just mean “the entire body of individuals born and living at about the same time,” but it also means a distinct group – distinguished by nasab, by sima, by shaʿâ’ir, etc.52 Jîl is a concept that pertains to time; it thus conveys the important social change that time brings. A specific generation (i.e., the first jîl of Berbers or the second jîl of Arabs) is different from the one it precedes as it is also different from the one that succeeds it. It is within a generation that a tribe goes from a bedouin stage (badâwa) to an urban stage of culture (ʿumrân); it is also after one generation that a tribe can go from a dynastical power to a defeated tribe. Besides these extremes, it is from a generation to a generation that a tribe can gain solidarity, and it is also from a generation to a generation that a dynasty loses a bit of its might (shawka) as it moves away from the stage of savagery (wahshiya). These important ˙ Arabic categorizations that introduce great sociological nuances disappear in the translation, to be replaced by categories specific to nineteenth-century France, such as race and nation.53 In the Arabic text of Ibn Khaldûn, there are only tribes because tribalism was the dominant polity in his time. One either belongs to a Berber tribe X or to an Arab tribe Y, but tribe X and tribe Y are not necessarily opposed, and oppositions (i.e., war and conflict) may be noticed between Berber tribe X and Berber tribe S, for economic reasons that can be symbolic and material, or both. Opposition is also to be found within tribes that are Arabs. Tribal affiliation was a sine qua none for political and social existence. Foreigners and slaves were also affiliated with tribes. In other words, politically, the individual does not exist in the tribal world of Ibn Khaldûn and in his time. Tribalism was the most common form of belonging, even stronger than religious affiliation.54 Tribes themselves were not homogenous, neither 52

53 54

Random House Dictionary of the English Language. Second edition, unabridged. New York: Random House. For more details, see Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary.” Thus in the work of Ibn Khaldûn itself, ʿasabiya is a tribal solidarity; the base, and the origin is tribal; religion only cemented the tribe with other tribes. But

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were they harmonious. Intertribal relations were fraught with conflict that, according to Ibn Khaldûn, create the ghâlib and the maghlûb, a relation of domination that is first and foremost tribal. Hence, there is also the absence of “minority identities” in his text. For the hegemonic tribal order, not only do individuals not exist, but entire groups fuse in this or that tribe usually as a consequence of a stronger ʿasabiya (tribal solidarity). Also, it is important to stress that De Slane’s translation not only strengthened and even naturalized the racial opposition of Arab versus Berber but also introduced the concept of domination to the narrative. Ibn Khaldûn speaks of fath, a Muslim concept common in Arab historiography of early Islam, but De Slane renders it as Arab “domination.” Yet in Khaldûn’s reflection on his historical narrative – an introduction called the Muqaddima – domination clearly is an explanatory key concept. It is ghalaba, itself the result not of a racial conflict, but of tribal antagonism that the concept of ʿasabiya further explains. In the region, as Ibn Khaldûn witnesses and ponders, tribal polities dominated even with the existence of states because states were first and foremost political tribal formations. A state is a tribe in power. The ʿasabiya allows a tribe to become more powerful and thus more expansionist not only as far as territory is concerned but especially, in this tribal world, as far as a tribe is concerned. The ʿasabiya allows a specific tribe to multiply, to create a system of subordinate tribes that are not cognizant that they are subordinated because what they obey is not the dominant tribe, but rather what it represents – religion. Ibn Khaldûn also noted this process of the transformation of the tribe into a state in the early development of Islam. He notices too another political process, a second one, that brings the state to its political demise, always inevitable. Therefore, it is a specific tribe, whether Arab or Berber, that subdues another one in the name of religion and makes it a support of its conquest of power and an ally in dynastical power. Those important nuances in the political theory of Ibn Khaldûn were not lost in translation, but were never part of the text that informs the history of the region. In metamorphosis, Ibn Khaldûn camps at the threshold of colonial times. L’Histoire des Berbères by itself constituted a discursive even in the case of the nation of the dawla (state), the tribe reigns. Hence my interpretation that in the view of Ibn Khaldûn, the state is a tribe in power.

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formation, for it had the impressive characteristics of generating countless narratives, in Arabic as well as in French, amongst colonial authors as well as among Arab ones, in the colonial period as well as in the postcolonial era. No other Arabic or French text on the region has the power that the text of Ibn Khaldûn/De Slane has. By this, I specifically mean the possibility of racial texts at the heart of which colonial categories of race, of Arabs and Berbers, of Arab domination, and even of ʿasabiya constituted the episteme of a new historiography. Hence, the colonial discourse constructed the Berbers not only as a white race, but also as a race in an antagonistic relation with Arabs, a relation regulated by the idea of domination. Thus the term Arab in the context of the region became fundamentally different from the concept of the Arab, say, in Egypt or in Syria. In the region at hand, the term Arab is defined by the term Berber, and vice versa. And this definition is colonially historical and racially political. But its racial dichotomy is neat and clear-cut only because other possibilities were silenced or, rather, eliminated, to make it so. These possibilities include the other categories we find in the early phases of colonial historiographic construction, other racial groups: Blacks, Haratin, Moors, Turks, Kouloughlis, and Jews. These groups are the collateral damage of the violence of the colonial discourse, and their erasure from the demographic colonial landscape outlasted colonialism.

The Narrative of the Race Struggle Epistemic disturbance is often caused by events that resist being comprehended by old categories or old frames of reference. Epistemic disturbance is not an epistemic murk, but rather the result of a disconnection between discourse and perception – when perception prevails and makes the discourse obsolete, or at least inadequate.55 The catalyst of this disconnect may be a cognitive event, in the sense that an accumulation of knowledge may have created the conditions for other possibilities of knowing. It may also be an occurrence that disturbs the discourse and its chains of reason.56 Or, it may be an unsustainable contradiction between the discourse and the reality that begs to be 55

56

Michael Taussig, “Culture of Terror, Space of Death,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 1983 (26)3: 467–497. See, on the concept of event as occurrence, Paul Ricoeur, “Evénement et sens,” in L’événement en perspective, ed. Jean-Luc Petit. Paris: EHESS, 1991.

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resolved. This was the case for colonial knowledge at this juncture of its construction. The discourse of the Arab Bureau describing the Berbers as originally a white race closer to the European by culture and even by religion was contradicted with the emergence of the Kabyles in 1870 as a fierce enemy of French occupation. Called the Kabyle Revolt in colonial language, the event demonstrated to the French that the Kabyle is no different from the Arab: he opposes the French, he resorts to violence, and he calls for jihad.57 After the brutal repression of the uprising, the fall of the empire, and the rise of a civilian regime to replace military rule, an entire civilian discourse started to form about the colony and its larger geographical surroundings. This discourse built ideas, maintained new ones, and also “corrected” old ideas not congruent with the civilians’ ideology and their agenda of appropriating the land. Among other concepts, they retained, from the body of knowledge of the Arab Bureau, the dichotomy of Arab versus Berber, with all the racial prejudice this dichotomy entailed, and stressed the idea of the invading Arab who occupied the best land as a prelude to expulsing him from it. Oftentimes, when speaking of the Arab Bureau, historians describe its officers as having a pro-Arab policy.58 This description was originally an accusation leveled against them by settlers who ferociously opposed the practices of the officers who, to them, seemed unwilling to pay attention to the implications of their ethnographic discourse and act accordingly. If the Arab is presented as a dominant conqueror, foreign and opposed to the Berber, why not eliminate him, right the wrong, end his political and economic domination, and free his land to colonization? Napoleon’s policy was opposed to such practice and aimed to make the country a new America. The war against Prussia soon halted this ambitious project, and its disastrous outcome brought the settlers to power, constituting what became known as the civilian regime (as opposed to the military regime, or the “sword regime” as the settlers disparagingly called it). From this time onward, not only did the political regime drastically change but so did the very mode of colonial knowledge in Algeria. An ethnographic state upheld by military officers 57 58

See on this, Hannoum, “Colonial Violence and Its Narratives.” See, as an example, Lorcin, Imperial Identities, who also repeats it uncritically in a book supposed to be critical of colonial categories. See a discussion of this book in my review essay “Writing Algeria.”

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was now officially replaced by what I call a historiographic state. A historiographic state relies on the past to legitimize its presence, to validate itself, and to provide itself with a political existence.59 Hence the crucial importance of L’Histoire des Berbères as a text that, by itself, created a discursive formation from which the Maghreb emerges as a cultural and historical unit. However, by the time of the emergence of the post-military civilian regime, the text needed restructuring to respond to new needs. By this time, and with the settlers in power, new and bigger colonial ambitions emerged as well. The coming of the settlers to power coincided also with the emergence of a historical narrative not only about the country that became Algeria but also about the entirety of the region. Ernest Mercier, a settler who became the mayor of Constantine, the second largest city in Algeria, authored the first civilian narrative about the region, a profoundly racial narrative at the heart of which one finds the opposition of Arab versus Berber. The book’s title announces a new name and a new agenda: Histoire de l’établissement des Arabes en Afrique septentrionale.60 In and of itself, this name indicates already the colonial ambition to expand beyond Algeria. If the author, Mercier, speaks of the region as a whole, Algeria is only a part of it. The ambition of his historiographical enterprise is in its title, and from the outset, he makes his goal clear and claims to show: The transformation of North Africa from a Berber land into an Arab land. To this end, one has to specify the period or the periods when the Arab entered the country, follow the trajectory of the invaders, indicate the resistance they faced from the indigenous population, and finally recognize particularly how they have been grouped, and how they compare in proportion with the indigenous population, and what places they occupy.61

Mercier provides a new colonial name for the entirety of the region that extends west from the Atlantic to the east at the “region of Barca” (pays de Barka), at the border of Egypt not shown in the map. He then redefines its characteristics, especially against the definitions of the 59 60

61

See Hannoum, “Historiographic State.” Ernest Mercier, Histoire de l’établissement des Arabes en Afrique septentrionale selons les documents fournis par les auteurs arabes . . . Constantine. L. Marle, 1875. Ibid.

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military officers of the Arab Bureau. His new definitions served to support the new colonial policy championed by the settlers for whom Mercier was a spokesman and now, with his three-volume work on the region, a historian. Afrique septentrionale, as he calls it, offers a continuity in space and in time. In space, it extends to all the regions that include neighboring countries. In time, the continuity is even more significant since the present of the region, now French, takes us to a historical time that was Roman. This is despite the fact that in Mercier’s narrative, because of its historic chronology, it is the Roman past that takes us to the present. The narrative unifies the region across both space and time: North Africa was an extension of Rome, and the French present is an extension of the Roman past. Its demographics are characterized by two populations in total opposition to each other, first and foremost at the racial level: Arabs, invaders from the East, and Berbers, an early European population under Arab domination. Indeed, Mercier unresistingly claims a European ancestry to what he calls “the indigenous populations.” Berbers are originally blondes from the north, he asserts.62 Mercier’s historical narrative is based almost exclusively on De Slane’s L’Histoire des Berbères, but with an important update to its form. In De Slane’s racial narrative, Ibn Khaldûn’s expert accounts remain organized according to a medieval structure that for the modern reader appears disorderly.63 In other words, its narrative sequence remains intact in the translation. Mercier’s merit was to introduce a modern narrative arc to the accounts of Ibn Khaldûn while highlighting their racial basis, and therefore his narrative is essentially a restructuring of De Slane’s translation.64 Therefore, despite the fact that it provides the settlers with a narrative that justifies their racial vision of colonial land policy, it still has “holes.” One that is not immediately obvious is the fact that Mercier relies on an Arab authority. This is especially problematic in light of the settlers’ critique of the Arab Bureau and its supposed dependency on “les indigènes” to build colonial knowledge. The second one is more serious, especially at the 62

63

64

Ernest Mercier, “Ethnographie de l’Afrique septentrionale. Note sur l’origine du people berbère,” Revue Africaine 1871 (25): 420–433. Also, by the same author, see “La race berbère. Véritable population de l’Afrique septentrionale,” Société Archéologique de Constantine 1905 (39): 23–59. Abdelmajid Hannoum, “The Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldûn” in Classical Texts in Context. Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method, ed. Stefan Berger. London: Bloomsbury Press, in press. See Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary.”

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moment of the annexation of Morocco. This pertains to the fact that the concept of race, still important, became less operational in the historiographic discourse of the metropole. If by 1875, racial theories, especially those of Ernest Renan, to whom Mercier dedicated a copy of the book, were still in fashion, soon another category emerged and became instrumental in political thinking.65 This was the concept of the nation that Renan first and forcefully theorized. By 1928, race was increasingly being substituted by the concept of the nation. Yet Mercier’s narrative reshaped colonial imagination in creating Algeria as a part of a whole that it should not be separated from: northern Africa.

The Nation and Its Opposites By 1912, after the Treaty of Fes and the establishment of the first colonial administration under Herbert Lyautey, the region as a whole was completed and referred to systematically as L’Afrique du Nord in the diplomatic language of the day; only Libya seems to have been excluded from this domination since the name in use was l’Afrique du Nord et la Lybie.66 The separation of Libya from the rest of North Africa was undoubtedly a result of colonial geopolitics since North Africa (i.e., the Maghreb) was under French rule and Libya was under Italian rule. The name North Africa itself excludes Egypt, and this exclusion, itself a product of geopolitics, was now taken for granted. These exclusions, to appear legitimate and natural, needed to be based on geographical and cultural reasons. Similarly, and equally imperatively, an intellectual effort had to be deployed to contrast this same bloc, North Africa, with West Africa and therefore with the rest of Africa. Creating smaller blocs, separating them, contrasting them, and opposing them was also a way to create geographical and cultural devices to manage and govern the colonies more effectively and less onerously, the same way districts were managed and governed in France itself, or in any center of imperial power, be it Great Britain, Italy, or the Netherlands. 65 66

Fund Ernest Renan, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. La conférence africaine française de Brazzaville, rapport de M. Vallat, Rabat, February 23, 1944. 2MA/1 Maroc SGP 326, Ministeres des Affaires Etrangeres, Archives Diplomatiques, Centre de Nantes.

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Therefore, for the case of Africa, a distinction had to be made between Islam and naturism67 on one hand, the first Arab, the second African, and between “Arab Islam” and “Black Islam,”68 the same way it had already been made between “Arab Islam,” characterized by fanaticism, and “Berber Islam,” lacking the “tide” of fervor and indifferent to the scriptures of the Quran. This opposition at times took complex forms, as is the case with Captain P. J. André, who sought to know the locations of Islam noir in countries of West Africa, one by one, providing statistics, and evaluating the degree of Islam of this or that population, and their relation to other non-Muslim groups, especially animists.69 “French Sudan is at the moment the battlefield of Islam against Animism,”70 he wrote. But all signs, according to him, indicate Islam is losing the battle. Among all the Muslims of the French Sudan, 9,300 were “Islamized” within a population of 2,475,000. But of the “Islamized” (and these are, of course, distinct from Muslims), he finds an “Islam façade.”71 Of all the countries in West Africa, he designates only Mauritania as entirely Muslim. In all the others, either their Islam is less “Islamic” or it is retreating with the advance of animism.72 But then, Mauritania was part of Senegal.73 These views constitute what Alain Quellien in 1910 called “Islamophobia,”74 that is, “a bias against Islam common among the people of Western and Christian civilization.”75 Quellien, who wrote earlier than Frédéric de La Chapelle and André, had a different view of Islam in West Africa. He expresses views similar to those of Ismael Urbain, who wrote in the context of the early colonization of Algeria in the 1850s. For him, Islam is a factor of progress for the Black population; it spread peacefully and with success. These successes are due to numerous and different causes. They pertain as much to the essence of the Muslim religion as to the affinities between blacks

67

68 69 71 73

74

75

Jules Brevie, Islamisme contre “Naturisme”: Essai de psychologie politique colonial. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1923. Paul Marty, Etude sur l’Islam au Sénégal. Paris: Le Roux, 1917. Capitaine A. J. André, L’Islam noir. Paris: Geuthner, 1924. 70 Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 18. 72 Ibid. Frédéric de La Chapelle, “Esquisse d’une histoire du Sahara Occidental,” Hespéris 1930 (11): 35–95. Alain Quellien, La politique musulmane dans l’Afrique Occidentale Francaise. Paris: Emile Larose, 1910, p. 133. Ibid.

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and Muslims (mahométans) and to the easiness by which Islam can adapt to the political, economic, and social Negro populations.76

However, despite its “successes,” Islam was unable to entirely eradicate the “primitive practices” of some populations, Quenelle argues.77 He makes the suggestion, then, that Islam in West Africa could be “nuanced.” Yet, a distinction remains between Islam in West Africa and Islam in Algeria, not only in terms of influences and practices but also in terms of the threat and danger to “our civilization,” and “our domination,” he warns. Black Muslims do not constitute a danger or a threat, he says; one may wonder why. Because their Islam, according to Quenelle, is different from the one in North Africa, which is more institutional, more organized, and more supported by a clergy than the Islam of West Africa, which is not fanatical or zealous and remains indifferent to calls for reconstituting the Caliphate.78 One can see that Quenelle denounces Islamophobia in West Africa even as he promotes it in North Africa. The Islam of the first is a threat to French presence; the Islam of the second is not. What makes Quenelle fall into this seeming contradiction is precisely the idea, espoused by his contemporaries, that Arab Islam is fundamentally different from Black Islam: the first is fanatical, but the second is only a shadow of the first and is thus without its power to threaten and harm. In any case, regardless of nuances, these distinctions between Islam noir and Arab Islam or, which amounts to the same thing, Islam of “White North Africa,” are crucial in the distinction between the region of northern Africa and western Africa in the colonial discourse.79 They also take on an important dimension later, in the work of George Hardy80and Vincent Monteil for Black Islam,81 and were even espoused by pan-African authors to highlight the distinctiveness of Africa in relation to the Middle East that starts for them in North Africa, and not only in Egypt. Yet, it is in Egypt that these authors find the civilizational argument against hegemonic racial Europe. I return later to Egypt in the discourse of pan-Africanism.

76 79 80

81

Ibid., p. II. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., p. VI. Vincent Monteil, Islam noir. Paris: Seuil, 1964, p. 125. George Hardy, Le problème religieux dans l’empire français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1940. Monteil, Islam noir.

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Associating Black Africa with naturism and thus separating it from Islam was an important element in the construction of both Africa and the Maghreb. Islam, for an author such as Maurice Delafosse, “has not penetrated in any profound or effective fashion [Black Africa] except among the Negro and Negroid populations who live on the border of the Sahara.”82 Furthermore, for Delafosse, even African Islam and African Christianity are of different types, specific to Africa. “All the rest, that is to say, the immense majority of the Negro population of Africa, is pagan.”83 He adds, “on the whole, the Muslim Negroes and the Christian Negroes remain faithful to their ancestral beliefs and many rites of their ancient paganism.”84 Blackness and paganism are then the hallmark of Africa. For Delafosse, one can see that the first is more constant, for one can change religion, but one cannot change race. This is what might have made Delafosse argue that “it is likely that North Africa was different from the rest of the continent and was closer to Mediterranean Europe than to central or meridional Africa which was inhabited by another race of men.”85 Race and systems of belief create further distinction and separation between Africa and its north. Colonial administrations bet on these oppositions of race and religion to separate, to isolate, to oppose, and to rule parts whose connections to the whole were assured by nothing but colonial governmentality itself, especially at the metropole level. Within the colonial whole, the parts (say Morocco, Algeria, or Senegal) were ruled by administrations that had colonial commonalities and colonial differences. The first were more predominant than the second since colonial interests rise above all differences. Historical narratives that delineate the history of northern Africa and the history of Africa appeared early on in the discourse on the region. Regulated by the categories of race and the hierarchy they entail in the margins south of the Sahara, the colonial narrative of Felix Dubois,86 Le Chatelier,87 and Capitaine Octave Meynier,88 among many, presents the incursion of the Berbers into the Sahara as a happy event for Blacks, long buried in primitivism. Consider a book by Capitaine Myenier, l’Afrique Noire, published in 1911 shortly 82 83 86 87 88

Maurice Delafosse, Les Noirs de l’Afrique. Paris: Payot, 1911, p. 110. Ibid., p. 110. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., p. 13. Felix Dubois, Tombouctou, la Mysterieuse. Paris: Flammarion, 1897. Le Chatelier, L’Islam dans l’Afrique occidentale. Capitaine Octave Meynier, L’Afrique noire. Paris: Flammarion, 1911.

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before French expansion in Morocco. Taking much of his categories (and even some material) from Le Chatelier, Myenier also reproduces the narrative of the race struggle in western Africa as well as in equatorial Africa.89 The entirety of the region – west, north, and center – seems fraught with racial conflict. And the political map of this region is marked neither by tribalism nor by a balance of power between tribes, regions, and even families, but by pure force, evident in the fact that domination is the rule of the superior race. Between two races, force always decides and shows the superior and the inferior, the dominant and the dominated. In this vast region of unequal (and inferior) races, mixing is a common practice. This mixing degenerates one race, the superior one, and, by the same token, improves the inferior one. Thus, in this racial narrative, the Arabs of Arabia, not the Arabs of the Maghreb, elevated the Berbers who, in their turn, pushed outside the Sahara and improved the lot of Blacks. The author even speaks about a new category, Arab Berbers. But this mixing clearly led to a general degeneration that returned West Africa to an earlier stage of barbarism before the arrival of Europeans, in his view. Blacks are inferior even in the deficiency they may share with others such as the Berbers and the Arabs, he maintains. He takes slavery as an example, to argue that slavery among Blacks is so common that they enslave each other – something Arabs and Berbers do not do. Amongst Blacks, the slave endures a particularly harsh condition, he notes, but among Arabs and Berbers, slaves are treated humanely. And once a black slave converts to Islam, Arabs and Berbers treat him as a free man. These views that may seem positive regarding Arabs and Berbers are in fact, only tropes to highlight the relative deficiency of Blacks. The point one can withdraw from Myenier is that Blacks are at the bottom of the racial hierarchy, a view already common among Europeans, thanks to the work of Gobineau, and that civilization, for them, is always an import. But behind this barbarism, low intelligence, and lack of initiative is race – not geography, not religion. One can almost see a contradiction in French writings on Black Africa among authors who maintain that Islam is a factor of civilization among Blacks of the Sudan, whereas at the same time Islam is not only a factor of retardation but itself a religion of barbarism, cruelty, and war. How to explain this contradiction? 89

Ibid.

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With these authors, race is an instrumental category, one with a powerful explanatory function. It is so instrumental that it deeply affects religion itself. It explains behaviors and actions. It explains the state of civilization and the state of barbarism. In itself and compared not only to France, but also to Christianity, Islam is a barbarity. Compared to black barbarism, Islam is an improvement. Nevertheless, this improvement remains a threat to civilization, a danger.90 Consider Le Chatelier’s views: A Muslim African power by [its annexation of] Algeria and by being adjunct to Morocco, Senegal, Soudan, and its new provinces of Chad, France is particularly interested in the development of Islamic studies, in a practical form to become useful for political action. However, it seems that this simple notion is not well understood outside of Algeria.91

This is an old idea one finds even in the earliest colonial writings about West Africa. Islam was perceived as a threat, not to Christianity as in the old Orientalist tradition, but to civilization itself. Ignoring it is to “hinder the work of French civilization in North and West Africa,” wrote Le Chatelier in 1888.92 Therefore the effort to distinguish, and possibly to oppose, the presence of Islam in West Africa to Islam in northern Africa was of tantamount importance to the colonial enterprise – and not only the French one. Pioneering work by British missionaries, explorers, and soldiers was of great importance to French authorities. David Livingstone, Edward Bylden, and Joseph Thompson, among others, were constant references in French writings before and after 1870. As late as 1947, in a conference whose keynote speaker was General Charles de Gaulle, where young Jacques Berque was also a participant along with other experts on the region of the Maghreb and on West Africa, the distinction between regional forms of “religiosity” was stressed, and the warning that the Islam of the region should not mix, influence, and change the animism of West Africa was issued.93

90

91 92 93

Henri Busson, “L’Islam dans l’Afrique occidentale d’après l’ouvrage de Mr. Le Chatelier (note critique).” Annales de Géographie 1900 (45): 269–273 at 269. Chatelier, L’Islam dans l’Afrique occidentale, p. 8. Ibid. The book was written in 1888. La conférence africaine française de Brazzaville, rapport de M. Vallat, Rabat, February 23, 1944. 2MA/1 Maroc SGP 326, Ministères des Affaires Etrangères, Archives Diplomatiques, Centre de Nantes.

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Lastly, as far as Islam is concerned, all the delegations of North Africa had to insist to take advantage of the opinion of the General Secretary who rightly maintained that it should as far as possible stop its expansion. If Islam may appear to the disinterested sociologist an instrument of civilization because it is accessible to the mentality of blacks, it constitutes, however, a clear progress over fetishism. However, it is obvious for anyone with experience that Islam is both at the origin of the major difficulties we encounter in our Empire and the most redoubtable tool of opposition.94

The historiographic continuity was assured interestingly enough by a geographer who, despite being an outsider to the field and especially despite the fact that he was not Arabisant or Berbérisant, would impose himself as the dominant historian of the region. In fact, this dominance itself is reflected in the fact that the name he invented is the one this chapter is examining. Émile-Félix Gautier invented the name Maghreb that was to be imposed as soon as the date of its publication in 1928. His book in question is entitled L’islamisation de l’Afrique du Nord.95 The multiplicity of names that the region had gained and the fact that none of these names had gained a consensus meant, to Gautier, that the region “is a country without a name.”96 To say this means two things: first, that the country does not exist and therefore it belongs to no one; second, that the country is to belong to those who can name it. Gautier names it for the colonial administration: Arabs give to the name Maghreb a little more extended meaning. They apply it to all the part of North Africa that extends from the west of Egypt and that includes Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. From a human point of view, they are right. Cyrenaica and Tripolitania are in fact barbarian countries (pays barbaresques) populated by Berbers. However, they [Cyrenaica and Tripolitania] rather constitute the “avenue” that leads from the Levant to the Maghreb.97

Arabs, of course, did not use the name Maghreb to designate the entirety of the region. Depending on the time period, the name was never a reference to a totality. In the time of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hakam, the ˙ region was called Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. Later on, another entity was added to compose a triad of names: Ifriqiya, Maghreb, and al94 95

96

Ibid. Émile-Félix Gautier, L’Islamisation de l’Afrique du Nord. Les siècles obscurs du Maghreb. Paris: Payot, 1927. Ibid. 97 Ibid.

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Andalus.98 Yet Gautier displays colonial authority that allows him to create and impose colonial truths even in the face of a highly “native” text that contradicts it. Thus, he excludes Libya (then an Italian colony) from the French region just because it is an “avenue” of a bloc he calls “the Levant,” which is mostly and historically under British rule. He concludes with his habitual overconfidence, “let us agree to adopt the name Maghreb.”99 This name, Gautier contends, does not then refer to what the name Maghrib (‫(ﻣﻐﺮﺏ‬, in Arabic historiography, meant in the book of al-Bayân al mughrib fi târikh al maghrib, which Gautier takes as the source of his naming.100 Gautier aims at demonstrating that this region, now called the Maghreb, had never been Arab. It was French at the time he was writing his book, and naming the region clearly made it so. Now that the region is named, it is possessed. Since the most authoritative text prior to 1928 was that authored by Mercier on the authority of Ibn Khaldûn, it is this authority that Gautier wanted to put an end to before formulating his own concept of what the Maghreb was or rather had been historically. This was not a huge challenge for Gautier. He racially disqualifies Ibn Khaldûn and all Arab historians, in the same way that the colonial administration would exclude or freely correct “native” points of view, by pointing to the biological and intellectual inferiority of the Oriental mind. Gautier writes about Arab historians with a colonial assurance, “all of them, including Ibn Khaldûn, have an oriental mind; which means that their conceptions of history are not always intelligible to us Occidentals.”101 Having eliminated out of hand all Arabic historiography, only a portion of which was available to him in translation, Gautier undertakes a rethinking of the region he just named the Maghreb according to its past, to wit the Berbers, their origins, and their relation to Europe. His explanation claims to be geographical, taking into account man in his relation with the land. To this end, he distinguishes between two modes of living: one sedentary, especially in the east, and the other 98

99

100

101

ʿ Abd al-Rahma¯n Ibn ʿAbd al-H akam, Futu¯h Misr wa-Ifrı¯qı¯yah, ed. ˙ Press, 1920. ˙ Yale University ˙ ˙ Charles Torrey. New Haven, CT: Ibid. The name Maghreb can be found early on in French historiography, often with its Arab connotations, but sometimes without them. For instance, Meynier uses the word Maghreb in 1911 and he distinguishes it from what he calls Afrique noire. See his L’Afrique noire, p. 92. Ibn ʻIda¯rı¯ al-Murrâkushî, Al-baya¯n al-muġrib fı¯ akhba¯r mulu¯k al-Andalus waˉ al-Maghrib. Ibid.

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nomadic, in the rest of the country. The sedentary man is “a pure Berber” because of his mode of living: he lives in a village. The nomad is “elusive”; he is an Arab in pursuit of plunder and pillage. “The tragedy of the Maghreb,” he continues, lies in this intense conflict, or rather war, between the sedentary and the nomad. It is this internal war that prevented the birth of a state and therefore created the impossibility of a political union. It is here that Gautier displays an originality, or rather novelty, in relation to previous colonial texts. He introduces the concept of the nation to explain the region whose name he invents. Ernest Renan, then the theoretician of the nation, once claimed with pride that “the concept of nation is ours.”102 Gautier undertakes to explain why the Berbers, who are one of “us,” were unable to constitute a nation. The answer lies in the presence of the other, a historical enemy: the Arabs. However, the Arab of Gautier is a specific type, different; he is a nomad, and hence his absence in the Sahara of Egypt in and of itself makes the Maghreb fundamentally different from Egypt, including its own Sahara. Actually, the Arab is present only in the Maghreb: In any case, the fact is certain. The Egyptian desert has no nomads. At least it does not have the large nomadic tribes. Those tribes are elusive, looters, powerful by their instinct and their war training. They are an eternal threat to the public order, as long as we do not resign to entrusting them with its guard. Egypt has its own Bedouins. It is an old name, “badaoui,” which was naturalized in all European languages, I do not know when. Would the expedition of Bonaparte in Egypt be at the origins of this naturalization?103

Colonial authorities, whether in northern or western Africa, were acutely aware that colonial geography had to be invented, that lands had to be explored, defined, and named. They were also equally aware that the pieces they created should be connected to others, or disconnected, as the case may be. Many of those who contributed to the Comité d’études historiques et scientifique de l’AfriqueOccidentale française, such as Meynier and Marty, served in Algeria. They did not lose sight of that country, a real colonial model that allowed them to rethink any other colonial situation, far or near. Their construction of Africa, and more specifically of West Africa, was also, ipso facto, a construction of how it was different from 102

Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?”

103

Gautier, Le Sahara.

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Algeria, and by extension northern Africa. In their mind, the region was a cultural and a geographic continuum, but not with West or Central Africa. Yet they did not publish in Algerian venues, but created their own venues and their own institutions. The Comité d’études historiques et scientifique de l’Afrique-Occidentale française was transformed later, in 1938, to the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire.104 In addition to these scholars of Algeria becoming experts on West Africa, there were also scholars of Algeria who stayed in Algeria, but never lost sight of the colonies elsewhere and especially not in eastern or western Africa. For those, Algeria was of tantamount importance, and the elsewhere in Africa helped define Algeria’s distinctiveness. One of these scholars was the same Gautier, an overwhelmingly domineering figure of colonial knowledge and its institutions. In 1934, he published a book called L’Afrique noire occidentale.105 By this time, the Maghreb as a name and a geographical entity was already constructed and isolated as distinct. Similarly, western Africa itself had been invented and made separate by authors of the Comité d’études historiques et scientifique de l’Afrique-Occidentale française and later the Institut de l’Afrique Noire. But this book of Gautier’s is undoubtedly significant because it was written by one of the main, and at least the final, architects of colonial geography and an expert on the Maghreb to boot. In the views of Gautier, the characteristics of Egypt, once again part of Asia since Herodotus, offer similarities with the rest of northern Africa. They share two geographical entities that are distinct and instrumental, the Mediterranean and the Sahara. Of course, these distinctions are constructions; they are made within a geopolitical framework to make French “possessions” distinct from adjunct colonies (Egypt and Libya) France did not control. In other terms, what is at play in the discourse of Gautier is the logic of empire to transform, appropriate, separate, and connect to French geography and history as well. It is this logic, with its discursive power on mind and imagination, that creates parts separated despite, or even because of, their continuous connections created throughout the course of history as a result of different logics of conquests and rules.106 104

105 106

Theodore Monod, “L’institut Français d’Afrique Noire,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 1943 (14)2: 194–199 at 194. Gautier, L’Afrique noire occidentale. For the case of Ottoman Empire and its logic in Africa, see Minawi, Ottoman Scramble for Africa.

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Gautier’s text did not only invent the name and even impose it, but he gave it a specific meaning as well. This meaning is made by all colonial stereotypes about “inferior races” – Arabs and Berbers alike – two categories the officers of the Arab Bureau created before they surfaced in the translated text of Ibn Khaldûn. The Arab hates the European, the Berber hates the Arab because he is European, and the European is superior to the Berber, despite shared kinship, because he developed in his natural environment. The tragedy of the Berber is that he was subjected to the domination of the Arab. This is to say that the Maghreb is a region defined by its racial conflict, racial inferiority, and thus political incapacity. Therefore, the Maghreb is a region in a pre-European stage: it is premodern and prenational, and it can be saved only if it accepts the French civilizing mission. However, the civilizing mission presumes, as in the very text of Gautier, an aptitude to change and to progress. The Berber has this aptitude by virtue of his presumed European ancestry. The Arab, on the other hand, is unable to acquire this aptitude. He is a nomad who does not learn. Even worse, in the view of Gautier, he is the enemy of Western civilization, he is the one who put an end to it in the region that he transformed into an Arab one. Therefore, two conditions are required for a political solution to make Algeria French: exclude Arabs and teach the Berber to catch up with Europe. This text was written at the height of French colonialism in the region. It expresses the raw colonial power’s unshakable confidence in itself. Its author knew neither Arabic nor Berber yet uttered cookiecutter judgments to be accepted as truths. One of the ironies in his naming of the region was that he did not know its Arabic semantics. The other irony is that another colonial author, a philologist of Arabic, William Marçais, despite his linguistic skill, and despite his huge effort to critique the name Maghreb and replace it with the name Berbérie, was unable to do so.107 The text of Gautier along with the name he invented for the region remained authoritative. Critique only seemed to prologue its authority. The name Berbérie has continued to be used by scholars, who argue for the thesis that the real indigenous of the region is the Berber. However, this name has not survived in the postcolonial 107

William Marçais, “Les siècles obscurs du Maghreb d’E-F. Gautier,” Revue Critique d’Histoire et de Literature 1929: 255–270. Reprinted in William Marçais, Articles et conferences. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1961, pp. 69–82.

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period; the last time it was used in an important historiographic text was in 1946.108 Meanwhile, the authority of Gautier can still be seen in the work of all subsequent French colonial and postcolonial authors, including Jacques Berque, who systematically uses the name Maghreb in all his writings and often evokes the figure of the Bedouin camel rider so dear to Gautier. Even as Gautier is confronted head on by Abdallah Laroui, his argument appears again, full-fledged and intact, in the text of Gabriel Camps.109 Thus Gautier’s work is not just an individual text, and not just an accumulation of colonial historical theses, but also the discursive embodiment of the Maghreb. Subsequent texts, such as those by Berque, Camps, Allal al-Fassi, and Laroui, willy-nilly continue its discursive existence, as any critique of it confirms its relevance. By the time of the independence of Algeria in 1962, and most likely before, Gautier’s work had lost most of its authority. A new historiographical text had emerged by 1951, written by a man highly sympathetic to the movements of liberation that were part of the climate of the time, even among those French politicians and diplomats who were once fervent champions of colonization. This was L’Histoire de l’Afrique du Nord, authored by Charles-André Julien.110 The book is inscribed in the long colonial historiography of the region. In fact, Fernand Braudel, who then reviewed it, saw in it a synthesis of previous works, especially those of Mercier and Gautier, whose “historiographic imperialism” Braudel applauds, “along with the great things we have done there.”111 This was not only a glowing review but also an acknowledgment that Braudel, the historian of the Mediterranean, owed a great deal in his conception of the Maghreb to Gautier.112 Julien clearly wanted to depart from Gautier, even in naming the region that he calls l’Afrique du Nord (North Africa). But he was unable to impose the name, let alone to undermine the huge popularity the name Maghreb enjoyed in scholarly writings as well as in political 108

109

110 111

112

Robert Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les Hafsides, des origines à la fin du XVe siècle. Paris, Adrien Maisonneuve, 1940. Gabriel Camps, “Comment la Berbérie est devenue le Maghreb arabe,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Mérditerranée 1983 (35): 7–24. Charles-André Julien, Histoire de l’Afrique blanche. Paris: PUF, 1966. Fernand Braudel, “A propos de l’histoire de l’Afrique du Nord de Ch.-André Julien,” Revue Africaine 1933 (74)1: 37–53. See frequent references to Gautier by Braudel, especially in his geographical conception of the area of the Maghreb. La Mediterranée et le monde mediteranéen.

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speeches both in France and in the region itself. The name Maghreb gained a natural existence in part because it sounded like a local name. It has Arabic connotations, of course, but it also has roots in a classical historiographic book, al-Bayân al mughrib fi târikh al maghrib.113 On the eve of colonialism, and in the local writings of historiography, the name could also be seen, albeit with adjectives: al-Maghreb al-Awsat, al-Maghreb al-Aqsâ’, al-Maghreb al-Adnâ’. In 1888, in Morocco, and more specifically in its northern parts, the local name of Maghreb alAqsa seems to have been still adopted by the Spanish, as attested by the Spanish newspaper al-maghreb Al-aksa.114 The name Maghreb, made more popular by Gautier, meant something entirely different by the 1920s. First, it indicates a French possession in the colonial period and a French zone of cultural and political influence in the postcolonial era. Julien’s use of the name Afrique du Nord was not successful also because it does not delimit the French colonial zone from the whole, especially from the west, where Nasser’s Egypt, with its pan-Arab ideology, menacingly sat in 1952. However, Gautier’s main thesis, regarding the permanent conflict between the nomadic (Arabs) and the sedentary (Berbers) is present in Julien’s narrative. And thus the very idea of the region’s political incapability to unite and/or found a nation is rearticulated. It is to refute this thesis that Abdallah Laroui wrote his l’histoire du Maghreb which, at least in postcolonial historiography, continues the use of the name.115 Let us not anticipate.

Conclusion If cartography constituted the form of the narrative on the Maghreb (that became the Maghreb itself), historical research, including archaeological narratives, constituted the content of this narrative. This content itself was made of semantics on one hand and narrative grammar on the other. In terms of semantics, lexemes such as Arab, Berber, Roman, and French denote a racial ideology with a hierarchy where Europeans are on top and Berbers are on the bottom, followed by 113

114

115

Ibn ʻIda¯rı¯ al-Murrâkushî, Al-baya¯n al-muġrib fı¯ akhba¯r mulu¯k al-Andalus waˉ al-Maghrib. Centre des Archives Diplomatique de La Courneuve. PAAP100/4 document 108. Laroui, L’histoire du Maghreb.

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Arabs. This narrative grammar denotes a societal grammar that may be rearranged into a plot, easy to read, easy to remember, and easy to renarrate – that is, also easy to politically manipulate. This colonial narrative can generally be divided into parts, one that pertains to the race struggle in which Arabs and Berbers are in constant conflict since the Arab invasion of the eighth century, with the absence of a third actor who is recent but old, superior but benevolent, a conqueror too, and at the same time a civilizer who came to put an end to centuries of Arab domination and save the Berber European from both domination and primitiveness. This narrative is of a quest whose real hero is none other than the Frenchman and whose avatar is Roman. The second narrative is also a narrative of racial struggle, but it displaces the grammar of the first narrative. Race is replaced with language, but not eliminated as an instrumental category that maintains the initial narrative grammar of the Arab (synonymous with Muslim), Berber (primitive after all), and European (behind whom Christianity quietly hides). But language unsettles some of these categories. It makes the Berber become Arab and the Arab become Berber. The object of the conquest in this second narrative is not domination, but rather the foundation of the nationhood that is absent from Berber history, always obstructed as it is by Arab disturbance and pillage, though finally achieved by the French. One can think about these narratives in functionalist terms and argue that they justify colonial rule and conquest, but one cannot explain why colonial administrations needed more than one narrative for justification and why they risked contradiction and uncertainty to develop several. Perhaps “Frenchmen sought to justify these conquests by economic arguments.”116 The truth of the matter is that these narratives, despite or maybe even because of their contradictions, uncertainties, and contingencies, are attempts at making sense of the colony and at connecting the colony to new parts as conquest continues unabated and new colonial rules are set up in new lands and in new contexts. With historical narratives, a constellation of meanings is created to make sense of the colony, to give it an identity and a face, to root it in French history itself by connecting it to the French Empire, to connect this 116

Henri Brunschwig, “French Exploration and African Conquest,” in Colonialism in Africa, vol. 1, ed. L. H. Gan and Peter Duignan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969, pp. 132–164 at p. 139.

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colony (Algeria) to other “colonies” of Tunisia and Morocco, to create a continuity between the three. Historical narratives also join archaeology and maps and create discontinuities, borders, and frontiers. They eliminate, they exclude; in doing so, they interpret, create, invent, and explain why this whole is different from this part, and why this part cannot be connected to this other part. For these reasons, three major categories have been put into use with wonderful effects since they seem most natural – that is, they seem to be integrated in the very objects they signify, and not imposed on the objects for the purpose of signification. These categories are space, race, and language. With space, the geographical notion is imposed: the region is North, and North itself as a geometrical category seems natural, despite the fact that Egypt was excluded along with Senegal from the North, and these were arbitrarily named – one as East, the other West. The first was East in relation to Asia, despite its African geography, the second was in West Africa, despite its being adjunct to Morocco. In terms of race, perceived exclusively in terms of color and phenotypes, the colony, Algeria, was connected eastward and westward to Tunisia and Morocco, retrospectively. But it was disconnected eastward and westward from Senegal and Egypt racially. From the first, “white Berbers” were disconnected from Senegal, and the same Arab-Berber relation also disconnected them from Egypt, where the “Arab” is presented differently. And last, religion was a major factor in that the colony and its connected surroundings were Muslim, disconnected from both Senegal and Egypt by the fact that in the first Islam is “paganized” and in the second, Islam is “literalized.” The separation from central Africa was the easiest. The Sahara stood as an important marker between the Maghreb and Africa, not only in modern times but in times immemorial. At the border with the Sahara is an animal-like man, the Bedouin, the limit of savagery, and beyond it is another animal-like man, the Black, the limit of primitiveness. At the limit of this space, civilization was not possible. France was only concerned with what is civilizational. The region under discussion had the potential to become civilized and become French. The name Afrique française was already a common name in atlases and in diplomatic dialogue.

5

Strategies for the Present

The Maghreb, as an idea, a realm of discourse, and an expression of colonial power, could not have been imposed without the complicity of local historians, ideologues, and politicians. However, this complicity pertains less to a political collaboration and more to the hegemony of the colonial discourse and its power dynamics. Colonial power is not like any other power. It is not the modern power that operates in the metropole and transforms rules and dynamics, creates discourses and sentiments, transforms land and people, determines attitudes and sexualities, and invents subjects and sensibilities.1 This modern power, it is worth noting, was at one point in time unique to Western societies, where the state was set up to invent a new citizen.2 In the colony, meanwhile, power functions differently and of course also means something quite distinct from the way modern power functions and what it means in Western societies. Power in the colony operates in a vacuum: a vacuum of modern institutions, a vacuum of equivalency, a vacuum of counter-modern power, an absence of citizenship with rights, and thus, precisely because of this set of vacuums, power in the colony exerts itself more destructively, more abruptly, and more effectively even. Power in the colony is not designed to create a new citizen, but new subjects characterized by racial difference that not only deprives them of rights, but constantly subjects them to state violations of person, dignity, land, and history. Power in the colony is exerted against a land deemed foreign and even threatening, and against masses considered, or rather created, as utterly “other” in their racial, cultural, and religious differences. The effects of colonial power are maximal because colonial power operates against land and masses (mostly tribes) not yet considered a population in the political sense, and barely 1

2

Of course, as it appears in the later work of Michel Foucault on prison, the history of sexuality, etc. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, ed. Quintin Hoare, Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1991, Reprint 1999, p. 246.

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treated as a people because of racial ideologies. They do not even qualify for the use of “bio-power,” an elevated power designed for citizens. Tribes especially were the object of collective power – that is, the colonial management of tribalism – which is the display and the deployment of brute power manifest in the use of sheer force when necessary – and it was often necessary – to make the land available and its people not just docile but also increasingly more accepting of the unacceptable, more enduring of injustices, and more subject to violence.3 Theorists of this power unleashed against the colony include Alexis de Tocqueville and Thomas Robert Bugeaud. The use of bio-power in the metropole is nuanced and subtle and aims at banking on and maximizing labor – the real source of wealth. In the colony, colonial power prioritizes land, seen as the source of wealth, to the detriment of people (especially tribes) regarded as dangerous, a real hindrance for civilization. Even in the colonial city, the urban natives are the “undifferentiated brown staff”4 George Orwell wondered about and on “which” he pondered, “do they even have names?”5 For a name is the property of individuality, not of collectivity. Bio-power operates in a society that is industrial, colonial power in a society that is nomadic and agricultural and whose peasantry are turned into something like serfs. Colonial power may face counterpower, of course, with the rise of tribal resistance. However, this counter-power is often minimal, approaching at times the zero degree of power. For modern power may be everywhere, but the colony is not modern, and modernity was brought to it violently.6 This imbalance of power, in case of confrontations, often results in more destruction and more violence inflicted as punishment, as in all the cases one might consider, including that of Abdelkader and El Mokrani in nineteenthcentury Algeria.7 Only in the 1950s did the native acquire the same type of power, and he launched it against a settler society with all the force and savagery it inherently contains. 3

4

5 6 7

On colonial violence that was part and parcel of its very functioning, see Hannoum, Violent Modernity. Different views by William Gallois, A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Brower, Desert Named Peace. George Orwell, “Marrakech,” in Collection of Essays. New York: Anchor Books, 1954, pp. 186–193 at p. 187. Ibid. On how violence is inherent to modernity, see Hannoum, Violent Modernity. See Hannoum, “Colonial Violence and Its Narratives.”

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Nevertheless, the naming of the region, as this chapter argues, is itself a manifestation of power and thus an act of possession – and of dispossession. It could be reclaimed, especially in the era of anticolonial protests, only by an equal local power backed by nation-states both in the region and beyond, and fostered by international solidarity movements worldwide. By 1928, the Maghreb was born – officially, that is. Its birth was long and contradictory, and its form changed, or rather autocorrected, as the politics of the production of knowledge changed and as the political dynamics of the region and of the world transformed. The birth of the Maghreb was a semantic one as well as a political one. By this point in time, as is manifest in the work of ÉmileFélix Gautier, Les siècles obscurs, the Maghreb, as a name and as a thing, constituted the ensemble of colonial cartographic, ethnographic, and historiographic representations accumulated to date. These representations, along with their network of names, were repeated and propagated in newspapers, journals, books, and maps, and of course in literary works (such as fiction, essays, and poetry). This is to say that colonial power seemed ubiquitous, and so was the name Maghreb after its invention. What were the reactions of local intellectuals and the ulama of the time in the presence of perhaps an unprecedented manifestation of a colonial power that was everywhere and seemed invincible? Ulama are religious scholars, and thus in precolonial Muslim societies they represented the intelligentsia, the intellectual elite. The ulama were indeed the elite who produced knowledge and reproduced it; they were the ones who propagated it and taught it.8 This knowledge consisted mainly of forms of religious studies (al-ʿulûm alsharʿiya), but also of forms of adab, that classical form of literary knowledge, and last of hikma, a form of philosophical knowledge ˙ that may even combine forms of religious knowledge with forms of adab. Modern technologies of power were undoubtedly the monopoly of Europeans. Yet, because of a long historiographic tradition that they believed they mastered and owned, the ulama felt confident creating narratives about the past using Arabic sources, but they lacked the use of archaeological excavation, archaeological interpretations of traces, the techniques by which to measure and to create maps. In lacking technologies of power, they also lacked that scientific authority that 8

See Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant.

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endowed the colonial discourse and its technical auxiliaries. Oftentimes, the ulama avoided the realm of science, and at times they borrowed from it, especially maps – they could translate their names, but not really alter their contours. In short, the semantics of coloniality was such that the ulama were unable to think outside of it; they had the power of contestation, but not the power of competence, which is the ability to impose reception. At best, their discourse was only paid heed as a subversive activity of the natives to be watched, not a social discourse to engage, let alone as one that could affect the course of colonial representations or alter the construction of the region as imagined by the colonial discourse. The national discourse generated the existence of that which colonialism denied: the nation and the larger political unity of the region as a whole. This discourse has itself been generated by the colonial discourse. It has a colonial genealogy despite change and alterations in its categories. The image emerging from this cultural production at the end of colonial rule is the same as the colonial images, with the only difference that it does not narrate the history of a lack, or a history of misfortunes, but histories of deeds, of continuity, of larger brotherhood with the outside east, but never the outside west or south. In short, it created the Arab Maghreb out of the French Maghreb. The difference between the one and the other is the difference between a thing in a given time and the same thing out of that same time – the time of nationalism, the time of the celebration of past glories, the time of the confirmation of unity against the racial and cultural diversity existing in precolonial times and reemerging in postcolonial times, like a threat, first begging for recognition, then demanding it with a loud voice – often in the French tongue. Its dynamic consists in affirming itself against that which discursively obliterates its existence, the nationstate, by turning that into the enemy and wishing it the same fate. The colonial dynamic in the postcolonial world cannot be clearer, more decisive, or more imposing of its realities.

Oppose and Continue It is expedient to note, first, that the local reaction to the colonial discourse originated from the newly founded Salafi (i.e., Islamic modern) movement in the region. Founded in Egypt by Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh, Salafism preached a return to the origin of the purity of faith, the period when Islam prevailed and

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opened new ways for civilization.9 The aim was to reinvent Islam and not just the region, to create a new Muslim, and to bring back lost civilization and glory. For them, there was no contradiction between Islam and modernity. On the contrary, they argued that the spirit of Islam itself is modern. Unmodern is everything that deviates from the teachings of Islam in the age of the salaf (the ancestors, or one might say the founding fathers of the oumma, the original Muslim community). However, while Abduh and Afghani in Egypt were concerned with an educational project, the Salafi of Algeria had another urgent priority to tackle: an argument for national existence. Neither Egypt nor Syria nor Iraq faced the problem of national existence. The movement reached Tunisia and Algeria at the moment of the height of the colonial enterprise in the region.10 Abduh himself visited Algeria and Tunisia, where he met the founders of the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama. The association was more openly political in Algeria and Tunisia (and later in Morocco) than it was in Egypt. In addition to a political discourse about Islam and about colonization, the ulama of the Salafi movement in the three countries of the region – Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco – transformed themselves, among other things, into “secular” historians with a declared aim: to challenge the very colonial historiography that created the name Maghreb and defined its content. They were also engaged in the French project of Laïcité, which they defended, requesting its application in Algeria.11 But their enterprise was even larger. The most painful colonial argument facing the Salafi was that the region had always been under domination, that it had never existed as a state or as a nation. Successive invasions culminating in the Arab conquest introduced a racial divide that still defines the region today and that prevents any national unity, unless helped by the French. It was mainly this challenge 9

10

11

Elie Kedourie, Afghani and ‘Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam. London: Frank Cass, 1997. See Ali Merad, Le réformisme musulman en Algérie de 1925 à 1940. Essai d’histoire religieuse et sociale. Paris: La Haye Mouton, 1967. See also James McDougal, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. For the teaching of Mohamed Abduh in Algeria, see Ali Merad, “L’enseigment politique de Mohamed Abduh aux Algériens,” Orient 1963 (8): 75–123. See Achi Raberh, “La séparation des Eglises et de l’Etat à l’épreuve de la situation coloniale. Les usages de la derogation dans l’administration du culte musulman en Algérie (1905–1959),” Politix 2004 (17)66: 81–106.

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that the Salafi had to face. It was this challenge that prompted them to rewrite history as a strategy of contestation and as a means to anticipate a better future for the nation. At the height of the colonial rule that France celebrated in 1930 with great fanfare, as the first century of its occupation of Algiers, Abd alHamid Ben Badis founded the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama. He planted the seeds of Algerian nationalism. Among the chief goals of his association was to demonstrate the existence of Algeria as a nation. Their strategy, historiographic narration; their audience, the Algerians themselves. Soon several members of the association had created a historical discourse with national coloring against the then dominant colonial discourse that had made the region what it was: a French territory with its proper name, the Maghreb. However, whereas the colonial historiographic discourse enjoyed exceptional power originating both from specific institutions (such as the University of Algiers, the Institut des Hautes Etudes marocaines in Rabat, the Sorbonne, etc.) as well as from the academic profession itself – which claimed history as the privileged scientific discourse on society even, or rather especially, in the metropole itself – the Algerian Salafi, as well as the Tunisian and the Moroccan ones, were deprived of the support of the institutions of the colonial state. Worse, the Salafi positioned themselves against colonial institutions, aware that settler society could not oppress and rule without them. This state had history as its mode, and so it could only be fought with greater historiographic fervor. Small wonder, then, that the Salafi approached history with confidence in their domain, believing that the long Arabic and Islamic historiography upon which the colonial discourse had built itself was their property. They undertook with confidence a historiographic endeavor to reclaim the region as their own – body and soul – and from time immemorial.12 Yet the Salafi discourse of members of the ulama, such as Abdel ʿAziz Thaʿâlibi, Abdelhamid Ben Badis, or Mubarak al-Mili – and, later on Ahmed Tewfik al-Madani and even Allal al-Fassi – functioned rather as a contesting discourse among those who could read it in Algeria, Tunisia, or Morocco. Whereas the Salafi historiographic discourse responded to the colonial discourse often by reversing it ideologically, colonial authors such as Gautier and Charles-André Julien remained 12

See Abdelmajid Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories. Heinemann: 2001, especially chapter 3.

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indifferent to these responses because the voice of the native, the subaltern, whether he speaks or screams, is irrelevant – just like the noise of the Souk. It was clear that colonial power bestows competence to not only express (even when ignorant of local languages, as in the case of Gautier) but also to ignore, to give or not to give importance to this or to that. The colonial discourse had such power to impose reception on a large and diverse audience, in the colonies, in the metropole, and beyond both of them even, in the form of English translations. The Salafi historian and ideologue lacked this competence and was unable to impose any reception in colonial societies and circles of academic discourse. However, he could find a reception in native society. One can see, then, how competence can exist at the level of native society yet not at the level of colonial society. The native society is the one of the local, the indigene, the Muslim, who is the object of colonial representation but not an interlocutor. While the Salafi discourse could find an audience among readers, including elites, across the region, it could only circulate among members of this native society, which is indicative of the dynamics of colonial power. Their discourse was performative on one level, yet not on another. While the Salafi discourse sometimes drew the attention of the colonial administration, it was only as a subversive activity undertaken by the “indigenes” and not as a historiographic discourse in its own right.13 However, the Salafi aim was not to reach the colonial audience, but the native one. Most importantly, in their historiographic contestations, they carried over, willy-nilly, the colonial discourse they protested. Thus an important characteristic of the discourse of power is its ability to subvert contestation, to convert protests, to generate itself in the form of critique, to survive even in the very act of the attempt to destroy it. It was in these colonial/local dynamics that the perception of the Maghreb was rearticulated in the discourse of the native, reproduced, and entrenched in local imagination. Nonetheless, most of the historical writing of the Salafi authors claims the existence of a nation whose constitution they find in the past. After all, since the past is only possible through the interpretation of historical texts that lend themselves to various interpretations, the 13

See Joseph Desparmet, “La résistence à l’Occident,” Afrique française May 1933: 265–268. Also his article on the historiographic writings of Madani and Mili, “Naissance d’une histoire ‘nationale’ de l’Algérie,” Afrique française July 1933 : 387–392.

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nation was not difficult to construct. The nation was constructed of narratives of the past commanded by colonial narratives that directed their meanings. The nation was specific, a part of a whole, but autonomous in and of itself; it appears to have existed in the past as well as in the present. A piece of a whole, Algeria appears as part of the geography that the same colonial narrative formulates under different names, with a multitude of maps, and an enormous amount of archaeological traces. Hence there is the publication of a certain number of historical narratives that bear the name of a nation: Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia.14 Yet the content of these different books revolves around a central idea – to reject colonial interpretations and offer local ones.15 However, local interpretations, as stated earlier, were themselves conditioned by colonial interpretations. Local narratives had the form of narratives of opposition and of contestation. They operated mainly by negation; they offered their own historical regimes of truths. Since the colonial discourse was faced with the highest suspicion as a discourse of deformation for the sake of exploitation, statements of the colonial discourse were reversed to obtain their opposite, deemed true. Paradoxically, the system of colonial “lies” imposed itself and not only created its audience amongst the local elites but also commanded their responses. As a discourse of power, the colonial discourse was contested by the Salafi. Yet this contestation itself ensured the longevity of the colonial discourse that constituted the Maghreb as a colonial geography. Whereas the Salafi discourse is fundamentally a discourse of opposition – which claims Carthage against the discourse of Rome, or for Arab origins of the Berbers against purported European origins – the colonial discourse is declarative and affirmative; it is a discourse of power unconcerned with

14

15

Moubarak al-Mili, Târîkh al-jazâ’ir fî al-qadîm wa al-hadîth. Constantine: 1932. Thaʿâlibi, La Tunisie martyre. Paris: Jouve, 1919. Al-Fassi, Hadîth al maghrib fî al-sharq. Cairo: Matbaʿat al-ʿAlamiya, 1956. See also Thaʿâlibi, La Tunisie martyre. Mili, Târîkh al-jazâʿir fî al-qadîm wa alhadîth. Also, Twefik Madani, Qartâjanna fi arbaʿati ʿuṣûr: min ʿasr al-hijra ilâ al-fath al-islâmi. Tunis: Matbʿat al-Nahda, 1927. Allal al-Fassi, al-Ḥarakât alistiqlâliya fi al-Maghrib al-ʿArabi. Tangier: Abdassalam Jasus, 1948. Also by the same author, Ḥadîth al maghrib fî al-sharq.

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discursive contradictions. These contradictions further guaranteed the continuity of the colonial discourse; they created the conditions of its proliferation. They generate multiple interpretations and multiply all possibilities of interpretations. There is indeed little to say about it if not to only repeat it, especially when opposing it. To say this more clearly, the colonial discourse, as a discourse of power, repeats itself in the Salafi discourse that opposes it. Yet it is this very contradiction that opens the way to greater opposition and thus this discourse is like Hydra, the monster with several heads: each time one of them is cut, it immediately grows another. Since Rome was central in the colonial historiographical narrative, the Salafi had neither the classical education of French colonials nor the skills in Latin and archaeology that, as we have seen, served as the main tools for historiographic and archaeological practices considered scientific. The Salafi had access to Arabic sources, but they often, by the logic of power dynamics, relied on the same authorities colonial agents relied on, mainly Ibn Khaldûn (albeit in his Arabic version). Yet the Salafi felt confident in a field with a long tradition in Islamic “sciences” and with authorities (recognized by the French as credible and important, albeit with hesitation, as we saw in the case of Gautier and Ibn Khaldûn). But what was important in this ideological struggle was the fact that the French relied on technologies of power, modern institutions, and material resources that the Salafi lacked. Technologies of power were the monopoly of French authorities; the “native” would only rely on his own associations and on forms of “institutions” – namely the zaouias (Sufi lodges), the madrasas, and the mosques that were carefully controlled and surveilled by French authorities.16 Consider Madani’s book on Carthage.17 Madani refers to the area with its colonial names: Maghreb (maghrib) and North Africa (shamâl ifriquiya).18 He also gives the same geographical definition of the region: “The Mediterranean covers the land of the Maghreb north and east, the Atlantic limits it west. From the south, the Sahara split it from the rest of Africa.”19 He expresses pride in this part of Africa that he visualizes as a “crown” for the body of Africa. Given the 16

17

Gouvernement Géneral de l’Algérie, Instruction sur la surveillance politique et administrative des indigènes algériens et des musulmans étrangers. Algier: Imprimerie Pierre Fontana, 1895. For the surveillance of mosques and zawiyas, see pp. 26–27. Archives Aix-en-Province. B1767. F 90 2029. Madani, Qarta¯jannah. 18 Ibid., p. 7. 19 Ibid., p. 9. ˙

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centrality of the Berbers and Rome in the colonial discourse, Madani centers his book on Carthage to oppose the myth of Rome. In doing so, he asks the unavoidable question about the origins of the Berbers, and provides an answer that opposes those provided by colonial authors from Eugène Daumas to Émile-Félix Gautier. Using Ibn Khaldûn, Gsell, and Daumas, Madani reaches the conclusion that “the Berbers are descendants of Kanaan son of Ham son of Noah,” who reached North Africa coming from the north of Arabia. The Phoenicians share the same origins, according to Madani, who refers to new research: “There is an irrefutable proof that the Phoenicians are descendants of Kanaan and they are closely related to Arabs” (yamitun ila al-ʿarab bi nasab qarîb).20 The Phoenicians are then cousins of the Berbers, and the Berbers and Arabs share the same origins as the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were established peacefully in northern Africa, founded Carthage, and created a civilization beyond the region that included parts of Europe such as Sicily, Corsica, and parts of southern France. Phoenicians generally expanded peacefully via commerce, except when they were forced to defend themselves. But all in all, their work in northern Africa amongst the Berber is undoubtedly civilizational: If we look generally to the influence of Carthage in this land, we will see that it had the greatest merit and biggest benefit in spreading civilization and elevating the scientific, social, and moral condition. It is this civilization that took hold of the soul of the Berbers. The long Roman occupation (iḥtilâl) only influenced it a little. It is this civilization that helped the establishment and the fast spread of the rule of Islam.21

Madani even asks “whether the government (ḥukûma) of Carthage was a national (waṭaniya) government or a government of occupation?”22 His response is categorical and quick. “The government of Carthage was a national government in this country.” For one thing, Phoenicians and Berbers share the same origin, and then the foundation of the Phoenician kingdom was the result of cooperation between the two populations, whose language was also mixed – neither really Berber nor purely Phoenician, but “a new national language.”23 Sporadic Berber revolts, Madani contends, are against some of the injustice and this in itself is “natural,” but all in all, “the Berber had 20

Ibid., p. 23.

21

Ibid., p. 36.

22

Ibid.

23

Ibid.

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never experienced a condition before Islam better than their condition with the government of Carthage. Those Berbers who lived under the yoke of Romans experienced a life of misery and suffering.”24 Madani celebrates the work of Carthage, including the heroic deeds of Hannibal. But after his narration of the Punic Wars, Madani addresses the issue of statehood and national unity that colonial authors saw as a major lack in the Maghreb, one that allowed its subjugation by foreign armies from the Phoenicians to the Arabs. Madani finds in Masinissa the national hero par excellence, the one who created a state, “founded a strong national army, constructed a powerful navy, and issued national coins with his name; he did his best to foster agriculture, and develop trade; he propagated the Cartagena’s language amongst all classes. And in his speeches, courted the Greeks, and was close to Rome.”25 The image of Rome that emerges from Madani’s narrative is that it perpetrated pure colonization, ruthless and exploitative. It was not civilizational and did not benefit the Berbers. The Berbers never accepted Rome; they revolted against it whenever they could and sought their independence constantly. This is clearly a rejection, but not a deconstruction, of the myth of Rome, only to replace it with the myth of Carthage. “Thus we conclude that with the end of Roman occupation ended all its influence in the country. By its end, the only thing left was the Berber race (or element) (al-ʿunsur al barbari), pure for having endured no influence but the early influence of Carthage.”26 Madani’s conception of history is colonial modern, and thus profoundly racial. He thinks of the actors in terms of race and race for him too is antagonistic. If Carthage accepted and integrated the Berber population, it is because they shared the same origin. If Rome or the Vandals after them excluded the population, this was because there was no affinity between the people, he assumes. At the end, when Arabs arrived, it was because they “shared the same Semitic origin” that allowed them to accept Islam and “live side by side.”27 Yet in this racial history, and despite an effort to fuse Arabs and Berbers together, his narrative, like those of colonial authors, is made of actors that are Arabs and Berbers. Madani replaced the myth of Rome, but reproduced the myth of the Semitic origin of Berbers and Arabs as a defining feature of the history of the Maghreb, and thus of its very present. His 24

Ibid., p. 37.

25

Ibid., p. 66.

26

Ibid., p. 119.

27

Ibid., p. 161.

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historical narrative is not only fraught with colonial categories, the same that were harnessed in the creation of the Maghreb, but is itself a modern form of knowledge, one that assumes the feasibility of accessing the past, of understanding it, and therefore of comprehending the making of the present, the colonial one. Through his narrative, one can see that Rome for him is France, and Arabs are still Arabs in his time, and so were Berbers. This is even far from the conception of Ibn Khaldûn, for whom Arabs can only be explained within a specific generation and in relation to a tribal genealogy that constituted their history. Moreover, the power relations are also manifest in the very use of names. Whereas colonial authors use the name Maghreb to mean French possession, Salafi authors are restricted in the way they name. They only speak in their writings of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Incapable of defending the whole or rethinking it, they limit themselves to defending a nation whose existence the colonial discourse denies. It is this very power dynamic that allows one to understand even the birth of names such as Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. The common idea in the writings of Ahmed Tewfik Madani, Mubarak al-Mili, and Ben Badis is that Algeria has always been a nation. Tunisian Salafi, such as Béshir Sfar and Thaʿâlibi, argue similarly that Tunisia has always been a nation. And so does al-Fassi in Morocco. Consider a book by alMili, Târikh al-jazâ’ir fî al-qadîm wa al-adîth, published in 1932 in the very context of the celebration of a century since the conquest of Algiers, which had marked the height of French colonial triumph.28 The very title of the book announces something new: the birth of national history. With this, Algeria is the object of a history in modern times. It is not a colonial creation, but existed in the distant past. And it is that history that al-Mili sets as a goal for himself to write, at the very moment when French colonials are writing histories of the Maghreb or histories of French Africa, or even histories of northern Africa. The point here is not only to see how Algeria has come to occupy a place in history, but rather, for the purpose of our general topic, what the place of Algeria is within this larger geography called the Maghreb. How does al-Mili perceive the part within the whole and the whole in relation to the part that is Algeria?

28

al-Mili, Ta¯rı¯kh al-Jaza¯ʾir fı¯ al-qadı¯m wa-al-hadı¯th. ˙

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First, al-Mili is aware that the name of Algeria is recent: “It refers to an extended nation only with the arrival of the Ottomans.”29 Before that, al-jazâ’ir “was the name of a great city on the Mediterranean [bahr rumi] and was known before the arrival of the Arabs as ˙ ICOSIUM [sic].” The name Algeria is part of “a larger nation” (waṭan kabîr) known in Phoenician times as Libya, “consisting of Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Marrakech.” Al-Mili gives the name of these parts according to Roman and Greek geographers. It is the Arabs who gave the name maghrib to the region because “it is west of their nation, Arabia.” He then lists Arab divisions of the region called maghrib: the Near Maghrib (al-Maghrib al-Adnâ), the Middle Maghrib (al-Maghrib al-Awsat), the Far Maghrib (al-Maghrib al˙ Aqsâ). However, despite this genealogy of names, al-Mili offers a definition identical to that of the French: Maghreb or North Africa, with all its parts, is separated from the rest of Africa by the Sahara, some parts of which are impossible and others difficult to access. This is why the connections (rawâbiṭ) between it [Maghreb] and between the continent weakened to the point it almost does not count as part of it. It constitutes a geographical, racial (jinsiya), religious and historical unit.30

Despite an acute awareness of the entirety of which Algeria was a part, al-Mili writes the history of Algeria, not the history of the Maghreb. He even uses anachronisms such as the origins of old Algerians, the ruins of old Algerians, and the lives of old Algerians. By Algerians al-Mili means, of course, the Algerians he sees in his everyday life, the colonized population he lives among, and the ones not called Algerians by colonial authorities, but called the Muslim population, or les indigènes. The name Algerians was devoted to the European population who were born or naturalized as French in the land demarcated as Algeria. The use of the name by al-Mili itself is political, but the historical narrative is no less so, especially in the ways it tells the story of the nation of Algeria, and especially in the 1930s. Al-Mili’s overall narrative, long as it is, does not differ in essence from the narrative we previously examined by Madani, except in details. Like all historical narratives that are about the present, Mili’s narrative is even more explicit. The main character of his narrative is 29

Ibid., p. 22.

30

Ibid., p. 23.

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Algeria (with its two racial populations of Arabs and Berbers), its helpers (Phoenicians and Arabs), and its anti-hero (Rome, and what he means by Rome is France). About this, he could not be more explicit. Having narrated Roman occupation, he ends the first volume by saying: If Romans lived in this epoch, they would have said: we came to save the Berbers and spread Latin civilization (al-madaniya al-latiniya) amongst them. And if we ask them about the degree of barbarism after a century, they would have said: the Berber has barbaric morals and is rebellious by nature, he does not accept to learn, and does not know how to borrow from his Roman neighbor. But maybe they will have nothing to say if we tell them: this nation learned well from the Phoenicians and reached, thanks to that, the height of its glory, and founded great states (duwal ʿuzmâ). And after one ˙ century, we tell them also: this nation has again benefited from the Arabs, and learned well from them, and recuperated its greatness, and founded great kingdoms as in the past.31

One can see al-Mili reproduces the narrative of the Maghreb, with its names, its geographical contours, and also with its historical narrative that he reserves for the new entity, the same one colonial authors had created, as a part of a whole. What is interesting is this same narrative, with stylistic changes, was reproduced by other Salafi writers regarding Tunisia and Morocco. Hence there is an interesting duplicate: the Maghreb is a narrative that applies to its parts as well as to its whole. This narrative, also found in the 1930s and 1940s among Maghrebi nationalists, will later change to become a competitive narrative of narrow nationalism. The dynasties of the Almohads, Almoravids, the Merinids, the Hafsids, and the Zayanids were contested as being Moroccan, or Algerian, or Tunisian.32 The Salafi narrative of the Arab Maghreb had a long life, not only in different parts of the region but also in Egypt, where it resonated with the rising Arab nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s. By the 1950s, the Arab Maghreb had become an important part of the historiographic narrative of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt.33 It could not be otherwise; Nasserism, more than Baʿathism, found in the Maghreb a strong basis 31 32

33

Ibid., p. 280. This nationalist competition extends beyond the history of dynasties and includes intellectual icons (most notably Ibn Khaldûn) and cultural heritage, including the culinary one. Hussein Mounis, Fatḥ alʿArab li al-Maghrib. Cairo: Maktabat al-adab, 1947.

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for its own truths about the colonial domination of Arab land. That was also how French colonialism saw it.34 One can even say that if Salafi historiography reinvented the Arab Maghreb out of colonial semantics, the Arab nationalism of the Middle East used that same narrative to claim the region as part of its then nascent geopolitics.35

Historicism and the Invention of the Present The Salafi critiqued and yet reproduced the configuration of the region from outside of the semantics of the French language, in Arabic. Their purpose was to produce a counternarrative to the colonial discourse, which is at the same time a narrative of nations. The result was still a colonial construction, and this construction itself cannot be seen either outside colonial semantics, despite its expression in Arabic, or separate from colonial politics, despite its exclusion from it. Soon a new generation of historians schooled in French institutions and masters of the language of historical writing emerged. Moroccan historian Abdallah Laroui sees Mohamed Salhi as a turning point, a figure who initiated the practice of “decolonizing history.”36 Yet Laroui also points out the limitations of Salhi who, I would say, like the Salafi, proceeded by reversing the colonial thesis. What was needed, according to Laroui, was both a critique of the colonial discourse and a national interpretation of history.37 This project was carried out by Laroui himself in a way that has not been surpassed. His historical narrative of the Maghreb is the last of its kind and is surely the most authoritative in the postcolonial era. While the historical narrative of Laroui is oppositional, it has a national difference that is important to stress in this analysis. Not all oppositions to colonial constructions were in Arabic and not all were religious. Secular responses by a younger generation schooled in colonial institutions were formulated early on, some of them in 34

35

36

37

Robert Montagne, “L’Orient Contre l’Occident,” Etudes February 1953: 145–159. Several historical narratives constructed on the Salafi model were published in Egypt, especially in the era of Arab nationalism. See Mounis, Fatḥ alʿArab li alMaghrib. Abdel Hamid Zaghloul, Târîkh al-maghrib al-ʿarabi. Cairo: Da¯r alMaʻa¯rif, 1964. Mohamed Salhi, Décoloniser l’histoire: Introduction à l’histoire du Maghreb. Paris: Maspero, 1965. Abdallah Laroui, “Décoloniser l’histoire,” Hespéris 1965 (6): 239–242.

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literature, especially fiction, and others in the domain of history. The one that stands out, even today, is The History of the Maghreb published in French by Laroui in 1970.38 Semiotics shows that the form of a narrative is as meaningful as its content and that form and content cannot be separated, as they were in old philological tradition.39 There is quite a cultural paradox in a national narrative that argues that the Maghreb is Arab and Muslim, and that it has a unity and a culture of its own. This discrepancy between the form and the content can be explained only once the national is examined, not as a discourse of resistance and challenge, but rather as a genealogical narrative that owes its very existence to the colonial. It follows, then, that given the form and the content of the national narrative, it is not a counterhistory (of the colonial), but rather it is a postcolonial history. Therefore, the national, as the colonial, stands as the counter-history of the precolonial (and in this case Muslim) historiography. This should come as no surprise, since the colonial dismissed Muslim historiography (on merely authoritative grounds) as lacking historicity.40 The national followed suit most of the time. Laroui, arguably the most influential Maghrebi national historian, sets as a goal for himself (and for the nation) to articulate its history and thus to define its present. He does so by arguing against colonial historiography and against what Laroui himself calls Khaldûnism. By Khaldûnism, Laroui means the framework of analysis, but also the theses, found in the work of Ibn Khaldûn.41 Why Ibn Khaldûn? Because the French Ibn Khaldûn generated an entire discursive tradition that the national historian could not ignore since it bore the name of Ibn Khaldûn and was constituted under his authority. This discursive tradition was erected as that which expresses, signifies, and ultimately constitutes the Maghreb. This is what the national historian inherited – a discursive colonial situation, itself the result of an entire age of colonial cultural production. This colonial cultural production is nothing more and nothing less than a narrative called the Maghreb. About it, the discourse of the 38 39

40

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Laroui, L’histoire du Maghreb. Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Baltimore, MD: Waverly Press, 1953. Algirdas-Julien Greimas, Sémantique structurae. Paris: Larousse, 1966. Gautier, Les siècles obscurs, p. 79. See for a discussion Hannoum, “La gouvernementalite coloniale et la naissance du Khaldunisme.” Abdallah Laroui, Esquisses historiques. Casablanca: Centre Culturel Arabe, 1992.

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national historian is rather ambiguous. In Laroui’s narrative, the history of the Maghreb was not a history of struggle between dominating Arabs and dominated Berbers (this is the colonial argument repeated in the national), but rather a history of class struggle undertaken within a national territory threatened by an imperialist other – Rome (whose heritage, even in the Maghreb, colonial France claimed; this is the colonial myth hiding in the skirts of the national). To quote Laroui: The Moors were disposed peasants who chose freedom; the Numidians were free peasants and farm workers who periodically avenged themselves on their exploiters. It was on the one hand a national, on the other a social, protest. Roman development of the land brought not only forced sedentarization, but also exhaustion of the soil, deforestation and social debasement.42

One can see how the term Berber, so dear to colonial authors, is replaced in the quote by other names, Moors and Numidians, each term endowed with a socioeconomic meaning, not a racial one. However, despite or because of this effort to delegitimize the colonial discourse of the race struggle, Laroui could not ignore the very important question of the origins of the “races,” which is part and parcel of the colonial discourse. In fact, the category of origin itself is a colonial category. As seen earlier, the colonial discourse traces the origins of Berbers to Europe. The thesis of the European racial origin of the Berbers makes the race struggle not only between Berbers and Arabs, but also between the latter and Europeans, who, by it, are given the legitimacy to be “here” to liberate. Laroui offers rather a narrative of diversity, mostly socioeconomic. Laroui assumes that the purported cultural unity stemmed from the Sahara and from contact with the Mediterranean, which resulted in the end of cultural diversity (itself relative, given the “Eastern” origins of Mediterranean countries). Thus the problems of the origin of both sets of cultures and inhabitants are differently solved; both are originally diverse and both are originally Oriental. The Phoenicians did not play any role in a civilizing mission, but only brought urban commerce to an agricultural society. Nevertheless, and as a result of this contact, one finds at center stage the formation of monarchies in the north, which in some ways ultimately created a discontinuity between the east and north. Thus, one can find the three geographical divisions of North Africa: the Sahara, the east 42

Laroui, L’histoire du Maghreb, p. 55.

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(where a number of colonies developed), and the north, where local monarchies established themselves. This division, already established by the Phoenicians, became more flagrant during the two centuries of Roman occupation. While the east was under occupation, in the south, the Sahara had become a refuge for those who chose freedom instead of submission to Rome. It is clear to see here how instead of the historical narrative of the struggle of races, Laroui maintained (and in fact imported) the narrative of the struggle of classes. The transition from one – the race struggle – to the other – the class struggle – was natural because the narrative of the struggle of classes itself has its origin in the narrative of the struggle of races. Karl Marx wrote to Friedrich Engels, saying “but, our class struggle, you know very well where we found it: we found it in the [work of] French historians when they narrated the race struggle.”43 The national historian operated here, then, the same transformation created by the European historians of the nineteenth century in the discourse of class struggle. This means that even within the framework of the nation, epistemological discontinuities are nothing but continuities of the former colonizer. What happens in the second sooner or later happens in the first. It is also clear how this discourse is fraught with colonial categories, some of which may not seem so. Categories such as “foreign,” “occupation,” “domination,” and “liberation” all denote the national body. In colonial narratives, they were introduced to maintain the thesis of the Arab (race) invading and dominating “the Berber” (race) who were liberated by the French (nation). The terms foreign, occupation, and domination draw their meanings only from within the frame of the national semantics that establish who is “us” and who is “other,” what territory is “occupied” and what territory is or has to be “liberated.” What the population of the region referred to in Muslim historiography as Ifriqiya thought of these “events” at the time of their occurrence, no one asked. However, for the sake of clarity, given the absence of the major category of the nation, the absence of its associated categories must have been also absent in precolonial times in the region. Equally absent from previous pre-national writings is the name Maghreb itself. The name was made mostly popular by Gautier, and 43

Cited in Michel Foucault, Il Faut défendre la société. Paris: Hautes Etudes, 1997, p. 69.

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behind it is a whole colonial politics of naming that had to isolate a French zone called the “Maghreb” as distinct from what is not French, and give it a personality of its own that cuts it from other colonial entities, eastward, westward, and southward, in a complex game called “geopolitics.” Laroui himself seems well aware of this, or why else would he write: “The idea is to trace the genesis of the concept of the Maghreb and discover how it ultimately took on an objective definition”? Yet he does not show how the name itself is colonial and because it is so, the name itself is an appearance of colonial power. For, as Judith Butler, echoing Nietzsche, nicely put it: “Power comes to appear as something other than itself, indeed, it comes to appear as a name.”44 Regardless of the national historian’s impressive intellectual strength, and even acuity, he accepts colonial naming and reiterates colonial categories, even when he does so to refute them. The question now is: could he have done otherwise? Here, one can see the pervasive power of the colonial over the national and cannot but accept the argument of Benedict Anderson that nationalism in the third world is a colonial import and that the nation was also imagined on the colonial model.45 Such an argument, I believe, was misunderstood by Partha Chatterjee, who argues for a thesis that would rather give credit to the third world and restore their agency. He maintains, as a counterargument, that the third world did not seem to even have an agency to imagine itself.46 While one can understand Chatterjee as consistent with Foucault’s theory of omnipresent power, Anderson’s view does not undermine the agency of the third world, neither does it even undermine the idea that power is everywhere. On the contrary, one should look at the term imagination and understand it as a philosophical and more specifically phenomenological concept. To imagine is not to create ex nihilo, but rather “imagining is the restructuring of semantic fields.”47 Even a discursive Foucauldian approach maintains that an “idea is born out of an idea not out of 44

45 46

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Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 35. Anderson, Imagined Communities. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Paul Ricoeur, “Imagination in Discourse and Action,” in Rethinking Imagination, ed. Gillian Robinson and John Rundell. New York: Routledge, 1994, pp. 18–35.

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the absence of an idea.”48 Therefore, what the nationalists have imagined – that is, created – whether in Algeria, India, or elsewhere, is a transformation of available colonial semantics. Yet such transformation bears within itself the unequal power relationship between what is transformed and what it is being transformed from. The concept of the nation, with its key categories of unity, territory, language, history, progress, modernity, and even will, is comprised of colonial modern categories, regardless of their restructuring in national narratives. Nationalism in Europe was transformed out of the semantics (or the content) of what Anderson calls print capitalism.49 Third world nationalism is a restructuring of colonial semantics. It is an idea created out of another one. Anderson does not maintain that nationalism in Europe is the same as that in Indonesia. Rather, nationalism in the third world was an import and because it was so, it had to adjust to where it was imported to. Yet the national ideologue (in the form of a historian, a writer, a politician, or all of the above) had nothing available to him but those same colonial categories that he oftentimes reversed and, in doing so, not only reproduced but also perpetuated. Such national discourse, created out of the colonial semantics, in reaction to it, and often against it, has been espoused by the nationstate. It constitutes the discourse of the nation. It remains, as of today, the main and maybe the sole legitimate reference on the history of the Maghreb. It offers a national narrative, but also a colonial critique. Because it does so, it is called by its authors and its readers alike a “decolonization of history.” But such a narrative, as we saw, is not decolonizing. For in order to be so, the historian needs to manage to either become epistemologically able to ignore the colonial – which is impossible given the effective postcolonial power axis shaping the imagined national community – or to become a critic and engage in an examination of colonial discursive practices in and of themselves, in order to deconstruct them and show how they have participated in the making of a postcolonial culture in whose webs the national subject is still caught or rather suspended. Such a project is possible, only now, because it links itself to other postcolonial histories and anthropologies, especially in India and Latin America, where different conditions gave birth to a postcolonial epistemology. 48

Foucault, L’archéologie du savoir.

49

Anderson, Imagined Communities.

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Let us make clearer that the foregoing critique does not mean that the national historian missed the point and did nothing but perpetuate colonial symbolic domination. The culture of nationalism that the national historian articulated and helped to put in place was perhaps what was needed in the period following independence, when nationalism constituted the cultural and political horizon of what was then called the third world. Compared to the colonial condition, nationalism offered what one may call an ideology of hope. However, half a century of state nationalism, through violent events inside and outside the borders of the nation, should make one think that nationalism should be subject to a rigorous critique to show its limitations and lay down the necessary conditions to go beyond it. However, what I wanted to underscore by this examination of Laroui’s text is the fact that the relation between the national and the colonial is a relation of continuity, not rupture, and that a critique, an engagement with the colonial discourse, in its language, in a postcolonial context still marked by colonial legacy, could not but reproduce the colonial text, and with it its own reconfiguration of the region, and conception of it, and of course its own name, the Maghreb.

Fiction and Geopolitics Literature, more specifically fiction, has a specificity common to ethnographic writing: it too stresses the local, the specific, the ordinary, and the contingent. Even though it focuses on the details of everyday life, these details that may appear trivial speak to larger issues.50 Literature was (and still is, to a large extent) context specific, yet in its local specificity there is something transcendental; it strives for meaning of a higher order, its expression is more abstract, more symbolic, and also more elusive than the ethnographic narrative. This is the case even among literature that tends toward realism, the most common literary trend with the rise of nationalism. And like ethnography, there seems to be a tacit principle of the division of intellectual labor. By tackling larger issues through small facts, the ethnographer and the literary author both are well aware of the fact that they write within a larger field of representation consisting of different experiences and a variety of human experiences. They also engage in forms of writing as 50

Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1973, p. 23.

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primordial characteristics of the craft. “What do ethnographers do? They write,” Clifford Geertz noticed. And they write different forms, some of which are literary in one or another tradition.51 Thus, to understand Paris in the nineteenth century, one ought to understand also the ensemble of its literary depictions. A highly prolific writer such as Honoré de Balzac may indeed capture Paris at a certain time, but his is only one expression; to read more literature about the city at that time allows more nuances, more points of view, and thus a larger social discourse on Paris, or to speak like Edmund Husserl, it is to receive multisided views of the city and the experiences of its inhabitants. Consider the Orient Edward Said studied half a century ago.52 What created the Orient was not only the work of Gustave Flaubert or Gérard de Nerval but an entire literature with many authors, the major and the minor ones. This is what Edward Said also understood when he said that he wants “to see Camus’ fiction as an element in France’s methodically constructed political geography of Algeria, which took many generations to complete, the better to see it as providing an arresting account of the political and interpretative context to represent, inhabit, and possess the territory itself – at exactly the same time that the British were leaving India.”53 What Albert Camus and an entire generation of writers accomplished in Algeria was to not only possess Algeria but also to connect Algeria to its larger context, which colonials called the Maghreb. And what Camus and generations of writers did in Algeria became part of a regional heritage, to be added to what Jean and Jérôme Tharaud and entire generations of French writers did in Morocco and Tunisia. What is called Francophonie is, at the end, this tradition of literary representations, with its language, its aesthetics, its repertoire of images and, of course, a tremendous amount of prestige bestowed upon it. Literature speaks and also provides the language of the nation. In this sense, its crafted writing is a model of – and a model for – reality, to borrow the words of Geertz. If this is the case, the question is: Given its focus on individual experiences, on localities, on the everyday, how has literature participated in the creation of the Maghreb, a geographic 51

52

Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist As Author. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988. Also, for the writing of Claude LéviStrauss within the tradition of symbolism, see James Boon, From Symbolism to Structuralism: Lévi-Strauss in a Literary Tradition. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972. Said, Orientalism. 53 Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. 176.

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formation that undoubtedly transcends the nation? In what language(s) was this creation undertaken, what small details were used to create its edifice? In what ways do these small details express the Maghreb? What are the sources of the creation? Generally, literature offers more freedom of national representation than do historical narratives. In literature, one finds a variety of such representations, some of them openly and unapologetically diverse. Beyond Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma, one can find an array of alternative national narratives, especially about the Berbers, by authors such as Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine54 and Jean Amrouche. Fiction allows historiography to reach a larger audience, but also it allows it a greater effect on shaping national imaginaries. For fiction operates through images, not through arguments. Therefore it is my contention that the role of fiction in the creation of the Maghreb went hand in hand with colonial constructions. Postcolonial literature, especially the francophone production, echoes colonial historiography and only rarely Arabic historiography.55 The literature of the region is marked by specific texts celebrated as canonical because they are expressions of the nation in its sublime form, in its essence, in its ideals. Yacine’s Nedjma is the novel that marks the Algerian nation. Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi’s poem “Life’s Will” (irâdat al-ḥayât) undoubtedly captures the Tunisian national condition and its aspirations for nationhood and freedom.56 The literary work of Allal al-Fassi and Abdallah Guennoun, consisting of essays and poems in Arabic, can be seen as the expression of Moroccan nationalism. Even the francophone work of Driss Chraïbi can be considered an example of the post-independence national condition, marked by the struggle between tradition and modernity.57 One thing immediately catches the eye: national fiction in the region is not about the region of the Maghreb as such; it is about the nation (i.e., Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria). Second, canonical national fiction is expressed, especially in the immediate post-independence years, in French, in the 54 55

56

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Mohamed Khair Ed-Dine, Agadir. Paris: Seuil, 1967. Such literature remained almost unknown. An example of this is a short story that argues, in the tradition of Ibn Khaldûn, of the Arab origins of the Berbers by Mohamed Hassar, “Abhathʿan barbari” (“In Search of a Berber”). Published in Majallat al-maghrib December 1933 15(10). Abû al-Qasim al-Shabi, “Irâdatual hayat,” in Dîwân Abû al-Qâsim al-Shabi. ˙ Beirut: Dâr al-ʻAwdah, 1972.˙ Driss Chraïbi, Le passé simple. Paris: Denoël, 1954.

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colonial language, not in the languages that the nation now claims (i.e., Arabic or Amazigh). But if there is no Maghrebi character in fiction it is because literature does not take larger geographies as the theater of its narrations. Literary characters are specific, with clear individualities, with names, a lexicon, and a world all their own. Such is the case of the four friends in Nedjma: Lakhdar, Mourad, Mustapha, and Rachid. Nedjma herself is a character, a woman, a symbol of the nation; she is there, but cannot be seen, and she is a nedjma (“star”). She is Algeria, but she could have also been the Maghreb; she shares all the characteristics of the region and not just Algeria. Nedjma (not any nedjma, but an eight-pointed star), as a symbol, is inscribed in the most authentic art of the region: in ceramics, in mosques, in houses, in palaces, in plates, in rugs, in short, in every aspect of the Maghreb. Its imprint is also inscribed in the very novel of Yacine, with its eight parts. It is le polygone étoilé (“a starshaped polygon”).58 In his novel Le polygone étoilé, originally part of Nedjma, the characters are national characters – that is, Algerians. But the Maghreb appears here and there, associated with some of them. The character Nedjma is considered in this novel “the star of the Maghreb.”59 Ibn Khaldûn, as a historical character, is also associated with the Maghreb. “The Maghreb calls him back to Bougie.”60 Maghrebi is also used to describe a veil that Nedjma wears as dark blue “à la Maghrébine.”61 Moreover, political and geographical frontiers of Algeria themselves may appear, for instance, “frontières Algéro-Tunisiennes,”62 with Morocco also appearing in different indirect references.63 The point here is while the novel participates in substantiating the nation, it does so within a larger unit of which it is a part. In his interviews, Yacine claims Africa to be the larger unit encompassing Algeria, but these remain declarations lacking the historical and cultural elements that cement Algeria to the continent. In his novels, he is able to weave these elements in such a way so as to attach Algeria to the Maghreb, yet he also distinguishes it from the region by focusing on unique historical elements, most notably the symbol of Algerian nationalism, the founder of the Algerian nation: 58

59 61

For an analysis of the polygon in the work of Yacine, see Bernard Aresu, “Polygonal and Arithmosophical Motifs: Their Significance in the Fiction of Kateb Yacine,” Research in African Literatures 1978 (9)2: 143–175. Kateb Yacine, Le polygone étoilé. Paris: Seuil, 1966, p. 142. 60 Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., p. 153. 62 Ibid., p. 180. 63 Ibid., pp. 77–78.

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Abdel Kader. Unlike the sultan of Morocco, Abdel Kader is “a man of the pen and the sword, the only chief capable of uniting the tribes into a nation.”64 By contrast, in the work of Camus, the Algerian did not exist; or rather he existed anonymously as the Arab with no name, no individuality, no history, no voice, and no language. Yacine, using the very same colonial language, depicts voices, faces, and names that come from deep in Algeria. His characters are those found in the everyday; they are the ordinary Algerians living in a colonized society and aspiring for more, including, in the case of Nejdma’s four protagonists, the white French girl they can see, dream of, and yet will never reach. It is also from deep in Algeria that Mohammed Dib populates his novel L’incendie with the stories of men and women living day to day amidst the challenges of colonial occupation and suffering social exclusion even in their own village. In Shabbi’s most celebrated poem, al-Shaʿb (“The People”), a new collectivity erupts with force in the national imaginary – and from their will comes liberty and freedom. Compared with its neighbors, Tunisia appears the most Arab – that is, the most Arabized, with a recognized Berber population of barely 1 percent; it comes as no surprise that it is poetry, in a classical form, that expresses what is most Tunisian about Tunisia. In Morocco, the construction of the nation was done by its Fassi bourgeois: Chraïbi, Abdelmajid Benjelloun, Abdelkrim Ghallab, and the older generation of Abdallah Guennoun and Allal al-Fassi. And the culture they expressed was mostly an Andalusian one: music, dress, names, and tastes that are distinct from and even exclude the several other ways of being in Moroccan society. For Chraïbi, it is the Moroccan bourgeoisie (Andalusians to boot) that populate the national imaginary: they are young, rebel against tradition, are open to modernity, and are unshakable in their belief in the nation. And in Moroccan literature, the expression of the nation was mostly (though not exclusively) in Arabic. This last point explains, to a certain extent, why francophone literature, including the work of Chraïbi himself, was marginalized, drawing the attention mostly of intellectual elites from Chraïbi’s own milieu – the milieu of the Fassi bourgeois of colonial 64

Kateb Yacine, Nedjma, trans. Richard Howard. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1991, p. 135.

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times. However, within the linguistic dynamics of colonial (and postcolonial) times, Arabic does not stand alone. It exists, as we saw in the previous chapter, in relation to other languages: in subordination to French (a language of modernity, according to its ideology), and dominant vis-à-vis all Berber linguistic variations. This is to say that even as the expression of the nation is in Arabic, France is omnipresent. The question of modernity is central to the work of the first generation of Moroccan writers. The construction of the nation in Morocco, despite the dominance of Fassi men, was also constructed via other experiences, those of women, of Berbers, of Jews.65 These experiences appear later, in the work of authors especially in the postcolonial era, and were often excluded from the national curricula. For instance, the Berber component appears early on, as might be expected, in the work of Khaïr-Eddine,66 Mohamed Choukri, and Mohamed Zefzaf. The Maghrebi novel of the post-independence era articulates the distinct culture of each nation-state, yet the genre itself, in France as well as elsewhere, is specific to a geography called Le Maghreb. And thus one finds its common name, littérature maghrébine, even though it is often also called littérature maghrébine d’expréssion française to distinguish it, of course, from its arabophone twin that too expresses something similar, but more in line with Arabophonie, and finds its main audience in the Middle East. Francophone literature finds its audience (as well as most of its publishers) in metropolitan France. These expressions of nationhood are not of the region, yet they are decidedly part of it. Literature depicts particularities, but it also opens up geographical horizons, especially when these particularities resonate, calling forth other particularities, the sum of which is precisely the Maghreb. For the Maghreb has particularities and resonances, among them the colonial experience and invention of the region – and, importantly, the very language of this experience and invention. Language is in itself a repository of memory; it stores the categories, the images, old and new constructions, and releases them again and again in the work of those that speak the language. It is this language that created the Maghreb, and it is also this language that came to define it as such, and 65

66

Jonathan Wyrtzen, Making Morocco: Colonial Interventions and the Politics of Identity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. Mohamed Khair Ed-Dine; see especially his novel Agadir.

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that deepened its roots with the efforts of native authors in colonial times. Of this, Yacine was well aware: “Francophonie is a neo-colonial machine, it does nothing but perpetuate our alienation.”67 In colonial times, and at the height of the Algerian revolution, Yacine wrote in French. In order to be heard, he needed to write in French: “I write in French to tell the French I am not French.”68 Yet he also wrote to demonstrate the existence of Algeria. He narrated the experiences of ordinary youth, described colonial society with its settlers in their particular relation to natives. He also attempted to connect the present to the past – an important undertaking, especially considering how hegemonic and ubiquitous the historiographic discourse was. It is especially in his examination of the past that the colonial shows its uncanny power of subversion. Yacine seems to argue against Salafi historiographic representations of the past, though, like the Salafi, his main source was the same colonial historiography. He thus argues against the Arab myth of the Salafi using the Berber myth. Even though the context was Algeria, both myths speak to the entire region, whose racial construction is made of the opposition of these two myths. Algeria, as part and parcel of a larger narrative called the Maghreb, was (as it still is) ubiquitous, powerful, and discursively self-generative even (or especially) when it is opposed. In it is the colonial and the local (colonized), the discourse of the colonial author and the discourse of the arabophone author, the narrative of the colonial author and the narrative of the francophone author. The name Maghreb illustrates these heteroclite, discursive elements all produced by coloniality even in the form of “resistance.” Consider the name Maghreb; it is almost unchallenged. It appears Arab, even local, from the heart of the local tradition, yet it is a francophone name as well, invented from a translated Arabic tradition, its “foreign” resonance hiding its colonial invention. When Yacine rejects the name of Algeria (because it is Arab; he would reject the name Maghreb for the same reason), he suggests, “we should say African.”69 His was a lone voice in the wilderness. Africa itself was constructed as black, and neither the population to the north nor the populations in the rest of Africa saw it otherwise. For the population of the northern part of the continent, their region is “white.” The 67 69

Kateb Yacine, Le poète comme un boxeur. Paris: Seuil, 1994. Ibid.

68

Ibid.

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Maghreb turns its back to Africa and looks toward the Middle East and Europe (i.e., France). For the rest of the population of Africa, Africa is black.70 In literature, the Maghreb exists the same way France exists: in pieces, in subtle ways in the work of its writers, poets, and artists. The existence of the Maghreb in this body of colonial and postcolonial literature is also, ipso facto, the existence of colonial France, with its images reproduced (even when reversed), its language, the form of its colonial culture (the novel, the essay), and even the journals (Esprit, Les Temps Modernes, etc.) and the publishing houses (notably Seuil for canonical writers such as Yacine and Mohamed Dib). Yet this body of literature does not depict the totality of the Maghreb, only particularities, only individual experiences, only lives in smaller locales. Within each nation, this literature is considered national (Moroccan, or Algerian, or Tunisian); outside of it, especially in France, it earns the label of Maghrebi literature. However, what one may find most important in the literary construction of the region as part of a larger unit that was called the Mashreq (a version of the Middle East) was the fact that in the national curricula of the five countries of the region (that include Mauritania and Libya) was the diffusion of literature of the Arab Renaissance (adab al-nahda) of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Writers and poets such as Georgy Zaydan, Mustafa al-Manfaluti, Ahmed Shawqi, Kahlil Gibran, Taha Hussein, Abbas Mahmood alʿAqqad, and many others enjoyed immense popularity in the region, even amongst francophone authors themselves. Also this Nahda literature considered pre-Islamic poetry, called the muʿallaqât, as the foundation of Arab culture.71 Both the Nahda literature and the premodern Arabic literature (pre-Islamic, Islamic, Omayyad, and Abbasid) constituted the foundation of the high culture of the region of the Maghreb and attached it deeply to the Mashreq, where the same literature was 70

71

Not only in Africa, but even beyond it. In the United States, for instance, African studies programs as well as African and African American studies are essentially Black studies. The Maghreb almost never can be found there. It is found in the Department of Middle Eastern studies, if only marginally. Muʿallaqât: seven according to some scholars of Arabic poetry, ten according to others. These pre-Islamic poems constitute the foundation of Arabic literature. Arabs in pre-Islamic times selected them, wrote them in golden ink, and hung them on the walls of the Kaaba. They are known in several translations in English and in French.

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also claimed as foundational for the al-Qawmiya al-ʿArabiya (Arab nationalism). Consider this statement of Taha Hussein, the dean of Arabic literature, from the 1920s: “We want our ancient literature to be the foundation of culture, the nourishment of our minds because it is the base of our Arab culture. Thus, it constitutes our identity and achieves our national unity. It prevents us from dissolving into the foreign (ajnabi) and helps us know ourselves.”72 Taha Hussein was speaking of Egypt in the 1920s, but this statement was echoed, because of his tremendous influence, throughout Arabic-speaking countries. After all, he only expressed what millions then felt and what states were pursuing as an educational policy. However, the emergence of the Arab Maghreb was nurtured as much by political alliances, according to geopolitics, as by policies of cultural cementation, not only with the Mashreq but also with its very foundation, classical Arabic literature (adab). Therefore two versions of the Maghreb coexisted in the region, a francophone one instituted by the powerful institution of Francophonie, and an Arab one assured by the nation-state that strategically attached itself to the Middle East more than to Africa through education policies shared across Arabicspeaking countries. Yet the realities are complex. The region also remains attached to France, in an unequal power relation still manifest today. It also remains attached to the Middle East by the same history one finds in the national and Salafi discourses.

Arabism and Negritude: Who Is “Really” African? If, by the time of independence, the region under consideration emerged as the Maghreb, but with an Arab identity that linked its past and its destiny to the Middle East and that made it part and parcel of a geopolitical entity called the Arab world, that association further disconnected the Maghreb from Africa, itself constructed mainly in terms of color. We can see in the historical writings, echoed by political statements of national leaders, that the region of the Maghreb, the same l’Afrique Blanche, consecrated the rupture between the region as constructed by colonial powers and Africa. Caught in the semantics of the colonial discourse and its power dynamics, authors in Tunisia, Algeria, 72

Taha Hussein, Hadith al-Arabiʿa. Cairo: Matba`a tijariya, 1926. Reprint: Beirut: Dar al-kitâb al-lubnâni, 1973, p. 17.

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and Morocco reproduced the categories, and in reproducing the categories, they produced the images, albeit with changes and transformations that were themselves conditioned by power dynamics of the colonial discourse and its chains of reasoning. In this reproduction, the region of the Maghreb emerged (as Arab) and its disconnection with Africa was reinforced (despite the existence of cultural, religious, economic connections) in favor of the geography of race established by colonial technologies of power, as we have seen in previous chapters. The question now is: how did the intellectual from “Black Africa” think about his region and its relations to its surroundings, its history, and its destiny? In other terms, how did he construct his own imaginary region? To answer this question, I examine the work of a major Senegalese intellectual whose work was influential in shaping the views of generations of Africans about Africa. Cheikh Anta Diop is an interesting figure also because his intervention is anthropological. He himself traces his intellectual heritage to Gaston Bachelard, Marcel Griaule, and André Leroi-Gourhan, the last two being demigods in the field of French anthropology and the first in philosophy, specifically a pioneer in the philosophy of science. At the outset, Diop clarifies the aim of his book called The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: I attempt to depart from the material conditions to explain all the cultural characteristics common to Africans, from domestic lives to the one of the nation, to the ideological superstructure, the successes, the failures, and technical regressions.73

Both in the title and the introduction what is clearly announced is a project focused on the continuity of colonial constructions of Africa as Black Africa and the essentialist idea of its cultural unity. Defining a population by a continent is a colonial novelty that arose in the nineteenth century as a result of colonial powers dividing the world into entities – large, such as Africa and Europe, and small such as North and South America or Asia. Racial categories were also instrumental in these constructions: Africa is black, Europe is white, Asia is yellow, the Americas are red, and Australia is black. But amongst this array of

73

Cheikh Anta Diop, L’unite culturelle de l’Afrique noire. Dakar: Présence Africaine, 1954, p. 7.

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colors, blackness was often cited as an index of both early biological development and cultural primitiveness. Diop’s project also carries within it the germ of the racial ideas that were instrumental in defining these large and small units – some of which we discussed in previous chapters, notably the idea of the Maghreb itself in relation to West, Central, and East Africa. Culture was also a colonial analytical concept that was introduced to nuance the concept of race. In the French language (and even in the social sciences tradition), culture means something different from the common Anglo-American concept of culture worked out by Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Geertz, and others. Culture, in that tradition, generally means the system of symbols by which humans create the world; it is constituted of ideas and actions. It is this creation that defines what it is to be human.74 Last, the citation just given also assumes the existence of a culture common to Africans – all of them, or at least all those who qualify to be called Africans. Some people may not. A prolific writer, but also one who often repeats himself, Diop not only inscribes names and ways of naming that are colonial, but also undertakes a reversed civilizing mission, one more comprehensive, more holistic, and more totalizing than the ones encountered in the colonial discourse with its varieties and variations. Diop’s narrative centralizes Africa of course, but without provincializing Europe. And this is not because his own discourse is European, with its language (French), its system of references from anthropology, archaeology, history, etc., but also because at the center of his narrative is Europe itself. At first sight, Africa seems to be the main historical actor of this seemingly African narrative because, according to Diop, Africa is the origin of humanity, the origin of civilization, the origin of all origins. But Diop is writing about an Africa constructed in colonial times, whose essence is color (race) and primitiveness (animism, witchcraft, etc.). Diop’s Africa is Black and that is also its name: Afrique Noire. Thus the narrative of origins Diop articulates is also found in colonial narratives. However, in colonial narratives, the narrative of origin is also a narrative of being stuck in early human development. It is a narrative of progress that defines Black Africa negatively. Here, unlike the Salafi Maghrebi writers who relied on Islamic 74

See Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures. Also see Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

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historiography, and even unlike Laroui, Hichem Djait, and Mohamed Talbi, who rely on the same historiography and on historical methods in fashion at the time, Diop relies exclusively on the European “sciences” to make Black Africa appear differently. But it appears reversed. Black Africa, in this narrative, erases particularities, localities, and distinctiveness, and appears as an expansive Black entity that sweeps aside not only all its parts, but also Europe itself. Black Africa is all that exists in Diop; there is no “White Africa” against which “Black Africa” was constructed. The region of northern Africa disappears in blackness. Africa becomes Black and Black is what Africa is. Even Egypt, used by colonials to distinguish Africa from Asia, has been blackened in Diop’s narrative. Egypt was black. Its civilization was black. Its achievements are black. The history of Africa is a Black history with Egypt as a central character. Yet Diop does not displace Europe, he does not provincialize it; he participates in the creating of an African Black imaginary populated by colonial imageries. Europe is expressed all over his discourse, or to be more precise, Europe is the manifestation of that discourse itself, with its grammar, its semantics, its aesthetics, its politics, its imagery, its scientific paradigms, its mode of knowing, and its claims to truth. The hegemonic discourse of Europe (i.e., France) on Africa, because of its racial dynamics of superiority, offers itself to critique and challenge. This is a discursive trap. Critique is what allows it to generate and multiply, and multiplication keeps it alive. Of course Diop is situated in the privileged position of speaking for himself, for his people, for Africa.75 Critique is a response, but the response itself is commanded; it sets the rules by which a response may be formulated. However, the grammars of these rules are themselves the grammars of the colonial discourse: race, blackness, Africa, Europe, civilization, progress, primitiveness, Islam, animism, jihad, Sufism, nation-state, tribes, nomadism, tribalism, witchcraft, origins, destiny, science, anthropology, the very conceptions of history itself. And finally, the imaginary of an educated person is made of a colonial library. Diop is Mustapha Said, Mustapha Said is also Leopold Senghor and the Black intellectual of Africa who sets as a goal for himself to reverse the image Europe created for him. Mustapha Said is the Black Muslim hero of 75

Francois-Xavier Fouvelle, L’Afrique de Cheikh Anta Diop. Paris: Karthala, 1996.

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Season of Migration to the North, the one who was expulsed from Europe for his alleged barbarism. Yet his mind, his home, his library, are European made.76 The citation as a metaphor points toward the colonized imaginary (with its canonical references and lack of references that question them and open the horizon to a new imaginary – the absence of Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, among many others). Like Diop, Senghor had a similar, yet different project he expressed in his defense of the literary movement of negritude. Negritude constructs Africa as black and therefore as racial, making the northern part that includes Egypt alien to the continent because it is assumed to be devoid of the blackness that defines Africa. Since language was also important in making the separation discussed earlier in Chapter 3, African authors used the same means to connect Black Africa to Egypt, while also disconnecting the same Black Africa from North Africa. Arabic was not part of the argument since it was considered by and large a Semitic language. But Berber, in the colonial linguistic discourse, was initially part of the so-called Hamitic languages before the term was replaced by Afro-Asian languages. Théophile Obenga, whose project is similar to that of Diop, attempted to establish that linguistic kinship between ancient Egyptian and what he calls negro-African languages. Since ancient Egyptian is extinct, Obenga considers Coptic a parent to it. But not Berber: “We see easily that Berber deviates by itself from Egyptian and from negro-African [languages] in vocalized sounds that are apparently inherited.”77 Intellectuals from West Africa had vested interest in prehistory, in the question of origins, in early man and early civilizations. Intellectuals from northern Africa had interest in the Islamic period, the one expressed in Arabic, in order to link themselves to Arab-ness, and therefore to a geographical area outside the continent itself. Both were reactions to the colonial discourse. The first claims universalism and a blackness of prehistorical times, including those that precede European geography and its populations. The second claims particularism and sees itself as part of the Arab nation, which was a highly popular claim then and was also strategic. These articulations of geography and race were also expressed in literature, especially essays and 76

77

Tayeb Saleh, Season of Migration to the North. New York: New York Review of Books, 2009. Théophille Obenga, “Egyptien ancient et négro-africain,” Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 1971–1972 (27): 6–92.

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fiction at the moment of the creation of the nation-states. But what about Islam? Diop is consistent in his racial thinking; Whites (he calls Berbers) tried to impose Islam by force, but only once – when “the Amoravids besieged Aoudaghast and Ghana” in the first half of the eleventh century.78 But Islam spread rather peacefully, first thanks to AraboBerber travelers and second, more massively, by the efforts of Black African “national chiefs.” Diop gives reason for the “successful spread of Islam” among Black Africans. “There is, in his view, a metaphysical relationship between African beliefs and the ‘Muslim tradition.’”79 And African religions, at the time of conversion, were dying, Diop argues. Yet Diop also Africanizes Islam and harbors its accomplishments against dominant white Europe. He agrees that “Islam has often been the mystical underpinning of African nationalism,” and he narrates the epics of Mahdi of Sudan and Amadu Sheiku, among others. Though Diop’s major issue is white Europe, he refuses to concede to it on any front. Just like W. E. B. Dubois before him,80 Diop runs the gamut against white Europe. If Europe has Christianity, Africa has Islam. He writes: Mohammedan Black Africa in the Middle Ages was no less original than Christian Europe at the close of antiquity. Both continents were invaded in the same way by alien monotheistic religions which ended up being at the foundation of the entire sociopolitical organization, ruling philosophical thought, and carrying forward intellectual and moral values during this whole period.81

Europe has Greece, but Africa has Egypt, Diop argues. For Diop, Egypt is not only an extension of West Africa (or the rest of Africa), it is rather Africa itself, a Negro Africa. Egypt is that which allows Diop to make civilizational claims over Europe via Greece. But it is interesting to note that while the West African looks at Egypt to counter the colonial civilizing mission with a Black civilizing mission, the Arab intellectual (in the dominant literary figure of Taha Hussein) uses 78 79 80

81

Diop, Precolonial Black Africa Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Book, 1988, p. 163. Ibid. W. E. B Dubois, “The Soul of White Folks, 1920,” in Voices of the African American Experience, ed. Lionel Bascom. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2009, pp. 385–394. Also in The World and Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. First published in 1949. Diop, Precolonial Africa, p. 173.

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Egypt to run away from Africa and connect to Europe. Egypt for him was part of Europe, an idea promulgated by the Kedives of Egypt and that found an echo among Egyptian elites.82 While on his annual vacation in France, Taha Hussein heard the news that Egypt was plagued by cholera. It was a shocking reminder for him that Egypt is part of Africa (not Europe). For cholera was an African disease!83 In the time of Nasser, Egypt turned toward Africa, even as Nasser officially advocated an Arab nationalism. Continental affinities had to be found to create more political alliances in a world still dominated by European powers. It is in this context that a conference on the topic of Arabism and Africa was organized in Cairo in February 1967. The speakers were distinguished. One of them was the sparkling literary and political figure of Senghor. Invited, Senghor prepared a long, rather difficult discourse titled Négritude and Arabisme. In it, he aims to show the similarities and differences between what he calls, following colonial authors, Arabo-Berbers and Negro Africans which is, for him, first a racial division between “marginal whites” and “marginal blacks.”84 Despite his ingenuity in showing similarities in languages and cultures, the division between northern Africa, inhabited by Arabo-Berbers, and between Negro Africa, inhabited by Blacks, is given a native authority. And this in turn is despite Senghor’s exclusively European references (Jacques Berque, Louis Massignon, Maurice Delafosse, among others) and systematic use of colonial naming (Afrique noire, nègres, race, Arabs, Berbers, Arabo-Berbers). Whereas Senghor defines the Maghreb as inhabited by Arabo-Berbers, he identifies the Arab with the nomad in a citation of Jacques Berque that is reminiscent of Gautier’s high Orientalism.85 His conclusion, in which he calls for humanism, confirms the divide between North and South. To his “Arab audience” in Egypt, he says: “I ask you to look South as we look North so that the equilibrium of Humanism of the twentieth century looms over the destiny of Africa.”86 82

83

84

85 86

“Egypt has always been part of Europe, in every aspect of its intellectual and cultural life.” Taha Hussein, Mustaqbal al-thaqa¯fah fı¯ misr. Cairo: Hindawi, ˙ 2014 [1938], p. 29. Taha Hussein, al-Muʻadhdhabu¯n fı¯ al-ard. Da¯r al-Maʻa¯rif, 1961, pp. 182–192. ˙ Cited in Abdallah Laroui, L’idéologie arabe contemporaine. Paris: Maspero, 1966, p. 17. Leopold Senghor, Les fondaments de l’Africanité ou Negritude et Arabité. Dakar: Présence Africaine, 1967. Jacques Berque, Les Arabes d’hier à demain. Paris: Seuil, 1969. Ibid., p. 105.

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Senghor stresses then the negritude (blackness) of Africa, yet calls for openness. This was a common view among Black Africans and even African Americans (who influenced them), who continued to see Africa in racial terms excluding, de facto, its northern part. Maybe that is why when V. Y. Mudimbe published The Invention of Africa, its northern part is entirely missing despite the fact that in colonial times (let alone precolonial ones), the north existed in all forms of knowledge about the era.87 But it existed only to be separated. Postcolonial authors seem to have confirmed the separation, making Africa a Black Africa or making North Africa a region attached to the Middle East. Commenting on negritude, Mudimbe writes, “The colonized internalizes the imposed racial stereotypes, particularly in attitudes towards technology, culture, and language. Black personality and negritude appear as the only [sic] means of negating this thesis.”88 But the origin of the Black personality can be found in Dubois and even earlier in the work of Marcus Garvey, both of whom conceived of Africa as black. The negritude movement continued it. Colonial authors and politicians of the (post)colonial period, such as Aimé Césaire and Kwame Nkrumah, when they speak of Africa, mean Black Africa despite the strong presence of Egypt and the Maghreb in African associations. Even Mudimbe himself follows suit in a book that was supposed to trace the invention of Africa (and leaves the name uninterrogated and unanalyzed despite its being a manifestation of colonial power); he is concerned only with Black Africa. Islam in Africa seems to be alien to Africa in his work, as it is in the work of Nkrumah, a champion of African unity.89 87 89

Mudimbe, Invention of Africa. 88 Ibid., p. 93. Ibid. Despite Blyden’s explicit wish to see Africa Christianized, Mudimbe is suspicious of him and concerned about his “naïve admiration of Islam.” He even concludes that “in spirit, Blyden was a Muslim” (Invention of Africa, p. 133). Such a suspicion, that masks a rejection of Islam from Africa, was common in colonial times among Blyden’s peers, and it clearly survived in a critical postcolonial text, such as the one of Mudimbe, and is common among Black nationalists. It is correct that Blyden speaks favorably about how Islam was blind to race whereas colonial Christianity was not. This should be read more as a critique of Christianity than a eulogy of Islam. But Mudimbe ignores Blyden’s negative views of Islam and his plans to use it to Christianize Africa. See Jacob Dorman, “Lifted Out of the Commonplace Grandeur of Modern Times: Reappraising Edward Wilmot Blyden’s Views of Islam and Afrocentrism in Light of His Scholarly Black Christian Orientalism,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 2010 (12): 4398–4418. Even Nkrumah,

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However, negritude is a sort of consciousness, in the view of its authors, and thus a culture in and of itself. It is also a racial culture formed by reading major colonial texts that construct the idea of negritude as a racial truth.90 Derived from the idea of Black Africa, the construction was initially and mainly part of the construction of Africa, one that is distinct by color and is separated from the rest also by color. There is Africa and there is White Africa, of which the Maghreb is a large part. The two entities are not homogeneous. Africa is also defined by its own racial/ethnic antagonism (Arabs versus Blacks, Moors versus Haratin, Hutu versus Tutsi, Pygmy versus Bantu, Dogon versus Peul, etc.), as the Maghreb is defined by its racial opposition between Arabs and Berbers.91 Consider Frantz Fanon, whose most celebrated work is on Algeria.92 Fanon displays an internationalism inherent in Marxist ideologies of the time. He attaches Algeria neither to Africa nor to the Middle East, but rather to a geography of imperial domination, a geography of the man subjected by colonial powers whose condition, struggle, and destiny he shares with other men outside of Algeria. If the colonial condition creates a unique man transcending class parameters, the same colonial condition also creates a man whose condition is not defined by class, but by colonial subjugation, the wretched of the earth. Algeria and the Algerian war allowed Fanon to go beyond the noir and find not only the African man, but Man in his full force, might, power, idealism, brotherhood, sacrifice, and invention. Yacine says that “colonial Algeria rejects the Algerian, even if he is an intellectual, it vomits him somehow, especially if he is

90

91

92

unlike Blyden, accepts Islam, but only if it is “digested,” meaning if it is Africanized (an idea that refers to Black Islam). In any case, twelve centuries of the presence of Islam, in its particularly African form, which is mainly Sufism, is still seen by Nkrumah as alien in a book meant to be an effort of decolonization. See Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964. On the history of the term nègre, see Simone Delesalle and Lucette Valensi, “Le mot nègre dans les dictionnaires d’Ancien régime histoire et lexicographie,” Langue française 1972 (15): 49–104. For the example of the Hutu versus the Tutsi, see Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Also see Lisa Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995. Franz Fanon, Les damnés de la terre. Paris: Maspero, 1961.

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an intellectual.”93 Such an attitude was undoubtedly displayed vis-àvis anyone under the French colonial yoke within or outside of Algeria. In Algeria, a black man like Fanon has no special privileges, hence his view that the colonized world is one: man under colonial oppression. The colonized world is one: it is neither just this nor just that, neither this attached to this, nor that attached to that. It is a world where men of different color suffer daily domination not at the hands of an economic class, but at the hands of an imperial power. Yet Fanon, who started his political career by writing a book about the Black condition when he was just twenty-six years old,94 was appropriated later, more via his first text, to reinforce blackness and thus to separate the blackness of Africa from its nonblackness.95 Works and authors often have careers they might have never intended or wished for. The death of the author may not be just a figure of speech, after all.

Conclusion The invention of the Maghreb was an invention of an ensemble of discourses constituting a system of references that generate themselves in a variety of cultural forms. Therefore the Maghreb is a conception built gradually, throughout colonial times, by corrections, by translation, by politics of representation, by strategies of names and naming, and so forth. At the end, this life of texts and discourses springing from within the colonial structure of power emerged as a geographical entity with a history of its own, a culture of its own, a set of maps of its own, all unified by the very colonial governmentality that made these aspects possible in the first place. Colonial modernity was undoubtedly creative, but also tyrannical in its ways of transformation, destruction, and ultimately imposition of its truths. Resistance to it, especially with a lack of or with insufficient technologies of power, generates it and infuses it with the oxygen that guarantees its longevity. Thus in the 93

94 95

Kateb Yacine, “J’ai fini avec la France,” interview 1966. https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=DXUOD71ylP8. Last accessed April 24, 2020. Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Seuil, 1952. Fanon became indeed an influential figure of Black ideologies; see Mabogo More, “The Intellectual Foundation of the Black Consciousness Movement,” Philosophia Africana: Analysis of Philosophy and Issues in Africa and the Black Diaspora 2012 (14)1: 23–39.

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colonial period, the many attempts to oppose the colonial construction of the region via its history were doomed to repeat it. The intellectual efforts of the Salafi writers in the three countries of the region not only contributed to reinforcing the parts, but they also willy-nilly solidified the invention of the whole – the Maghreb. The work of authors such as Sfar, Thaʿâlibi, Ben Badis, al-Mili, Madani, and al-Fassi testify to the obvious fact that colonial representations were imposed on the colonized. Moreover, they made them respond and more problematically commanded these responses. In the process, racial culture was itself reproduced by these authors. The colonial division of Arab versus Berber was a regulating dichotomy in the colonial discourse. It has become a focal point of the discourse of the Salafi, albeit with changes that consist mainly in making Berbers versus Arabs a thesis that is not alien to the colonial discourse. Here too, in his very opposition to the colonial discourse, Laroui reproduces a nationalist perception of the Maghreb, one that makes the Maghreb a unit that has always existed with a language, with a will to live together, with a shared destiny. Instead of a narrative of lack of nationhood, the national historian creates a narrative of a conquest of a nationhood that has, in his opinion, always marked the history of the Maghreb. In other words, out of the colonial Maghreb, elaborated gradually through its colonial times, we find a national Maghreb also made out of colonial semantics in its postcolonial times. Laroui constructs a complex idea of a Maghreb whose discursive origins are to be found in colonial authors as well as in Salafi writers. The Maghreb is Arab; however, Laroui adopts the conception of Arabness that was common during the Nasserite era (1952–1970), mainly the association with the language and with a shared system of values. But for Laroui too, the Maghreb has existed, and it has done so against the very image constructed by colonial scholars, notably Gautier, an author who by himself sums up an entire historical discursive formation that led to the formation of the Maghreb. Laroui not only reproduced the Maghreb from a Maghrebi perspective, balancing the Salafi and the colonial discourse, balancing the Arab Ibn Khaldûn and the Orientalist Ibn Khaldûn, but in the process, by virtue of the argumentative dimension of his discourse, he reproduced also the colonial Maghreb, if only negatively. The proof is that in his attempt to refute the colonial Maghreb, Laroui at no point made connections between the region and Africa, some of which we find in precolonial

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historiography. The Maghreb of Laroui extends its cultural frontiers to the Middle East and limits its geographic borders no further than the Sahara. The Maghreb was confirmed in its (post)colonial identity also by the silence of Black African scholars. It is not only that Africa inherited colonial frontiers, but also that it inherited the conceptions by which frontiers and nations are imagined. Africa has a personality and one can only see that color is part and parcel of that African personality.96 Even when it connects to Egypt, it is not to Arab Egypt that it connects, but rather to ancient Egypt that it blackens before it claims it as its own. Modern Egyptian scholars do not see themselves as part of Africa, but rather as part of the Middle East, and at the heart of the Arab world. The Maghreb has come to be seen as part of the continent only through colonization, the same colonization that created it and separated it from Africa. Maybe it is this same colonization that allowed it to be included in political associations and unions called African. But this pertains more to geopolitics and less to geoculture.

96

Edward Blyden coined the concept in May 1893. However, prior to this date, Blyden used similar concepts, especially in his article “Africa and Africans,” first published in Fraser’s Magazine, August 1878, and reprinted in Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race. New York: Eca Associates Chesapeake, 1990. The concept of African personality also inspired Marcus Garvey and the activist work of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. See Marcus Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. New York: Universal Publishing House, 1923. See W. E. B. Dubois, The World and Africa and Color and Democracy, ed. Henri Louis Gates Jr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

6

Cracks

There is something undoubtedly paradoxical about the entity called the Maghreb. On one hand, it is an idea, a narrative, a perception of a unit, a conception of something united, seemingly concrete, and real. It is out there, so it seems, with a geography of its own, a history of its own, a population of its own, in short, an identity of its own shared neither by the rest of Africa nor by the Middle East. On the other hand, this entity is fragmented, disunited, existing in pieces called nation-states with strong identities that are at times antagonistic and conflictual. Marked from within by rigid yet disputed frontiers triggering at times open war – even into the present – it is also traversed from one corner to the other by racial, linguistic, and political divides. If the French colonial experience constitutes one of its defining characteristics, this is because the region was reconfigured by it. If in colonial times, the region was perceived as a unified entity, especially by those who constructed it as such, in postcolonial times, the region is also perceived as such from the standpoint of the former metropole. In France, the region’s existence is never in doubt. For, after all, the former colony of the past is an essential francophone zone in the present. The idea of the Maghreb is also a real one for the political actors of its nation-states. Even before the Algerian war, the idea was conceived by the first political organizations in the region, such as the Etoile Nord Africaine and the Algerian Popular Party, both founded by Messali Hadj in 1926 and in 1946, respectively.1 In 1948, the Committee of the Liberation of the Maghreb was created in Cairo. The idea of the Maghreb was thus inherent in the idea of liberation from the colonial yoke. For the leaders of these political organizations, the unity of the Maghreb was vital, a question of life and death – “a strategic whole,” 1

On the history of these political organizations, see Mahfoud Kaddache, Histoire du nationalism algérien. Paris: Méditerranée, 2003. Benjamin Stora, Les sources du nationalism algérien. Parcours idéologiques. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000.

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as young Hocine Aït Ahmed described it in 1948, and to launch the struggle for liberation outside its framework would be “suicide,” he added with great conviction.2 The young militant’s warning echoes sentiments repeatedly expressed by others, including Abdelkrim alKhattabi, the president of the Committee of the Liberation of the Arab Maghreb. The call for political liberation was itself based on the idea of a people united by “history, religion, language, [and which] nothing separates or opposes.”3 In other words, once the Maghreb was constituted as a whole, as a distinct geography by the colonizers, this idea was accepted, as a matter of fact, even by the most intransigent opponents of colonial rule. Al-Khattabi, who was in Cairo working with Salafi ideologues such as Allal al-Fassi, defines it as “having owed its existence to Islam”; the Maghreb, for him, is “Muslim” and “Arab,” and is “indissolubly part of Arab countries.”4 This is the same conception of the Maghreb we have previously examined in the work of the Salafi writers of the region. But this Maghreb somehow ignores Libya and Mauritania, as a hybrid zone between Blacks and Whites, separating the Maghreb from West Africa.5 For the young generation of Aït Ahmed, as well as the older one of al-Khattabi, the Maghreb was specifically “Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.”6 Clearly, Libya was not seen as part of the struggle and therefore as part of the Maghreb, most likely because it was outside the francophone zone. In any case, while the struggle was carried out from within this unit called the Maghreb, independence was individual, negotiated by selected groups of future nation-states, not a unified popular front. And it was not liberation as such, but independence, and in the case of Morocco, “independence within interdependence,” the formula 2

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Rapport de Hocine Ait Ahmed au comité central élargi de Zeddine, décembre 1948. www.scribd.com/doc/294397805/Ait-Ahmed-rapport-pour-l-Organisati on-Secrete-en-1948. Last accessed May 3, 2020. Ibid. “Nous espérons que l’idéal maghrébin ressuscitera par les idéaux d’unité, d’intégration et de solidarité qui manquent fortement aujourd’hui, avec une génération consciente et des dirigeants d’envergure, intelligents et déterminés à dépasser leurs égoïsmes, transcender les obstacles et réussir à unir les peuples du Maghreb que tout rassemble : l’histoire, la religion, la langue, que rien ne sépare et ni oppose.” Abdelkrim al-Khattabi, ʿAraa wa mawaqif (1926–1963): hawla al-tajribah alrifiyag, al-Maghrib ba`d harb al-rif. Al-Sukhayrat: Manshurat ikhtilaf, 2002. See Christelle Jus, Soudan-Mauritanie, une géopolitique coloniale (1880–1963): Tracer une ligne dans le sable. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003, p. 18. Khattabi, ʿAraa wa mawaqif; Aït Ahmed, Rapport.

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French prime minister Edgar Faure coined in 1955. What emerged from these independent movements was a regional nationalism whose cultural elements we see in the ideological and historiographic Salafi discourses. Nationalism is an ideology of an elite, the same ones who were able to speak in the name of the nation and for it. Regional nationalism was also shaped by the specific struggle of independence and was constructed around its symbols: the monarchy in Morocco, the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria, and the Destour in Tunisia, each personified by a national figure: Mohammed V, Boumedienne, and Bourguiba. Yet the idea of the Maghreb, or rather of the necessity of its unity, was still part of their ideological education, a sort of étoile de fond because of the ideological work provided by the Salafi, whose impact on national movements was not only instrumental, but who were integrated in the state apparatus. Once claimed as a goal, the unity of the Maghreb became – after independence – a “destiny,” and was thus relegated to the future, which means it was taken out of the concerns of the present. One of the main concerns of the present, and for sure the most urgent, was that regarding the very frontiers of the Maghreb – were they to be the ones inherited from colonial or from Ottoman rule? Yet, despite conflicts and even wars over those frontiers, the idea of the Maghreb remained in the national discourse of all countries of the region, including Libya, because the founding of the nation-state could not obliterate it. The Maghreb was considered a reality, a geography – fragmented, yes, but still existent – and political will could end its fragmentation. Thus, in 1986, and after a long process, the idea of l’unité du Maghreb was created. But this was short-lived, as the conflict in the region over the Sahara continued unabated and every nationstate struggled with political, social, and economic issues, all part of the colonial heritage. Since my analysis is centered at the level of the unit called the Maghreb, I would like to investigate in this chapter the fissures in its edifice, the cracks that prevent its cohesion. There are several, but I consider three of them essential. First is the conflict over the Sahara, which is a conflict not only of borders but also of geopolitics, pertaining to ambitions and interests of nation-states in a postcolonial era. Second is the Amazigh question, which pertains to politics, to identity, to culture, and to postcolonial race. And third is the question of language, which is a question of culture, but also a question of geopolitics,

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especially as it involves antagonism between French and Arabic. Francophonie is and was a cultural and political project that guarantees the presence of France in the region. These complex issues, made up and passed on from colonial times and impossible to separate from intricate games of colonial policies and geopolitical maneuvering, define the region. For these problems are unthinkable outside of the conception called the Maghreb, or to be more precise, the creation of the Maghreb made these problems possible in the first place.

Fragments of Fragments With the independence of the countries that formed the French Maghreb, a cultural project for its nations had been conceived and was in order. We have seen, in Chapter 4, how Muslim reformists in these three countries initiated this cultural project, drawing both from an imagined Arab nation and from an equally imagined Muslim oumma. The differences between Sfar, Thaʿâlibi, Ben Badis, and Allal al-Fassi are in fact minor considering that their responses were after all a reaction to the colonial discourse, in an unbalanced power relation with the colonial establishment in their countries. Also deeply paradoxical in these responses was the fact that while they were responding to a discourse involving the three countries of the region, their response was specific to their respective countries: Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The national historian proceeded differently, and in some ways in opposition. While he undertook to demonstrate a national culture specific to the region, he was nevertheless and because of the immediate postcolonial condition engaged in the nationalism of the nation-state, and not of the entire region. It is not at all surprising that the same historian would find himself at the forefront of an ideological nationalistic battle that opposes Morocco to Algeria. The national historical discourse exists as a continuity of the colonial discourse. Consequently, it is part of the same colonial discursive formation. It functions mostly, but not exclusively, as a contradiction to a larger discursive colonial unit. Contradictions constitute an essential part of a discursive formation. The colonial historical discourse, itself a translation of the local discourse, represents the other with its own textual material whereas the national discourse self-represents with colonial materials. The concept of nationhood that structures both colonial historical knowledge and national knowledge, the first

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in the form of a lack, the second in the form of a quest, is a modern colonial category, and it implies that all citizens of the same country share its history, its language, and its ideals. None of the three categories is deconstructed to see that the official history cancels other histories, the official languages marginalize other languages, and declared ideals mask other ideals, all of which are also part and parcel of the constitution of the national unit. However, there is something quite peculiar about national history in the region under discussion. On one hand, it constructs nationalism that substantiates the nation-state (e.g., Morocco), and on the other, it articulates a broader history that feeds an atypical nationalism we can call pan-Maghrebism, since it celebrates the same idea that was inherited from the colonial discourse and rearticulated, again mutatis mutandis, by national historicism. Yet regional nationalism is intense within the region, with Moroccan and Algerian nationalism crystallizing around the issue of the Western Sahara.7 Hence, in Algeria, is an ambivalence about the idea of the Sahara, an idea that is strong at the level of political (mostly military) elites (who are militant about it) and that almost disappears at the level of the masses in Algeria (who are indifferent to it).8 In Morocco, the Sahara has intensified the feeling of nationalism, and even unified once-fragmented, conflictual political parties, if only regarding the issue of the Sahara, further legitimizing the monarchy as the guarantor of national unity.9 The point is, if the national discourse is larger (much larger) than its territory, it is also because of the unsettled and unsettling questions of the frontiers of the nation. The example of the Sahara is only one example among several, albeit it is the most known, the most timely, the most unresolved, and potentially also the most dangerous one. From early on in the phase of decolonization, the problem of frontiers was forcefully announced by Allal al-Fassi, the Salafi ideologue turned staunch Moroccan nationalist:

7

8 9

For a brief history of the Western Sahara, see Osama Abi-Mershed and Adam Farrar, “A History of the Conflict in Western Sahara,” in Perspectives on Western Sahara: Myths, Nationalisms, and Geopolitics, ed. Anouar Boukhars and Jacques Roussellier. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, pp. 3–27. Interviews conducted in 2005 and 2008 in Algiers and Constantine. George Joffeé, “Sovereignty and the Western Sahara,” Journal of North African Studies 2010 (1)3: 375–384.

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If Morocco is independent, it remains not completely unified. The Moroccans will continue the struggle until Tangier, the Sahara from Tindouf to Colomb-Beachr, Touat, Kenadza, and Mauritania are liberated and unified. Our independence will only be complete with the Sahara! The frontiers of Morocco end in the South at Saint-Louis-du-Senegal.10

Independence brought a slew of postcolonial problems just at the frontiers of the nation. These problems were the immediate consequence of the long divide-and-rule policy of colonial France. The national historian and ideologue alike (often infused in each other) are aware of the presence of colonialism in the present, but only in terms of its responsibility for dividing the nation, and rarely in terms of discourse – that is, in terms of creating a cognitive universe that is hegemonic, in which the opponents of colonialism itself are caught. To say it plainly and bluntly, the national historian does not recognize that the colonial discourse comes out of his mouth and pen in the forms of categories that structure his thoughts, his imagination, and even the language and the tools of his critique. Neither does he seem aware that the language itself that he speaks is not a neutral means of communication; no, it makes him think, argue, and persuade in a certain way. The very terms he uses to substantiate the nation or to critique colonial rule are the same ones inherited from a long era of colonial discourse. Therefore, it is by deconstructing those and possibly inventing a new language that the problem of the Sahara needs to be rethought, not within a historical and political discourse unable to think outside of colonial semantics, but within a framework that interrogates the legitimacy of these same categories that structure its reason and fashion its arguments. One can take any example from those engaged in this political debate, irrespective of their political leanings, to find out that the arguments used by one side or the other draw their meaning from colonial semantics; the categories of the discourse themselves are colonial, hence the fact that the arguments turn in a circle. One cannot rethink a precolonial situation with colonial arguments without obscuring the period under discussion. Consider the argument of Abdallah Laroui regarding the same dichotomy of makhzen and siba whose constructions and politics, we have seen in Chapter 4. For him, 10

Cited in Bertrand Fessard de Foucault, “La question du Sahara espagnol,” Revue francaise d études politiques africaines 1975 (10)119 : 74–106 at 78.

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siba is not an independent territory, but rather a land of fiscal dissidence. The proof that it is not a land of spiritual autonomy is that the authority of the sultan was recognized even in times of active dissidence (siba). The Sahara might, as with other parts of Morocco that are now decidedly Moroccan, switch between fiscal dissidence and spiritual obedience. Its existence as a political entity is unsubstantiated, according to Laroui. Once the colonial category of siba is accepted and used as a departing point for argumentation, the colonial discourse is reactivated, and colonial understanding of a precolonial situation is deployed. For, as shown in Chapter 3, the concept of siba, absent in local thinking of the time, could not be separated from an arsenal of modern political concepts that colonial ideologues put into practice to understand a situation totally alien to them. Consider also the official Moroccan arguments: Within the mechanism of the functioning of the secular Moroccan state, the Sahara has always held a privileged and decisive position. Thus, the founders of the different dynasties in Morocco were often members of one of the tribes of the Western Sahara. This was the case for the Almoravids, whose founder, Youssouf Ben Tachfine [ninth century] was later to create the “Greater Morocco” which extended to the frontiers of Senegal. Those close ties with the Sahara had not been interrupted with the advent of the Alaouite dynasty [seventeenth century] that came from Tafilalet [the Sahara] and which never stopped consolidating the national unity and strengthening the immemorial ties between all parts of Morocco.11

The concepts used – secular state, frontiers, national unity – are not only forms of postcolonial anachronism; they are categories that structure the thoughts and arguments of the Moroccan discourse again about a situation that is precolonial, meaning that it was conceived in different terms. The point here is not to restate the obvious – that the Sahara is a colonial problem resulting from colonial policies of divide and rule – but rather to stress the fact that the Sahara is a major problem that highlights the idea of the Maghreb while, paradoxically, constituting one of the major obstacles (if not the major one) in the way of Maghrebi political unity. The point is also to stress that the actors in the region (and even beyond) think, argue, and make decisions

11

Ministry of Communication, “Historical Foundations of the Moroccanity of the Sahara.” 1997.

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according to colonial semantics that can be properly understood only in local terms, the archaeology of which needs to be undertaken. The problem of the Sahara generates a discourse that displays the conflict of nationalism mainly between Algeria and Morocco. However, this conflict mobilizes other discourses in Africa as well as in the Middle East. The reason is that the problem of the Sahara is undoubtedly a postcolonial problem whose equivalents exist virtually in every colonized territory: Namibia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Kashmir, and Palestine, to mention just a few examples. The question now is, can a colonial problem of frontiers and geography be resolved through political thinking in a colonial cognitive universe? The answer may be yes only if we assume that the problem was initially created in colonial times. And this leads me to my next contention: the invention of the Maghreb bears serious cracks that are defining of the invention. In other words, the Maghreb was created as a unity, but with racial, linguistic, and geographic divisions that explode that unity into pieces. The Sahara is the most visible of these, but there are others at the eastern borders with Algeria, and the northern border with Europe, and at the border between Algeria and Mali.12

Postcolonial Regimes of Language A political problem is often a linguistic problem, and vice versa. Language is profoundly political. Politics itself is unthinkable without language; one can even define politics as the art of discourse. What do politicians do? They talk. We have seen previously that colonial power did not only reconfigure the region via technologies of power; it has also introduced, via the founding of schools and institutions of cultures, a system of meaning, a web of significance that is inseparable from its language – French. French, in a matter of decades, had become a defining feature of the region. Through the very formation of regional nationalisms, Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian, the language of engagement between the elite (often young) and colonial administrators (often older) was French. 12

For Mauretania that was rather attached to the Sahel before colonialism, see Jus, Soudan-Mauritanie. For a view on the problems of frontiers in Africa after independence, see Boutros-Boutros Ghali and Nabiyah Isfahani, Les conflits des frontières en Afrique. Paris: Editions techniques et économiques, 1973.

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Colonial knowledge functioned as a means by which to order the colonies and to make them understood so that effective colonial policies would be informed and founded on solid, empirical grounds. This is also to say that this knowledge was produced in a specific historical context with the intent to understand and control colonial reality. If this understanding and control failed (as evident by the collapse of the colonial system), one would expect a dismissal of this same knowledge that either failed to maintain control or, which does not amount to the same thing, caused it by its myopia or its “errors.” Yet an important point still cries out for an explanation: if the colonial public no longer exists, one may assume that colonial knowledge also disappeared, or at least is considered no longer accurate and thus no longer relevant. Why isn’t this so? It is almost surprising that the effectiveness of colonial knowledge became increasingly efficacious, albeit at times invisible, only after the departure of the French. The colonial signifying objects still constitute a postcolonial public, most notoriously a national one, who consume them in the form of French modernity. And here one finds another crucially important characteristic of colonial knowledge, or any form of modern knowledge for that matter – the creation of imaginaries, of realities that produce subjects who themselves reproduce the same realities, albeit with changes and alterations. One might well ask then: how, why, and in which conditions do colonial objects still participate in the making of a (postcolonial) public? What are the dynamics, the rules, and the constraints of such making? The postcolonial period brought up a new condition: when the formerly colonial scholars retreated to French institutions, the formerly colonized national elite inherited colonial institutions such as the Institut des Hautes-Études Marocaines (Rabat), the University of Algiers, the University of Oran, the University of Tunis, and even institutional or bureaucratic organs such as Hespéris, Tamuda, and Revue Tunisienne. The national elite, the inheritors of the colonial state, were still in a state of dependency, given that the passage to French institutions had become a necessity, a rite de passage not only for any would-be intellectual, but also for any would-be politician or ideologue. In other words, colonial culture not only stayed where it was born and developed but it was also consumed as a commodity to enhance one’s symbolic capital. One can even make a general but still accurate remark and state that the educational system was inherited

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from colonialism, as were most of the forms of modern governance and state surveillance. At the same time, most of the intellectual effort was directed against the colonial legacy. Thus, seven years after the independence of the last North African country, Algerian president Boumediene declared at the first Pan-African Cultural Festival: To reject the counter truths spread by colonialism, to bring proofs from the past and the intellectual presence of Africa, such was from the outset our struggle, a task to which we have assigned its place and its role.13

Boumediene represented – and not only in Algeria – this willingness to cut off the colonial past. However, his condition as a postcolonial subject makes him unable and in fact unwilling to think outside of colonial parameters: indeed, he had never spoken French in public, neither had he ever visited France, and during French official visits, he always made recourse to the traditional Algerian burnous – beneath which, however, one could still see the European suit. This is different from the attitude of the king of Morocco, Hassan II, who visibly enjoyed speaking French in front of an audience of French journalists, and who often boasted of speaking French better than a French-born person. In these contrasting cases, it is clear how the action of the former colonized is nothing but reaction. This means that the culture of colonialism still governed and imposed itself on the attitudes and behaviors of even the most fervent detractors. Whether through the political or intellectual elite (often fused in the case of the Maghreb, especially immediately following independence), colonialism has become a focal point of competing Maghrebi national discourses. In other words, colonial categories, as articulated in various discursive formations (whether nationalist, religious, or variants thereof), not only contain the colonial categories of race and nation, modernity and progress, a certain vision of time, and the profane and sacred, but are often reformulated to fit the postcolonial condition. The point is seen most evidently in the postcolonial era, when the formerly colonized have categories of their own to think about themselves, to contest the colonial other, to resist him, but the same categories of colonial modernity linger. Or, as Pierre Bourdieu succinctly puts it: 13

Houari Boumedienne, “Discours inaugural au Syposium du Premier Festival culturel panafricain,” in La Culture algérienne dans les textes, ed. Jean Dejeux. Paris: Publisud, 1995, p. 87.

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When the dominated apply to what dominates them schemes that are the product of domination, or, to put it another way, when their thoughts and perceptions are structured in accordance with the very structures of the relation of domination that is imposed on them, their acts of cognition are, inevitably, acts of recognition, submission.14

Postcolonial power is marked by a horizontal not a vertical relationship, no matter the constraints and maneuvers of the so-called native. It remains limited, yet at critical junctures it can even be effective in the face of strategies and tactics of postcolonial struggle and human liberation. Nowhere is this relationship more apparent than the domain of language. Small wonder, as language is often seen as one of the defining characteristics of a nation. Colonial language, in this context French, holds profound symbolic charge. It provides the new masters – the nationalist elite – with the language of power, and in turn allows for the proprietary monopoly of knowledge and resources both symbolic and material vis-à-vis the masses whose salient characteristic is precisely the absence of such language. Let us discuss three examples: one from literature, the second from political rhetoric on education, and the third drawn from historiography (the textual form of the national discourse). By language, I do not mean langue in the sense given by Ferdinand de Saussure – that is, as an abstract, a virtual system of signs – but rather as an actual system of signs, precisely that which Saussure calls langage, language-in-use, language as practiced in communications, in literature, and in all types of speaking and writing. The importance of language as an ideological project vital to the nation-state is better seen, I believe, in the domain of artistic creation, especially in literature, and even more specifically in the novel. In the Maghreb, an impressive body of literature is written in the language of the colonizer. More importantly, the canons of Maghrebi literature are invariably articulated and penned in French and recognized in France. Abdallah Laroui writes in 1967 that “a large part of francophone North African literature is transitory, circumstantial, not expressive because it is conceived as a regionalist branch of a culture elsewhere centered, and it is [this culture of elsewhere] that approves or disapproves [of the francophone North African literature].”15 Laroui makes an exception, Kateb 14

15

Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001, p. 13. Laroui, L’idéologie arabe contemporaine, pp. 175–176.

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Yacine. But Yacine may beg to differ; he indeed states that the “only reason the French took interest in me is because I represent an extreme form of alienation.”16 Yacine once wrote, “French is the booty of war.” This expression has been repeated by francophone Maghrebi writers such as Assia Djebar (even though, in practice, Yacine actually refused to write in French after independence and chose instead the Algerian “dialect,” which he considered more Algerian than either Arabic or French).17 For him, writing in French was justified only by the fact that he needed to communicate his “Algerianism” to France in the language France could understand. After independence Yacine took a more critical stand toward Francophonie, a stand ignored by those who repeat his phrase about French being the “booty of war.” This is to say that Yacine stored, or recycled, this booty once the war for independence reached its goal. Yacine’s act can be clearly seen as an attempt to achieve cultural liberation. But for other francophone writers, the booty came to imprison the soldier. Consider Mohammed Dib, one of the most notorious francophone Maghrebi writers, who only a few months before his death asserted that writing in Arabic was shameful: The Algerians who write in Arabic should be ashamed to write in an archaic language which is for the Algerians as Latin or Greek is for the French.18

Dib makes a parallel that otherwise he would not have been able to make, had he not opted for a linguistic counter-ideology against Arabic rooted in the ideology of modernity itself – namely, that modernity is possible only in European languages. The strongest means of persuasion is the one that uses what the public already believes in. The public of Dib is a francophone one and for them, Arabic is indeed a language of the past, archaic, dead at least as far as they are concerned. The deficiency of the argument becomes obvious if one does not accept this ideological premise. Latin is a dead language and Arabic is not; Greek is a language of the Greeks, not of the French. Therefore, one could say, just for the sake of clarification, that “the Algerian who speaks French should be ashamed; it is for the Algerian as German is for the French.” 16 17

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Yacine, Le poète comme un boxeur. Assia Djebar, “Du français comme butin,” Quanzaine littéraire 1985 (436): 16–31. Mohamed Dib, Interview. Magazine Littérature January 2003 (416): 65.

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The comparison of Germany’s invasion of France to France’s occupation of Algeria was indeed suggested one day by Farhat Abbas, only to receive a swift response from Charles de Gaulle: “I did not marry a German, I did not doubt the reality of the French nation in my younger age,19 and I did not believe it was a duty to give my family a German education.”20 These linguistic problems, despite their genealogy and omnipresence since independence, have surfaced in the past ten years or so, especially in the midst of a real renaissance of Arabic. The cultural production of Arabic in recent years has been indeed impressive. Its renaissance is also due to the age of globalization when the Internet can connect communities of speakers across the globe in the blink of an eye. It is also due to the economic rise of the Gulf States, which play an important role in the spread and development of Arabic via precious, highly lucrative state prizes and state channels with impressive global reach, especially Al Jazeera. This channel especially, with its staff from all over the Arab world and with a significant share of staff from the region of the Maghreb itself, has undoubtedly made the competition with French more difficult and more ferocious. In the age of globalization, French also appears more and more like a regional language in the presence of the spread of English worldwide, including increasingly in the region of the Maghreb. Thus there are frequent calls to replace French with English when the issue of modernity and global connectivity is raised in the debate – which is also always a debate about Arabic. Spanish, despite its longer presence than French in the region, does not enter the competition, not even in the so-called Spanish zone.21 The dichotomy is postcolonial, meaning it has a colonial genealogy. In Morocco, the question of language reached a turning point ten or so years ago, just before the outbreak of the so-called Arab Spring. A real campaign to replace Arabic with darija (i.e., colloquial Arabic) in the educational system had been launched with great vigor in the 19

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This was in reference to Farhat Abbas’s well-known statement that “I have asked history, I have asked the living and the dead; I have visited the cemeteries: no one talked to me about it [the Algerian nation],” cited in Jean Lacouture, Cinq hommes et la France. Paris: Seuil, 1961, p. 274. Jean Daniel, Express, January 25, 1961, cited in Lacouture, Cinq hommes et la France, p. 323. See discussion of French in Tangier, Abdelmajid Hannoum, Living Tangier: Migration, Race, and Illegality in a Moroccan City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.

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media, most often by francophone writers who tend to use French and not darija as their daily language, which too exists with differences in syntax and vocabulary and accent, depending on region and social class. This paradox is indicative of the linguistic war not only in Morocco but also in the region by and large. For linguistically, the opposition is between a francophone Maghreb and an Arab Maghreb. Amazigh (with all its different variations) is often harnessed, albeit differently, in this context. The truth of the matter is that there is no movement that argues for replacing Arabic with Amazigh, or French with Amazigh. The reasons are many, and chief among them is the fact that unlike Arabic and French, Amazigh is not a carrier of bookish civilization. Arabic claims Islam, with which it is closely associated. It also claims the entire cultural production contributed throughout the ages by Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Greeks, Berbers, and other ethnicities. Long ago, Benjamin Whorf drew attention to the crucial fact that language is not only a means of communication, as in the Saussaurian conception, but is rather the means by which one analyzes and reasons: Every language is a vast pattern-system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness.22

However, language is not only a means of expression, or an assembling of words that translate things; it is, rather, a cultural system in and of itself. It makes the things it translates. Language is also the means by which our consciousness is made, the cognitive universe that we create, the space in which we think, reason, and remember. If history is “us,” as Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues, language is the transcendental us, connected to others in time and in space. Language is also “us” in that it connects us to what is most intimate about ourselves. It inhabits us as it expresses the most abstract of our thoughts and the deepest of our emotions. Without it, history is impossible, and the very idea of “we” is unthinkable. Yet, as free and spontaneous as it may appear, language is unseparated from power – that is, from rules.23 Power is constitutive of language first in the form of rules 22

23

Benjamin Whorf, Language, Thoughts, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1956, p. 235. Roland Barthes, Leçon inaugurale au Collège de France. Paris: Seuil, 1978.

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(grammatical rules),24 in the form of narrative and discursive grammar,25 and of course in the form of institutional constraints.26 Therefore, French is not simply a medium that allows one to communicate with Europe and gives access to modernity – this claim is rather an expression of its ideology – it is rather a specific cultural system, with its own categories, providing a social world of its own. To say that “French is the booty of war” is to espouse the simplistic, naïve, and even dangerous view that language is simply a means of communication. In the colonial period, it was understandable that French was booty, since the Algerian writer needed to express his protest and make his demands heard by the French public. Nevertheless, French ties the Maghrebi writer to a system of domination that continues in the present. This is particularly so in that writing in French is always at the expense of the national language – be it Arabic, Berber, or a Maghrebi “dialect.” Cultural creation, especially in the case of literature – and more so in the case of the novel – is very much associated with the formation of the nation-state.27 But in the case of Europe – or, to be more specific, in the case of France – this nation-state was given substance from within its own territory by French writers formulating and articulating French bourgeois values. Even in France itself, French established itself as the national language at the expense of other languages that became marginalized or even eliminated. This process, long and difficult in some parts, short and easy in others, was deftly called by Weber “a White man’s burden of Francophonie, whose first conquests were to be right at home.”28 However, whereas for obvious reasons, the process of Frenchification was inclusive, indiscriminate in France, it became selective in northern Africa. French was taught to Europeans and was also the privilege of a small lucky local elite.29 It was (and it still is) deemed modern, clearer, and scientific.30 The same French myth of clarity and precision that 24 25

26 27 28 29

30

Michel Foucault, L’ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard, 1971. Algirdas-Julien Greimas, Du sens. Paris: Seuil, 1971. Also see Algirdas-Julien Greimas, ed., L’analyse du discourse n sciences sociales. Paris: Hachette, 1979. Barthes, Leçon inaugurale au Collège de France. Foucault, L’ordre du discours. Anderson, Imagined Communities. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, p. 73. Jonathan Gosnell, The Politics of Frenchness in Colonial Algeria: 1930–1954. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002. As Moroccans, our philosophy teacher explained to us in high school how French is a language of clarity and precision by giving us an example. In Arabic,

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developed as French, rose to become a dominant language was redeployed in the colonies.31 And this was given greater power by the fact that French was the language of importance and prestige. Indeed, as a colonial language, it was the language of power itself, of the rulers, of the masters. In any case, writing in French is essentially writing to the French public, making the Maghrebi writer a soldier of the fifth column (légion étrangère, as Nouvel Observateur labeled them).32 The Maghrebi writers, unlike their Indian peers in the United Kingdom, for instance, do not have a place in the French literary establishment. Their work is taught neither in French high schools nor in universities. Being themselves products of colonial culture, their effects on the French imaginary are minimal, despite the fact that the values they advocate are ones of Francophonie except when their writings participate in French debates regarding Islam, the veil, violence, and so forth. Therefore they are looked at with paradoxical suspicion by the national ideologue who accuses them of providing the literature of folklore.33 They remain, at the end, writers for a small, liberal, Frenchified elite. They reach the national elite because of language and because they are, after all, an expression of “national” culture after independence. Yet they are as far from the masses as a foreign language is for a people. For, despite or maybe because of its high symbolic capital that makes it a desired and a highly competitive commodity, French is not spoken by

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33

he said, when one describes the weather, one says: “al jawwu jamîl” (“The weather is nice!”). This is neither clear nor precise, he noted. The French expression, on the contrary, is “aujourd’hui, le ciel est bleu (‘Today, the sky is blue’). He explained to us how the last sentence is more descriptive and thus clearer and more precise. Pierre Swiggers, “Ideology and the Clarity of French,” in Ideologies and Language, ed. John Joseph and Talbot Taylor. London: Routledge, 1990, pp. 112–130. Interesting metaphor by Nouvel Observateur, as the légion étrangère was the military regiment with only foreign recruits from the colonies. The judgment was generalized to all francophone literature by Laroui, who noted one exception – Kateb Yacine. See L’idéologie arabe. The term folklore is a pejorative one in the language of nationalists, who in the name of modernity, considered it part of local culture unworthy of the nation. Folklore, literally popular culture, is a culture in its own right. In fact, it is more local than national culture that owes its expression and existence to colonial culture. For an anthropological understanding of the concept of folklore, see Alan Dundee, “Folk Ideas As Unit of Worldview,” Journal of American Folklore 1971 (84) 331: 93–103.

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the masses of the Maghreb; they do not even know it enough to read it.34 This takes me to the second issue of the political discourse on language and culture. In May 2000, during a lecture on the political situation in Morocco given by the US ambassador to Morocco, the president of AlAkhawayn University (who has since served as a minister of education) was asked about the state of education in Morocco in front of a small audience of students and faculty. His response was: We admit that we failed in the educational project. This failure has to do with the fact that we were in charge of educating a multilingual population. In Morocco, Arabic is not spoken, but what we find instead are three languages: Moroccan dialect, Berber, and French. We formulated the educational program as if all Moroccans speak the same language.35

He then proposed a solution: What should be done is to educate the people according to the language they speak. Therefore, those who speak French need to be educated in that language; others speak Arabic, they should be educated in it; and others speak Berber, they needed to be educated accordingly.36

The university president, was not, in fact, stating his vision of Moroccan education, but was expressing the cultural situation in Morocco, which he described as a failure. In other words, he confessed “our” failure in education and surprisingly proposed the same failed program as a solution. The linguistic divisions are the result of colonial rule. Both Arabic and Berber have come to be defined in relation to French. In practical terms, languages are endowed with different and unequal symbolic capital, mainly because of ideologies associated with them. French is undoubtedly considered the language of the elite – that is, the language of distinction. It is the language that allows access to – and the ability to monopolize – important positions in Moroccan 34

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This remark by no means applies to the generation of French Maghrebi writings in French in France. Author’s notes on lecture, May 2000. Eight years later, in February 2008, after a forum on education, the minister of education of Morocco made a public announcement about “the failure of education” in Morocco. In 2008, one would have expected the failure already announced in 2000 to be addressed, not to come again to the conclusion reached already in 2000. Author’s notes, May 2000. The case of Berber he mentions is not clear and highly problematic, to say the least, as there are varieties of “Berber dialects” and no written tradition.

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society (as well as in the francophone Maghreb), mainly because it is deemed the language of modernity – of science, and of savoir faire and savoir vivre. Arabic is second and even secondary to it. Yet its relative importance stems mostly from the fact that it is seen as the language of Islam, sacred in the views of the masses, but useful in the eyes of the state. It is the language by which state ideology is articulated and communicated. Berber (or rather the ensemble of dialects referred to as Berber) is a language with minimal symbolic capital. It is mostly the language of those masses located at the periphery of the nation-state – both physically and metaphorically. Language through education has always been the strongest means by which a state assures linguistic hegemony and homogeneity in modern liberal societies. The vision of the Moroccan university president, which is an official vision, shows that the institutional power of education is seen as a means by which to assure the continuation of socioeconomic inequalities. Not only are linguistic divisions needed to be bridged to achieve social justice, but rather, the solution, which is the same as the problem, is that these divisions need to be maintained with their differential access to power and social positions intact. However, French remains a commodity of competition that not many can afford, especially in a time when education has been increasingly privatized. It constitutes the currency that can give one access to greater and better material goods. This does not mean those who do not speak it or know it are free from colonial culture. On the contrary, French becomes a symbol in and of itself, which may have a greater impact on the minds of those who do not master it. The value of a commodity may become more appreciated by those who do not possess it. Those who have it keep it, jealously. A system of domination consists of a set of symbols that are present and hence naturalized in different cultural guises. It has effective, sometimes even everlasting consequences, both symbolic and material. Symbols of domination, because they are often naturalized, permeate all aspects of social life; hence the tremendous power they exert on bodies and fissured or colonized minds. Colonial knowledge, as it survived in its customary forms as well as those disguised in what appears to be an anticolonial discourse, are generative of what Bourdieu calls “symbolic power.” Here, symbolic power is “that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those

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who do not want to know that they are subject to it or that they themselves exercise it.”37

Racial Difference in a National Age The Amazigh question is first a question of the nation-state, especially Morocco and Algeria, but it also concerns the region as a whole. For the Amazigh question is a question of nationalism, one that competes with different nationalisms all born, for the case of the region, in colonial times. These nationalisms include Arab nationalism, Maghrebi nationalism, and of course, Amazigh nationalism, once called Berberism. The genealogies of all these nationalisms are to be found in colonial politics first in the context of Algeria, as we have seen with both the Arab Bureau and the civilian regime within the University of Algiers, and then in the context of Morocco, as we also have seen in the case of the Institut des Hautes-Études Marocaines (Rabat). An important dimension in the construction of the Maghreb was not only to trace the contours of its geography, make its map, or to rewrite its history in ways that are comprehensible and useful for the colonial state eager to classify and order, but also to categorize its populations using secular categories that betray the very religiosity (e.g., Christianity) of the colonial state: Berber, Arabs, Israelites. Beyond the first there is primitive, but deep-seated Christianity, behind the second there is clearly Islam, and behind the third there is of course Judaism. That the signified of these categories are invented can be testified by the fact that from the fourteenth century, with Ibn Khaldûn, to the nineteenth century, with Nassiri and Ibn Diyâf, the population of the region was undoubtedly categorized differently in ways that were invented according to a specific episteme that includes faith affiliations (Muslims and Jews) and tribal belongings, as well as oumma identifications (the group from which an ensemble of tribes derive their affiliation, Ismael for the Arabs, Madiz for the Berbers); these identifications were context specific. Colonial categories, as I showed in the preceding chapter, privileged racial categories without abandoning religious identifications. This was not only a question of divide and rule, as has been often noted, but it 37

Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, p. 164.

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was especially a question of the colonial episteme. It is also the question of minorities, introduced into the Ottoman Empire by Europe. In the Middle East, for instance, this question of minority rights was associated with religious liberty introduced by European powers in parts of the Ottoman Empire marked by the existence of different religious communities.38 Christianity disappeared from the Maghreb by the fourteenth century. The Jews as indigenes disappeared from Algeria and were considered a category between indigenes and Europeans in both Morocco and Tunisia – not indigenous because of their faith, also shared by European Jews, but not quite European because too Arab. The case of the Maghreb was similar to the case of West Africa, where racial ideology was also introduced into the fabric of societies with disastrous postcolonial effects, resulting sometimes in real instances of genocide. Racial categories were invented in West Africa between the Negro and Moor, between the Peul and Touareg, and in East Africa, between the Hutu and Tutsi. But religion was also a category of secular colonialism (unliberated from its Christian theology and with a modern state that was itself the precious daughter of the church). Opposing Africa in terms of religious categories, as in Egypt, was not an easy matter. Africa, say Senegal or Mali, or Nigeria or Niger, had a significant Muslim population. Therefore, Islam itself had to be racialized. Paul Marty is renowned for coining the term Islam noir.39 But what is this Islam noir? It is undoubtedly Islam, but its fundamental difference is “noir” as opposed to “White” or to “Arab” also, in the colonial discourse considered as white, but a “white” that Arthur de Gobineau differentiated from the Aryan or even the Latin white. It is the degenerate White that is white only because he cannot be called black, and he cannot be called black because he does not have what French colonial anthropology called negroide. The term has had a fortune of its own. It has become an explanatory concept for understanding West African Islam by P.-J. André and even later, in 1962, by Vincent Monteuil.40 In the region of the Maghreb, in the quasi absence of sectarianism, the French observed the same modern attitude, observed elsewhere by colonial powers, between the public and the private. Islam became an 38

39

Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. Marty, Islam au Sénégal. 40 Monteil, L’Islam noir.

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issue for the colonial state only, and only when it rebelled or resisted. In other words, Moroccan Islam (or rather its various forms of Islam) was not invented by Edouard Michaux-Bellaire and Hubert Lyautey, or even by Robert Montagne and Jacques Berque. Once in the region, and from 1830 onward, new understandings of Islam emerged in the work of colonial officers, scholars, ideologues, and politicians. But this is a colonial understanding of Islam, not a Moroccan Islam. The work of invention, or rather of reinventing Islam in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia was a daily endeavor carried out not only by scholars such as Sfar, Thaʿâlibi, Ben Badis, al-Fassi, and Guennoun, or Sufi brotherhoods such as the Qadiriya, Rahmaniya, and Tijaniya,41 but also by ordinary people who had to negotiate their faith, day to day, in a condition marked by the violent presence of a colonial power42 that considered them racially outside the sphere of civilization. Saying that the French invented Moroccan Islam, or Maghrebi Islam for that matter, should mean only that a certain understanding of Islam emerged as a consequence of the encounter with colonial power, with its ideology of modernity, and its claim to secularism – and not that Islam as a faith, a system of belief and an ensemble of practices in Morocco, or in the Maghreb for that matter, was invented by the French. People, everywhere and not only in the Maghreb, negotiate their faith (as part of their culture) in everyday life, in relation, in reaction, and in continuation of historical practices. For the case at hand, these negotiations happened in relation to the advent of modernity generally and in relation to the colonial culture of secularism, in particular. Modernity created another alternative that is secular. This is well captured in the memoirs of one of the early nationalist writers, Abdelmajid Benjelloun, when he compares the figure of a schoolteacher of Arabic with a figure of a schoolteacher of French: one represents negative traditionalism, awkward conservatism, and old age; the other

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On these brotherhoods in Africa, see B. G. Martin, Muslim Brotherhoods in Nineteenth Century Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Jamil Abun-Nasr, Muslim Communities of Grace: The Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Also see Abdelmajid Hannoum, ed., Practicing Sufism: Sufi Politics and Performance in Africa. London: Routledge, 2016. Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

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represents dynamism, openness, and youth – in short, he represents modernity with its sparkling and seductive signs.43 This is not to say that there was no French understanding of Islam, an understanding that must have affected, maybe even been espoused by those exposed to it. There is undoubtedly an understanding of Islam by the French in the region. By this, I mean the region was not only reconfigured cartographically, geographically, historiographically, ethnographically, but also religiously – that is, it was understood according to colonial categories of nineteenth-century Europe, and more specifically, French. And this understanding too was to be distinguished from other understandings of Islam eastward and westward and southward. Westward, Paul Martin and Capitaine André argued that Islam in Senegal is indeed black.44 In colonial times, one already finds a Berberist discourse that was an appropriation of the colonial discourse itself. Consider the statement of a native, “I feel closer to Saint Augustine than to Sidi Oqba,” which not only reproduces the Christianity of the Berber, but also claims current affiliation with it and its opposition to Oqba, the Arab conqueror.45 For Saint Augustine represents here Christian France just as Oqba represents “Arab Islam.” Or consider the more eloquent essay of Jean Amrouche, “L’éternel Jugurtha.”46 Amrouche, who, unlike Yacine, opted to be French, does not oppose the colonial discourse and neither does he espouse it, as is. Rather, he accepts it with alterations that could be acceptable to the colonial mind. For instance, he accepts the idea of the versatile Berber, but for Amrouche, the characteristics of this Berber are the result of contradictions in the situations he has experienced, not really of a pre-logical mentality, as the colonial discourse maintains. The Berber, in the view of Amrouche, is capable of the “most passionate devotion.”47 In other terms, he can become a genuine friend and ally to the French, but only if he is respected. Amrouche implies that France can win the Berber to its side only on the condition that he be granted equality.48 43

44 45 46 47

Abdelmajid Benjelloun, fi al-tufûla. First published in 1949, selections of it were part of the Moroccan textbook for primary and elementary schools. The selection mentioned was part of a textbook. Paul Marty, Etudes sur l’Islam au Sénégal. Paris: Le Roux, 1917. Lahmek Husayn, Lettres algeriennes. Paris: Jouve & Cie, Ed. 1931, p. 179. Jean Amrouche, “L’éternel Jugurtha.” L’Arc 1946 (13): 58–70. Ibid., p. 63. 48 Ibid.

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Those who insist that the Berbers are originally Arabs, as a solution to the colonial argument of the distinctiveness of the Berber, do nothing but to obliterate this identity and dissolve it into an equally colonial construct, Arab. Consider also the essay by Moroccan writer Mohamed Hassar, abhath ʿan barbarî (“In Search of a Berber!”).49 Published in 1930, this short story tells of a Berber who, after death, wanted to enter paradise because he was a Muslim, but upon questioning, he insisted that he was a Berber. Modeled on the Epistle of Pardon of Syrian poet Abu al-ʿAlâ’ Al-Maʿarri (died 1057), the author of this short story takes the reader to the Day of Judgment, and more specifically to the entrance to heaven, where believers, Muslims and nonMuslims, are allowed to enter and enjoy paradise. A Berber man who announced himself as such was not allowed because the keeper of the gate did not recognize him. Even though Christians and Jews could enter, the Berber man was kept at bay. Finally, a man appeared, a Muslim, who was of course allowed to enter. They asked him about the Berber man, and he recognized him, and immediately informed the gatekeeper of the man’s genealogy that links him to Arabs. The Berber man was thus an Arab, and thanks to the man who revealed his identity, he was allowed to enter and enjoy an eternity in paradise. His savior was none other than the historian of the Berbers: Ibn Khaldûn. The early national discourse in the region Arabized the Berbers not only to counter the colonial opposition but also to anticipate a homogenous nation made of all Arabs, and thus also part of “Arab countries,” as al-Khattabi himself advocated. The colonial discourse clearly sought to do what it always did anywhere else: divide, a policy that constituted part of its strategy to conquer and rule. The native discourse instead sought to homogenize as a strategy of “unifying the lines” (tawḥîd al-ṣufûf ) to use its leitmotif, in order to oppose colonialism and later face the challenge of development. To say that the colonial era introduced the opposition of Arab and Berber to the detriment of a richer, more complex social fabric in the precolonial period is not to say that the region was diverse only in its demographic variety. It is to also say that the diversity disappeared from the academic discourse, colonial and national alike. But it can still be 49

Mohamed Hassar, “Abhath ʿan barbarî.” Majallat al-maghrib 1933 (15)10: 1933. Reprinted in Ahmed Ziyadi Tarikh, al-wataniya al-maghribiya mina alqissa al-qasira. Casablanca: Dar al-thaqafa, 1998, p. 84.

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seen today in the region by those unschooled in the colonial discourse. It is lived daily in the region by those whose national imaginary was not shaped by colonial modernity. In short, it is lived in the countryside of the Atlas mountains, in the shantytowns of the cities, and even in the streets of the cities by people whose daily experience exposes them to this diversity of race, of class, of region, of gender, and of family affiliation, old tribal genealogies, and so forth. Of course, it can rarely be seen by those schooled by the colonial discourse and its firstborn legitimate child, the national discourse. It can also not be seen by organizations that profit and bank on the simplistic and dangerous dichotomy of Arabs versus Berbers. Even when the late colonial discourse disowned its old affirmation, “It would have been, then, that from the obscure millenaries of prehistory the countries of the Maghreb were tied to Africa and to the Orient,” the Berberist discourse continued to espouse its old truths.50 It not only used the old colonial discourse of opposition between Arab and Berber, but also systematically reappropriated its colonial version of history and even its heritage of archaeology. Here too, as with the Salafi and with the nationalists, Berber nationalism was reinvented out of colonial semantics. However, whereas the first reinvented nationalism, reversing colonial semantics, through an act of translation from French into Arabic, the second invented Berber nationalism out of the colonial semantics, with little change, and in the very language of France. The intellectual Berberist discourse is a francophone discourse, and as such, is completely cut from the reality of the population who often speak Berber as well as a Maghrebi Arabic. Nonetheless, the appropriation of the colonial discourse on the Berbers by intellectuals such as Jean Amrouche, Kateb Yacine, Mohamed Dib was in itself the beginning of the development of a Berberist movement in Algeria that expanded to Morocco and even, though to a lesser extent, to Tunisia. In other words, it was not only the birth of a cultural movement that celebrated the heroes who stood against Rome, such as Massinissi, Jugurtha, and Juba I and II, but also those who stood against the Arabs, most notoriously the Kahina and Kusayla.51 These heroes transcend the limits of the nation-state to 50

51

Lionel Balout, “Quelques problèmes Nord-Africains de chronologie préhistorique,” Revue Africaine 1948 (262): 416–417. On these mythical heroes, see Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories.

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embody Berber history in the entire region. With the “departure” of France, this nationalism had no others to stand against but the Arabs, believed to be those who do not speak one of the Berber dialects of the region. We have seen in Chapter 4 that the category Berber in the colonial discourse not only did not mean what it meant in precolonial times, but most importantly it was created as part of another category against which it stands, Arab. A category is not only a signifier, but it always refers to its negation that defines it. And this dichotomy has become hegemonic: other groups had to join the first or the second. Therefore, the creation of the modern Berber was done using racial semantics where the enemy, opposition, and negation are part and parcel of its makeup. This is also to say that Berber nationalism found its substance in history and in language, as provided by the colonial discourse of history and archaeology, but also by French colonial literature and artistic representations. To say it differently, the Maghreb was here again reproduced, mutatis mutandis, but with a societal fracture made of Berbers and Arabs, while the groups that existed at the outset of the colonial enterprise, and that most likely existed centuries before, remained erased for they had to choose a camp and identify either as Arabs or as Berbers.52 Or rather the camp was already chosen for them: they are Berbers if they speak one of the Berber dialects or else they are Arabs. This explains but does not justify the initial attitude of the nation-state in the region toward such movements. Even though these movements claimed a cultural and linguistic recognition, they were seen as decidedly political, not only because the divide between the political and the cultural is very difficult to make but also because these movements contain within themselves the important trope of Arab domination found in De Slane/Ibn Khaldûn and reproduced almost systematically by novelists, intellectuals, and even politicians of the movements. This trope takes on a highly intense racial and racist dimension in the discourse of activists, especially on social media. The nation-state reacts to these movements in various ways. They were seen, even in the case of Algeria, where Kabyles are perceived as highly represented in the state apparatus, as a threat to the unity of the nation.53 Hence an attitude of suspicion, mistrust, manipulation, and 52

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Different groups such as the Persians, the Jews, the sub-Saharan Africans, the Turks, and the Cologouli were simply subsumed in this dichotomy. This is also a matter of popular perception often expressed in racial (and racist) terms in Algeria, “laqbayli al-idara, shawi, lpara, lʿarbi, zammara” (“The

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eventually, repression was exerted against these movements. In Morocco, after an initial mistrust, the state adopted a strategy of appropriation by recognizing Amazigh as a national language, by introducing it into the educational system, by institutionalizing it in centers and associations, even by promoting it on state television. This was important to the makhzen not only because it allowed the appropriation of a movement, but also because the movement itself feeds into the dominant ideology of the monarchy as a symbol of unity of a fragmented nation. Only the king can unite; no political party, or other figure can bring together a deeply fragmented nation. Yet, the attitude of the state remains vigilant toward the Rif, seen as an area resisting integration and clinging to its distinctive character intensified by its different type of colonial rule, its resistance to it and its history with it, and even with independence. This is not to say that the question of the Rif is the question of Amazigh, but rather to say that the Rif offers a complex and thus unique case, where Amazigh is a dimension that offers an ideology for a situation that is economic and historic at once. In Tunisia, the question of Amazigh, because of the small percentage of Tamazight speakers, has not been raised to a degree that would make it a national problem. Despite the fact that the movements of Amazigh in both Morocco and Algeria achieved considerable gain, symbolized especially by the fact that the language became official in the constitution of both countries – the first in 2001 and the second only in 2016, the movements are considered highly political in both countries. Their politics are perceived as a threat, a danger to the national cohesion, so much so that Amazigh movements are compared to Islamism (i.e., political Islam).54 Needless to say that these two are entirely different political projects. One is a secular nationalism with a strong racial dimension; the other is a religious project with a global dimension.

Conclusion Since so-called independence in the region, a plethora of national events have succeeded one another, and in some cases occurred

54

Kayble [occupies] the administration, the [Berber] shawi, the military, and the Arab, the flute [i.e., popular entertainment often associated with begging]). Mohamed Touzy, “Amazighité et Islamisme,” in Usages de l’identité Amazigh au Maroc, ed. Hassan Rachik. Casablanca: Najah El Jadida, 2006, p. 69.

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simultaneously. I call national events occurrences that are considered happenings at a national scale, involving the nation-state and the citizenry it commands. For instance, independence itself is one of these national events that create in the narrative of the nation a before and an after. Yet, when one analyzes this event in one of the nation-states that constitute the Maghreb, one can see that there are narratives that are hegemonic and claim or rather impose the truth of what happened. These same narratives also contain categories of thoughts, assumptions, and ideas that are not thinkable without the colonial narrative. In this chapter, I focused on three major events in the region that I believe are constitutive of the idea of the Maghreb. I argued that the creation of the Maghreb as a cultural and political unit was a colonial process of invention and that its creation, tentative, contradictory, and changing, created cracks in the construction. I identified three that are defining of the postcolonial Maghreb, the one reinvented nationally as well as the colonial one that traveled transnationally. Those were the racial invention of the demography of the Maghreb, the invention of the language of the Maghreb, and the invention of the problem of the Maghreb. Demographically, colonialism introduced race and race thinking as powerful and dominant modes of identity and identification. If the population of the region adopted multiple modes of identification (regional, familial, genealogical, urban), religious affiliation used to be the dominant mode of identification, as evident not only in the colossal Arabic historiography from Ibn Khaldûn to Nassiri but also in early colonial ethnography from Berbrugger to Masqueray. However, by 1870, racial identity became binary in the entirety of the region even if the concept of race changed from being biological in 1830 to becoming cultural in the 1870s and linguistic in the 1900s. Race is an important dimension of modernity. As the region was invented as modern, race is inherent to its very composition. The diversity once noticed amongst the population as late as early colonial encounters disappeared, to be replaced by a binary racial opposition between Arabs and Berbers. Outside the region are Arabs and Berbers. Inside the region, the diversity once noticed still plays out in the city as well as in the countryside. The demographic composition of the region today bears witness to the profoundly rich human diversity that is still ignored, including or rather especially by the academic discourse and

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its reference to the militant discourse. Yet, it is exactly this racial binary that defines the Maghreb. Whether in Egypt or West Africa, the racial composition is unique – yet it could have been similar or even identical because of the possibilities of other redefinitions. Yet the racial problem in the region not only opposes Arabs to Berbers, but this same dichotomy semiotically implies a category that is neither Arab nor Berber, one that is surely discursively invisible, if nonetheless a defining category. Since by late colonialism, race was defined by language, the region opposes not only Arabic speakers (Arabs) and Tamazight speakers (Amazigh) but also another language that inserts itself in the dichotomy and that is the defining category of both Arabic and Berber. This is French, a language of distinction and mobility, of power and bureaucracy, a language associated with an elite referred to in Algeria as hizb fransa (party of France) or in Morocco as wlâd frânsa (children of France). Thus we have the linguistic relations between French on one hand and Arabic on the other, and French on one hand and Berber on the other. If the relationship between Arabic and Berber is one of exclusion, interpreted by colonials in terms of domination and retreat, the relation between France and Arabic is also one of exclusion, but defined as modernity against un-modernity. The relation between French and Berber is the same, but since Berber is not a threatening civilizational language, it supports the opposition with Arabs; at no point did colonial authorities claim to make Berber the language of the region, yet their intention to force Arabic to “retreat” was expressed, defended, and fought for. The point was to impose French as the language of modernity. It is this same problem that has been playing out in these societies still composed of a francophone elite and arabophone masses. Yet, despite the official ideology of Arabic (and in Morocco, also Berber) as the official language(s), the de facto language of modernity in the region is French, which does not need recognition from the nation-state. France watches over its linguistic heritage in the region with the eyes of a hawk. It harnesses efforts and resources for its support via the very ministry of Francophonie. The resources are enormous and so are the efforts: powerful francophone institutions in the region itself: consulates, lycées français; instituts français; prestigious prizes for francophone authors, including the most prestigious of all, the Prix Goncourt; Parisian publishing houses; and last but not least, a French-like elite in the region monopolizing cultural capital

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with the executive power to orient education in each country. Regardless of what one may think of the linguistic dynamics between these languages, the Maghreb remains a francophone zone of the utmost importance. This importance is due to the fact that it is the backyard of France, and also that the long-standing colonial linguistic and cultural investment in the region must be saved and protected. It is also this francophone dimension that explains the liminality of Libya in the geography – neither entirely Maghrebi nor really Middle Eastern. It is torn between the first and the second. And in the time of Qaddafi, its ambivalence made it look beyond the region itself, in Africa, to connect with a geography that colonialism separated from the Maghreb. Nevertheless, the region was also invented with cracks in its geography, its frontiers, its demographic composition, and its linguistic regimes. If culture and language cemented the whole while at the same time creating cracks within it, the geography of frontiers constitutes a more political, more conflictual, and more unresolvable problem. The Sahara is this problem. But if it were not the Sahara, it would have been Mauritania, or Tlemcen, or even the entirety of the eastern frontiers, once the object of a war between Morocco and Algeria. It could also have been Mellila and Ceuta, still occupied by Spain. These problems of frontiers and these still colonized spots in the region are undoubtedly other cracks; they almost seem natural, like old healed wounds. By contrast, the Sahara is an open conflict that represents and personifies the failed idea of the Maghreb, yet its very realization also evokes it. Put plainly, the conflict of the Sahara, mainly between Algeria and Morocco, seems to be the obstacle to the unity of the Maghreb – that is, to its concretization. The Maghreb is now parts, fragments, and even states connected to one another in a whole that begs to be unified. It is also this same lack of unification that has made various actors believe there is something unfinished, but waiting to be finished, like a destiny.

Postscript

In the previous chapters, I have examined how the Maghreb came into being – how it was constructed and defined as a distinct geopolitical and cultural entity separate from Africa and from the Middle East, both of them also colonial inventions created at the same time and in relation to each other. I argued that the Maghreb as a field of discourse is a modern reconfiguration of the region operated by and through modern technologies of power of colonial France. I demonstrated that the construction of the area was a discursive process elaborated gradually, piece by piece, and tentatively, with changes, contradictions, and alterations. This discursive process culminated in the elaboration, by the 1920s, of a conception of the region – taken as the region itself. Despite the fact that part of the region was also at the same time under Italian and Spanish colonial rule, these two powers were at the margin of industrial Europe and therefore were not only inadequately industrialized but also technologically dependent on the rest of Europe, especially France. France had the lion’s share of the region, and the construction of the Maghreb is essentially a French construction. Nevertheless, French colonial creation of the region was reproduced and confirmed, despite alterations and changes, despite contradictions and corrections, by an early generation of local historians and ideologues. Instead of arguing that the Arabic discourse of the Salafi is a discontinuity and that it constitutes a separate discursive formation, I argued that the Salafi discourse on the region is inscribed within the same colonial discursive formation, as a discursive continuity, a counterargument. This conception was further confirmed by and through colonial, inherited, modern technologies of power of the newly founded nation-state in the region. It should be noted that the intensity of colonial power was such that not only was it highly effective and pervasive but it also converted those who resisted its effects, turning their work into discursive complicities. They could only think within the cognitive discourse the French had 275

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invented. Their actions were always reactions, and their reactions themselves carried the logic and the dynamics of colonial power. Thus, even after independence, French colonial knowledge has remained the foundation of modern knowledge of the entire region. Its categories, its semantics, its framework of thought, its theses and antitheses, even its system of discursive authorities, have remained highly operative beyond colonial times. National leaders of the region pursued the political realization of this conception even before independence, guided by the very idea of the existence of the Maghreb as a geographic unit, and as a cultural one as well, the evidence of which is the existence of a history of the Maghreb that unfolds from Roman times (as a quest narrative) to the present (when the aim of this quest is waiting to be achieved). The various attempts undertaken to make this perception a political unit should be the subject of another project, mainly because they pertain to a political history that might examine how the idea of the Maghreb made its way into the political realm, and how attempts at implementing it have failed over and again.1 If the idea of the unity of the Maghreb refuses to die, it is because it has a strong discursive existence. Such a discursive existence makes it real and tangible. What is most important then, if only for the present book, is not the political will that manifested itself, in good faith or not, to claim the region as a political unit, but rather the conception itself that inspired such a political pursuit. What is most important is not how actors in the region have used the discourse on the unity of the Maghreb as a political strategy to pursue peace, diplomatic gains, or victory in conflicts over political adversaries within the civil societies of nationstates. Instead, what is important and urgent is to consider the region’s construction and thus to unfold the history of its present problems that constitute the main obstacles to its political unity. A first step toward a genuine work of decolonization is to undertake a critical historical deconstruction – not only to rewrite history and offer alternative interpretations of past events, but rather to see how the construction of geographies, of histories, and of the making of racial and political 1

On June 10, 1988, the heads of state of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, and Libya met and decided to create a commission in order to explore ways to fund the union of the Maghreb. The Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) was founded the following year, on February 17, 1989. See the website of the UMA: https:// maghrebarabe.org/fr/. Last consulted April 29, 2020.

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identities was itself constitutive of the present. Such a work of critical decolonization can greatly contribute to the creation of the conditions of cognitive liberation – a necessary condition for true political liberation. First, let us clarify some concepts I used here and there and left undefined. By field of discourse, I mean the cognitive space in which one thinks, writes, and elaborates conceptions; it is the realm of discursive truths, the social world that we create. By discursive truths, I mean the very ideas whose existence is made possible only by discursive strategies and devices cemented by power. One example of a discursive truth is precisely the invention of the Maghreb. To say that the Maghreb is a French colonial invention means above all that the incessant effort to make sense of it, to conceptualize it, to reconfigure it, to categorize and define its population, to describe its geography, and to trace its contours was mainly the work of French colonial agents, officers, and scholars (often one subsuming the others) in an age of military, cultural, political, and technological domination unparalleled in human history. French imperial power and colonial technologies could only be matched by those of Great Britain and not at all by Spain or Italy. This work was the product of a French colonial imaginary – that is, the product and the field of an imagination specific to Europe, and particularly France, in the age of colonial modernity. This conception was not only constructed by power; it was also imposed by it in an age of colonial inventions and truths that converted even its most ferocious detractors via engagement, critique, and above all colonial reception. As demonstrated in Chapter 4, the colossal colonial historical and sociological production about the region constituted the modern intellectual production of the region in the postcolonial era that no scholar or politician can escape. For, after all, what we call modernity in this context is also this production that has constructed our present, and for the topic at hand, our conception of the region. French remains the medium to access this production, this field of discourse that is selfgenerating as it changes and mutates. This may explain why one can (and often does) easily dispense of Arabic, the only local written language, and rely exclusively on French to engage in examining the region, its history, its politics, and its cultures – or what are thought to be so. For such an endeavor, however critical it may claim itself to be, and however extensive its use of this or that critical theorist, of Michel

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Foucault or Frantz Fanon, only perpetuates colonial understanding, categories, discourse, and practically everything else that these imply in the academic discourse and beyond it. The former coloniality of the region is transposed to its field of study and thus prolongs a cultural coloniality that has long followed the political one. The postcolonial era is an era of a colonial heritage, politically and culturally, that a scholar faces willingly or unwillingly, consciously or not. This tendency to ignore local languages and rely exclusively on a colonial language, found also in African studies, does not constitute a trend in Middle Eastern studies, where knowledge of languages (Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, and Persian) is a condition of the study of the region.2 One of the reasons may lie in the fact that the Maghreb was invented by colonial agents, by diplomats, whereas the Middle East owes its invention to Orientalists whose knowledge of languages was (and still is) a sine qua non for their crafts. The other reason may lie in the drastic cultural form of colonization that the region called the Maghreb has experienced, and that is unparalleled in the region called the Middle East. One of these differences is precisely that the Maghreb was mapped, created, narrated, and named from within, in the ways we have seen, by the French in relation to vital colonial interests of the nineteenth century that, despite independence, are no less vital. The Maghreb was constructed as a geopolitical and geocultural entity. “From within” means by institutions in the region that functioned independently from the metropole and by researchers, most of whom claimed “colonial nativism” in the region. Therefore, in its postcolonial era, the Maghreb as a field of discourse is essentially francophone – that is, French – which means that the acquisition of competence cannot happen outside of it, and therefore any discursive performance could only be possible through such a competence. The acquisition of competence requires an initiation into French colonial research or its mutation in the postcolonial era, which constitutes a colonial discursive formation in and of itself – it lives in the present, it shapes, it 2

Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Archiving Algeria:Violence, Secrecy, and the Archives,” in Sources and Methods in Histories of Colonialism: Approaching the Imperial Archive, ed. Kirsty Reid and Fiona Paisley. London: Routledge, 2017, pp. 67–80. It also true that Middle Eastern studies has witnessed an epistemic revolution, with the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, that has not much affected Maghrebi studies, save for literary studies that have witnessed a real renewal. This is also thanks to the fact that literary studies tend more toward cultural studies and are traditionally more receptive of cultural theories.

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reconfigures, and it invents, and, as I said before, it makes the region’s unity appear real and tangible. In his book The History of the Maghreb, previously analyzed as authoritative in its confirmation of the conception of the Maghreb, Abdallah Laroui diagnoses what he calls the “misfortune” of the Maghreb: That of always having had inept historians: geographers with brilliant ideas, functionaries with scientific pretensions, soldiers priding themselves on their culture, art historians who refuse to specialize, and, on a higher level, historians without a linguistic training or linguists and archaeologists without historical training.3

This is a description of symptoms, of abnormalities in the field, but not a diagnosis of the cause. One may well ask: What indeed are the reasons for this misfortune that has befallen the region? Why is it “cursed” by historians with no language training and linguists with no historical training? What makes a soldier turn into a historian and/ or anthropologist? Why do art historians refuse to specialize? What prompts a functionary without knowledge of local languages to become a historian of the region? In other words, why is the Maghreb discursively unregulated and ungoverned? These are problems inherent to the very construction of the Maghreb. When the Maghreb was constituted as a field of discourse, it was also constituted without epistemological sovereignty and without discursive independency. Its architects were missionaries, colonial agents, military officers, historians without linguistic training (such as Émile-Félix Gautier), linguists without historical training (such as Ernest Mercier), and so forth. Its birth, its discursive constitution, its grammar of discourse, and its categories of thought were created in colonial times. It continues to have a career of its own, to develop and deploy itself in the postcolonial era. For this reason, local languages (the very voice of the colonial indigene) can be ignored (metaphorically and strictly speaking), but not the French or French (post)colonial field of discourse. Therefore, the problem of which Laroui saw the symptoms is still present and will continue to be as long as the invention is in place. Or rather the very dynamics of the invention of the area condition the existence of these symptoms whose real cause is coloniality – that is, the very condition of 3

Laroui, L’histoire du Maghreb, p. 3.

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the existence of the region as a colonial construction and therefore as a field discursively dependent on the old metropole then and now. Coloniality is both the body of knowledge we inherit and the institutions that keep this knowledge alive and relevant, generate it, correct it, and revive it even in times that strictly speaking are no longer colonial. Or else how can we explain the astonishing life of the colonial discourse in our present? Why do we still find it worthy of engagement? Why do we strive to bury it by a critique that does nothing but to prolong it in our intellectual life? Why does it refuse to die and go away? Coloniality is, therefore, not only the state of being colonized, it is rather the condition of our intellectual and political existence. It is not only a past we left behind us; it is a cognitive legacy that submerges us, a discursive heritage that constitutes our very existence. The question of language is undoubtedly of critical importance given the fact that language, as we previously saw, is not a neutral medium, it is not just a means of communication by which and through which information is expressed and conveyed. It constitutes a cognitive universe, and power is also an essential component of its making. Therefore, to say that the Maghreb was constituted in French is to say that it is a French conception made possible, credible, and even true by power. Thus the Maghreb is a French discursive formation even when it changes and mutates. Its foundations, its major text, and its archives are not only French in the sense that they are expressed via the French language, but they are French in the sense that they are owned by France itself. The Maghreb as a field of discourse here too is a francophone discourse, one that comes with its own objects, its own categories, its own modes of thought, its structure of silence, and its own language even when “translated.” And because of this, it also comes with an army of biases and prejudices – for instance, to unapologetically think of colonial modernity, of colonialism itself, as a blessing for the region and its people, the price for it justified in the establishment of modernity itself, even with the tremendous number of human lives lost and the huge sum of human suffering that continues into the present. For it also comes with an attitude of superiority toward and disdain of the (post)colonial other, an attitude and disdain that operate in entirely different postcolonial contexts but that are still reminiscent of the colonial attitude and disdain.

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Institutionally, the study of the Maghreb, today as before, is unseparated from France. Consider the question of the archives. Postcolonial France continues to monopolize the archives of the modern history of the region. This history covers almost the entire modern period of the region and surely the part that is most significant to its transformation, or rather to its invention. Archives are an important source of the study of a nation. Yet most of the archives are French. To say archives is not only to refer to all sorts of documents stored in space but also to the very institution, part and parcel of the Ministry of Culture, that creates the space and that organizes its contents according to specific rules of exclusion and inclusion, but also exposition and concealment.4 Therefore, it is simplistic to think that the archives are the repository of “raw knowledge.” Rather, the archives are constituted as knowledge and create, by the rules of their very constitution, the condition of the possibility of new knowledge. Therefore, decolonizing knowledge is not only about offering an alternative discourse, an alternative interpretation, and neither is it about harnessing the critical arsenal of Fanon or Foucault, or even of Marx and Heidegger, and claiming to provincialize that which colonizes us, France or Europe. Decolonizing knowledge ought to be about the now quasi-impossible task of freeing institutions themselves from postcolonial power – institutions that are themselves the postcolonial avatars of the colonial state. For colonizing knowledge is imposing the frame of thought, the rules of writing, and the categories of the discourse. I would even say colonizing knowledge is ultimately and fundamentally creating a hegemonic cognitive universe in which we think, the semantic space in which we critique and the parameters of our critique, and the venues of our desperate cries. The immense challenge is that coloniality (in time and in space) not only tolerates critique but it rather invites it, it seeks it, it invests in it. Far from displacing it, it is critique that rejuvenates it, gives it new life, and guarantees both its longevity and its power of transformation. It constitutes not only our present, but also our intellectual and political horizon. The absence of colonial institutions (morphed into postcolonial ones) makes it barely visible and in this discursive invisibility, its power becomes maximal and enduring. Knowledge is a form of culture, albeit a processed one. As such, it is the means by which we think ourselves, we situate ourselves in the 4

Ibid.

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present, we identify directions for the future, we invent anticipations, and we create our actions in space and time. It is the web of significance in which we are caught. It is our “program” for thinking and for acting, in the well-known phrases of Clifford Geertz.5 The knowledge that constituted the Maghreb as such pertains to a specific type of knowledge that we should call historical, even when it is linguistic and sociological – that is, even when it is ethnographic. As we have seen, the construction of the Maghreb was made out of precolonial Arabic knowledge through translating, interpreting, domesticating, and appropriating the classical Arabic production about the region and what lies beyond it. Therefore, the entirety of the periods these sources cover is colonized. And also colonized is the present in which these interpretations and appropriations were completed. As history is not only a view of the past, but rather narratives of the past that rethink the present, one can see how colonizing knowledge is not just a cognitive and a political process. It is rather an ontological one. History is “us,” “it wraps us,” says Maurice Merleau-Ponty;6 a colonized history is therefore an “us” assigned to us from a location of power by another. It is the inability to think ourselves except within the parameters set for us, inside the cognitive universe created about us. Colonizing history is wrapping us with a significance we have not spun. This wrapping is indicative not only of power but also of an “us” devoid of effective agency and constructive will. Colonizing the other is reducing his freedom, in thought and in action, in the present and in the future. Liberating is freeing human potentials and unfettering possibilities – in thought and in action – and similarly in the present and in the future. To rethink ourselves inside the cognitive universe created by the colonial discourse (and its chains of postcolonial reasoning) is to not only perpetuate a domination but also to generate, even if rejuvenated, that colonial cognitive universe. However, one might object again and say: How can you argue that something pertaining to the far past has continued in the present and has continued with the same force, the same acuity, and the same pervasiveness as in the nineteenth century? Study of the region in today’s France is in decline, relative to its recent past and also compared to 5 6

Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures p. 44. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Le philosophe et la sociologie,” Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie 1951 (10): 50–69 at 65.

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new centers that historically did not colonize the area and did not show that much scholarly interest. There is undoubtedly much research about the area in the region itself, in the United Kingdom, and also in the United States, where centers, journals, chairs and positions are dedicated to the region in a way that we do not find in France today. Are you saying that the construction has remained the same? Or are you saying that the power of the construction is still operative the way it was in colonial times? One could argue that the field is detached from the once French metropole, and that knowledge of the area has drastically changed. Either the construction you speak about no longer exists or if it does, it does so in a form that has little resemblance to what it was in the colonial period.

Let me address these statements and start with the first one. Doubtless, knowledge is also a changing system of meaning, not a fixed one; it is selfgenerating in the sense that it mutates while remaining itself. The creation of the concept of the Maghreb that has become the reality of the Maghreb is also a field of study. It has changed, it has mutated, but the Maghreb as a geographic unit, as a constructed historical entity, as a sociological totality, is as recognizable to us today as it was in the time of Roger Le Tourneau and Charles-André Julien. The definition of 1966 became clearly possible in the 1920s. Today, it makes sense to us and if we have to define the Maghreb, we can comfortably offer the definition of Le Tourneau. Why? Because the Maghreb is a field of discourse where statements have been made across an entire age of colonization. And this field now has a postcolonial discursive career that transcends France. In the United States, the concept of the Maghreb has emerged as a geopolitical concept, as a geographical concept, and (concomitantly) as a field of study, all at once. The Maghreb, as a field of discourse, has also its own reality in the Anglo-American context, more in the United States than in the United Kingdom. Yet what is inherited is rather a French colonial creation. Sometimes this creation is reproduced willy-nilly, often as the categories of the colonial discourse itself are reproduced. The first thing the field inherited from the French colonial one was the fact that it is divorced from the other colonial geopolitical entity we call since 1916 the Middle East.7 It is not the Middle East and it is not Africa.8 Yet, in the new 7 8

Berque, “Perspectives de l’Orientalisme contemporain.” Edmund Burke III, “Theorizing the Histories of Colonialism and Nationalism in the Arab Maghrib,” in Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghrib: History, Culture, Politics, ed. Ali Abdullatif Ahmida. New York: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 17–34.

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context, without the discursive constraints alluded to, it could have been the Middle East and Africa. Despite claims that the study of the region has declined in France in the past few decades,9 the construction of the Maghreb is no less French today than it used to be at the time of its full construction – that is, around the 1920s. However, it is correct that the region is no longer the object of intense scholarly scrutiny in France the way it used to be half a century ago. The field itself no longer produces the renowned experts it once did in profusion: Louis Massignon, Robert Montagne, Le Tourneau, André Adam, Charles-André Julien, Charles-Robert Ageron, Jacques Berque. One may of course link this phenomenon not only to the field of Maghrebi studies, but also to academic life in France, which lost much of its prestige. Postcolonial France does not produce scholars of the caliber of Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice MerleauPonty, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Raymond Aron, Paul Ricoeur, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu. The connection between the first and the second exists and may lie in the fact that France has long ceased to be that empire that dominated militarily, economically, and intellectually. But still the field is a French creation, as this book has shown, even if France lost its monopoly over it. Perhaps the dearth of new French research on the topic is also because the region seems to be in the French orbit already; it does not represent that great a challenge to France, and it is definitively not among the emerging (or already emerged) geopolitical entities of utmost significance, such as China, India, and the turbulent regions of the Middle East. It is true that cultural production on the region is also accomplished within the francophone zone of the Maghreb. This production is assured by francophone publishing houses and journals, some inherited from colonial times. It is also assured by a contingent of francophone scholars trained in France itself or schooled in the astonishingly alive French education in the region. However, it is important to mention that the monopoly over the field is held in the United States, in the very domain of colonial studies as they pertain to the area of the Maghreb. This interest did not emerge in a vacuum, but is largely the result of postcolonial studies mapped by the work of Edward Said and 9

Ruth Grosrichard, “Comment la France a delaissé les études sur le Maghreb,” Le Monde, September 18, 2015. www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2015/09/18/com ment-la-france-a-delaisse-les-etudes-sur-le-maghreb_4762870_3212.html. Last accessed April 29, 2020.

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the subaltern studies that ironically emerged out of the work of French and francophone authors such as Fanon, Laroui, Anouar Abdel Malek, and Foucault. In the English-speaking world (i.e., North America and United Kingdom), the study of Maghrebi literature is more touched by this trend than is the study of the region’s history, which remains, by and large, contained within a positivist framework, often privileging a history of events over other forms of history that the development of the discipline has known in the past half century. Yet events may happen to challenge discourse. The so-called Arab Spring, a revolution in and of itself, happened to break something that had seemed unbreakable since the formal independence of the region. It also indicated something important about the region. Given that the protest spread from Tunisia eastward all the way to Syria and westward all the way to Morocco is itself a sign that cultural patterns make the parts of the region move and respond in ways that are similar despite their distinctiveness. In other words, the emergence of that important event itself is a postcolonial reminder that the region is part of a larger fabric that colonial geography canceled, and that the divorce the colonial encounter created was fragile despite its long and sustained efforts of construction. After all, the people in these regions speak, read, and most importantly listen to the same language, share the same cultural references, and are initiated into the same historical narrative – in short, they share the same language and set of values. This is what Arabness means, and being an Arab (which is not exclusive of being an Amazigh, a Kurd, or a Jew) also means sharing a language and a set of values transmitted by a cultural heritage produced in Arabic throughout the ages by Arabs, Kurds, Amazighs, Jews, and so forth. In its colonial meaning, being an Arab is a racial identity that, in the case of the Maghreb, is unthinkable without the category of Berber. Yet in postcolonial France, the Arab is the Maghrébin, which is synonymous for being Arab regardless of self-identification as Amazigh.10 The same category of Arab is defined differently in the Mashreq, depending on the geographical area and its history (Arab is defined in relation to Kurd in Syria and in Iraq, and in relation to Jew in the context of Palestine, and in relation to Copt in the context of Egypt). And in all of these contexts, the category is not the same, it is not fixed 10

Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Qu’est-ce qu’un Maghrébin?” Awal: Cahiers d’Etudes Berbères 2015 (43): 75–87.

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or certain. Being produced by the state through the census, often out of vestiges of colonial naming, these categories are marked by uncertainty.11 A consequence of the creation of the region is not only that it introduced race thinking but also that it reduced human diversity into two categories that it set against each other. The same set was also set against others in a complex racial grammar that put the categories eastward (Blacks) and westward (Arabs) in a relation of inferiority to the north. New racial dynamics in the region, from Morocco to Tunisia, surround sub-Saharan African migration that is itself to be seen as a renewal of a long pattern of movement. It has only been reactivated and intensified by neoliberal policies, especially since the 1990s. What is at play are racial (modern and colonial, as we have seen) identities that created demographic resistance, if not outright rejection of subSaharan migration to the region. Whereas historically, sub-Saharan Africa was part and parcel of a larger geography, in colonial and later in postcolonial times, sub-Saharan Africans are seen, by and large, as foreign, alien, and not constituting the Maghreb or any of its parts. Despite this postcolonial racial resistance, the sub-Saharan Africans are there to stay (when they are unable to cross to Europe). Their presence is not new, it has only been masked under the hegemonic racial dichotomy of the Arab versus the Berber. For again, the Maghreb has also been invented racially, and in the process of this long and powerful invention, some historical realities were transformed and others were concealed. National ideologies have undoubtedly contributed to these processes of transformation and concealment. To accept this allows the possibility that the region is far greater than its representations (colonial and national), far richer, and much stronger. To accept that the Maghreb is a construction is also to accept it as conjectural and circumstantial, thus making us aware that our interpretations of the past and present and our predictions of the future are determined by the cognitive framework of these interpretations. In itself, this consciousness may open for us new ways of understanding, new discursive possibilities, more cognitive sovereignty, and thus for the region and its population maybe also new ways of living.

11

Arjun Appadurai, “Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization,” Public Culture 1998 (10)2: 225–247.

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Index

Abdel Kader, Émir, 230 Abduh, Muhammad, 209–210 Abû al-Fidâ’, 82, 175 adab al-nahda, 233 Adam, André, 284 Afri. See Africani Africa, iii, viii, ix, 1–2, 4–5, 7–9, 13, 16, 18, 23, 28, 33–34, 36–39, 42–43, 46–48, 50–52, 60–61, 64, 66–68, 70–74, 78–80, 83–84, 88–89, 92, 97, 99–103, 105–106, 108, 110, 113, 118–121, 123, 127–128, 130–132, 137, 141, 143–146, 148–149, 158–159, 163–164, 167–169, 174–175, 180–182, 189–194, 196–197, 199–200, 202, 204–205, 214–215, 217–218, 222, 229, 232–246, 253, 255, 260, 265–266, 269, 274–275, 283 African kingdoms, 37 Africani, 8 Africanus, 9, 16, 41 Afrique. See Africa Afrique blanche. See White Africa Afrique noire. See Black Africa Afrique Septentrionale, 41, 51 Aït Ahmed, Hocine, 247 ʿAjîssa, 14 al-Afghani, Sayyid Jamal al Din, 68, 209 Alaouite, 16, 252 al-ʿAqqad, Abbas Mahmood, 233 al-Bakri, 26, 29 al-Fassi, Allal, 202, 211, 213, 217, 247, 249, 266 Algeria, 2–6, 17–22, 41, 43–45, 47, 50, 52–55, 60, 65, 71–72, 74, 76–78, 84–88, 90–91, 93–96, 98–106, 109–110, 112, 114, 118, 121, 123, 125–127, 130, 136–137, 139–140,

312

145–147, 149–150, 154, 158–161, 166–167, 172, 174, 177–178, 181, 184, 188–189, 191–194, 196, 199–202, 205, 207, 210–211, 213, 217–219, 225, 227–230, 232, 234, 242, 247–250, 253, 255, 258, 260, 264–266, 269–271, 273–274, 276, 278 Algerian nationalism, 211, 229, 250 Algerian Popular Party, 246 Algerian revolution, 232 Algerian war, 4, 242, 246 al-Idrissi, 26 Al-Khattabi, Abdelkrim, 247 al-Madani, Ahmed Tewfik, 211 al-Manfaluti, Mustafa, 233 al-Mili, Mubarak, 211, 217–219, 244 al-Shabi, Abu al-Qasim, 228, 309 Altekamp, Stefan, 105, 107, 120–121 Althusser, Louis, 4 al-Wazzân, Hassan. See Leo Africanus Amazigh nationalism, 264 Amazigh question, 248, 264 Amrouche, Jean, 228, 267, 269 Andalusia, 9, 135 Anderson, Benedict, 153, 224–225, 260 André, Pierre Capitaine, 192, 267 animism, 68, 192, 196, 236–237 Arab, 2–3, 5, 8–9, 12, 15, 17–19, 26, 31, 41, 45, 47–48, 50–51, 53–54, 59, 66, 72, 82, 89, 92–93, 99, 107, 110, 126–127, 130, 134–138, 140, 143, 145, 150, 157–160, 164–167, 169, 171, 174, 177–181, 183, 185–190, 192–193, 195, 198–199, 201, 203–205, 209–210, 213, 218–221, 223, 228, 230, 232–234, 238–240, 244–245, 247, 249, 258, 264–265, 267–271, 273, 276, 283, 285–286

Index Arab Bureau, 18, 26, 50, 53, 126, 130, 137, 150, 157, 160, 174, 178–179, 181, 188, 190, 201, 264 Arab Islam, 192–193, 267 Arab Maghreb, 5, 209, 219, 234, 247, 259, 276 Arab nationalism, 2, 140, 181, 219–220, 234, 240, 264 Arab Spring, 258, 285 Arab, Greek, and Roman maps, 31 archaeo-Christian narratives, 81 archaeological formation, 100, 111 archaeological trace, 114 archaeology, 4, 19, 24, 27, 77–78, 80–82, 84, 86, 88–91, 93, 96, 98, 100, 102–111, 114, 116, 119–121, 139, 170, 205, 214, 236, 253, 269–270 archives, 44, 50, 65, 91, 177–178, 180, 280–281 Armée d’Afrique, 43 ʿasabiya, 13, 15, 166, 185–187 Asia, 2–3, 8, 37, 42–43, 48, 70, 85, 99, 106, 132, 195, 200, 205, 235, 237 Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama, 210–211 atlas, 18, 65, 69–71, 73, 75, 101, 114 Aurès, 102, 181 badâwa, 185 Bani Yfran, 12, 14 Barbarie. See Barbary barbarism, 151, 174, 195–196, 219, 238 Barbary, 17, 37, 39, 41, 52, 74, 82, 173–176 Béja, 48 Belot, Jean-Baptist, 133 Ben Badis, Abdelhamid, 211, 217, 244, 249, 266 Benedict, Ruth, 236 Benjelloun, Abdelmajid, 230, 266–267 Berber, 12, 14, 27, 59–60, 63, 66, 72, 88–89, 126–127, 130, 132–148, 154, 157–166, 168–169, 174, 177, 179–180, 183, 185–189, 192, 199, 201, 203–205, 215–216, 219, 222–223, 228, 230–232, 238–239, 244, 260, 262, 264, 267–271, 273, 285–286

313 Berbérie, 92, 174, 201–202 Berberism. See Amazigh nationalism Berbrugger, Louis-Adrien, 44, 49–50, 60, 91–92, 95, 101, 126, 129, 177, 272 Bernard, Augustin, 113 Berque, Jacques, 5, 158–160, 196, 202, 210, 240, 266, 283–285 Bertrand, Louis, 106, 114, 118 Beulé, Charles Ernest, 80 Binger, Louis Gustave, 145 biopower, 207 Black Africa, 2, 68, 74, 143, 194–195, 235–236, 238–239, 241–242 Black Islam, 192–193, 242 blackness, 1, 48, 127–128, 236–238, 241, 243 Blacks, 61, 192, 197, 240 blad al-makhzen, 154 Blais, Hélène, 3, 43, 50–52, 64, 76 bled as-siba, 155–158, 164–166 Boas, Franz, 236 Boumedienne, Houari, 249, 255 Bourdieu, Pierre, 255–256, 263–264, 284 Braudel, Fernand, 6, 22, 25, 61–62, 64, 95, 202 British Egypt, 3, 85 Burckhardt, Jacob, 41 Burke III, Edmund, 94, 126, 158–159, 172, 283 Butler, Judith, 224 Camus, Albert, 118, 227, 230 Carette, Ernest, 45–46, 53–54, 56, 58–60, 72, 177, 181, 184 Carthage, 8, 80–81, 84, 102, 121, 182, 213–216 cartographic power, 172 cartographic representation, 30 cartography, 24, 33, 43–45, 52–53, 138, 145, 170, 203 Césaire, Aimé, 241 Chad, 73, 196 Chancel, Ausone de, 44 Chateaubriand, 180 Chatelain, Louis, 107, 109, 115 Chatterjee, Partha, 224 Chénier, Louis de, 41, 176 Chraïbi, Driss, 228, 230

314

Index

Christian Europe, 5, 37, 179, 239 Christian humanism, 80, 83 civilization, 8, 37, 39, 52, 62, 64, 69, 85, 87–89, 92, 97, 99, 101, 104, 110, 114–115, 133, 139–141, 144, 151, 158, 174, 176, 192–193, 195–197, 201, 205, 207, 210, 215, 219, 236–237, 259, 266 colonial domination, 4, 220 colonial imaginaries, 25, 170, 183 colonial modernity, 20 colonial power, 3–5, 7, 27–28, 31–32, 36, 65, 69, 71, 76–77, 94, 101, 110, 117, 167, 201, 206–208, 212, 224, 241, 253, 266, 275 Comité de l’Afrique Française, 158 Committee of the Liberation of the Maghreb, 246 conquest of Algiers, 4, 16, 79, 105, 113, 137, 174–175, 177, 217 Constantine, 14, 46, 184, 189–190, 213, 250 Crone, G. R., 36 Cyrenaica, 9, 197

destruction, 27, 120–121, 129, 163, 180, 207, 243 Diaz-Andrew, Margarita, 77, 107–109 dictionaries, 130–133, 136, 140–141, 146, 168 Dielter, Michael, 77–78, 87, 92 Diop, Cheikh Anta, 235–239 Dirks, Nicholas, 87, 94, 121, 178 discursive formation, 25–26, 81–82, 93, 111, 166, 187, 189, 244, 249, 275, 278, 280 discursive invisibility, 281 Djait, Hichem, 237 Djardjoura, 181 Djemilâ, 114 Dougga, 114 Doutté, Edmond, 137–138, 148, 159–160 Du Bois-Aymé, 39, 179–180 Dubois, Felix, 194 Dubois, W. E. B., 239 Dundes, Alan, 261 Durkheim, Emile, 68, 159, 164 Duvivier, General, 99, 176

d’Anville, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon, 36–37 Dar, Jean, 141–142 Daumas, Eugène, 53–55, 59–60, 126, 161, 215 Davis, Natalie, 16–17 Dawla, 186 de Gaulle, Charles, 196, 258 de Gobineau, Arthur, 124–125, 195, 265 de Nerval, Gérard, 227 de Saussure, Ferdinand, 131, 238, 256 de Segonzac, René, 158 De Slane, William, 51, 181, 184–187, 190, 270 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 21, 125–126, 129, 177–178, 207 decolonizing history, 220 Delafosse, Maurice, 194, 240 Delamare, Alphonse, 90–91 Delattre, Alfred Louis, 80–81, 84–85 Delisle, Guillaume, 35–36, 38, 40 Description de l’Afrique, 16, 41, 51 Deslile, George, 22

East Africa, 2, 66–67, 236, 265 Ecole Française de Rome, 9, 109 Ecole Normale Supérieure, 159 Effros, Bonnie, 79, 83, 86, 89, 92, 120–121 Egypt, 1–2, 7–8, 12–13, 19, 28, 35–37, 41–43, 50, 63–64, 74, 82, 85, 87–90, 99, 121, 123, 132, 137, 140, 148, 161, 179–182, 187, 189, 191, 193, 197, 199–200, 203, 205, 209–210, 219–220, 234, 237–241, 245, 265, 273, 285 Egyptian desert, 63–64, 199 Egyptology, 86, 88 Empire of Morocco, 46, 54, 154 Errington, Joseph, 143, 146 Essaouira, 152 Ethiopians, 14 ethnographic state, 17, 94, 121, 178, 188 ethnography, 24, 84, 150, 155, 161, 226, 272 Etoile Nord Africaine, 246 Europe, 1, 3–4, 7, 9–10, 14, 16–17, 19, 21–22, 27, 32–33, 35, 39, 41–42, 47–48, 52, 67, 69, 72–74, 77–79, 81,

Index 83, 85–86, 92, 99–100, 102, 124–125, 129, 132, 149, 173–176, 180, 193–194, 198, 201, 215, 222, 225, 233, 235–237, 239–240, 253, 260, 265, 267, 275, 277, 281, 286, 299, 309 European colonies, 37, 66, 70, 73 Exploration scientifique de l’Algérie, 3, 26, 45–46, 50–51, 85–87, 90–91, 112, 150, 177 Faidherbe, Louis Léon, 142–146, 148 Fanon, Frantz, 127, 159, 242–243, 278, 281, 285 Fazzan, 9 fez, 2, 44 field of discourse, 275, 277–280, 283 Flaubert, Gustave, 118, 180, 227 FLN, 248 Foucauld, Charles de, 130, 150, 153–158 Foucault, Michel, 4, 25, 154–155, 157–158, 184, 206, 223–225, 251, 260, 278, 281, 284–285 France, 2–3, 6–7, 9, 18, 21, 23, 32–33, 35, 43–44, 48, 52–53, 60, 66–67, 71–73, 77, 79, 81, 83–90, 92–95, 98–106, 108–110, 112–116, 118–119, 121, 130, 137, 142, 149, 152–153, 158, 162, 172–173, 176, 178–180, 183, 185, 191, 193, 196, 200, 203, 205, 211, 215, 217, 219, 222, 227, 231, 233–234, 237, 240, 243, 246, 249, 251, 255–260, 262, 267, 269–270, 273, 275, 277, 280–285 francophone literature, 230 French Africa, 43, 49–50, 62, 70, 113, 217 Front de Libération Nationale. See FLN Fula, 131 Gaetulian, 9 Gal, Susan, 131 Gambia, 73, 88 Garvey, Marcus, 241, 245 Gautier, Emile-Félix, 1, 8, 53, 60–64, 75, 85, 127–128, 137–141, 148–149, 169, 180, 195, 197–203, 208,

315 211–212, 214–215, 221, 223, 240, 244, 279 Geatuli, 46 Geertz, Clifford, 17, 27–28, 155, 226–227, 236, 282 geographic imagination, 26, 30, 51, 75 geography, 3–4, 7, 11–12, 14, 23–24, 28, 32–33, 36–37, 39, 41, 46–47, 50, 53–54, 61, 63, 66–67, 69–70, 73–74, 77, 86, 92, 96, 110, 136–137, 149–150, 167, 175, 195, 199–200, 205, 213, 217, 227, 231, 235, 238, 242, 246–248, 253, 264, 274, 277, 285–286 geopolitics, 66, 74, 108, 173, 183, 191, 220, 224, 234, 245, 248 Germany, 44, 87, 258 Ghallab, Abdelkrim, 230 Gibran, Kahlil, 233 Gozalbes Cravioto, Enrique, 107–108 Grande Kabylie, 181 Graphic representation. See cartographic representation Grataloup, Christian, 8, 35 Great Britain, 23, 44, 86–88, 101, 108, 121, 152, 191, 277 Greimas, Algirdas-Julien, 221 Gsell, Stéphane, 91, 95–96, 100–103, 105, 112–115, 120, 139, 182–183, 215 Guennoun, Abdallah, 228, 230, 266 Gutron, Clémentine, 81, 83, 98 Hanoteau, Adolphe, 130–131, 136–137, 141 Haratin, 187, 242 Hardy, George, 193 Hase, Johann Mathias, 34, 37 Hassan I, 152, 155–156 Hassan II, 255 Hassaniya (language), 145 Hassar, Mohamed, 228, 268 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 238 Herodotus, 8, 45–46, 200 Hespéris, 160–161, 163, 171, 192, 220, 254 historicism, 220 historiographic state, 93, 95, 100, 104, 181, 189

316 historiography, 4, 7, 9, 13, 17, 24, 77, 84, 155–156, 172, 181, 183, 186–187, 198, 202–203, 210–211, 221, 223, 228, 232, 237, 245, 256, 272 Hobbes, Thomas, 165 Hobsbawm, Eric, 23–24 Höckel, Ernst, 144 Hussein, Taha, 233 Huwâra, 14 Huyghe, Gustave, 130 Ibn ʿAbd al-Hakam, ʿAbd al-Rahma¯n, 8 ˙ 18 ˙ Ibn Abi Diyâf, Ibn Battouta, 41 Ibn Hawqal, 17, 26, 41 Ibn ʻIda¯rı¯ al-Murrâkushî, 15 ˉ Ibn Khaldûn, 10–18, 26, 128, 134–136, 163–164, 166, 172, 183–186, 190, 198, 201, 214–215, 217, 219, 221, 228–229, 244, 264, 268, 270, 272, 300 Idrissites, 15, 181 Ifriqiya, 8–9, 12–15, 48, 66, 135, 174, 197, 223 indigenous, 8, 86, 88, 97, 99, 101–102, 110, 132, 148, 159, 182, 189–190, 201, 265 Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines, 26 Institut Français d’Afrique Noire, 200 Iraq, 9, 88, 210, 285 Irvine, Judith, 130–131, 133, 143–146, 148 Islam, 18, 24, 39, 42, 52, 67–68, 76–77, 94, 120, 126, 133–134, 144–145, 172, 179, 181, 186, 192–197, 205, 209–210, 215–216, 237, 239, 241, 245, 247, 259, 261, 263–265, 267, 271 Islamophobia, 192–193 Italy, 17, 23, 44, 72, 105–106, 121, 191, 277 Jacqueton, Gilbert, 113, 115 Jews, 72, 126, 128, 187, 231, 264–265, 268, 270, 285 jîl, 134, 185 Jomard, 39, 179 Jouenne, Pierre, 88

Index journalistic discourse, 118 Julien, Charles–André, 1–3, 8, 202–203, 211, 221, 283–284 Justinard, Captain, 147–148, 161 Kahina, 269 Kant, Immanuel, 173–174 Khaïr-Eddine, Mohammed, 228, 231 Kitâb al-ʿibar, 11 Kouloughlis, 126, 187 Kusayla, 269 Kutâma, 14 l’Académie des inscriptions et belleslettres, 26, 109 L’Histoire des Berbères, 11, 184, 186, 189–190 L’islam arabe, 67 L’islam berbère, 67 L’islam noir, 67 L’islamisation de l’Afrique du Nord, 197 La Chapelle, Frederic de, 161–163, 166, 192 Lalande, Jérôme, 41 Lambaesis, 106 Lambèse, 114 Lane, Edward, 180 language, 3, 7, 12, 23, 28, 37, 48, 63, 69, 99, 123–126, 129–149, 165, 167–169, 188, 191, 204–205, 215–216, 220, 225–227, 229–231, 233, 236, 238, 241, 244, 247–248, 250–251, 253, 256–262, 269–274, 277–280, 285 language ideologies, 131, 147 Laoust, Henri, 136, 141, 148, 161 Laroui, Abdallah, 10, 202–203, 220–224, 226, 237, 240, 244–245, 251–252, 256, 261, 279, 285 Le Chatelier, Alfred, 181, 194–196 le polygone étoilé, 229 Le Tourneau, Roger, 1–3, 283–284 leff, 162–163, 165–166 Leo Africanus, 16 Letourneux, Aristide, 137 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 22, 80, 83, 125, 138, 227, 284 Libophoenicians, 46

Index Libya, 5, 9, 17, 36, 43, 74, 90, 105–107, 110, 120–121, 136–137, 146, 176, 191, 198, 200, 218, 233, 247–248, 274, 276 Libyan-Phoenician, 104 linguistics, 4, 24, 129–130, 132, 136, 143, 148 literature, 17, 24, 75, 112, 115, 117, 139, 173–175, 179, 221, 226–231, 233–234, 238, 256, 260–261, 270, 285 local knowledge, 17, 21, 27, 29, 51, 84, 183 Lyautey, Hubert, 109, 113, 160–161, 172, 191, 266 Machiavelli, 154 Maghreb, 1–2, 4–7, 9–10, 12–15, 21, 23–28, 31–32, 41, 43, 48, 51, 53, 61, 63–66, 75, 79, 95, 99, 101, 103, 105, 110, 113, 121, 123, 126–127, 135, 139–140, 142, 149, 153, 159, 164, 167–168, 171–172, 175, 177, 179–181, 183, 188–189, 191, 194–198, 200–203, 205–206, 208–214, 216–223, 225–229, 231–234, 236, 240–249, 252–253, 255–256, 258–259, 262–265, 269–270, 272–286, 305 Maghrebi literature. See francophone literature Maghrebi nationalism, 264 makzhen, 152 Mali, 45, 48, 61, 253, 265 Mandinka (race), 145 Marin, Louis, 35, 305 Marrakech, 10, 74, 207, 218 Martinière, Henri de la, 117–118, 155, 174 Marty, Paul, 127, 192, 199, 265, 267 Marx, Karl, 223, 238, 281 Masqueray, Emile, 137, 163, 166, 272 Massignon, Louis, 240, 284 Mauretania Caesariensis, 9, 183 Mauretania Tingitana, 9 Maurette, Fernand, 67–68 Mauritania, 46, 97, 176, 192, 233, 247, 251, 274 McKenzie, Donald, 152

317 Mediterranean, 1–3, 8, 12, 23, 25, 35, 46–48, 52, 62–64, 72, 77, 79, 85, 88, 96, 99, 106, 108, 112, 144, 146, 173, 175, 177, 182, 194, 200, 202, 214, 218, 222 Meknes, 109 Mercier, Ernest, 139, 189–191, 198, 202, 279 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 259, 282, 284 Mesopotamian archaeology, 88 Messali Hadj, 246 Meynier, Capitain O., 194 Michaux-Bellaire, Edouard, 174, 266 Michelin, 75, 112–114 Middle East, 2–5, 7, 9, 28–29, 66, 68, 89, 110, 132, 140, 143, 193, 220, 231, 233–234, 241–242, 245–246, 253, 265, 275, 278, 283–284 millet, 17 Ministry of Commerce, 132 Ministry of the Colonies, 70 Ministry of War, 101, 132 Mission archéologique française à Carthage, 26 Mission scientifique au Maroc, 26 Missions Catholiques, 80 modern Egypt, 2 modernity, 4, 7–8, 10, 19, 21–23, 27, 42, 73, 81, 83, 90, 108, 119, 129, 140, 167, 183, 207, 210, 225, 228, 230, 243, 254–255, 257–258, 260–261, 263, 266, 269, 272–273, 277, 280 Mogador, 22 Montagne, Robert, 160–166, 220, 266, 284 Montalbán, César Luis de, 107 Monteil, Vincent, 193, 265 Moors, 46, 125–127, 187, 222, 242 Moreno, Manuel Gómez, 108 Moroccan bourgeoisie, 230 Moroccan nationalism, 228 Morocco, 3, 5, 17, 22, 44–45, 47, 51, 59, 69–74, 94, 97–101, 105, 107–110, 113, 116–118, 121, 123, 126, 130, 136, 146–150, 152–155, 157–161, 166, 168, 172, 174, 176, 191, 194–196, 203, 205, 210–211, 213, 217, 219, 227–231, 235, 247,

318 249–253, 255, 258, 262, 264–266, 269, 271, 273–274, 276, 285–286 Moulouya River, 12 muʿallaqât. See pre–Islamic poetry Mudimbe, V.Y., 7, 23, 241 Müller, Friedrich, 144 Mullucha river. See Mulluvia river Mulluvia river, 176 Musée Lavigerie, 80 Musulamian, 9 Nafzawa, 12 naming, 46, 92, 97, 99, 170, 172–173, 175–176, 181–182, 198, 201–202, 208, 224, 236, 243, 286 Napoleon, 2, 19, 43, 52, 85–87, 94, 112, 159, 161, 170, 174, 188 Napoleon’s expedition, 2 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 203, 219, 240 Nassiri, Ahmad ibn Khalid, 20, 264, 272 national discourse, 209, 225, 248–250, 256, 268–269 national elite, 254, 261 national identities, 77, 123 nationalism, 6, 28, 88, 149, 151, 209–210, 219–220, 224, 226, 239, 246, 248–250, 253, 264, 269–271, 283 Nedjma, 228–230, 311 Neffousa, 12 Negritude, 234, 238, 240 Negroes, 14, 39, 48, 52, 54, 61, 194 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 76, 224, 238 Nifzawa, 14 Nile, 1, 47, 63 Nkrumah, Kwame, 241–242 Numidia, 9 Numidians, 46, 222 Obenga, Théophile, 238 Oran, 22, 46, 83, 139, 254 Orwell, George, 207, 307 Ottoman Empire, 3, 10, 17, 19, 22, 42, 66, 200, 265 oumma, 12, 66, 152, 210, 249, 264 Pan-African Cultural Festival, 255 Paris, 118, 227

Index Pelet, Paul, 70–73, 75 Pellissier, Edmond de Reynaud, 46–47, 126 Pères Blancs, 80 Petite Kabylie, 181 Peul (language), 144–145 Peul (race), 144–145, 242 Phoenicians, 63, 104, 215–216, 219, 222 photography, 112, 116 photos. See photography Pompeii, 106 postcolonial power, 225, 281 pre-Islamic poetry, 233 premodern Arabic literature, 233 Pricot de Sainte-Marie, Jean Baptiste Evariste Charles, 80 Prussia, 93, 188 Ptolemy, 8, 11, 41–42, 175, 182 Punic, 63, 89, 99, 101–102, 107, 110, 114, 136, 216 Qadiriya, 266 Qayrawan, 15 Quellien, Alain, 192 race struggle, 139, 195, 204, 222–223 racial theory, 149 Rahmaniya, 266 raʿiya, 152–153, 156 Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, 16 Randau, Robert, 118 Ranger, Terence, 23–24, 301 realm of discourse. See field of discourse Reclus, Elisée, 47–48, 67–68 Red Sea, 36–37, 63, 182 Regimes of Language, 130, 253 Reig, Daniel, v Rémusat, Abdel, 47 Revue Tunisienne, 254 Ricoeur, Paul, 111, 187, 224 Rif region, 174 Rif war, 108 Roger, Jacques-François, 141–142 Roman Africa, 50, 106 Roman Mediterranean, 8 Roman past, 77–78, 85–87, 102, 106, 121, 190 Roman ruins, 76 Roman rule, 104, 120, 179

Index Rome, 6, 9, 13, 42, 77, 79–81, 83, 86–87, 91–93, 95–97, 99–100, 102–106, 110, 114–115, 118–119, 121, 173, 176, 183, 190, 213–216, 219, 222–223, 269 Rosenthal, Franz, 18, 208 Royaume d’Alger, 22, 35 Royaume de Tripoly, 35 Royaume de Tunis, 22, 35 Royaume du Maroc, 35 Saadian, 16 Sacy, Antoine Isaac de, 184 Sahara, 14, 28, 35, 46, 51–55, 59–61, 63–64, 71–74, 90, 96, 99, 105, 110, 121, 127, 132, 145, 149, 175, 181, 192, 194, 199–200, 205, 214, 218, 222, 245, 248, 250–253, 274 Said, Edward, 227, 284 Salafi historiography, 220 Salafism, 209 Salhi, Mohamed, 220 Saqâliba, 14 savagery, 33, 39, 64, 174, 185, 205, 207 school of Durkheim, 159, 164 school of Rabat, 98 secular, 81, 130, 133, 210, 252, 264–266, 271 Semiotics (of the Atlas), 69, 221 Senegal, 61, 68, 88–90, 131, 142–146, 192, 194, 196, 205, 251–252, 265, 267 Senghor, Leopold, 237–238, 240–241 Serer, 145 Sfar, Béshir, 217, 244, 249, 266 Shaw, Brent, 8 Shaw, Thomas, 41, 81–82, 175 Shawqi, Ahmed, 233 Shiʿa, 15 Siba, 155 Sidi Ferruch, 2 Soninke (language), 145 Soudan. See Sudan Sous, 127, 152, 154 south Africa, 148 Spain, 10, 23, 39, 44, 72, 107, 121, 152, 274, 277 Spanish archaeology, 108 Strabo, 46 Sublime Porte, 16–17, 19

319 sub-Saharan Africa, 9–10, 37, 51, 123, 286 Sudan, 12, 192, 195, 239 Sudanese, 14 Sykes-Picot Agreement, 108 symbolic power, 155 Syria, 9, 43, 187, 210, 285 Talbi, Mohamed, 237 Tamuda, 107–108, 171, 254 Tangier, 12, 22, 41, 48, 213, 251, 258 tanzimat, 19 Tarradell, Miquel, 108–109 Tébessa, 106 technologies of power, 3, 9, 16–18, 20, 27, 39, 43–44, 74, 76, 84, 88, 123, 153, 208, 214, 235, 243, 253, 275 territory, 69, 123, 150–151, 154–155, 157 Thaʿâlibi, Abdel ‘Aziz, 211 Tharaud, Jean, 227 Tharaud, Jerome, 227 third world nationalism, 225 Thomas, Nicholas, 102 Tijaniya, 266 Timgad, 106, 114 Tissot, Charles, 97–99, 109–110, 118, 182–183 Tlemcen, 14, 274 tourism, 112, 115 Treaty of Fez, 160 tribalism, 11, 185, 195, 207, 237 Tripolitania, 9, 197 Tunisia, 3, 5, 17, 22, 44, 47, 50–51, 59, 71–72, 74, 96–98, 101, 104–105, 109–110, 112, 114, 123, 130, 154, 172, 205, 210–211, 213, 217, 219, 227–228, 230, 234, 247–249, 265–266, 269, 271, 276, 285–286 Tunisian nationalism, 228 Turks, 17, 21, 37, 126, 128, 135, 154, 175, 178, 187, 270 ʿumrân, 185 University of Algiers, 26, 60, 62, 95–96, 103, 107, 137, 139, 163, 211, 254, 264 Venture de Paradis, Jean Michel, 132, 154 Verzijl, J. H. W., 154–155

320

Index

Vidal de la Blache, Paul, 67 Villefosse, René Héron, 80 violence, 4, 21, 44, 77, 86, 104, 170, 187–188, 207, 261 Volney, Constantin-François, 132 Volubilis, 106, 109, 114, 117

Western Sahara, 250, 252 White Africa, 1–2, 53, 237 White North Africa, 193 whiteness, 1, 174 Whorf, Benjamin, 259 Wolof, 131, 145

Wadi Tine, 8 Walckenaer, Charles, 36, 41 Weber, Max, 104, 151, 260 West Africa, 2, 7, 28, 60, 66, 68, 72–73, 88–90, 110, 121, 128, 132, 145, 148, 150, 191–193, 195–196, 199–200, 205, 238–239, 247, 265, 273

Yacine, Kateb, 228–230, 232–233, 242–243, 257, 261, 267, 269 Zaydan, Georgy, 233 Zenata tribes, 12 Zuwâwa, 14