When Charles Henri de Rouvroy de Saint-Simon died in 1825 the campaign against Algiers, which led to the conquest of Algeria by the French, was still five years away. Saint-Simon had advocated and written about a reconstructed and united Europe (primarily France and Britain) that would be capable of spreading technological, industrial and scientific progress beyond European frontiers, but he had not looked specifically in the direction of Africa. His close involvement with some of the leading educational institutions of the day, however, in particular the Ecole Polytechnique, training ground of France's leading military engineers and civilian technocrats, determined the spread of his influence to Algeria.
The apostles of Abi-Mershed's study are Arabist military officers and colonial administrators who, in a variety of ways, tried to introduce the modernizing principles of Saint-Simonianism to Algeria. Re-iterating some of the themes of earlier scholarship on the impact of the military on colonial policies and ideologies in Algeria, Abi-Mershed argues, on the one hand, that no hard and fast policy of assimilation existed in nineteenth-century Algeria and, on the other, that there was never a clear break between a policy of assimilation and one of association. He seeks to resolve three historiographical “problems”, which he sees as intrinsic to existing scholarship that stresses the importance of the assimilationist impulse of French colonialism. The first of these is the privileging of ideology over practice; the second is the tendency to evaluate the colonial bureaucracy as monolithic rather than multi-faceted; and the third is a predisposition to analyze the decades of French rule in Algeria as an extension of the narrative of the emergence of modern France.
Abi-Mershed's response to the first of these problems is to emphasize that it was historical context, political expedience and technocratic expertise, rather than “ideological clarity” that shaped French policies in Algeria. Given the uncertainties that characterized much of the early period of colonization in Algeria, ideological clarity was never a defining feature of French policies, however much certain coteries of the period may have advocated it as such, and not many scholars have argued, either overtly or obliquely, that it was. If Abi-Mershed is inclined to overstate the ground-breaking dimension of his contribution to the long-standing debate on the prioritization of ideology over practice or vice versa, he nonetheless provides a nuanced study of the tensions within the colonial bureaucracy during the military regime and the ways in which these played out in colonial policies. His aim, he states, is to “muddle the picture of Saint-Simonian philanthropy and to moderate the enthusiasm for colonial rehabilitation by illustrating the exploitive assumptions and repressive outcomes of civilizing initiatives” (p. 11) and he chooses as his main focus educational policies and practices. Proponents of Nostalgérie and colonial apologists apart, it is difficult to imagine who now takes the concept of France's civilizing mission at face value even when dealing with the relationship between modernizing impulses and seemingly philanthropic activities such as education and medicine. Any occupation, however purportedly benign, is exploitative even in its most philanthropic endeavours. The strengths of this work, however, lie in its attention to detail and well-argued presentation of the shifting nature of colonial policies under the military regime rather in its overarching claims.
The first chapter of the six that make up the book is an overview of the tenets of Saint-Simonianism relevant to France's “moral conquest” and the way in which they became threaded into the fabric of colonial officialdom, in particular that of the Arab Bureaux. The “moral conquest” that Abi-Mershed describes is an attempt to gain the hearts and souls of the inhabitants of their newly conquered territories through a range of different educational and instructional policies. The “civilizing” impulse inherent in any educational policy is, in a situation of conquest and occupation, eclipsed by the need to secure and pacify the territory occupied by creating a compliant and governable population. It is the paradox that is at the heart of the duality of civilizing and pacifying that Abi-Mershed's monograph so deftly explores.
Although the establishment of educational institutions in Algeria often occurred in tandem with the laws promulgated in France, such as the inauguration of the first mutual school in 1833 in Algiers, reflecting the Guizot Law of the same year, Abi-Mershed demonstrates that all such institutions deviated from the standards of similar establishments in France. So imbued were the conquerors with the notion of the primacy of their civilization, that they failed not only to understand the reluctance of Muslim families to espouse French educational possibilities but they also paid little attention to the long-term employment prospects of those who did.
The focus on educational policies – or lack of them – to demonstrate the inconsistent nature of colonial practices and administrative aberrations is especially appropriate as it braids together military concerns regarding religion, gender, and security. Thus we are told that by the late 1840s, when the conquered territory became three French departments, it was the Ministry of Public Instruction that presided over the educational policies of the European and Jewish communities, whereas it was the Ministry of War that did so for Muslim education; a division that says much about the differences in attitude towards the different ethno-religious groups that made up the population of colonial Algeria. The introduction of French practices to the Muslim population may have been the ultimate goal, but security was the defining concern, as this division of responsibility also implies. Upsetting orthodox Muslims, whether it was through attempts to educate their wives and daughters or by introducing French values and concepts too quickly, had to be avoided at all costs if “pacification” was to be successful. Abi-Mershed does a fine job of detailing the ideological and political tensions between the differing French approaches within the administration, both in France and Algeria, toward educating and “civilizing” the local population.
If the early chapters lay the groundwork for the study, the real strengths of the work become apparent in its second half. Here Abi-Mershed illustrates how the three-stage project to create a “Franco-Algerian” civilization by gradually bringing together the “traditional” Arabo-Islamic and “modern” French socio-cultural spheres was undercut by administrative scandals, bureaucratic politicking and dissent among the Saint-Simonians. But this is not just a story of administrative practices. Abi-Mershed demonstrates how the emergence over time of indigenous elites willing to cooperate with the French, and the increasing numbers of civilians settlers prompted the administration repeatedly to rethink and reshape their policies and the institutions responsible for them.
During the 1860s, the last decade of military ascendency, Napoleon III, influenced by Ismaïl Urbain and other Saint-Simonians, promoted the notion of French Algeria as a Royaume Arabe in which the advancement of the Arab towards “civilized modernity” could progress unhindered. The decade is usually depicted as one of an antagonistic binary confrontation between military arabophiles and civilian arabophobes, which eventually led to the replacement of the military administration by that of the civilian one. Abi-Mershed complicates the picture considerably by demonstrating that there were numerous other interests, military and civilian, that united to challenge what they perceived as imperial Arabophilia. Local revolts and natural disasters added to the turmoil and Abi-Mershed does an excellent job of tying together the social, political and cultural dynamics of the period without losing sight of the developments with regard to education.
The text is enhanced by maps, tables and statistical charts as well as a number of useful appendices, all of which make this a valuable contribution to the existing literature on Saint-Simonianism in Algeria and the erratic trajectory of colonial policy during the military administration.
