As Allan Christelow's rich study of Algerians who cross borders shows, Algerian migration has a complex history involving the circulation of ideas as well as people, just as it provides a fascinating means of exploring the many strategies deployed by Algerians in the face of Ottoman and then French control and, today, globalization. The book takes a long chronological approach (starting in the late eighteenth century) alongside a broad geographical framework (from the Pacific to the Middle East to North America – in addition to France) to better put ‘the Algerian experience into historical and comparative perspective’ (p. 174).
As the author remarks, Algeria, as a ‘frontier society’ has often been situated uncomfortably on the fault line of tensions between Western and Islamic worlds, making it acutely susceptible to geopolitical shifts (p. 185). Simultaneously, however, the country has produced individuals capable of understanding a multitude of political, cultural, and intellectual environments and serving as cultural intermediaries in different roles (interpreters, scholars, and diplomats), thereby challenging – both implicitly and explicitly – many a cultural binary. Indeed, one of the book's key aims is to analyze, through a study of the longue durée, the multiplicity of factors creating or foreclosing cultural, political, and religious dialogue between Algerians and the societies with which they have interacted, as the internal, regional, and wider world order was continually reframed by, inter alia, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, French invasion in 1830, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, two World Wars, and decolonization.
The analysis does not neglect the significant rural-urban migrations of recent centuries. However, much emphasis is logically placed on the longstanding links between western Algeria (Oran) and Morocco, and eastern Algeria (Constantine) and both Tunis and Tripoli, for example amongst Sufi religious orders, family and commercial networks. Using many relevant Arabic-language sources, the analysis pays particular attention to the biographical trajectories of key political and religious figures. Christelow underlines the significance of migration (hijra), whether chosen or forced, to Cairo, Medina, Mecca, and especially Damascus, the latter emerging as a focal point for a sizeable Algerian migrant community. After 1855, the central Algerian figure there was exiled Amir ‘Abd al-Qadir, emblematic of resistance to French conquest. Subsequently, Damascus attracted many Algerians fleeing repression, avoiding French conscription, and seeking out the city's dynamic political and cultural environment.
The wider French imperial space produced new destinations for Algerians: military service across empire or in the hexagon, work in French factories, wartime imprisonment, or exile through official diktat all played a significant role in allowing ordinary as well as better-off Algerians to develop cultural knowledge and linguistic skills enabling them to view their original place(s) of socialisation from another perspective. Christlelow also shows how Algerians proved skillful in negotiating within a context of European imperial rivalries during and after World War I: this arguably foreshadowed the National Liberation Front's (FLN) strategic use of Cold War rivalries.
In 1920, Syria came under French control, and many Algerians therefore recentred their activities on Algeria itself. Usefully complementing James McDougall's work, Christelow examines the complex intersection between religion, culture, and politics seen within the Islamic Reformist movement (Association of ‘Ulama), showing how figures such as Bashir Ibrahimi harnessed new ideas of religious reform and nationalism. The Association used schools and theatre (inspired by Egyptian influences) to extend its reach into the flourishing Algerian civil society of the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s. For this period, more attention could have been devoted to scouting and sporting associations and the trade union movement as prime examples of cross-fertilization used by various oppositional groups. However, Christelow's analysis usefully underlines the plural Algerian political field before FLN hegemony and the heightened French repression after 1954: the war for liberation (1954–62) witnessed the rapid disintegration of symbolic spaces for cultural, political, and inter-faith dialogue.
This war-time narrowing and fragmentation of Algerian civil society, the book argues, left the post-independence Algerian state in an unassailably dominant position, creating political refugee migrations both under President Boumediene (1965–78) and during the armed conflict of the 1990s. This conflict – and economic factors – generated a reconfiguration and further diversification of the Algerian diasporas with destinations now including Quebec, Belgium, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Interestingly, Christelow also suggests, over the last two centuries Algeria has focused international attention on themes such as piracy, slavery, torture, and, latterly, terrorism – all subjects informing how Algerians are perceived abroad.
Algerians without Borders succeeds in broadening and deepening our understanding of the political and cross-cultural impact of Algerian migration, both at home and abroad. This thought-provoking and refreshing addition to the literature takes us within and beyond the Franco-Algerian dynamic, placing Algeria within a truly global perspective over several centuries.
