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The Roots of Insurrection: The Role of the Algerian Village Assembly (Djemâa) in Peasant Resistance, 1863–1962

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2013

Neil MacMaster
Neil MacMaster*
Affiliation:
School of Political, Social and International Studies, University of East Anglia
*
neilmacmaster@dsl.pipex.com
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Abstract

Interpretations of the origins of the Algerian war of independence have tended to emphasize either discontinuity—the radical dislocation of precolonial social and political structures following the French conquest—or the continuity of a culture of peasant resistance between 1871 and 1954. Little investigation has been carried out into the latter, or how, if at all, socio-political institutions enabled rural society to sustain an unbroken “tradition” of resistance over nearly a century of unprecedented crisis. Most debate has focused on the role of the tribe, a largely moribund institution, and this has obscured the importance of the village assembly, or djemâa, a micro-level organization that historians have largely neglected. The djemâa, in both its official and covert forms, enabled village elders to regulate the internal affairs of the community, such as land disputes, as well as to present a unified face against external threats. This article shows how emerging nationalist movements starting in the 1920s penetrated isolated rural communities by adapting to the preexisting structure of the djemâa, a tactic that was also followed after 1954 as independence fighters established a guerrilla support base among the mountain peasants. While Pierre Bourdieu and other scholars have emphasized the devastating impacts that economic individualism had on peasant communalism, this study employs the djemâa as a case study of a “traditional” institution that proved flexible and enduring as rural society confronted settler land appropriations and a savage war of decolonization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 419 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2013

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References

1 There is a vast literature on the rise of Algerian nationalism in the twentieth century. Some key texts are: Stora, Benjamin, Messali Hadj (1898–1974): Pionnier du nationalisme algérien (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1986)Google Scholar; Carlier, Omar, Entre Nation et Jihad: Histoire sociale des radicalismes algériens (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1995)Google Scholar; Harbi, Mohammed, Le FLN Mirage et Réalité, des origines à la prise du pouvoir (1945–1962) (Paris: Editions JA, 1985)Google Scholar; Kaddache, Mahfoud, Histoire du Nationalisme Algérien: Question Nationale et Politique Algérienne, 1919–1951, 2 vols. (Algiers: Société Nationale d'édition et de Diffusion, 1980–1981)Google Scholar.

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3 M. Lacheraf, L'algérie, 70. All translations are my own.

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12 Xavier Yacono, in one of the finest studies of rural society, points out that documentation becomes increasingly difficult to locate the further one descends from central to local levels, “and regrettably the douar or the douar fraction [the level at which the djemâa operated] are not entities than can always be readily located and understood.” La Colonisation des Plaines du Chélif, vol. 1 (Algiers: E. Imbert, 1955–56), 8.Google Scholar

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16 Mahé, Alain, Histoire de la Grande Kabylie XIXe–XX siècles: Anthropologie historique du lien social dans les communautés villageoises (n.p.: Editions Bouchène, 2000)Google Scholar.

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18 Here I follow the illuminating work of the historical geographer Marc Côte, in which he interprets the shared and enduring structures of Algerian rural society that underlay regional or cultural adaptations. See L'Algérie ou l'Espace Retouné (Paris: Flammarion, 1988)Google Scholar; and particularly, Pays, paysages, paysans d'Algérie (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1996)Google Scholar.

19 A growing volume of research by historical anthropologists describes how both French and British imperialism, as part of a process of state-building, classified and mapped precise “tribal” units where no such organisation existed on the ground: see, Oscar Salemink, who makes use of Georges Condominas theory of “tribalization” and writes, “Ethnographic classifications functioned initially as a way to immobilise groups of people by drawing boundaries around ‘their territory’”: The Ethnography of Vietnam's Central Highlanders: A Historical Contextualization, 1850–1990 (Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press, 2003)Google Scholar, 17, 23, 29, 98, 135, 219. Scott, in The Art of Not Being Governed, notes that tribes were fluid and constantly changing entities that never existed as “distinct, bounded, total social units” (243, 256–65).

20 The Minister of War (1858) quoted by Collot, Claude, Les Institutions de l'Algérie durant la période coloniale (1830–1962) (Paris: CNRS, 1987), 87Google Scholar.

21 Bourdieu, Pierre and Sayad, Abdelmalek, Le déracinement: la crise de l'agriculture traditionnelle en Algérie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1964)Google Scholar.

22 See, in particular, Mahé, Histoire de la Grande Kabylie.

23 Ageron writes that the government, “preserved more or less intact the traditional space of the tribe,” in Les Algériens Musulmans, vol. 1, 141–42. Between 1863 and 1938, 1,196 douar-communes were created from 789 tribes, which suggests a quite limited level of spatial subdivision (Collot, Les Institutions, 89).

24 The classic instance was that of the extraordinary fragmentation of the Ouled Kosseïr Tribe, close to Orléansville in the rich Chélif Valley, studied by Xavier Yacono in La Colonisation des Plaines du Chélif, vol. 2, 284–90. Eric Wolf generalized on the process of tribal fragmentation from this exceptional case in his influential study, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), 215Google Scholar.

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26 Montagne, Robert, Les Berbères et Le Makhzen dans le Sud du Maroc: Essai sur la transformation politique des Berbères sédentaires (groupe chleuh) (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1930), 180Google Scholar.

27 In all, Bourdieu recognized five levels of Kabyle organization: house (akham), lineage (takharroubt), clan (adroun), village (taddart), and tribe (ârch). The Algerians (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961, rev. ed.), 18–19.

28 Ibid., 2–17.

29 Ibid., 17.

30 Lizot, Jacques, Metidja. Un Village Algérien de l'Ouarsensis (Algiers: Société Nationale et de Diffusion, 1973)Google Scholar. In 1944, the commune mixte of Chélif included a population of 126,000, divided between twenty-six douars and further subdivided into 291 boccas (fractions), indicating an average of eleven fractions per douar, and a population of 433 for each fraction. Data from Julian Rohrbacher, administrator commune mixte du Chélif, “Centre municipaux” (1944), Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau, 20000045, art. 23, no. 703.

31 Djilali Sari shows how the fraction also occupied a finely tuned ecological niche, with a complimentarity of socio-economic and agrarian-pastoral resources, in L'Homme et l'érosion dans l'Ouarsenis (Algérie) (Algiers: Société Nationale et de Diffusion, 1977), 188–91Google Scholar.

32 Masqueray, Formation, 48.

33 Ibid., 50.

34 For the most detailed analysis of the Kabyle djemâa, see Mahé, Grande Kabylie, 78–99.

35 Eric Wolf, remarked, “We must not think of peasant communalism and individualism as mutually exclusive” (Peasant Wars, 58).

36 Bennoune, El Akbia, 52.

37 Kalyvas, Stathis N., The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Ageron, Algériens Musulmans, vol. 1, 518–19.

39 The Bureaux arabes consisted of military administrators of rural zones, backed by a small team of indigenous secretaries, interpreters, and cavalry.

40 Yacono, Xavier, Les Bureaux Arabes et l'Evolution des Genres de Vie Indigènes dans l'Ouest du Tell Algérois (Dahra, Chélif, Ouarsenis, Sersou) (Paris: Editions Larose, 1953), 111–12Google Scholar. See also Frémeaux, Jacques, Les Bureaux Arabes dans l'Algérie de la Conquête (Paris: Denoël, 1993), 110Google Scholar; and Mahé, Grande Kabylie, 189.

41 The detailed organization of the djemâa was spelled out in the government order (arrêté) of 20 May 1868; see Bulletin officiel du gouvernement général de l'Algérie, 1868. The unpaid members were to meet four times a year and the administrator of the commune mixte closely scrutinized the proceedings; a secretary recorded minutes, and maintained the civil registers for the douar.

42 Guinard, Didier, “Conservatoire ou révolutionnaire? Le sénatus-consulte de 1863 appliqué au régime foncier d'Algérie,” Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle 41 (2010): 81–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Collot, Les Institutions, 121–22, 127–28; Rahem, Karim, Le sillage de la tribu: Imaginaires politiques et histoire en Algérie (1843–1993) (Paris: Riveneuve éditions, 2008), 101–2Google Scholar; Nouschi, André, Enquête sur le niveau de vie des populations rurales Constantinois (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961)Google Scholar, 420, 441, 565; Rey-Goldzeiguer, Royaume Arabe, 413.

44 A key reference here has been Thompson, E. P.'s Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act (New York: Penguin Books, 1975)Google Scholar. For Algeria, see Guignard, L'abus de pouvoir; and for a similar approach to the Russian peasantry, see Gaudin, Corinne, Ruling Peasants: Village and State in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

45 Rey-Goldzeiguer, Royaume Arabe, 363.

46 Bulletin officiel du gouvernement général de l'Algérie, 1868, 1126–27, text in Sari, Le Désastre Démographique, 295–96.

47 Sari, L'Homme, 217.

48 Guignard, “L’affaire Beni Urjin.”

49 Apart from this exception, I have found no reference to such registers in either archival or secondary sources. If located in any number, they would provide an invaluable source for the history of rural society.

50 Jean Fendeler “Les Djemaas de Douars' dans les Communes Mixtes de la Mékerra et du Telagh (Département d'Oran) et d'Aïn-Touta (Département de Constantine),” Centre de Hautes études sur l'Afrique et l'Asie modernes (1938), 40 pp., Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau, 20000046, art. 4., no. 110.

51 Jean-Paul Charnay found from court records that the djemâas often took a legal initiative in attempting to defend land rights; peasants, “once the voice of the gun fell silent, were left with only one choice: to penetrate into the maze of texts and the cogs of the administration in order to defend their lands.”La vie musulmane en Algérie d'après la jurisprudence de la première moitié du XXe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991), 229–31Google Scholar. See also the action of the djemâa of Tamesguida in 1881, in Sainte-Marie, Alain, “Législation foncière et société rurale: L'application de la loi du 26 juillet 1873 dans les douars de l'Algérois,” Etudes rurales 57 (Jan.–Mar. 1975), 61–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 73.

52 Mahé, Grande Kabylie, 245–52.

53 Ageron, Charles-Robert, “Une Politique Algérienne Libérale sous la Troisième République (1912–1919),” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine (Apr.–June 1959): 121–51Google Scholar.

54 The text of the application of the law of 4 February to the djemâas is in Bulletin officiel du gouvernement général de l'Algérie, 1919, 464, arrête du 5 Mar. 1919.

55 Ageron, Charles-Robert, Histoire de L'Algérie Contemporaine, vol. 2 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 279Google Scholar.

56 On the Société Indigènes de Prévoyance, see Ageron, Algériens Musulmans, vol. 2, 861–71.

57 Launay, Michel, Paysans Algériens: La Terre, La Vigne, et les Hommes (Paris: Seuil, 1963), 63Google Scholar.

58 Ageron broadly confirms this picture of Algerian electoral corruption that was assisted by the colonial government seeking to place its own “administrative” candidates (Algérie Contemporaine, vol. 2, 280; see also Rahem, Le sillage, 101–2).

59 On the code, see Merle, Isabelle, “De la ‘légalisation’ de la violence en contexte colonial: Le régime de l'indigénat en question,” Politix 17, 66 (2004): 137–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Fendeler, “Les Djemâas,” 16.

61 Ibid., 14.

62 On the nationalist ferment in the Constantine region during the 1930s, see McDougall, James, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

63 Fendeler, “Les Djemâas,” 26–27. The name “Village Blanc” may be an ironic reference to its deviant status, as opposed to “village nègre,” the more common term for a shantytown. On this turbulent period of Bendjelloul-led militancy, see Rahem, Le sillage, 131–34.

64 Bennoune, El Akbia, 127; see also Ageron, Algérie Contemporaine, 280–81.

65 Kaddache, Histoire du Nationalisme Algérien, vol. 2, 788; see also Stora, Le nationalisme, 176–77.

66 Rebah, Mohamed, Des Chemins et des Hommes (Algiers: Mille-Feuillles, 2010)Google Scholar, 33, 50; Bourouiba, Boualem, Les Syndicalistes Algériens: Leur combat de l'éveil à la libération (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998), 160–61Google Scholar; Gallissot, René, Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier Maghreb (Ivry-sur-Seine: Editions de l'Atelier, 2006), 316–17Google Scholar, 394–95, 487–88, 541–43; www.algérie-dz.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-34277.html (accessed 3 Jan. 2011).

67 Archives nationales d'Outre-mer, 4i209, monthly report Renseignements généraux to Service des liaisons nord-africaines, 3 Mar. 1948. Caïds, bachaghas, and aghas were all grades of indigenous “chiefs” that served, with quasi-feudal trappings, as functionaries of colonial power in rural areas.

68 Archives nationales d'Outre-mer, 4i209, letter of Gauthier to Sous-Prefet of Miliana, 2 Feb. 1948.

69 Archives nationales d'Outre-mer, 4i209, letter of Voitelier, administrator of commune mixte of Ammi-Moussa to sous-prefet of Mostaganem, 24 Oct. 1950.

70 Kaddache, Histoire du Nationalisme Algérien, vol. 1, 792–97. At a meeting organized by the Parti communiste algérien in Duperré in May 1950, the militant Ahmed Keddar explained that the government had dissolved the communist controlled djemâa of the douar Bouzahar because it “sunk new wells, maintained the roads and proceeded to an equitable division of the land”; that is, it had managed the communal property in the interests of the poor rather than those of the corrupt pro-French caïds and notables. Centre des archives d'outre-mer, i199, report commissaire de police, 22 May 1950.

71 Ageron, Algériens Musulmans, vol. 1, 494–95. On an 1891 senatorial enquiry that disclosed the existence of parallel djemâas, see Mahé, Grande Kabylie, 253–54.

72 See Santucci, Robert's “Preface” to Morizot, Jean, Les Kabyles: propos d'un témoin (Paris: Centre de Hautes études sur l'Afrique et l'Asie modernes, 1985), 7–11Google Scholar.

73 Jean Morizot, “Les institutions coutumières, les centres municipaux et le projet de loi sur les communes rurales” (Paris: Centre de Hautes études sur l'Afrique et l'Asie modernes, 1951), 3, Centre des archives contemporaines, Fontainebleau, 20000046, art. 74, no. 1997. See also his L'Algérie kabylisée (Paris: J. Peyronnet, 1962), 117Google Scholar.

74 Fendeler, “Les Djemâas,” 16–17.

75 There was often a linkage between douar-djemâa and the fraction-djemâa since the former was usually selected by the administrators so as to include one representative (kébar) from each fraction; see Rahem, Le sillage, 59, 111, 233. That this system was still in place in September 1956 is shown in an army (SAS) report that names all of the fraction representatives for douars near Duperré in the Chélif region; CAOM 4SAS73.

76 Lizot, Metidja, 106.

77 J. Morizot, Algérie kabylisée, 119. See also Stora, Le nationalisme, 146–49, on such forms of resistance; and Guignard, Abus de pouvoir, 101–2, on “collective silence.”

78 Rahem, Le sillage, 234–35, interview with Fatima Nahil, 1999. There is a sense here in which the interviewee regarded the clan as wealthy precisely to the extent that it was autonomous from the predatory, external state.

79 Mammeri, Mouloud and Bourdieu, Pierre, “Dialogue on Oral Poetry,” Ethnography 5, 4 (2004): 511–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar (originally published as “Dialogue sur la poésie orale en Kabylie,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 23 [Sept. 1978]: 51–66Google Scholar). On Mammeri, see Kebbas, Malika, ed., Mammeri, 1917–1989: L'intellectuelle démocrate impénitent (Algiers: Casbah Editions, 2008)Google Scholar.

80 Bourdieu and Mammeri, “Dialogue,” 543.

81 Ibid., 518. For a similar account of such an apprenticeship, see Omar Boudaoud, later head of the central Comité fédéral of the FLN in France, on his attendance, at age fourteen or fifteen, in the village djemâa in which a studied economy of words, rather than verbosity, was a sign of virtue and therefore to be encouraged; Du PPA au FLN: Mémoires d'un combattant (Algiers: Casbah Editions, 2007), 14–15Google Scholar. On the modern djemâa in the Ouarsenis mountains, see Lizot, Metidja, 54, 106–7.

82 On the similar procedure, and disapproval of unnecessary verbosity, in the traditional Russian commune (mir), see Wolf, Peasant Wars, 60–61.

83 Guerroudj, Jacqueline, Des douars et des prisons (Algiers: Bouchène, 1993), 19–20Google Scholar; MacMaster interview with Abdelkader Guerroudj, Algiers, 28 and 31 Jan. 2012. See also an interview with Halima Ghomri, daughter of Tahar Ghomri, in Amrane-Minne, Danièle Djamila, Des Femmes dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Paris: Karthala, 1994), 100–3Google Scholar.

84 Gallissot, René, ed., Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier: Maghreb (Paris: Editions de l'Atelier, 2006), 307Google Scholar.

85 Ahmed, Hocine Aït, Mémoires d'un combatant: L'esprit d'indépendance 1942–1952 (Paris: Sylvie Messenger, 1983)Google Scholar, 15: “I learned that we should never separate our personal interests from those of the community, our personal freedom from our collective duties.”

86 Ibid., 15.

87 Ibid., 14, 127. The marabout constituted a hereditary religious lineage.

88 Stora, Le nationalisme, 247–58; Carlier, Omar, Entre Nation et Jihad: Histoire sociale des radicalismes algériens (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1995)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

89 Stora, Le nationalisme, 144–45.

90 Ibid., 173–74.

91 Aït Ahmed, Mémoires, 41.

92 Ibid., 42. This exemplifies the way in which the transfer of memory played an important role in the nationalist movement after 1945.

93 Ibid., 67–70.

94 H. Aït Ahmed, Report, in Harbi, Mohammed, Les Archives de la révolution algérienne (Paris: Jeune Afrique, 1981)Google Scholar, 27.

95 Ibid., 37.

96 This two-year expansion, mapped by the army (Service historique de l'armée de terre, 1H1933/3), is reproduced in Pervillé, Guy, Atlas de la guerre d'Algérie: De la conquête à l'indépendance (Paris: Autrement, 2003)Google Scholar, 18.

97 This area will be explored in detail in a book I am writing, “Counter-Insurgency and Peasant Resistance: Colonial Warfare in the Algerian Mountains, 1945–1958.”

98 Madoui, Rémy, J'ai été fellagha, officier français et déserteur: Du FLN à l'OAS (Paris: Seuil, 2004), 43–44Google Scholar.

99 In the same area of Wilya 4, at this time, an Algerian Communist Party maquis was rapidly detected and destroyed due to the actions of peasants loyal to the Bachaga Boualem and France; see Kastell, Serge, Le maquis rouge: L'aspirant Maillot et la guerre d'Algérie, 1956 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997)Google Scholar.

100 Madoui, J'ai été, 62–64. See also Commandant Azzedine, On nous appelait fellaghas (1974; repr., along with Carrière, Jean-Claude's, La Paix des Braves, under the title C'Etait la Guerre [Paris: Plon, 1992], 206–10)Google Scholar. For identical methods in Wilaya 2, see Kafi, Ali, Du militant politique au dirigeant militaire: Mémoires (1946–1962) (Algiers: Editions Casbah, 2004), 52, 56–57Google Scholar.

101 Bennoune Saad from 1935, followed in 1945 by his nephew Bennoune Lakhdar, held the djemâa Presidency for twenty years on a nationalist slate, before passing effortlessly into the FLN in 1954; Bennoune, El Akbia, 127–30. See also Archives nationales d'Outre-mer, 1K874, file “Maquis PCA,” police reports on Zitoufi. Zitoufi was continuously reelected president of the djemâa of Taourira near Ténès from 1919. He was a notable who had “acquired great authority over the population,” who organized a communist maquis that murdered Alexandre Boualem, brother of the Bachaga, on 26 July 1956.

102 Madoui, J'ai éte, 52, 61. Madaoui's grandfather had been agha of the Ouled Sidi M'Hamed, and his father a functionary in a commune mixte. Thus he, like Hocine Aït Ahmed, had a close knowledge of “the structure at the level of the douar and commune mixte, as well as of the linkages and relations between the different players” (ibid., 18, 62).

103 French military intelligence was perfectly aware of the continuities between the djemâa and FLN OPA. As Jean Servier, an anthropologist who worked with counterinsurgency, remarked, “The FLN collectors [of dues] were the traditional leaders of the locale. The FLN, here as elsewhere, had the intelligence to penetrate the existing structures.” The French army riposted by secretly attempting to create its own “djemâa amie”; Servier, Adieu Djebels (Paris: France-Empire, 1958), 139–40Google Scholar.

104 See, for example, the negotiated surrender of the douar Tiara, recounted in the memoirs of Eoche-Duval, Monique: Madame SAS femme d'officier, Algérie 1957–1962 (Paris: F.-X. De Guibert, 2007), 17–125Google Scholar.

105 Kergoat, Louis Saïd, Frères contemplatifs en zone de combats (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005)Google Scholar, 128; and MacMaster interview, Paris, 14 June 2011.

106 Harbi, Mohammed and Meynier, Gilbert, eds., Le FLN, Documents et Histoire, 1954–1962 (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 193–202Google Scholar.

107 Ibid., 172–73, 288; also Meynier, Gilbert, Histoire Intérieure du FLN, 1954–1962 (Paris: Fayard, 2002), 202, 205–6Google Scholar.

108 Garanger, Marc, La guerre d'Algérie vue par un appelé du contingent (Paris: Seuil, 1984), 42–47Google Scholar. For a photograph of a djemâa, see Servier, Jean, Adieu Djebels (Paris: France-Empire, 1958)Google Scholar, 80.

109 On these post-1962 tensions, see Bennoune, El Akbia, 356–62.

110 The senior FLN cadre, Mohand Akli Benyounes, notes that the djemâa was, “a major factor in the creation of FLN structures and organisation in France”; Sept Ans Dans Le Feu Du Combat: La Guerre d'Algérie en France 1954–1962 (Algiers: Casbah Editions, 2012)Google Scholar, 14. See also my Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900–62 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), 94–102Google Scholar.

111 Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in New States,” in Geertz, C., ed., Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 105–57Google Scholar.