List of Maps Preface One: Introduction Two: Ottoman Algeria and Its Legacy Three: Invasion, Resistance, and Colonization, 1830-1871 Four: The Colonial System and the Transformation of Algerian Society, 1871-1919 Five: The Algerian Nationalist Movement, 1919-1954 Six: The War of Independence, 1954-1962 Seven: The Challenges of Independence, 1962-1978 Eight: The Bendjedid Years--Readjustment and Crisis Appendix--Place Names Bibliographical Essay Bibliography Index
John Ruedy is Emeritus Professor of History at Georgetown University. He has served most recently as the North Africa editor for the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa.
"Chapter 4, titled The Colonial System and the Transformation of
Algerian Society, 1871, 1919, chronicles and describes the
different ways in which the almost total ascendancy of the colons
in French Algeria, and the power base they developed for themselves
in the parliamentary system of the French Third Republic, completed
the de structuring and pauperization of native Algerian society.
While the result for the native Muslim population in general is
what would lead the liberal French Governor General, Jules Martin
Cambon (serving between 1891 and 1897) to refer to Algerian society
as a kind of human dust, a small elite of Algerians did learn to co
exist successfully with the French regime.[2] Some of its members
who formed the Young Algerian movement sought equality with the
colons and greater assimilation of Algeria and its whole population
to France. Others formed the so called Vieux turban neo
traditionalist group. The era also witnessed the beginning of the
migration of Algerian workers to France and attempts at French
reforms that were timid at best and almost completely stymied by
the colon parliamentary delegation in Paris. Chapter 5, on The
Algerian Nationalist Movement 1919, 1954 that follows, details a
very significant French failure, the inability of the Popular Front
government of 1936 to adopt and impose the Blu" Violette reform
proposals."
"Currently an emeritus professor at Georgetown University in
Washington D. C., Ruedy established his reputation as one of the
few American specialists on Algerian history with the publication
of his doctoral dissertation, Land Policy in Colonial Algeria: The
Origins of the Rural Public Domain at the University of California,
Los Angeles (1967). One suspects that it was his scholarly
encounter with the dark underside of French land policy in Algeria
(in fact, the organized theft of Algerian lands for the benefit of
the European colons or settlers) that led him to adopt the very
negative view of the whole French project in Algeria five
generations of colonial exploitation (p. xi), as he labels i" that
permeates the first seven chapters of his book."
"Like many historians who have described the French military
occupation of Algiers of July 1830, Ruedy emphasizes the contrast,
on one hand, between the terms of the Treaty of Capitulation of
July 5 (by which the French Commandant and War Minister, Count
Louis de Bourmont, guaranteed the inviolability of the property,
the businesses, and the industries of the local population, as well
as the free exercise of Islam and the protection of women), and, on
the other hand, the generalized looting and raping that actually
occurred including the theft of more than half of the Regency's
treasury. Unfortunately, Ruedy fails to explain how and why
Bourmont lost control of his army, making it possible for these
outrages to occur. He does, however, draw a parallel between these
events occurring at the start of French rule and the spontaneous
seizure of French properties by Algerians in July 1962 as French
rule ended." "
"Like Henri Pirenne in his search for the origins of the Belgian
nation, Ruedy, in his introductory chapter, digs deeply into the
North African past, struggling to identify the first germination of
an Algerian nation, even though the name itself Algerie, coined by
the French philosophe, Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle in the early
eighteenth century did not become official until made so by French
Royal Ordinance of October 14, 1839.[1] In rapid succession, Ruedy
evokes the Berber kingdoms of classical antiquity, the Masaesyles,
the Massyles, and Numidia that rose and fell on future Algerian
territory. Consistent with his negative view of French rule in
Algeria, Ruedy has almost nothing positive to say about the five
centuries of rule by the Latin predecessors of the French, despite
the impressive Roman archaeological remains that dot the Algerian
countryside. Roman Numidia, he maintains, was a land of vast
latifundia owned by Roman and Romanized Berbers, worked by
exploited Berber coloni, that exported grain to Europe just as
French Algeria would export wine. Ruedy suggests that the
successful efforts of St. Augustine of Hippo to suppress the so
called Donatist heresy, one that was very popular among Berber
Christians, led to the de Christianization of the latter and
prepared the way for the nearly total Berber adoption of Islam,
despite fierce Berber resistance to the Arab conquest itself. The
final pages of the introductory chapter concentrate on the pos"
A.D. 740 succession of Islamized Berber dynasties that flourished
on Algerian soil: the Rustamids, the Zirids, the Hammadids, and the
'Abd el Wadids.--A.D. 740 succession of Islamized Berber dynasties
that flourished on Algerian soil: the Rustamids, the Zirids, the
Hammadids, and the 'Abd el Wadids."
"Ruedy's aim, as he explained in the preface to the first edition,
was to write a work of historical synthesis to serve as an
introductory history of modern Algeria suited to serve the needs of
the general reader and useful in university classrooms (p. xi).
Since what interests Ruedy is the history of the contemporary
Algerian nation, he devotes all but two chapters of his study to
the post 1830 period, tacitly recognizing that it was the Frenc"
Muslim dialectic that gave the principal impetus to the development
of Algerian nationalism that came progressively into existence "in
a sociological sense" between 1871 and 1920 (p. 4)."
"The publication of the present workthe second edition of Modern
Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (originally
published in 1992) appears to be directed at a similar readership
(despite the author's more modest claims); but it also responds
specifically to a growing concern about the post, 1992 Islamist
insurgency in Algeria. For certain observers, this insurrection
appeared to be, at the same time, part of a worldwide Islamic war
against the West and a continuation of the War of Independence that
the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) had fought against the
French Army between 1954 and 1962 to win Algerian independence."
"
"The third chapter, Invasion, Resistance, and Colonization, 1830
1871, discusses the French conquest through 1871, stressing the
resistance of such new men as Emir Abd el Kader whose state, for a
while, dominated the western Algerian Tell, and the equally
tenacious resistance of such traditional rulers as Ahmed Bey of
Constantine. European settlement that began almost as an
afterthought following the capitulation of Algiers developed, early
on, a dynamic of its own. The chapter ends with an account of the
French suppression of the Kabyle rebellion of 1871, an event that
is conventionally taken as marking the end of primary resistance in
the Algerian Tell and the northern Sahara, the end of French
military rule (the so called regime du sabre) in this part of
Algeria, and the establishment of settle" dominated civilian rule
that would remain unshaken until after 1954."
"Thus John Ruedy has made a serious effort to update his book. He
has revised chapter 8, The Bendjedid Years Readjustment and Crisis,
to account for the social and economic crisis, the failed liberal
reforms of the 1979 92 period, and the assumption of power by the
military dominated Haut Comite de Securite, following the forced
resignation of President Chadli Bendjedid on January 11, 1992.
Ruedy has added a ninth chapter, Insurgency and the Pursuit of
Democracy, which chronicles the responses of a succession of
military dominated governments to the Islamist threat and describes
the major political, social, and economic developments in Algeria
through the April 2004 re election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika as
president of the Algerian Republic. Ruedy has also revised the
bibliographical essay and the bibliography which conclude the book.
Like the first edition, the second continues to have particular
significance for Anglophone readers in a field that is still
dominated by Frenc" language literature."
"This same chapter also includes a brief presentation of the
author's view of nation building as a contrast between segmentation
and integration (p. 2), the progression from one to the other being
particularly distorted and delayed in the cases of settler
colonies. (For Ruedy, it is an indisputable fact that Algeria was a
French settler colony of the most exploitive type even though the
French authorities never designated Algeria as a colony in the
formal legal sense nor administered it as such, declaring it,
instead, an integral part of France by decree of March 4, 1848.)
Chapter 2, Ottoman Algeria and Its Legacy, describes the rise and
fall of the Regency of Algiers (151" 1830). Ruedy's detailed
presentation of the political, social, and economic history of this
entity makes a strong argument that, decentralized though it was,
the Regency, by 1830, had evolved into a true state. Ruedy
speculates that it might have become a nation had its development
not been cut short by the French "invasion."--1830). Ruedy's
detailed presentation of the political, social, and economic
history of this entity makes a strong argument that, decentralized
though it was, the Regency, by 1830, had evolved into a true state.
Ruedy speculates that it might have become a nation had its
development not been cut short by the French "invasion."
Chapter 4, titled The Colonial System and the Transformation of
Algerian Society, 1871, 1919, chronicles and describes the
different ways in which the almost total ascendancy of the colons
in French Algeria, and the power base they developed for themselves
in the parliamentary system of the French Third Republic, completed
the de--structuring and pauperization of native Algerian society.
While the result for the native Muslim population in general is
what would lead the liberal French Governor--General, Jules Martin
Cambon (serving between 1891 and 1897) to refer to Algerian society
as a kind of human dust, a small elite of Algerians did learn to
co--exist successfully with the French regime.[2] Some of its
members who formed the Young Algerian movement sought equality with
the colons and greater assimilation of Algeria and its whole
population to France. Others formed the so--called Vieux turban
neo--traditionalist group. The era also witnessed the beginning of
the migration of Algerian workers to France and attempts at French
reforms that were timid at best and almost completely stymied by
the colon parliamentary delegation in Paris. Chapter 5, on The
Algerian Nationalist Movement 1919, 1954 that follows, details a
very significant French failure, the inability of the Popular Front
government of 1936 to adopt and impose the Blu
Currently an emeritus professor at Georgetown University in
Washington D. C., Ruedy established his reputation as one of the
few American specialists on Algerian history with the publication
of his doctoral dissertation, Land Policy in Colonial Algeria: The
Origins of the Rural Public Domain at the University of California,
Los Angeles (1967). One suspects that it was his scholarly
encounter with the dark underside of French land policy in Algeria
(in fact, the organized theft of Algerian lands for the benefit of
the European colons or settlers) that led him to adopt the very
negative view of the whole French project in Algeria--five
generations of colonial exploitation (p. xi), as he labels i
Like many historians who have described the French military
occupation of Algiers of July 1830, Ruedy emphasizes the contrast,
on one hand, between the terms of the Treaty of Capitulation of
July 5 (by which the French Commandant and War Minister, Count
Louis de Bourmont, guaranteed the inviolability of the property,
the businesses, and the industries of the local population, as well
as the free exercise of Islam and the protection of women), and, on
the other hand, the generalized looting and raping that actually
occurred including the theft of more than half of the Regency's
treasury. Unfortunately, Ruedy fails to explain how and why
Bourmont lost control of his army, making it possible for these
outrages to occur. He does, however, draw a parallel between these
events occurring at the start of French rule and the spontaneous
seizure of French properties by Algerians in July 1962 as French
rule ended.
Like Henri Pirenne in his search for the origins of the Belgian
nation, Ruedy, in his introductory chapter, digs deeply into the
North African past, struggling to identify the first germination of
an Algerian nation, even though the name itself--Algerie, coined by
the French philosophe, Bernard le Bouyer de Fontenelle in the early
eighteenth century--did not become official until made so by French
Royal Ordinance of October 14, 1839.[1] In rapid succession, Ruedy
evokes the Berber kingdoms of classical antiquity, the Masaesyles,
the Massyles, and Numidia that rose and fell on future Algerian
territory. Consistent with his negative view of French rule in
Algeria, Ruedy has almost nothing positive to say about the five
centuries of rule by the Latin predecessors of the French, despite
the impressive Roman archaeological remains that dot the Algerian
countryside. Roman Numidia, he maintains, was a land of vast
latifundia owned by Roman and Romanized Berbers, worked by
exploited Berber coloni, that exported grain to Europe just as
French Algeria would export wine. Ruedy suggests that the
successful efforts of St. Augustine of Hippo to suppress the
so--called Donatist heresy, one that was very popular among Berber
Christians, led to the de--Christianization of the latter and
prepared the way for the nearly total Berber adoption of Islam,
despite fierce Berber resistance to the Arab conquest itself. The
final pages of the introductory chapter concentrate on the
pos--A.D. 740 succession of Islamized Berber dynasties that
flourished on Algerian soil: the Rustamids, the Zirids, the
Hammadids, and the 'Abd el Wadids.
Ruedy's aim, as he explained in the preface to the first edition,
was to write a work of historical synthesis to serve as an
introductory history of modern Algeria suited to serve the needs of
the general reader and useful in university classrooms (p. xi).
Since what interests Ruedy is the history of the contemporary
Algerian nation, he devotes all but two chapters of his study to
the post--1830 period, tacitly recognizing that it was the
Frenc
The publication of the present workthe second edition of Modern
Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (originally
published in 1992) appears to be directed at a similar readership
(despite the author's more modest claims); but it also responds
specifically to a growing concern about the post, 1992 Islamist
insurgency in Algeria. For certain observers, this insurrection
appeared to be, at the same time, part of a worldwide Islamic war
against the West and a continuation of the War of Independence that
the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) had fought against the
French Army between 1954 and 1962 to win Algerian independence.
The third chapter, Invasion, Resistance, and Colonization,
1830--1871, discusses the French conquest through 1871, stressing
the resistance of such new men as Emir Abd el--Kader whose state,
for a while, dominated the western Algerian Tell, and the equally
tenacious resistance of such traditional rulers as Ahmed Bey of
Constantine. European settlement that began almost as an
afterthought following the capitulation of Algiers developed, early
on, a dynamic of its own. The chapter ends with an account of the
French suppression of the Kabyle rebellion of 1871, an event that
is conventionally taken as marking the end of primary resistance in
the Algerian Tell and the northern Sahara, the end of French
military rule (the so--called regime du sabre) in this part of
Algeria, and the establishment of settle
This same chapter also includes a brief presentation of the
author's view of nation--building as a contrast between
segmentation and integration (p. 2), the progression from one to
the other being particularly distorted and delayed in the cases of
settler colonies. (For Ruedy, it is an indisputable fact that
Algeria was a French settler colony of the most exploitive type
even though the French authorities never designated Algeria as a
colony in the formal legal sense nor administered it as such,
declaring it, instead, an integral part of France by decree of
March 4, 1848.) Chapter 2, Ottoman Algeria and Its Legacy,
describes the rise and fall of the Regency of Algiers (151--1830).
Ruedy's detailed presentation of the political, social, and
economic history of this entity makes a strong argument that,
decentralized though it was, the Regency, by 1830, had evolved into
a true state. Ruedy speculates that it might have become a nation
had its development not been cut short by the French
"invasion."
Thus John Ruedy has made a serious effort to update his book. He
has revised chapter 8, The Bendjedid Years--Readjustment and
Crisis, to account for the social and economic crisis, the failed
liberal reforms of the 1979--92 period, and the assumption of power
by the military--dominated Haut Comite de Securite, following the
forced resignation of President Chadli Bendjedid on January 11,
1992. Ruedy has added a ninth chapter, Insurgency and the Pursuit
of Democracy, which chronicles the responses of a succession of
military--dominated governments to the Islamist threat and
describes the major political, social, and economic developments in
Algeria through the April 2004 re--election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika
as president of the Algerian Republic. Ruedy has also revised the
bibliographical essay and the bibliography which conclude the book.
Like the first edition, the second continues to have particular
significance for Anglophone readers in a field that is still
dominated by Frenc
A collateral result of the post-September 11, American-driven war
onterrorism and military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq has
been a growinginterest among Americans and others in the history of
French involvement in NorthAfrica, particularly the Algerian War of
Independence. Alistair Horne's 1977 studyof this war, A Savage War
of Peace, with a revised preface by the author evokingAfghanistan
and Iraq, has just recently been reprinted (2006). Gillo
Pontecorvo's1965 film, The Battle of Algiers has been made widely
available on DVD. Both arerequired reading and viewing for U.S.
military and civilian officials involved withAfghanistan and Iraq.
The publication of the present work, thesecond edition of Modern
Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation(originally
published in 1992) appears to be directed at a similar
readership(despite the author's more modest claims); but it also
responds specifically to agrowing concern about the post, 1992
Islamist insurgency in Algeria. F
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