Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

1905-1914

very little. As Muslims they had separate representation on local

councils as well as in the Conseil Superieur and the Delegations

Financieres (one Muslim

delegation

to two French), but always in

the minority. They were ruled by French mayors and administra-

tors,

with the functions of the

caid(qa'id,

the Muslim district

chief,

reduced to a minimum. French judges and juries handled even

matters of Muslim law, severely restricting the competence of the

cadi (qadi) the Muslim judge. In 1902 the burden of the

code

rindigenat,

penal regulations directed solely at the Muslim popula-

tion, was aggravated by the creation of

tribunaux repressifs

to deal

with the many offences regarded as signs of insubordination and

rebellion. Fiscally, Muslims were liable to the

impots

arabes,

the

traditional Islamic taxes on crops, livestock and so on, greatly

increased by irregular assessment and additional levies. These

impots

were doubled by taxes payable to the commune, such as

labour services or money in lieu, and by indirect taxes on goods

entering each commune as well as the country. The burden fell

heavily on the poor, who were the great majority. It was

exacerbated by the fact that while Muslims accounted for 46 per

cent of the total revenue but only 36 per cent of the national

income, the taxes they paid were spent by the Europeans almost

wholly for the benefit of Europeans, as in the construction of all

the well-laid-out French towns and villages. This transference of

resources from one community to another was only one aspect

of the systematic creation of

modern European economy at the

expense of the traditional sector.

By the First World War, land laws for public and private

property had enabled the French to appropriate about half of the

total area of Algeria north of the Sahara. The bulk of this land

belonged to the state or the communes, and consisted of forest

and waste. The rest, about a tenth of the area north of the Sahara,

was arable land belonging to European settlers. As arable land,

however, it accounted for no less than two-fifths of the arable area

of this mountainous country bordering on desert. Its loss,

together with that of the forests and wastes belonging to the state,

meant the end of the traditional system of extensive cultivation

and grazing for the majority of the Muslim population. Deprived

of good agricultural land and of much former pasture, people

turned to grazing ground for their crops, while the number of

271

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE

MAGHRIB

animals in their possession fell. This exploitation of marginal land

to obtain essential grain brought about its rapid deterioration. A

concentration of the population on smaller and smaller areas was

followed by a dispersal as the means of livelihood failed. Some

became destitute scavengers, others went out for work. European

properties, increasingly capitalised, offered

less

and less permanent

employment to labourers or tenants, requiring mainly seasonal

labour for the harvest. Wages were low, and by the first decade

of the century migration to France for industrial work had begun.

Meanwhile there was

drift into regions around the big Algerian

cities,

and into the cities themselves, where the immigrants settled

to form a new population. They found little work, for traditional

crafts and occupations survived with difficulty, and the European

sector had little to offer apart from housework for women.

Regular crime and frequent famine indicated a situation all the

more desperate as the population continued, despite everything,

to increase.

There were few survivals from the past. The great families of

Turkish Algeria, still prominent in 1870, had lost wealth, power

and status under the Third Republic. Their dwindling remnants,

however, still formed a group of Muslim landlords. These were

reinforced by a new generation of Muslims who had learned to

take advantage of the opportunities for acquiring property

provided by the French. Land in Muslim ownership which was

francise or registered under French law was not far short of the

amount of land owned by Europeans. While many of the older

estates, still running to hundreds of hectares, were farmed by poor

sharecroppers in the traditional manner, others were more

modern. Their owners frequently held official positions, charged

by the French to keep order, collect taxes, or serve as Muslim

representatives on local councils. Known as the Beni Oui Oui as

a result of their compliance with French demands, their positions

made them influential in their communities, and sometimes rich.

At Tolga, on the northern edge of the Sahara, an English traveller

reported that an artesian well had been sunk. A man with a

divining rod had found the water, and offered to sell the secret

for 60,000 francs. The cadi had the money and a certain amount

of scientific knowledge; he had paid, and caused the well to be

dug. Then he had given half the water to the village in return for

a large tract of land, which he was developing and planting. The

272

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

1905-1914

water was turned alternately upon his land and that of the village.

Equally enterprising were marabouts or holy men, moneylenders

whose operations were both essential and disastrous for the

peasantry, professional people who had managed to acquire a

French education, and a class of shopkeepers and businessmen

who ensured the distribution of the manufactures on which the

population had come to rely.

The modern economy to which such people belonged despite

their inferior status was less than modern in the high proportion

of the employment accounted for by government and agriculture

and in the correspondingly feeble share of industry. The peasant

way of life of the first French settlers had nevertheless been

transformed by the investment in cash-crops in the last quarter

of the nineteenth century. By 1905 the vine was well established,

and wheat-growing by the dry-farming methods of North America

was beginning. Cultivation of this kind needed capital, and the

process was already far advanced by which smallholders were

obliged to sell out; properties grew in size, and were progressively

acquired by companies ultimately owned by the great French

banks.

As a result, the rural European population remained static

at little more than 200,000, while the urban population continued

to grow. Resentment at the progress of capitalism had shown itself

at the time of the Dreyfus affair in hostility to the Algerian Jews

naturalised as French citizens, who were blamed for their modest

success in government employment and commerce. The riots of

1897 had marked the conversion of the settlers from left-wing

republicans to right-wing radicals suspicious of the liberalism of

the metropolis. Their hold upon the government of Algeria, and

the permanent repression of the Muslim population, seemed their

only guarantee of survival in an economy dependent upon credit

for the production and export of primary products. The Delega-

tions Financieres, which gave the European population effective

control over an Algerian budget, were vital to its calculations.

The settlers were aided by the fact that they were represented,

as the Muslims were not, by three senators and six deputies in the

French parliament. These formed

powerful group led by Eugene

Etienne of Oran, vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies and

a prominent supporter of world-wide French imperialism. Down

to 1914 they were able to resist the attempts of men like Abel

C. F. and L. Grant, 'Twixt sand and

sea

(London, n.d. [1912]), 404-5.

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE

MAGHRIB

Ferry, Albin Rozet and Paul Bourde to introduce legislation of

a kind to abolish the distinction between the two communities

in Algeria on the grounds of religion, and to assimilate the Muslim

population to the French, administratively,

fiscally

and electorally.

Such proposals were logical for a country which formed part of

metropolitan France, but were totally rejected by the settlers on

the grounds of national security and their own dignity. In 1911

a celebrated incident, the mass emigration of eight hundred

Muslims from Tlemcen to Syria, led to a public enquiry which

highlighted the disagreement. The committee of enquiry which

investigated the reason for this apparent rejection of French rule

produced a list of Muslim grievances condemning every aspect

of French rule in Algeria. The settler deputies, on the other hand,

ascribed the affair to Turkish intrigue. It confirmed them in their

belief that the insurrection of a fanatical race was still a danger

to be guarded against with the utmost severity. Putting the blame

for Muslim discontent upon that severity, the reformers for their

part used the incident to show why all Muslim Algerians might

be expected to resent their treatment, rather than to explain why

these particular people had taken this particular action.

As the settlers were quick to point out, however, a basic

weakness of the case for liberal reform was the lack of Muslim

support. It was favoured by the so-called Young Algerians, those

younger Muslims who had managed, despite the inadequate

provision of the regime for the education of the Muslim population,

to obtain a French schooling and professional qualifications.

Their political demands were dismissed by the settlers as the

agitation of people who really wanted jobs they could not get.

Certainly, although they refused to separate themselves from their

community by discarding Islamic law for French citizenship, as

evolues

they were at a distance from the bulk of the Muslim

population. The mass of the people was inarticulate except in

songs and stories which preserved the memory of resistance to

the French while commenting on a hard present, sometimes

looking for the coming of the Mahdi, 'the Rightly-Guided One',

sent by God to give the victory to the faithful. The

better-off,

especially those who depended on the French for jobs and

grudging toleration, found their advantage in the existing separa-

tion of the two communities, which they looked to the French

to maintain. More principled opposition to a campaign which

274

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

1905-1914'

linked equal rights to common citizenship in a European

democracy came from the Vieux Turbans, the members of learned

and respectable urban families from which came the

oulemas

('ulama'), the traditional scholars. Those who held office in the

mosques and the judiciary showed little independence of the

French who appointed them. But insofar as there was a single

explanation of the exodus from Tlemcen, it was the proposal to

introduce conscription for the Muslim population, favoured by

the reformers as a step towards equality. Beyond the narrow issue

of service in an army which might go to war with the Ottoman

empire was the appeal of the doctrines of Islamic reform and

regeneration current in the Middle East.

Tunisia

The Tunisian Protectorate had been conceived in

generous spirit

as an alternative to the oppressive regime of Algeria. It was

governed in accordance with the recently published statutes of

France Outremer as a separate country with its own nationality

and native administration under French supervision. The bey, his

ministers and his caids (district governors) acted on the advice of

the resident minister and his staff of district officers, the

controkurs

civils, members of a special service with its own recruitment,

training and career structure. The resident minister, in turn, was

responsible not to the colonial ministry but to that for foreign

affairs. In practice, however, the Tunisians submitted to French

dictation. To incorporate the country firmly into the French

empire, the policy was to encourage French investment, but above

all,

as in Algeria, French settlement on the land. French land laws

had therefore defined landownership in a European sense. Their

progressive application to about 13,000 sq.km of cultivable land

by 1928 was largely at the expense of the rights of native

occupants, whether individuals or groups, who either remained

precariously or were driven off. French purchases of land thus

made available had at first been speculative; before 1900, more

than

5,000

sq.km were acquired by individuals and companies, but

much less was actually developed. To promote settlement, the

state had turned to official colonisation, allocating to European

colonists land from the state domain and from the so-called public

habous,

properties dedicated under Muslim law to the maintenance

275

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE MAGHRIB

of charitable foundations, and administered for this purpose by

the state. By 1914 such colonisation had spread over some 2,500

sq.km, mainly in the cereal-growing districts of the north. By that

time the total land under European control was approaching the

maximum of about 9,000 sq.km, more than a fifth of the cultivable

area. It was predominantly in French hands, with roughly 15 per

cent belonging to Italian proprietors, mostly small fruit-farmers

in the north-east.

As in Algeria, French farmers were soon in difficulty, and most

of those provided with land by the state moved away to the towns.

However, European agriculture was assisted by the railway

system centred on Tunis, running eastwards into Algeria and

southwards from Bizerta to Sfax and eventually Gabes. Branch

lines brought the minerals of the north to Bizerta and Tunis, and

the phosphates of the south to Sfax and Sousse. These, especially

Tunis and Sfax, were the principal ports, with new docks. The

development of mining was rapid in the first two decades of the

century; Tunisia caught up with the Algerian production of about

a million tons of iron ore a year, and greatly exceeded her

neighbour in the production of phosphates. With lead and zinc

in addition, Tunisia made a significant contribution to the world

supply of these minerals. Cereals, wine and olive oil were the main

agricultural exports. From a negligible quantity in international

trade at the beginning of the French occupation in 1881, the

country had become a fairly important trading partner of France,

with whom she enjoyed a favourable customs arrangement.

The benefits were felt for the most part by the Europeans, a

small community at the beginning of the century of about 75,000

Italians, 25,000 French and 10,000 Maltese. The number of

Italians in Tunisia had worried the French since before the

protectorate, and continued to do so as the various construction

programmes of the regime attracted a workforce from Sicily and

southern Italy in addition to the existing numbers of small

proprietors. By 1911 there were almost 90,000 Italians, but

immigration from Algeria, Corsica and the south of France had

brought the number of French to about 45,000. Their nationality

as citizens of the ruling power gave them a privileged position

as the chosen agents of French policy. Although expatriate, they

were politically represented in the Conference Consultative, a

body created out of the French chamber of commerce to advise

the resident minister on behalf of the French community.

276

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

1905-1914

Nationality, rather than religion, distinguished them equally

from the native population of more than a million Muslims and

some 50,000 Jews. A separate Tunisian section added to the

Conference Consultative commented separately on the few subjects

it was invited to discuss. Tunisian nationals suffered in the same

way as the Muslims of Algeria from the loss of land, and more

generally from the growth of

modern economy. This devalued

traditional occupations, while offering insufficient opportunities

for employment in European agriculture and industry. Never-

theless, in the oases dates became a commercial crop in native

hands.

More important were olives, especially in the Sahel and

around Sfax. Europeans who acquired the land developed the

plantations by

mugb~arasa

or bail

complant,

form of sharecropping

by which the Tunisian cultivator who planted and tended the trees

until maturity eventually received half the plantation, and often

continued to look after and divide the product of the remainder

with the landowner. The practice was taken up by Tunisian

landlords, some of whom grew rich. In general, the possession

of land registered

(Jmmatricule)

under French law helped the old

aristocracy to survive. The former ruling families were joined in

government service and the professions by the traditional

bourgeoisie of

scholars,

merchants and craftsmen. By 1914a new

generation of those with a European education had begun to take

over. Although largely drawn from established families, it

included some from very humble backgrounds. European

education and training was becoming a way for the son of

poor

man to do well.

In the decade before the First World War, the French presence

led to conflict as much between Tunisians as between Tunisians

and French. In Algeria, virtually the entire process of modernisa-

tion had been the work of the French, but in Tunisia, as in Egypt,

modernisation was already well advanced when the French took

control. A constitution or

dustur

had been in force from 1861 to

1864;

in the 1870s, Prime Minister Khayr al-Din (Kheireddine)

had endeavoured to establish an efficient administration in accord-

ance with the principles of Islam. Khayr al-Din had enlisted the

services, not of the conservative Malikite

'ultima'

of Tunis, but

of the great Hanafite 'ulama' of Turkish origin more closely

identified with the government of the beys, and the humbler

Malikite 'ulama' of provincial origin who needed the employment

offered by an expanding administration. To produce the 'ulama'

Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008

THE

MAGHRIB

he required, he had modernised the teaching of the Islamic

sciences at the Zitouna (Zaytuna) Mosque school, and founded

the Sadiki (Sadiqi) College to provide a European-type education

within the framework of Islam.

For twenty years after their

occupation of the country in 1881, the French had endeavoured,

with some success, to ally with the more progressive

'ulama"

and

the graduates of the Sadiki College. In 1896 they encouraged the

foundation of the Khaldounia, an educational society named after

the great historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun, which under the

presidency of the Sadiki graduate Bechir Sfar offered to students

of the Zitouna the opportunity to broaden their studies beyond

the limits of the traditional Islamic curriculum. But the

'ultima"

were eventually deterred by this French enthusiasm for westernisa-

tion, which seemed to them to threaten the Zitouna

itself.

In a

quarrel over education, they found themselves opposed not only

to Bechir Sfar and his colleagues; their hostility extended to the

Salafiyya, the movement for Islamic reform. The Salafiyya,

inspired by the Egyptian Muhammad 'Abduh, who visited

Tunisia in 1903, aimed at the revival of Islam and Islamic society

by the purging away of the traditional interpretations of the Faith

which obscured the religion of the Prophet and prevented the

triumph of the community in the modern world. This aim was

profoundly Islamic, but the Tunisian

'ulame?

were repelled by

pronouncements on the Koran by the principal Tunisian spokes-

man of the Salafiyya, Shaykh Taalbi (al-Tha'alibi), which they

considered blasphemous. What began as a quarrel with an

individual rather than a doctrine, however, left them with no

alternative to Europeanism but conservative traditionalism. From

1905 their attitude was welcomed by the French, who turned away

from their earlier encouragement of modernism as Tunisian

evolues

became increasingly critical of the protectorate. By 1914 the

'ularnc?

had come paradoxically to accept a tacit alliance with the

authorities against their own more radical countrymen.

The break between the French and the

evolues

occurred in the

years after 1900 over the political representation of the settlers in

the country, and the introduction of the programme of official

colonisation. The organisation of the

evolues"

opposition began in

1905 with the foundation of the Societe des Anciens Eleves de

Sadiki, grouping the graduates of the school in an association led

G. S. van Krieken,

Khayr al-Din

el la

Tunisie

{iSjo-iSSt) (Leiden, 1976), 186-98.

278

1905-1914

by the lawyer Ali Bach Hamba, independent of the administration.

In 1906 Bechir Sfar publicly criticised French policy, to the

indignation of the French press. In 1907 he and Ali Bach Hamba

created a political group, the Young Tunisians, with a French-

language weekly, Le

Tunisien,

to speak for the interests of their

countrymen. Unlike the Young Algerians, who may have taken

the name from them as they had probably taken it from the Young

Turks,

the Young Tunisians thought not in terms of assimilation

to the French, but in terms of equality with them as people in their

own right. The basis of their programme was the moderate

demand for rights in accordance with the terms of the protectorate,

but their approach was more radical. In 1909 they were joined by

Shaykh Taalbi, and the movement acquired a religious as well as

a constitutional character, with an Arabic as well as a French

edition of Le

Tunisien.

In the absence of a Khayr al-Din to found

a modern state on the basis of Islamic law, the Salafiyya as

represented by Taalbi called first and foremost for an inner change

of heart in preparation for the future. Politically, however, it could

hardly avoid being anti-colonial, opposed to the principle of

European rule. The association of Taalbi with the Young

Tunisians was an important step in the formation of a Tunisian

nationalist movement.

The popular appeal of the new party was demonstrated in 1911,

when it protested against the Italian invasion of Libya. In

November 1911 the excitement was focused at Tunis by a French

proposal to bring the Djellaz cemetery under the French law of

property. A riot, quelled by troops, led to the proclamation of

a state of siege. When in February 1912 an Italian tram-driver

knocked down and killed a child, the trams were boycotted, and

Tunisian employees of the company claimed equal pay with the

Italian personnel. The government declared there had been a

political plot and exiled, among others, Ali Bach Hamba and

Taalbi. This combination, in the capital, of political agitation,

popular protest and workers' demands

was

the

first

clear manifesta-

tion of a Tunisian national consciousness. As the final stage of

the colonial conquest of North Africa commenced, the disturb-

ances coincided, significantly, with the beginnings of revolt

against British rule in Egypt.

279

THE

MAGHRIB

Morocco

Morocco had long been regarded by the French in the same

light as Tunisia, as a natural extension of their empire in North

Africa. For many years, however, international rivalry had

prevented any agreement over the future of the country. Down

to 1904 the French had concentrated upon a favourable delimit-

ation of the border with Algeria. The Moroccan oasis of Figuig

was almost encircled. Tuat, whose inhabitants traditionally owed

a nominal allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco, was annexed in

1900.

Thereafter, under the command of Lyautey, the French

army moved westwards across the desert towards the Anti-Atlas,

successfully persuading tribesmen of the northern Sahara who

thought of themselves as subjects of the sultan to submit to

incorporation into Algeria. The conclusion of the Entente Cordiale

in 1904 enabled the French foreign minister, Delcasse, to prepare

for something much more important, the eventual creation of a

Moroccan protectorate with the acquiescence of Britain.

By common consent in Europe, Morocco was barbarously

backward, a state whose weakness would threaten international

peace until the powers could agree upon a form of control. A great

deal of this weakness was attributable to European infiltration,

which had undermined the sultan's authority and disrupted the

traditional economy. Moroccans who became European proteges

in and around the main ports were immune from the sultan's

jurisdiction. The import of European commodities, in excess of

what could be paid for by the export of grain, wool and dates,

drained the country of its silver, and led to severe inflation. While

the sultan attempted, with insufficient resources, to modernise the

army, modern rifles found their way to the tribes. Poverty,

insecurity and rebellion were the result. From 1900 the situation

became acute. The attempt of young Sultan 'Abd al-'Aziz to

introduce a single new tax, the

tertib

(tartib),

in place of traditional

dues without any kind of preparation deprived the government

of its basic revenue for at least two years. The extravagance and

corruption of the court made foreign loans all the more necessary.

In 1904 a French loan was made under an agreement which

created a Controle de la Dette, in charge of the French official

Henri Regnault, to supervise the customs and ensure that 60 per

cent of their revenue was allocated to repayment. Delcasse had

280