Algeria 1962. A popular history
by Malika Rahal
The Discovery, 424 p., 25 €
Algeria 1962. The word “revolution” best sums up this pivotal year, marked by the Evian accords, the self-determination referendum, the proclamation of independence, the elections to the Algerian National Assembly and the establishment of the Algerian National Assembly. first government of Ahmed Ben Bella.
“The overthrow of the old order goes beyond state sovereignty to fundamentally disrupt private property and modes of production, employment and housing, places of life and the way of living”, underlines Malika Rahal, at the end of her fascinating investigation. The historian focuses on “the history of people”, found in “The voices that we rarely hear, that of people from modest backgrounds, illiterate people, women and, more generally, those emerging from colonial rule in 1962”.
Seen from below, this “revolution” takes place in a mixture of festive effervescence, collective energy and violence. At the end of the war, the bodies are counted. The question of the place of the French in independent Algeria crystallizes around the passage of the law on nationality, thousands of prisoners are released, combatants are demobilized, families are looking for their missing.
The stolen blood
1962 is also the apocalyptic atmosphere that accompanies the end of a world for the colonial population, the collapse that feeds the rumor of stolen blood. According to this unfounded rumor, explains the American consul William Porter in a report, “Europeans” are removed and emptied of their blood by “Muslims” to provide transfusions for wounded Muslims from the bombings. Heir to the “blood legends” of Christian anti-Semitism, this storytelling says a lot regarding the colonial unconscious: the ancestral fear of riot and massacre, demographic anxiety and the fear of racial mixing.
On the other hand, for the colonized population, 1962 means the end of a long wait, “The time of the possible”. The unexpected departure of the French from Algeria, in such large numbers, opens up unexpected possibilities for rehousing, appropriation of land and jobs, unprecedented opportunities for social advancement and career advancement. On the territory liberated by the cease-fire of March 19, 1962, an anthill country is moving in all directions. Spatial segregation is accentuated until the exodus of Europeans triggers chain moves. Neighborhoods or localities change their identity, an urban revolution is taking place in the upheaval of the social order.
In Oran, the height of violence
In a richly documented chapter, Malika Rahal situates the massacre of July 5 in Oran, in the larger context of end-of-war violence in this political and demographic bastion of French Algeria. The testimonies of residents collected by historians Fouad Soufi and Miloud Karim Rouina, reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the American consul, the diary of Father Michel de Laparre, a Catholic priest very French Algeria, responsible of patronage in the Saint-Eugène district, redraw the landscape of a city at war.
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The historian returns to the scene with Farouk Mohammed Brahim, former resident of the – rather European – district of Saint-Antoine, and Mohammed Boudoumi, a native of the Muslim quarter of El-Hamri (Lamur). The OAS snipers, the forgotten OAS attack of February 28, 1962, the self-defense of Muslim neighborhoods and the multiplicity of authorities are part of a complex mechanism of rising violence, resulting in “Paroxysm” July 5. If we trust Fouad Soufi’s count, “The strongest we have”, writes Malika Rahal, “The explosion of vengeful violence would have made more ‘Muslim’ victims than ‘European’ victims”.
Narrative overbid
Far from psychosis, fantasy and denial, the forgotten massacre of July 5, a lasting object of “Narrative bidding”, is inscribed, like the whole year 1962, in the long time of a history of dispossession and reappropriation. And in the unresolved fragments of the past, still active in the present.
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