War in the Mountains

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Macmaster
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Rebel Governance ◽  
Algerian War Of Independence ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Peasant Community ◽  
High Level ◽  
Client Relations

The role of the peasantry during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) has been long neglected by historians, in part because they have been viewed as a ‘primitive’ mass devoid of political consciousness. This ground-breaking social history challenges this conventional understanding by tracing the ability of the peasant community to sustain an autonomous political culture through family, clan, and village assemblies (djemâa), organizations that were eventually harnessed by emerging guerrilla forces. The long-established system of indirect rule by which the colonial state controlled and policed the vast mountainous interior through an ‘intelligence state’ began to break down after the 1920s as the djemâas formed a pole of opposition to the patron-client relations of the rural élites. Clandestine urban-rural networks emerged that prepared the way for armed resistance and a system of rebel governance. The anthropologist Jean Servier, recognizing the dynamics of the peasant community, in 1957 masterminded a major counterinsurgency experiment, Opération Pilote, that sought to defeat the guerilla forces by constructing a parallel ‘hearts and minds’ strategy. The army, unable to implement a programme of ‘pacification’ of dispersed mountain populations, reversed its policy by the forced evacuation of the peasants into regroupement camps. Contrary to the accepted historical analysis of Pierre Bourdieu and others that rural society was massively uprooted and dislocated, the peasantry continued to demonstrate a high level of social cohesion and resistance based on powerful family and kin networks.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Neil Macmaster
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Peasant Community ◽  
Client Relations ◽  
The Village ◽  
Organized Resistance

A key aspect of the colonial state was a geo-political dualism of space in which settlers occupied the rich agricultural plain and urban centres while Algerian peasants inhabited the communes mixtes, the forests and mountains of the interior. After the First World War the caids, the traditional élites that governed the peasants through indirect rule and patron-client relations, entered a crisis of legitimacy and were challenged by communist and nationalist movements. Marxists and historians have tended to perceive the peasants as lacking in political consciousness, incapable of organized resistance, but a new social history, by restoring agency to the lowest strata of the colonized, demonstrates that they assumed a key role in the long-term move towards insurrection. Contrary to the conventional interpretation of rural revolution as a movement initiated by a vanguard party of urban militants, the nationalists adapted to, and built upon, the traditional social and political structures of the peasant community, including the village assemblies. The colonial state largely failed in its attempts to cut the root cause of rebellion through economic modernization of the peasant economy. After 1956 the French launched Opération Pilote, a massive counterinsurgent experiment that deployed anthropology and psychological warfare, but signally failed to contain an insurrection that was embedded within the family, kin, and associational structures of rural society.

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes: The Algerian War of Independence in Retrospect

1994 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brett
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
National Society ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
North African ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Algerian War Of Independence ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Writers ◽  
High Level

The English-language literature on Algeria generated by the Algerian war of independence and continuing down to the present forms an intellectual as well as linguistic tradition apart from the much more voluminous literature in French. Despite the involvement of French and North African writers who have published in English, it is largely the creation of outsiders looking at the country from British and North American points of view, according to current fashions. The war of independence remains central to its concerns as the great transformer of a colonial into a national society, however that transformation is to be understood. The qualified approval of the nationalist cause by Alistair Horne contrasts sharply with Elie Kedourie's denunciation. Most judgements have been based on the outcome, the political, social and economic performance of the regime, considered as good or bad. Since the death of Boumedienne in 1978, they have tended to be unfavourable. Their largely secular analyses, however, have been called in question since 1988 by the rise of political Islam, which has called for a reappraisal of the whole subject of the war and its consequences. Such a reappraisal is still in the future. Meanwhile Ernest Gellner, in dispute with Edward Said over the question of Orientalism, has raised the matter of the role of Islam in the history of Algeria to a high level of generalization, at which the war itself may, paradoxically, return to the forefront of international scholarly concern.

Explaining “How... Politics Actually Work”: The German Historian Wolfgang Reinhard, the Theory of Verflechtungen and Micropolitics

2021 ◽  
pp. 118-123
Author(s):  
Alice Plate ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Relationship Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Level ◽  
Informal Relations ◽  
Client Relations ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

The conceptualization of the role of informal relationships, including patron-client relations, in the development of Early Modern state institutions in modern European historiography is usually associated with the names of R. Munier, S. Kettering and A. Maczak, whose works have long since become classics. Less well known in this context is the Verflechtungstheorie (lit. theory of entanglement), developed in the 1970s by the Freiburg historian W. Reinhard. The aim of this article is to examine the Verflechtungstheorie in historical perspective and its theoretical foundations, as well as the history of its reception in the context of the development of social history in Germany. In doing so, the author explains the reasons why Reinhard's approach occurred less influential in comparison with the works of the historians mentioned above. The article is based on a detailed study of Reinhard's works dedicated to the Verflechtungstheorie (since the 1990s micropolitics), starting from his 1979 monograph Freunde und Kreaturen (“Friends and Creatures”) and ending with the most recent publications in the 2010s. The beginning of the article is devoted to the formation of the conceptual apparatus of Reinhard's theory. He understands the term Verflechtungen as the result and foundation of social interaction based on four relationship types - kinship, compatriot, friendship and patronage, playing, according to Reinhard, a key role in premodern times. The theoretical basis of Reinhard's explanatory model is formed by the sociometry of the American sociologist J. L. Moreno, and Reinhard viewed his concept of elite relations as a kind of network analysis. Further on the article moves on analyzing the reception problem of the presented theory. According to Reinhard, the Verflechtungstheorie experienced reception difficulties within historical scholarship mostly for being technically ahead of its time. However, as the article shows, the main reason was that the concept failed to meet the zeitgeist prevailing in postwar German historiography. While social history developing under the influence of the Bielefeld school focused on the study of microhistorical subjects, Reinhards's approach was mainly a political one. Abandoning the term Verflechtungen in the mid-1990s and replacing it with the term micropolitics, Reinhard did not solve the problem. This change was a merely linguistic one, and Reinhard continued to argue that informal relations mark a negotiable stage, which is characteristic for societies with a high level of mobility and an underdeveloped statehood. In conclusion, the article shows that the results of Reinhard's scholarly work should not be considered a failure. The main merit is its continuity: some of Reinhard's former students proved that informal relationships are by no means a parasitic atavism associated solely with corruption.

Memories of a French Migration Crisis

2018 ◽  
pp. 56-72
Author(s):  
Laura Jeanne Sims
Keyword(s):  
Algerian War ◽  
African Origin ◽  
North African ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Algerian War Of Independence ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
North African Origin

This chapter examines how the French state created a crisis through its management of the arrival and installation of the Harkis in 1962. The Harkis, Algerians of North African origin who supported the French army during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), faced reprisal violence in Algeria at the end of the war and many were forced to migrate with their families to France. In response, French officials attempted to prevent the Harkis from escaping to France and placed some of those who succeeded in internment camps. Comparing the treatment of the Harkis with that of the Pieds-Noirs, the descendants of European settlers in Algeria who likewise fled to France in 1962, highlights the structural racism underlying French perceptions of and reactions to Harki migration. This chapter also explores the ways in which second-generation Harkis have constructed collective memories of the crisis and their attempts to hold the state responsible for its actions.

The Revival of Quantification: Reflections on Old New Histories

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Steven Ruggles
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second Wave

AbstractQuantitative historical analysis in the United States surged in three distinct waves. The first quantitative wave occurred as part of the “New History” that blossomed in the early twentieth century and disappeared in the 1940s and 1950s with the rise of consensus history. The second wave thrived from the 1960s to the 1980s during the ascendance of the New Economic History, the New Political History, and the New Social History, and died out during the “cultural turn” of the late twentieth century. The third wave of historical quantification—which I call the revival of quantification—emerged in the second decade of the twenty-first century and is still underway. I describe characteristics of each wave and discuss the historiographical context of the ebb and flow of quantification in history.

Different Approaches to Economic and Social Changes: New Research Issues, Sources and Results

2022 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Working Group ◽  
Hungarian Academy ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional Committee ◽  
New Research ◽  
High Level ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

This series was launched in 2021 by the Working Group of Economic and Social History of the Pécs Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to present research conducted within its framework. The foreign language edition is meant to be a contribution to the internationalization of research made in Hungary. The Working Group has made every effort since the publication of the first two volumes to allow its members, and also their Ph.D. students, to publish their findings more easily and in larger volume, providing at the same time an opportunity for other professionals in the region of South Transdanubia to publish their researches. The majority of the studies in this book, similarly to the first volume of the series, are about the history of the region, but some of the papers go beyond this theme. The diversity of the papers created an inspiring environment for the authors, which in turn has greatly stimulated the already existing professional cooperation among them. Both the editors and the authors find it very important to popularise the economic and social history of the region as broadly as possible, in line with the ambitions of the Pécs Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In addition, this book also promotes the cooperation among generations of researchers; it is not only the young that enjoy the support of their senior colleagues but the ideas and momentum of the younger generation also keep the activity of the Working Group at a high level. It is due to the well-functioning generational discussions, among other things, that several young researchers earned their Ph.D. degree in 2021. The framework of the studies in the broader sense is the economic and social history of Hungary and Europe in the 18th – 20th centuries. The papers in this volume also provide information about the development and current phases of the different pieces of research. Several papers are sequels to publications released in 2021 from a chronological or thematic aspect, however the book contains brand new topics as well. Great significance is attributed to the fact that several renowned international members of the research network of the Working Group were also persuaded to publish. The results of some ongoing Ph.D. research are also presented. The high number of young authors is a proof that the professional interest in economic and social history is not decreasing at all. We do hope that this book will contribute to the maintenance of this trend.

6. Hybridity

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Robert J. C. Young
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
American Music ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
African American Music ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Algerian War Of Independence ◽  
The Us

‘Hybridity’ explains that cultural hybridity can be seen as an expansion of W. E. B. Du Bois’ concept of ‘double consciousness’: a painful incompatibility between how people see themselves and how society sees them only in terms of their race. Nevertheless, this has also formed the basis of the extraordinary cultural creativity of African-Americans. Drawing on cultural memory of their African roots, African-Americans have adapted and transformed aspects of European culture encountered in the US, particularly noticeable in the realm of African-American music. A comparable development of a hybridized culture is considered by tracing the emergence of raï music in 1970s Algeria, following the traumatic experiences of the Algerian War of Independence.

Market dominance and endogenous decline: the contribution of historical analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-183
Author(s):  
Bas van Bavel
Keyword(s):  
Financial Markets ◽  
Social History ◽  
Feedback Loop ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Factor Markets ◽  
Political Leverage ◽  
Endogenous Process

AbstractThe advances in economic and social history over the past years enabled me to empirically test assumptions about the long-run development of markets. The review by Geoff Hodgson of the resulting book, The Invisible Hand?, is lucid but incomplete. I argue that the rise to dominance of factor markets, followed by that of financial markets, took place already in several early cases, and that all market economies, through an endogenous process, saw the accumulation of wealth and, next, the translation of this wealth into political leverage, creating a feedback loop with negative outcomes which is very hard to break.

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