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Algeria
The Land and Colonizers
Even before the decision was made to annex Algeria, major changes
had taken place. In a bargain-hunting frenzy to take over or buy
at low prices all manner of property--homes, shops, farms and
factories--Europeans poured into Algiers after it fell. French
authorities took possession of the beylik lands, from
which Ottoman officials had derived income. Over time, as pressures
increased to obtain more land for settlement by Europeans, the
state seized more categories of land, particularly that used by
tribes, religious foundations, and villages.
Soon after the conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician Bertrand
Clauzel and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land
and, despite official discouragement, to subsidize its settlement
by European farmers, triggering a land rush. Clauzel recognized
the farming potential of the Mitidja Plain and envisioned the
production there of cotton on a large scale. As governor general
(1835-36), he used his office to make private investments in land
and encouraged army officers and bureaucrats in his administration
to do the same. This development created a vested interest among
government officials in greater French involvement in Algeria.
Commercial interests with influence in the government also began
to recognize the prospects for profitable land speculation in
expanding the French zone of occupation. They created large agricultural
tracts, built factories and businesses, and exploited cheap local
labor.
Called colons (colonists) or, more popularly, pieds noirs
(literally, black feet), the European settlers were largely of
peasant farmer or working-class origin from the poor southern
areas of Italy, Spain, and France. Others were criminal and political
deportees from France, transported under sentence in large numbers
to Algeria. In the 1840s and 1850s, to encourage settlement in
rural areas official policy was to offer grants of land for a
fee and a promise that improvements would be made. A distinction
soon developed between the grands colons (great colonists)
at one end of the scale, often self-made men who had accumulated
large estates or built successful businesses, and the petits
blancs (little whites), smallholders and workers at the other
end, whose lot was often not much better than that of their Muslim
counterparts. According to historian John Ruedy, although by 1848
only 15,000 of the 109,000 European settlers were in rural areas,
"by systematically expropriating both pastoralists and farmers,
rural colonization was the most important single factor in the
destructuring of traditional society."
Data as of December 1993
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