Algeria

“ Algeria is the safety-valve by which the superfluous steam of the national character is in some measure let off; it affords a point de mire for the people, occupation for the army, a subject of discussion for the newspapers. Doubtless a large section of the French nation, or at least of its more sensible and thinking classes, would gladly witness the abandonment of a colony which has already cost more than there is any probability of its yielding for years to come—more, perhaps, than it ever will yield, either in direct or indirect advantages. ”

“ It was Italy which objected to a French occupation of Tunis. Algeria has never been officially a French “colony.” It is in many respects administered as an integral portion of French territory, the governor-general, as agent of the central power, exercising wide jurisdiction. Although the Europeans in Algeria are less than a seventh of the population, and although the French are actually a minority of the European inhabitants—Spaniards prevailing in the west, Italians and Maltese in the east—the three departments of Constantine, Algiers and Oran are administered like three French departments. ”

“ Algeria, “la belle Algérie” as the French fondly call it, is not a mere strip of mountain land and desert. It is one of the richest agricultural lands on earth, running eastward from the Moroccan frontier well over into Tunisia; and, for ages, it has been known as the granary of Europe. The Carthaginians and the Phœnicians built colonies and empires{32} here, and Rome was nourished from its wheat-fields and olive-groves. ”

“ The hillsides of Algeria are in many districts clothed with vines which prosper exceedingly, often almost superseding cereals as objects of cultivation by Europeans.
The European colonists are of all nationalities, and the proportion which is not French is astonishingly large, but every inducement is held out for naturalization as Algerians, and all legitimate obstacles are thrown in the way of those who maintain fidelity to their fatherlands. Every effort [page 308] is made to render Algeria virtually part of France, as politically it is already considered to be. ”

“ Although the words colonization and colonists are on everybody’s lips, Algeria is not in fact a colony. It is attached to the Ministère de l’Intérieur, and is therefore technically a part of France. It is divided into three departments, each of which sends to Paris two deputies and one senator. The suffrage is “universal,” but confined to citizens of French origin or naturalized. The Mohammedan natives are subjects, not citizens. ”

“ Henceforth connected with Europe, Northern Africa has acquired considerable importance in contemporaneous history, and Algeria especially participates in the intense life which now animates civilised society. After Egypt, Algeria of all other African regions has been the theatre of events whose influence has been most far-reaching. Next to Cape Colony, Algeria is the largest centre of Euro- pean populations, and in spite of thirty years of almost incessant wars, it has. relatively speaking, even been more rapidly peopled by European immigrants than the English possessions in South Africa. ”

“ Next to the province of Morocco, lies Algeria, and farther on is Tripoli, the farthest boundary of which adjoins Egypt.
Algeria, I learned, is five times as large as Pennsylvania. Algiers, one of the largest cities on the coast, is its capital. Walls of stone have been built across the harbor as fortifications. Algiers resembles an amphitheatre. Its streets rise on terraces. The streets are narrow; bazaars are everywhere. ”

“ The consequence is, that Algeria has no natural frontiers at all, and it has on either side of it one of the strongest, most warlike and most turbulent tribes in North Africa, the Khomair to the east and the Beni Snassen to the west. ”

“ Algeria is essentially a Mediterranean land, lying over against France, Spain and Italy, and a few hours' passage suffices to reach the south European seaboard from any of its ports. Nevertheless, Algeria labours under the disadvantage of being completely isolated and cut off from the rest of the continent by the almost trackless wastes of the Sahara. ”

“ This is one of France’s wisest policies in Algeria, and it is of comparatively recent date.
At first the French did not realize the enormous importance of Islam in North Africa, but now that they have grasped it, they use their knowledge sagaciously.
The French administration of Algeria is complex, but it achieves its end, as the traveler will realize if, on marvelous roads, he traverses this immense country [56] unmolested by the masses of wild men who live there. ”

“ Throughout Algeria the nomad Arab is he who comes from the Sahara and its closer confines during the summer, returning with his herds in the winter to the desert, or to the great tents of his father’s tribe. The Arab peasant, or labourer, is a native of the Tell region, and is manifestly not of the same purity of type as the desert Arab who speaks the pure idiom of the Koran. ”

“ Algeria was a very small province to have any effect on French society, but many Frenchmen declare that it infected their soldiers with what is known in France as "the vice of Algeria." To take the strongest instance of all, no one can doubt that the planters and mean whites of the Southern States were powerfully modified by their contact with the black race, becoming imperious, licentious, and disdainful of patient toil. ”

“ An effort was made to attract French colonists to Algeria by gratuitous concessions of land. Some lands were granted in particular to natives of Alsace-Lorraine, who preferred to retain French nationality after the war. Peasants from the south of France, whose vines had been destroyed by the phylloxera, crossed the Mediterranean and established in Algeria an important vineyard. This double current of immigration notably increased the French population of North Africa. The tendency then was to treat Algeria as a piece of France. ”

“ Governments seldom dream imperial dreams; they are more concerned to keep their seats. Sovereigns like George III may lose an empire. Mere accidental citizens, as Clive or Rhodes, may create one.
So this fertile North Africa, through history the shuttle-cock of Asia and Europe, with an illimitable hinterland of “rather light soil,” to quote the words of a statesman who had little sympathy with African conquest, became French because an Algerian Dey struck a consul with his fan. ”

“ Next to tormented British India, Algeria under French rule claims pride of place in the annals of capitalist colonisation. When the French conquered Algeria, ancient social and economic institutions prevailed among the Arab-Kabyle population. These had been preserved until the nineteenth century, and in spite of the long and turbulent history of the country they survive in part even to the present day.
Private property may have existed no doubt in the towns, among the Moors and Jews, among merchants, artisans and usurers. ”

“ Meantime, in the extreme west, on the borders of Morocco, the railway has been extended as far as Colomb-Béchar, a distance of 728 kilometres to the south-west of Oran. This is a strategic line. It is in the direction of Morocco that the eyes of the army of Africa are now turned. French writers are never tired of repeating that Barbary is one, and should be undivided, that the masters of Tunis and Algeria must be lords of Morocco too. The safety of Algeria itself is said to depend on the French control of Morocco. ”

“ For the moment we are dealing mainly with the character of the Arab of Algeria, or rather the character of the real Arab of the South, and not that of the Europeanized waster one meets in the big centers, or of the effeminate and overcivilized chiefs one sees at tourist-infested centers such as Biskra and Bou Saada.
With few exceptions those men have lost all their fundamental principles and are but the apes of a rather poor class of European. ”

“ In three weeks it breached and captured the corsair's strongholds. The history of the French occupation of Algeria is a tale of unceasing martial exploits, by which France has extended her empire six hundred miles along the shores of the Mediterranean, and inland fifty miles,—two hundred miles, according, we had almost said, to the position of the last Arab or Kabyle raid and insurrection.
Whatever else Algeria may or may not have done for France, it certainly has furnished a field whereon to train soldiers. Here seventy-five thousand men, day and night, have watched and fought a wily foe. ”

“ The greater part of the inhabitants of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, known collectively to Arabs as the Maghrab, and to our forefathers as Barbary,—an island girt by sea and desert,—still represents those original peoples who preceded the Phœnicians and the Romans. They have endured and survived many conquests, for the most part accommodating themselves to the conquerors’ institutions and religions. The Arabs called them Berbers,—the origin of the name is doubtful. Being to-day Arab in all but descent,—and very mixed in that,—they are described in common parlance as Arabs. ”

“ It has increased fourfold the traveller’s opportunities of observation. Algeria, a land of great distances and admirable roads, is especially suited to its use. And it is a country brimful of interest, historical and actual. The scholar may dig 6in the debris of the Roman and Byzantine dominions; the connoisseur revel in the relics of Moorish art; the politician contemplate the colonization of a conquered territory in the face of a subject population alien in race and religion; the ordinary traveller will be content to sip a little at each source. ”

“ Algeria is now a French colony, is well ordered and quite safe for the visitor.
This people is made up of many breeds: we saw thin, bandy-legged Arabs, fat, burly Turks, ramrod-like Bedouins; Kalougis, with a complexion suggesting old sole leather; Greeks, with frilled petticoats; Romans, of course with the toga; Kabeles, with black hair and wearing a robe like a big gas-bag; Moors, with the Duke's nose and spindle shanks; Mohammedans, carrying bannocks with holes in them; and dragomans, with "bakshish" stamped on every department of their anatomy. ”

“ The French have not shown their usual sagacity in fixing the boundaries of their colony, or rather I should say a desire to avoid even the appearance of encroaching on their neighbours, and perhaps some pressure from other European Powers, has induced them to abandon much valuable territory, which, if the prescription of eighteen centuries deserves to be taken into account, undoubtedly belonged to Algeria.
After the fall of Jugurtha, 106 B.C., the country between the east coast of Tunis and the Atlantic was divided into three provinces, Africa proper, Numidia and Mauritania. ”

“ With the exception of a few Kabyle districts that struggle to maintain an independence of the French government, the whole of Algeria is now so much in subjection that it is perfectly safe to travel through any part of it without fear of being molested. ”

“ TO get into the interior back of Algiers, you make your start from Maison Carrée. Here one gets his first glimpse of the real countryside of Algeria. These visions of the Arab life of olden times are quite the most interesting features of the country. Civilization has crept in and rubbed shoulders very hard here and there; but still the Arab trader, workman, and shopkeeper conducts his affairs much as he did before he carried a dollar watch and lighted his cigarettes with safety matches. ”

“ The common idea of a fertile belt, more or less hilly and of varying width, between the sea on the north and the Sahara on the south, is imperfect and incorrect. As a very rough generalization, subject to innumerable variations of mountain and valley and plain, Algeria may be said to consist of two parallel ranges of mountains running north-east and south-west. The northern range slopes very gradually to the sea, often in a series of plains, providing with its copious rainfall that fertile tract known as the Tell, once the granary of Rome, and now again developing a great export trade. ”

“ Thank goodness, Algeria is as yet encumbered by no manual or “Hand-book,” as our modern Germanised phraseology elects to call the egregious productions; so shall we travellers be at liberty to follow our own noses, to go exactly where we like, and to do what we please, even to dressing like Arabs, should the whim seize us. Moreover, we 15 may do in Rome as Rome does, and enjoy a French breakfast washed down with good wine in lieu of bad tea, without having ourselves or our proceedings stigmatised as “shocking,” as would undoubtedly be our lot at Paris, or Brussels, or Berlin. ”

“ Algeria is situated some fifteen hundred miles due south of London, and is accessible via Paris and Marseilles in fifty hours, or by sea from Southhampton in four days. The country is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean, on the east by Tunisia, and on the west by Morocco. Its southern boundary is difficult to define, as, though in reality Algeria extends right across the desert to Senegal, Algeria proper does not go farther than the northerly tracts of the Sahara. ”

“ It is only in its picturesque aspect, and as a winter residence for invalids, that Algiers will ever claim much interest for English people; and even in picturesqueness, it falls far short of other cities well known to Englishmen. There is nothing in costume to compare with the bazaars of Constantinople, or in architecture, to the bystreets of Trebizond; but Algeria is much more accessible from England, and that is our reason for selecting it. ”