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From Colonial Crops to National Commodities: The Development of Olive Oil and Wine in Algeria, 1958 – 1965
Abstract
While many accounts of late colonialism view development as a way to perpetuate a neo-colonial relationship between metropole and colony, the Algerian case remains ambiguous. The creation of the European Common Market in 1957 applied to Algeria as well as the hexagon, signaling the need for a regional logic of development that sought to economically integrate Algeria into a European economic space. Consequently, this paper examines the relationship between colonial development and European Integration by looking at the impact of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (1957) on Algerian agriculture. Specifically, it focuses on the ways in which the standardization of olive oil and wine reflected the changing environmental, racial, and economic logics of late colonial rule, which were later fundamental for the nationalist discourses of France and Algeria after 1962. Olive oil and wine, which had historically been associated with the Mediterranean region, came to be viewed as natural facts that symbolized the geographical unit known as EurAfrica in the 1950s. This period witnessed the application of international accords that fixed the rules of production for these two products and presented a number of technical and political challenges. In standardizing wine, economic logic was often trumped by the political desires of the colon, who benefited from state protection and maintained that wine was the key to social harmony and French cultural presence. In the case of olive oil, which was a traditionally indigenous crop, the process of standardization erased the geographical origin of a product whose distinctively bitter taste had formerly been a mark of the Algerian soil. While accounts of colonial agriculture have generally focused on the ways in which the consumption of colonial products in the metropole helped to domesticate colonialism by fostering a “colonial culture,” these works overlook the ways in which technical and economic processes enabled these dietary habits and were central to creating real and imagined spaces. Based on extensive research carried out in both France and Algeria, this paper follows the political and scientific debates regarding the standardization of wine and oil on both sides of the Mediterranean. It shows how the production of agriculture was a key site for creating colonial (and later national) ways of thinking about space and political identities.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Algeria
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries