In 1931, OFALAC (L’Office Algerian d’Action Economique et Touristique) was created in order to ensure the quality and control of Algerian agricultural products. By the late late 1950s, propaganda for the organization was able to declare that Algeria was “The Country of Quality,” going so far as to introduce an official Algerian brand for certain products for export to the Metropole. In the late colonial period, the modernization of Algerian agriculture relied on a series of political, spatial, and technical developments that reflected Algeria’s ambiguous position at the crossroads of European integration and decolonization. The Treaty of Rome, signed in 1957, also applied to Algeria. In moving away from economic protectionism, it undermined the existing "colonial pact," which granted Algerian products a privileged outlet in the Metropole. Faced with competition from countries such as Spain, European colons asserted that Algeria’s place as an integral part of France meant that their commercial interests should be protected. This claim, however, was increasingly untenable given the raging War of Independence as well as the budding Common Agricultural Policy in Europe. This paper thus asks the question: In what ways did the resulting “politique de qualité” reconfigure the relationship between political and economic power? In other words, it asks how shifts in European economy intersected with local practices in Algeria. How did the regional commodification of agriculture (and the attending technologies of shipping techniques, port surveillance, and commercial propaganda), impact the understanding of the “traditional” (often synonymous with Muslim) economy? Drawing from archival research, as well as interviews in Algeria and France, it traces the changing technical and political contexts of commodification. In so doing, it furthers our understanding of how colonial power was able to create a dual economy in which cultural traditions, Islam, and local production were articulated in contrast to an allegedly dynamic, market-based, modernity.