In 1925-26, the centre-left government of the Cartel des Gauches found itself managing two major crises in the French colonies: the so-called ‘Druze revolt’ in Syria (in fact a widespread uprising with nationalist characteristics) and the Rif uprising led by ‘Abd al-Karim in Morocco. The two were linked, both in reality—the emerging insurrection in Syria had benefited from the redeployment of troops from the Levant to Morocco—and in the minds of French deputies. Although the government tried to avoid a parliamentary debate on the issue, it found itself attacked from both sides in the Parliament: by the Communist left, which both rejected the colonial project and invoked raw memories of the Great War to criticize the expenditure of French lives; and by right-wing deputies (by no means all of them from the extreme end of the political spectrum) who accepted France’s colonial mission but used these crises to attack the Cartel’s management of it—and, implicitly or explicitly, of France’s political destiny. The Cartel was forced to recall the left-wing general Maurice Sarrail, its own high-profile appointment as High Commissioner in Beirut. This paper focuses on the Syrian uprising and the ‘affaire Sarrail’, though it also refers—as the parliamentary debates did—to the simultaneous conflict in Morocco. Drawing on parliamentary records and the contemporary French and Syrian press, as well as archival material on the uprising, it seeks to demonstrate that the debate about colonial affairs was only indirectly concerned with the colonies themselves. The stances that deputies across the chamber took on colonial affairs were shaped more by metropolitan political struggles than by any profound knowledge of or engagement with events in the colonies, however bloody. Yet the decisions taken in the metropole did have a direct effect on the colonies, notably as credits voted to augment the military budget funded the repression of these anti-colonial uprisings. The colonized populations, meanwhile, were not represented in the metropolitan parliament; it was only through such crises that they could impinge on its debates. The paper thus intervenes in the long-running debate over the place of imperialism in metropolitan society and politics, to show that metropolitan politicians (and metropolitan society) could be profoundly committed to the colonial project on the basis of a very superficial understanding of the realities of French colonial government—and the colonized population’s reactions to it.

In 1945, the colonized population of Algeria was granted representation at the French Parliament for the first time. Although this representation was not proportionate to the size of the population, elections arouse great expectations for social and political reforms. Political representation had been demanded for decades; many saw the opportunity of passing the reforms towards autonomy. As one of the deputies put it, “We have been waiting for this moment for 116 years”. Three legislative elections within two years led to the rapid succession of several groups of representatives, all of whom were well-known, charismatic leaders who worked hard to present legislation, taking part in debates and playing by the rules of the Assembly. Nevertheless, by 1948, the rigging of the elections by the French administration was so efficient that no nationalist leader stood a chance. The composition of the group of deputies reflected French policy in Algeria; it was also affected by political practices within the Assembly itself. The suppression of the Algerian constituencies in 1962, meanwhile, when Algeria became independent, revealed the complexity and contradictions of France parting with a piece of itself. This paper will offer a precise account of this group’s history, drawn from parliamentary debates, contemporary newspaper reports and autobiographies. These permit an anthropological description of the way the colonized representatives behaved, spoke and performed within the Assembly arena according to their political belonging. Discursive practices are particularly telling: some representatives evidently mastered the Byzantine rituals and complex vocabulary of the Assembly, and were active in producing speeches and texts promoting reforms; others presented themselves as “apprentices in democracy”, willingly accepting the criticism of supposedly more experienced metropolitan deputies. Photographs add a gestural perspective as well as revealing the variety of clothing that the colonized representatives brought into the Assembly. The debates also illuminate the reactions of the metropolitan deputies: sympathy or (more often) hostility were not always linked directly to the content of the discourse, but also to their mastery of the French political language, their physical attitudes, and the absence of the expected colonized inhibition in some of them. By adopting a chronological approach, the paper shows how genuine representatives of the colonized population were progressively excluded – in a variety of ways – from taking part in parliamentary work, forcing them to find other arenas to develop their political activities.

In 1826, Charles X imposed a naval blockade on the port city of Algiers. French military forces were already engaged in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Greek War of Independence. This decision necessitated increasing the already bloated military budget. In reading speeches made on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies, throughout the 1820s, it is evident that many voices were raised to question the wisdom of confronting a traditional French ally, the Ottoman Empire. From 1826 to 1830, many deputies also questioned the necessity of maintaining and expanding the on-going blocus of the North African coast. One deputy went so far as far as to call it “une guerre froide” in1827. At the heart of the quarrel with the Pasha of Algiers lay the issue of a French debt dating back to the Directoire, as well as French non-payment for use of its concessions at La Calla and Bône. After French forces succeeded in taking Algiers, it was left to the July Monarchy to decide whether to remain only in Algiers or to expand the conquest. In the face of mounting debt and increasing casualties, members of the Chamber of Deputies questioned the feasibility of conquering the entire 1,000 mile coastline, from Constantine to Oran. Their doubts were assuaged only after 1837 with the successful taking of Constantine. At that point, dissent was reduced to the sole voice of Amédée Desjobert (1796-1853), a deputy representing a region in Normandy. My paper is focused on the ideas of deputy Desjobert as he expressed them on the floor of the Chamber and in his various publications. Unlike fellow deputy Alexis de Tocqueville, Desjobert never traveled to Algeria claiming, “I do not feel the need to travel there to know what we are doing there is wrong.” Desjobert deplored the escalating brutality of French occupying forces, and called for the recognition of a “sovereign Islamic nation” on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, with its rightful leader Abdel Kader. The most surprising element of Desjobert’s anti-colonial rhetoric is his deeply held belief that colonialism itself had become “anachronistic”. In interpreting his arguments, I will explore his writing within the intellectual context of his time. In so doing, Desjobert’s rhetoric gives us a view into an overlooked period in the history of French colonialism, before the “Mission to Civilize” was formulated as a justification for its actions.

From the end of the First World War to the late 1930s, the political and social conditions of life in the countries of Maghreb – Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia – were turned upside down under French authority. The colonial issue progressively became a crucial item on the French political scene, as a number of men from the colonized population started to raise precise demands in the name of the peoples of the Maghreb. Although the three Algerian departments and the two protectorates were administered by different authorities and along specific lines, the French Parliament debated Republican policy in the Maghreb as a whole. Within this framework, the Socialist Party’s position presents a number of features. There was no great coherence within the colonial thought of the Socialist group in the National Assembly. Some representatives, such as Marius Moutet, were open to the claims of the colonized people; others, such as Georges Barthélémy, staunchly defended the interests of the settler population. The relative incoherence of the Socialist group’s colonial doctrine was also apparent in its different treatment of the three Maghrebi countries. During the Rif War, for example, Socialist members of Parliament expressed some sympathy towards the Abdelkrim movement, but finally supported the military response to the independentist movement. They also seemed to be open-minded towards the Tunisian claims for self-government. Their attitude to Algeria, with its large settler population and legal status as part of the metropole, was necessarily different. Under the Popular Front, Socialist views on the Algerian problem evolved, but the Socialist deputies went on being reluctant to important change in the « Muslims »’ conditions of living. This paper uses the records of parliamentary debates to account for the Socialist group’s behavior in relation to other parties (particularly during times of crisis), and the archives of the Socialist parliamentary group to retrace the importance of the colonial issue and the range of opinion on the nationalist question in the Maghreb in the party’s internal debates. It addresses the following questions: what were the main features of Socialist colonial doctrine? How did the specific circumstances of the three Maghrebi countries influence Socialist thought? Were comparisons impossible between the Tunisian, Algerian and Moroccan cases? And was the Socialist group entirely unable to think up colonial reforms, and blind towards the colonized peoples’ rights and demands, when it came to regions other than Algeria?