In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
By Juan Cole for Informed Comment
The Algerian newspaper al-Masa’ reports that on December 24, the Algerian parliament passed a law recognizing French colonialism in that country, 1830-1962, as having been a crime that involved mass killing, rape, displacement of populations, usurpation of land, and marginalization of people. The law also makes claims on France for reparations.
The great Algerian historian Mahfoud Bennoune had made the case for the economic benefits to France of exploitation of Algerian natural resources (metals, oil), expansion of French vineyards on expropriated Algerian land, trade monopolies and the creation of Algeria as a captive market for French goods.
He wrote not only of countless massacres by French commanders of local populations but also of a vast transfer of landed wealth: “Using innumerable arbitrary measures — sequestration, confiscation, expropriation, cantonment . . . an increasing number of hectares were accumulated for the purposes of colonization . . . The subsequent booty was distributed among the colons [French colonizers]. By 1954, these 3,028,000 expropriated hectares [~116,000 sq. mi.] consisted of 2,828,000 hectares of plowland and 210,000 hectares of forest, all owned privately by the French colons. The colonial state still possessed 7,200,000 hectares, including forest, unproductive land, and pastureland.” As for the land the Algerians were crowded onto, ” two thirds of the land assigned to the peasants was minimal pasture and unproductive plots.”
Ibrahim Boughali, the speaker of the Algerian parliament, underlined that the objective of this law is not to deploy history for the purposes of revenge, but to restate the historical truth and preserve the national memory from all efforts to erase it or falsify it. At the same time, the law emphasized the necessity for the Occupying state to accept responsibility for the “systematic crimes committed against persons, land and Algerian identity.”
Juan Cole
Juan Cole, a TomDispatch regular, is the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation From the Persian and Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires. His latest book is Peace Movements in Islam. His award-winning blog is Informed Comment. He is also a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha and of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.