Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
157. The War of Algeria’s Independence – 3
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA

 

The Franco-Prussian war of 1880-81 was a disaster for France. The Prussians decisively defeated the French, took Napoleon III prisoner, and occupied Paris. The German states were consolidated into a single state which emerged as the strongest power on the continent.

France lost Alsace-Lorraine and was forced to pay an indemnity of 5 billion francs to the Germans. The Third Republic that emerged in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war was too weak to withstand the pressures of the colons in Algeria who were instrumental in getting the Code de l’indigent passed through the French National Assembly in 1985. The Code legalized discrimination against Algerian Muslims and expanded the powers of the colons. Confiscation of Algerian lands proceeded unabated. The growing power of the Europeans attracted further immigration from Southern Europe. A new entrenched European personality emerged in North Africa, more determined than before to keep Algeria French and keep a tight lid on the aspirations of the native population.

The interlude between the war of 1880-1881 and the First World War was a period of colonial consolidation. There emerged in Algeria a two tiered socio-political structure with the French and the colons at the top and the Algerian Muslims at the bottom. The Sephardic Jews were considered honorary Frenchmen. Each group had its own interests and its own political agenda. The French government, licking its wounds from the Franco-Prussian war, was aware of the economic and political condition of its Algerian subjects but was too weak to do anything about it. The colons, determined to preserve their privileges, were adamantly opposed to any concessions to the Algerians. The Algerian Muslims, continuously squeezed economically and politically by the colons, increasingly resented their condition but were powerless to do anything about it.

The worsening social condition of the Algerian Muslims was manifest in their educational backwardness. The old madrasa system was destroyed by the French. Lycees, or high school similar to those in France, sprang up in North Africa, but these were reserved for the French and the colons. The Algerians were reluctant to send their children to the lycees lest they inculcate alien values. But even if they wanted to, Algerian Muslim children were not welcome in French schools. The educational backwardness was most conspicuous in the predominantly Muslim hinterland which received little investment in the educational infrastructure and was at best treated with benign neglect.

The onset of the 20 th century saw the colonial empires at their zenith. The British were the paramount power in the world. The French sway over North and Western Africa was unchallenged. The Netherlands had an iron grip on Indonesia. So secure was the political structure that the most that the native populations in the colonies could ask for was a dominion status within the empires. Independence was not conceivable. The colonial powers conceded nothing except tokenism. Any hint of serious political resistance was ruthlessly crushed.

World War I was a war that nobody wanted. The European powers stumbled onto it through a series of miscalculations. Serbia coveted Bosnia-Herzegovina which was ruled by Austria-Hungary after the Ottoman capitulation of 1886. The refusal of the Austrians to relinquish their control of Bosnia-Herzegovina was the pretext for the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo (1914). The assassination of the crown prince could not go unpunished and so Austria, with the tacit approval of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, declared war on Serbia. Russia, which was an ally of Serbia, and self-declared protector of its Eastern Orthodox population, declared war on Austria. Germany, an ally of Austria, declared war on Russia. The French saw in the ensuring war an opportunity to win back Alsace-Loraine. So, France declared war on Germany.

The German armies cut through Belgium, advanced on Paris, hoping to deal a fatal blow to the French as they had done in the war of 1880-81 and bring the war to a quick conclusion. Great Britain, concerned that the balance of power in Central Europe was shifting inexorably towards Germany, declared war on Germany. British dominions and colonies including Canada, Australia and India joined in. A stalemate developed on the Franco-German front.

The Germans convinced the Ottomans to join the fray on their side with offers of gold and the prospects of winning back the Balkan provinces lost in the war of 1911. Russia dropped out the war after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. There was a risk of an allied defeat and forfeiture of loans which the United States had advanced to the allies. The United States, which was initially neutral, entered war in 1917 partly in response to German submarine attacks on its trans-Atlantic shipping in support of the British war effort and partly to ensure that the allies would repay their debts to Washington. A single assassination thus turned into a world conflagration. The calculations of all the major powers proved incorrect. The Great War dragged on for four years and exhausted the economies and manpower of the European powers.

More than 100,000 Algerians fought for the French in the war, along with troops from Tunisia and Morocco. Thousands gave their lives defending Paris. Many thousands more perished in the trench warfare that pitted contesting armies towards the later stages of the war.

The North Africans had hoped that their sacrifices would improve their political status within the French empire. The American President Woodrow Wilson had articulated a 14 Point program which promised self-determination for the colonized people. Nationalists in Afro-Asia, from India to Morocco had pinned their hopes that a successful outcome of the war in favor of Britain and France would improve their political prospects. This was not to be.

The allies did win the war. Germany surrendered in August 1918 and was forced to pay enormous war reparations. Alsace-Lorraine was back under the control of France. The Ottoman Empire was occupied and dismembered. Woodrow Wilson who attended the victor’s conference in 1919 left disillusioned with the scheming of the European powers. France occupied Syria and Lebanon. Britain took Palestine and Iraq. Protests against colonial rule were brutally suppressed in India (Jalianwala Bagh, 1919), Syria (Damascus, 1920) and Algeria. It looked as if the colonial edifice which looked imposing at the turn of the century had received further reinforcement as a result of the war. But the picture was deceptive. The seeds of the next war were sown in the humiliating terms dictated to Germany. The colonial people, having fought for their masters in distant lands, grew restless. The movements towards autonomy and independence gathered momentum.

The First World War contributed to the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. The impact of this event was global. A host of communist movements sprang up in Asia and Africa deriving their inspiration from the success of the Bolsheviks in Russia. The communist rhetoric had its appeal to the colonized masses that were at the receiving end of unbridled exploitative colonial capitalism. In some of the larger countries such as India and Indonesia the communists became important players in the ensuing struggle against colonialism. Communism also made inroads into Algeria. However, there was a difference. Whereas the communist parties in India and Indonesia were home grown, those in North Africa found their voice only through the communist party of France. The presence of a large European colonial population and the repressive political environment they fostered precluded the formation of effective political parties on home turf.

(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)