The Battle for Algeria. Jennifer Johnson
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UN. The FLN therefore mobilized Algerian delegates to secure support in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, regions with a shared religious tradition and colonial past that were committed to Third World solidarity, with the expectation that representatives from these allied countries would present the Algerian case at the UN on their behalf. The FLN further solidified its strategy for internationalizing the conflict and campaigning for inscription onto the General Assembly agenda by sending Algerian delegates to New York to set up an office from which to publicize the war in the United States and target the United Nations from closer range.
The FLN diplomatic corps acted as political and social attachés and represented another dimension of the nascent Algerian state. They refined the nationalist message for external audiences and presented an alternative version to the world to that of the French government’s portrayal of Algerian “terrorists.” Similar to the nationalists’ domestic health-care campaigns and Red Crescent efforts, the FLN wanted to prove that not only did it understand the international diplomatic norms and rights of the day but it could also put them into practice. The nationalists’ efforts evoked the actions of a state before it was officially recognized as such, and they paid particular attention to establishing internal and external recognition of their right to rule Algeria.
In the end, the nationalists were more successful in using notions of welfare and rights to their advantage. They exposed the hypocrisy of selectively applying universal discourse and provided a blueprint for claim making that nonstate actors could emulate. Consequently, anticolonial leaders throughout the Third World saw Algeria as a model for success in developing platforms for claiming sovereignty. Furthermore, the Algerians helped transform international organizations by forcing them to reconsider their purpose and mandate in a postcolonial world. Analyzing the war in this manner provides a different interpretation of the conflict and offers new directions for studying nationalist movements and concepts of sovereignty.
Sovereignty lies at the heart of this study. Dating back to Jean Bodin, a sixteenth-century French jurist and political philosopher, scholars have grappled with defining the idea in theory and in practice.12 While most agree that sovereignty means fully controlling the state, there are myriad ways of establishing and maintaining sovereignty. This is especially true in an imperial context, where the concept was constantly in flux and redefined.13 For our purposes, a sovereign derives its source of authority from being able to regulate the internal and external affairs of the state. From a domestic point of view, sovereigns need to control the physical space and the people within the territorial borders. The people also must recognize the sovereign’s authority, and, in return, they frequently expect the state to take care of and provide for their welfare. From an external point of view, sovereigns are in charge of international relations and conduct in war. Therefore, sovereignty has two inextricably linked parts, domestic and international recognition.14 A state cannot be sovereign without meeting both criteria. But the process of asserting and establishing that power is often fraught.
The FLN constructed a plan that, if successful, would satisfy the two required components of sovereignty. Its leadership developed a domestic strategy that (frequently through the use of force) eliminated its political rivals and provided social services, both of which contributed to the Algerian people recognizing the FLN’s authority. The FLN’s health-care outreach also helped cement its supremacy over other groups, such as the Algerian National Movement (MNA), and provided life-sustaining care for Algerian soldiers who were then able to continue fighting for national liberation. The numerous target audiences highlight the complicated Algerian landscape through which the FLN had to navigate during the war. Furthermore, the FLN’s international strategy sought external recognition from a wide array of sources, such as sovereign countries, Arab, African, and Asian allies, and international organizations. The Algerians’ approach challenged the French state’s claims to Algeria and offered a clear alternative, especially when it came to questions of the people’s health and welfare. Nationalist movements throughout the Third World were engaged in this contested process of claiming sovereignty, and many turned to Algeria for inspiration.
My work, therefore, is part of a growing comparative history of decolonization and international history that concentrates on how newly independent countries and nationalist movements throughout the Third World impacted the metropoles and made their way into the international order. John Darwin and Dane Kennedy wrote pioneering studies about the end of empire, arguing that a robust “history of decolonization requires the careful fusion of three ‘sub-historiographies.’”15 To be sure, developments in the metropole, national liberation movements in the colonies, and superpower politics each played an individual role in the formal transfer of power. But, according to Darwin and Kennedy, in order for scholars to fully understand the process of decolonization, one must examine and combine local, national, and international perspectives, as this study does.
Recent scholarship on North Africa and the Middle East continues to challenge an area-studies framework that previously analyzed social and political movements as local, unique, and disconnected from global politics.16 In addition to deprovincializing North Africa and the Middle East, these studies have forced Cold War and foreign relations scholars to contend with the periphery between Washington and Moscow and take non-European actors in the postwar period seriously.
Scholarship on Algeria, a burgeoning field in the last twenty years, usually takes one of two forms: nationalist studies framed by nationalist agendas and international approaches devoid of Algerian actors. But it rarely integrates the local, national, and international dimensions that Darwin and Kennedy argued were necessary for understanding decolonization. French and Algerian national histories perpetuate the notion that the practices in Algeria between 1954 and 1962 were separate and distinct from one another, rather than related and interconnected to strategies that other nationalists used in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to achieve independence from European powers.
After 1962, according to Benjamin Stora, the French national consciousness underwent “historical amnesia” for nearly thirty years.17 For the next quarter century, the subsequent governments, former soldiers, and the one million repatriated European settlers tried to put Algeria behind them by concentrating on domestic issues.18 With the hope of forgetting the violent separation between the two countries, President Charles de Gaulle pardoned prominent military generals who previously attempted to assassinate him, and the state absorbed a large European settler community that, in many cases, had never lived in France. In school, the history of the French empire, including the 132 years in Algeria, was glossed over until February 2005 when a controversial French law stipulated that school curricula emphasize the “positive role” of colonialism, especially in North Africa.
As archival material gradually became available in France in the late 1980s, histories about Algeria, in particular the war years (1954–1962), proliferated. A new generation of French scholars shattered the silence and confronted difficult questions about the nature of the colonial relationship in the North African territory, exploring military and judicial abuses that challenged official French narratives.19 This prompted national public outcry, which continued in 2001 when former general Paul Aussaresses wrote Special Services, 1955–1957 and discussed torture openly. Aussaresses coolly stated that the French military commonly employed it and that he had no regrets because he was acting in service of his country.20 Personal accounts of torture inflicted by the French military fueled the national conversation and opened the door for academics to engage in spirited debate.21
Recently, scholars have started analyzing the history of previously overlooked political parties in France and Algeria.22 To be sure, they add an important layer of texture to a complicated decolonization story. However, these studies concentrate on what the revelations mean for French history and/or Franco-Algerian history. Their conclusions rarely touch on the implications for histories of the Third World, comparative empire, and international history.
Algerian histories of the war are equally myopic. Unlike French history, Algerian history after independence frequently celebrated and commemorated the eight-year struggle. Former participants and their families frequently publish their memoirs.23 The Algerian government awards maquisards and their descendants benefits and pensions and these individuals are revered throughout the country.24