The roots of the predicament in which Abd el-Kader found himself went deep in the entangled history of the two adversaries, France and Algeria. A look at this background will help set Abd el-Kader in his time and place—a dramatic setting for a man who became one of the most celebrated leaders of the nineteenth century.
In 1516 the port city of Algiers, situated in the region of North Africa now called Algeria, came under the rule of the Ottomans, a far-flung Muslim empire with its capital in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). The Ottoman sultan sent an elite corps of Turkish soldiers to take charge, and before long the whole territory was known as the Regency of Algiers. The Dey of Algiers, chosen by the top military men from among their number, was the supreme ruler of the country. Surrounded by intrigue and jealousy, however, deys usually did not last long in office.
As the Ottoman Empire grew weaker in the eighteenth century, the Regency became almost independent. But the ruling class was still Turkish, and they imposed heavy taxes on the indigenous people of Algeria while keeping order with a heavy hand. Occasionally some of the Algerian tribes rose up against the oppressive Turkish rule, but did not get far.
Meanwhile, Europeans had their own problems with the coast of North Africa. The Barbary states, as the regions around the main ports of Algiers, Tripoli (Libya), and Tunis (Tunisia) were known, were basically brigands. Lawlessness on the high seas was their main business—and a thriving business it was. The North African raiders, called corsairs, were not outlaws like pirates; quite the contrary, they worked for their governments. In their small, swift vessels they roamed the Mediterranean, preying on the ships of other states.
Of course they seized goods and treasure, but that was not the primary prize. What the corsairs wanted most were human beings. Some of the captives, brought back to the home base, were sold to private individuals, but most were thrown into large prisons and forced to work at heavy labor. They might languish as slaves for years, unless they were important or fortunate enough to be bought back by their governments or families. The Barbary states grew rich on ransom for unfortunate captives, most of them Christians from European countries.
Naturally, the Europeans feared and hated the Barbary corsairs. At the same time, European states had reasons for not putting an end to the business. Sometimes they were too occupied with their own wars to pay much attention to the corsairs in the Mediterranean, or they needed the Barbary states for alliances and food supplies. Consequently they made treaties with the rulers of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, paying them tribute—large amounts of money, ridiculously extravagant gifts, and lots of firearms—to leave their ships alone.
Then a new player entered the field. The ships of the newly independent United States of America began getting captured in the Mediterranean, and the Americans were outraged. In 1803, ships from the United States Navy attacked Tripoli and put the corsairs of Tripoli out of business. (This expedition, which included a contingent of U.S. Marines, inspired a line in the Marines’ Hymn: “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.”) The United States still had to pay tribute to Algiers and Tunis, however, so in 1815 the American navy took on the Barbary states again. This time the Turkish rulers decided not to put up any fight at all. Great Britain, not to be outdone by the upstart Americans, promptly sent a formidable fleet to attack Algiers in 1816. A massive ten-hour bombardment all but finished off the corsairs.
The Barbary states’ long history left North Africa with a decidedly unsavory reputation. It was also quite a colorful one, inspiring many a best-selling memoir, novel, painting, opera, drama, poem, and ballet. A more realistic description, perhaps—and also important to keep in mind—came from the American consul in Algiers in the 1820s. Slavery was not as terrible as generally thought, he wrote, and the population was both pious and tolerant. Persons and property were safe day and night, the city prosperous, and the garbage collected regularly. Learning flourished, with many Islamic schools and other religious institutions.
Nonetheless, for three hundred years a small, alien ruling class, supported by brigandage, kidnapping, and extortion, had run much of North Africa. It had dominated a vastly larger indigenous population with no reason whatever for loyalty toward their rulers. This was the society that faced the French when they arrived at Algiers in 1830.
For hundreds of years France had been one of the most prominent nation-states in Europe. The French regarded their culture as the finest possible, whether in literature, philosophy, architecture, science, or cuisine. At the time of its fateful encounter with Algeria, however, France was torn by political divisions.
In the late eighteenth century, the French people had overthrown their monarchy, their nobility, and the Catholic Church in one of the bloodiest and most passionately ideological revolutions in history. The French Revolution (1789-94) was followed by a republican form of government, which soon yielded to the ambitions of one man: Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte set out with his armies to spread the ideals of the French republic—liberty, fraternity, equality—all over Europe, but the other European states wanted no part of it. In 1815, when a coalition led by Great Britain finally put down the French threat, the monarchs of Europe breathed much more easily. France, too, went back to being a monarchy.
The French were not very happy with their king, Charles X. Many looked back on Bonaparte’s era as a time of great national glory. They mourned the loss of prestige from his final defeat, and they longed to see the French army redeem itself on the field of battle. Moreover, King Charles’ government tried to undo many of the progressive changes that the Revolution had brought about, and the country’s economy was in bad shape. The middle class—and public opinion—grew steadily more powerful.
By the mid-1820s France was bristling with nationalistic fervor and eager to flex its muscles. It soon found a way to do so, thanks to an incident that sounds almost like low comedy.
During the Napoleonic wars, the government of France had been forced to buy wheat from the Regency of Algiers and had run up a huge debt. That France, however, was the republican government. Now France was a monarchy again, and in no mood to pay debts incurred by irresponsible revolutionaries. One day in April 1827, the French consul made this very clear to the ruler of Algiers. Finally losing patience, the dey struck the Frenchman with his fly whisk.
In Paris the royalist government was outraged by this insult to French honor. It recalled the consul and set up a naval blockade. In Algiers, the dey ordered all French citizens to leave.
If a swat with peacock feathers had been the only issue, no doubt the matter could have been settled without bloodshed. But France was ready for dramatic action, and the unpopular government of King Charles X wanted to divert attention from its troubles at home. Although some people argued fiercely against military action, calling it a shameless, self-deluded adventure, the nation went ahead anyway and prepared for war. On June 14, 1830, France launched an assault against the city of Algiers.
This was no small punitive raid. The French fleet—one hundred warships and five hundred and seventy-two supply vessels—carried the freshly created Army of Africa consisting of thirty-one thousand soldiers, five hundred cavalrymen, and more than a thousand engineers. The expedition also included cannons, four thousand horses, and several artists—the photo-journalists of the time.
In the face of overwhelming firepower, Algiers fell quickly. The dey and his family speedily departed for Egypt, leaving behind a fabulous treasury of gold and jewels. The Turkish military and the whole ruling class likewise fled or were soon expelled, leaving behind a capital city without anyone who could manage anything.
Soon after declaring victory, the triumphant French general made a public announcement promising to protect houses of worship and to respect the inhabitants’ rights. Those words were quickly forgotten, and the French soldiers fell to looting and destroying Algiers. They desecrated mosques, ripped houses apart for firewood, used manuscripts from libraries for their bivouac fires, and massacred many of the people. Everywhere the French invaders went in the central part of Algeria, they destroyed. The urban populations all but vanished, taking flight to the countryside or dying of starvation or disease. French observers, including some sent by Parliament in 1833 to report on conditions, were horrified.
Although the French had easily conquered Algiers with their impressive military force, they had no clear idea of what to do next. They had made no plans for a new system of government, and they knew practically nothing about Algeria and its people.
Then, with chaos reigning in Algiers, the French king suddenly quit his office and fled from Paris. Another royal head took on the crown in late July, Louis-Philippe, promising better government. But France was torn between royalists and republicans, and could not agree about Algeria. The French generals, government, and public argued over their choices. Should they limit their North African possessions to the main coastal cities, such as Algiers, Oran, Bone? Or should they try to conquer the entire country? Or should they just wash their hands of the whole undertaking and go home?
Very soon the third option was no longer possible. Barely had most of the people of Algiers been cleared out than European settlers started arriving, seeing it as a chance for a better life. Some people in France thought Algeria would be a good place to dump society’s riffraff—the poor, criminal, and politically troublesome. In any case, settlers rapidly established facts on the ground, seizing land everywhere they could and dispossessing the Algerians.
It is hard to understand why, at the very beginning of the conflict—even before the French themselves had suffered losses, horrors, and humiliations—they should have behaved so brutally. Possibly it was revenge for those centuries of Barbary piracy and the enslavement of Christians . . . possibly it was racial and religious prejudice. In any case, the conquest of Algiers was a forewarning of what lay ahead for the two peoples. Not only would the North African Muslims be conquered by military force, but their property, culture, and lives would be deliberately destroyed—all in the name of European superiority.
Yet from the start there were other, more idealistic, motives present in the French adventure. However hypocritical and dishonest they may now appear, these expressions of a noble purpose should not be over-looked, for they carried some weight throughout the history of France in Algeria. The idea of France’s “civilizing mission,” as it was called, soon found its way into speeches and memoirs. For instance, in 1832 a high-ranking French administrator wrote:
To pacify and enlighten these countries by turn, and extend again the benefits of science that have been lost for so many centuries: that is the noble mission which she [France] has proposed for herself and which she will accomplish.1
The two opposing drives—conquest versus civilization—pulled and ripped at the French presence in Algeria from the very first days till the last, with aftershocks still felt today. Certainly Abd el-Kader experienced this “split personality” of France in North Africa. It’s at the center of his dramatic story.