Samuel Kalman,French Colonial Fascism: The Extreme Right in Algeria,1919–1939

By addressing the issue of settler fascism in colonized Algeria, Samuel Kalman delivers a much-welcome book in the historiographical field of the French Empire. Even if many studies deal with the political history of Algeria during the interwar period, and even more deal with French politics during that same period, an exhaustive work of the Algerian settlers’ political landscape and its far right tendencies was lacking. Based on extensive archival research, this book successfully fills this gap.

The notion of algérianité played an essential role in extreme right movements among the settler population in Algeria. As a promotion of the mixed origins of the European colonizers’ society – which was made up of individuals of French but also Spanish, Italian or Maltese descent – it implied the exclusion of both Muslim and Jewish populations. Since the antisemitic and separatist crisis at the end of the nineteenth century, the settlers openly claimed themselves to constitute a Mediterranean people different from the metropolitan French, thereby expressing a sense of superiority and uniqueness. The success of the metropolitan extreme right parties and leagues in the departments of Algiers, Oran and Constantine precisely depended on their ability to fit into this specific framework. In the 1920s, because they were reluctant to adapt their discourse and address specifically Algerian and colonial issues, the royalist Action française and the Jeunesses patriotes thus found little success. On the contrary, the Unions latines, created by the mayor of Oran Jules Molle, perfectly matched the settlers’ grievances during the same period. Based on the concept of latinité, it focused on the primacy of the ‘Latin race’, the inferiority of the Algerian Muslims and Jews as well as the rejection of metropolitan French rule.

Amid the economic crisis, the launch of Algerian nationalism and the rise of the Algerian Left following the victory of the Popular Front, the same scenario was repeated in the 1930s. Within the Croix de Feu, the issues related to the algérianiste doctrine raised disagreements between the metropolitan headquarter and the Algerian chapters. The two main extreme right parties founded in France at that time, the Parti populaire français (PPF) and the Parti social français (PSF), had to accept important variations of their discourse in order to capture as large an audience as possible amongst the settler population. At the head of the PSF, colonel de la Rocque reluctantly supported the economic boycott of the Jewish community for instance, while he rejected antisemitism in metropolitan France. Those organizations also had to reckon with the leadership of Gabriel Lambert, mayor of Oran from 1934, who created a large front called the Rassemblement national on the Western Algerian fertile ground. Lambert equally professed hostility towards the Jews, the Algerian nationalist movements and the Left, and adopted an idiosyncratic political style, drawing from his admiration for Mussolini and Franco but also on his charismatic aura as a former priest turned water diviner and political leader. Only the personal divisions within the extreme right camp prevented it from completely gaining the upper hand in the electoral game. In 1940, the erection of the Vichy regime came as a ‘divine surprise’ in Algeria, whilst it was widely accepted by the European population whose enduring appeal for a national and moral revolution perfectly echoed Marshall Pétain’s program.

Structured along chronological lines, Samuel Kalman’s work proves very clear, detailed and useful. The specificities of each region are described with great precision, highlighting the political effects of different demographic configurations. Political violence is relevantly grasped as a response to ‘both real and imagined threats’ (p. 82), notably coming from the Left, partly fantasized as an anticolonial actor. The author also interestingly discusses the changing tactics of the far-right organizations towards the Algerian natives, leading to the global failure of their strategy of Muslim recruitment. He thereby dismisses the myth of an alliance between the European extreme-right and the Algerian nationalist organizations. The more interesting side of this work, however, probably has to do with the settler colonial society itself. Taking seriously into account its unique features, Kalman considers algérianité in its political dimension, enabling a more complete vision of the colonizers’ stance, beyond literary, psychological and cultural aspects. Algerianité was not idle talk, and the tensions with the metropolitan institutions, but also political parties, were very real.

That being said, some of the questions Kalman raises remain partly unanswered. What part of colonial society did extreme righters represent? The author often uses broadly encompassing expressions such as ‘the European population’ (p. 11), ‘the settlers’ (p. 80), exaggerating their political homogeneity. To precisely address the question of their real significance, their social background and networks could have been further investigated, not only regarding the leaders but also the ordinary activists. The definition of a peculiar ‘fascism’ and its comparison with its European counterparts would also have merited a deeper discussion, not least in relationship to other works on the same topic ¹ . That being said, Kalman’s book demonstrates how deep the tensions between the metropolitan institutions and the local administration ran, the police being described as largely in favor of the ‘fascist’ organizations. As such, it paves the way for a debate on the existence of an autonomous Algerian ‘colonial State’.