lorcin.rome and france in africa

Rome and France in Africa: Recovering Colonial Algeria's LatinPast

Lorcin, Patricia M. E.

French Historical Studies, Volume 25, Number 2, Spring 2002,pp. 295-329 (Article)

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Rome and France in Africa: RecoveringColonial Algeria’s Latin Past

Patricia M. E. Lorcin

In 1852, the archaeologist-historian Adolphe Dureau de laMalle (1777–1857) admonished his compatriots for their underestimation of Frenchachievements in Algeria during the twenty-two years since their initiallanding in Sidi Ferruch, as follows: ‘‘To counteract the impatience . . .of the French . . . it is perhaps useful to draw attention to the fact Rometook 240 years to transform the area into a titular subject province. . . .May the motto, Perserverando vincit, which encapsulates the prodigiousnature of the power of Rome and England, be inscribed on our flags,our public buildings, and in our African colony.’’1

The passage is significant for both its content and its timing. First,it conveys the trivalent significance of Rome as a cultural idiom forFrench domination: justification, admiration, and emulation—threethemes that are prevalent in nearly all French accounts of RomanAfrica. Second, this observation was made shortly after the occupiedterritory had been divided into three departments and designated apart of France. The period of uncertainty as to what France should dowith Algeria was therefore formally over. But as a part of France, Alge-ria’s heritage became of subjective relevance. As a region of France, itwould inevitably engender some ideological attempt to draw it into thenational fold.

Patricia Lorcin teaches European and French history at Texas Tech University. Her publishedworks include Imperial Identities (London, 1995) and a number of articles on different aspects ofFrench imperialism.

The author thanksMichael Osborne for his comments on the first draft of this article, whichwas presented at the American Historical Association conference in January 1999, and David Pro-chaska for his pertinent and helpful suggestions. She also thanks the two anonymous readersfor this journal. Monsieur J.-P. Ronfard, husband of the late Marie Cardinal and her executor,graciously gave permission to reproduce illustrations from Ms. Cardinal’s book, Les pieds-noirs(Paris, 1988).

1 Adolphe Dureau de la Malle, Histoire des guerres des Romains, des Byzantins et des Vandales ac-compagnée d’examens sur les moyens employés anciennement pour la conquête et la soumission de la portion del’Afrique septentrionale nommée aujourd’hui l’Algérie (Paris, 1852), x (my translation).

French Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (spring 2002)Copyright © 2002 by the Society for French Historical Studies

296 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

The ruins at Timgad, northeastern Algeria. From Marie Cardinal, Les pieds-noirs (Paris,1988). Reprinted with permission

During their 132 years of domination of Algeria, the French pro-duced a remarkable number of texts on France and Rome in NorthAfrica. The approach varied over time. Early on, the use of classicaltexts was apparently casual: as points of reference in an alien land. Astime progressed, and occupation gave way to colonization, these earlypoints of reference evolved into a conviction that Rome and Francewere inextricably linked. France’s fascination with Algeria’s Roman pasthad its roots in the intellectual background of the military and the cir-cumstances of their active service when, of all the previous occupyingpowers, Rome was deemed the only one to bear a working resemblanceto France. It was, however, during the second half of the nineteenthcentury that the preoccupation with Algeria’s Latin past achieved thestatus of a foundation myth.

The appropriation of Rome and its legacy by the French occurredon multiple levels: scientific, religious, literary, and mythical. This sug-gests that there was more to the process than the justification of an im-perial presence. Scientific knowledge, we now know, is as much a toolof empire as is politics or economics; nor is culture innocent of hege-monic impulses.2 While this sets the theoretical framework for what fol-lows, it is the question of how the French used this knowledge to efface

2 See, for example, Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979); idem, Culture and Imperial-ism (New York, 1994); Daniel R. Headricks, The Tools of Empire (Oxford, 1981); John M. Mackenzie,ed., Imperialism and the Natural World (Manchester, 1990); Lewis Pyenson, Civilizing Mission: ExactSciences and French Overseas Expansion (Baltimore, Md., 1993); Michael Osborne, Nature, the Exotic,and the Science of French Colonialism (Bloomington, Ind., 1994); and Paul Rabinow, French Modern(Cambridge, Mass., 1989). All these works are in some way informed by the theoretical works ofFoucault and Gramsci, as is this article.

RECOVERING COLONIAL ALGERIA’S LATIN PAST 297

the long-standing Arab-Berber presence in the area that is this essay’scentral theme. The process of imagining and establishing a collectiveidentity is a multifaceted process entailing, among other features, theelaboration of foundational myths through the selective use of mem-ory.3 With regard to Algeria, the creation of a colonial identity has beenapproached from a number of angles, but the relevance of France’s useof ancient Rome as integral to the process has not formed part of thisliterature.4 Jean-François Guilhaume’s examination of French Algeria’sfoundationmyths also overlooks this dimension, situating the emergentcolonial identity in ‘‘heroic’’ deeds of conquest and in the image of pre-colonial Algeria as a desert and site of ignorance equated with Islam,which a modern and progressive France would redress.5 To be sure,the ‘‘heroes’’ of conquest were part of the perceived ‘‘ancestral legacy’’of the colony, while the myth of a deserted Algeria and the theory ofprogress versus stagnation were essential to the justificatory canon ofFrench imperial activity. But the process was more complex. Justifyinga French presence in Algeria by attempting to shrug off Islam was onething, but binding the settlers spiritually to the soil of the land as a re-gional extension of France required more than heroes of conquest andimages of Arab ‘‘ineptitude’’ in the face ofmodernity. By examining howthe Roman legacy was used over time, this essay will demonstrate theway in which the French in Algeria created a tradition of regionalitythat bound them to France.

Early Influences and Educational Background

The first military glimpse of Roman might in Africa in the nineteenthcentury occurred during the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt (1789–1800), where officers were awed by Rome’s impressive architecturallegacy.The sight of hugemonuments in the heart of a totally alien land,which had endured for centuries, was a tribute to both Rome’s culture

3 On the formation of identity, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London,1991); Terence Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983); andSteven Ungar and Tom Conley, Identity Papers: Contested Nationhood in Twentieth-Century France (Min-neapolis, Minn., 1996). The literature on the role of memory in the construction of nationalidentity is large and steadily increasing. Works that have informed this essay include: MauriceHalbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York, 1980); Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols.(Paris, 1984–92); Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1945 (Cam-bridge, Mass., 1991); and Nancy Wood, Vectors of Memory (Oxford, 1999).

4 Works on aspects of colonial identity formation in Algeria include David Prochaska,Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920 (Cambridge, 1990), Patricia M. E. Lorcin,Imperial Identities (London, 1995); Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and Cultural Confrontations (Berkeley,Calif., 1997); and Peter Dunwoodie, Writing French Algeria (Oxford, 1998).

5 Jean-François Guilhaume, Les mythes fondateurs de l’Algérie française (Paris, 1992), esp.chap. 5.


and its power.6 The scholars and scientists who accompanied Napoléonwere called on to examine and record the land, inhabitants, culture,and history of Egypt. Napoléon believed that an in-depth understand-ing of the area would lead to better governance. In the process, theyset a precedent for the connection of scholarship and reconnaissancethat was replicated in Algeria, where the administration was a militaryone for the first forty years of colonial rule.7 The multivolume Descrip-tion de l’Egypte, the end product of the Napoleonic scholarly endeavor,included lavishly illustrated archaeological works that foreshadowedequally ambitious activities in Algeria.

If the Napoleonic expedition was an initial step in creating the as-sociation between imperial France and imperial Rome in Africa, theeducational background of the officers and scholars encouraged thelink.The basis of French secondary educationwas the classics.With rareexceptions, the officers who undertook research in Algeria were betterversed in Latin and Greek texts than they were in Arabic ones. Whilethe intellectual preparation of officers embarking for North Africa in-cluded contemporary travelogues and exploratory accounts, it was theclassics that constituted the prime reference material. The French mayhave looked to the Romans as colonial precursors, but there was theadded advantage of cultural familiarity. Classical historians and geog-raphers such as the Greeks Strabo and Polybius and the Romans Sallust,Tacitus, and Livy (Titus Livius), to name but a few, were part of theFrench educational canon. Ibn Batuta or Ibn Khaldun, Arab authorswho would have provided equally pertinent information, were not. Tobe sure, Slane’s French translation of Khaldun’s The Muqaddimah didnot appear until 1852, but it was not just a question of timing.8 Arabsources were not considered suitable. As one university professor putit as late as the 1930 centenary celebrations: ‘‘For all his genius [IbnKhaldun] had an oriental brain which does not function like ours. Hecannot be read like Titus-Livius or Polybius, or even Procopius. He hasto be interpreted.’’9 Contemporary sources on the area were limited.While the officers who had been to Egypt had certainly read the worksof Volney and Savary, it was the works of Shaler, Shaw, and Raynal thatwere consulted in the Algerian context.10 None dealt with the matters

6 E. Jomard, ‘‘Description d’Antimoë,’’ in Description de l’Egypte, 23 vols. (Paris, 1809–28),2:15:1.

7 Lorcin, Imperial Identities, 35–75, 97–166.8 Le Baron de Slane, Histoire des Berbères (Paris, 1852).9 Emile Gautier, ‘‘Le cadre géographique de l’histoire en Algérie,’’ in Histoire et historiens de

l’Algérie, ed. J. Alazard et al. (Paris, 1931), 19. (Emile Gautier was professor at the University ofAlgiers at the time.)

10 C. F. Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, 2 vols. (Paris, 1786); M. Savary, Lettres sur l’Egypte


of conquest and colonization. It was therefore natural for the Frenchto use the classics as primary sources for their research on the newlyoccupied territory where the only other documentation was in Arabicor in Ottoman Turkish.

The Military Epoch: Warfare and SpatialDomination—The Legacy As Similarity

The French conquest of Algeria lasted twenty-seven years, from thecapture of Algiers in 1830 to the fall of Kabylia in 1857. Resistance toFrench domination was uneven but fierce, and the terrain unfamiliar.The precedents of warfare in the area with which the French officerswere most familiar were Roman. Livy’s account of Masinissa’s heroic re-sistance to Syphax and Sallust on Jurgurtha’s war with the Romans werethemost obvious examples. In his widely read account of RomanAfrica,Gaston Boissier, the renowned classicist,11 compared Jurgurtha to theArab leader Abd-el-Kader and drew parallels between Metellus’s tacticsagainst Jurgurtha and those of the French: ‘‘bold attacks, razzias [raids]as we call them, in which he overthrows the huts, burns the crops, andleads off the herds. The heavy Roman legion, so careful, so measuredin its movements, so true to its ancient tactics, he makes supple andflexible. He accustoms the soldier to make forced marches by night . . .carrying, besides his arms, skins filled with water. . . . All that we toohave . . . experienced . . . the same method has always been used.’’12

Indeed, when General Bugeaud took command in 1841 of the army inAlgeria, he realized that warfare in Africa could not be conducted asit was in Europe, and he changed French military tactics in the sameway as Metellus had done. He abandoned traditional formations, whichincluded the infantry square, and introduced mobile strike columns,

(Paris, 1787); William Shaler, Sketches of Algiers (Boston, 1826); Thomas Shaw, Voyages dans la régenced’Alger, trans. from the English by J.W. MacCarthy (Paris, 1830); Abbé GuillaumeThomas FrançoisRaynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans l’Afrique sep-tentrionale (Paris, 1826). See Norman Daniel, Islam, Europe and Empire (Edinburgh, 1962), 96, forofficers’ reading material prior to the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt.

11 Boissier was a member of the Institut de France, secretary of the Académie Française,and professor at the Collège de France and the Ecole Normale Supérieure. His oeuvre includedworks on Cicero, Tacitus, Virgil, and Horace, as well as works on Roman mores, Roman women,and Roman archaeology. His books were translated into Spanish, English, and Russian. Boissierwas inspired to write Roman Africa following a visit to Algeria in 1891, at a time when the Algerianquestion was once again being debated in the National Assembly. He toured Algeria in the com-pany of a group of deputies and senators and decided to write a book to draw the close parallelbetween the Roman and French experiences in North Africa, which, he felt, was relevant to thedebate. Gaston Boissier, Roman Africa, trans. Arabella Ward (London, 1898), v–vii.

12 Ibid., 25–26. For further comparisons between Roman and French conquest and coloni-zation, see Spécimen colonial de l’Algérie: Résumé, réfutation ou complément des systèmes de MM. Leblanc dePrébois, L’abbé Landmann, de Lamoricière, Bedeau et Bugeaud (Paris, 1847), 40–42.


which could strike rapidly and withdraw as quickly. He also adopted therazzia.13Bugeaud’smilitary success, where his predecessors had failed, isattributed to these changes. Bugeaud’s experiences in Spain during thePeninsular War had convinced him that contemporary military tacticswere all but useless in situations of guerilla warfare, but he was also con-versant with classical sources on the subject in North Africa, as the ref-erences in his speeches to Roman activities there indicate.14 The extentto which Bugeaud modeled himself on his Roman predecessors is infact of less importance than the way in which French military successesunder his command in Africa were tied to those of ancient Rome. Suchcomparisons served to increase his stature and fed into the ‘‘glorious’’legend of the invincible father figure, Père Bugeaud, who had securedAlgeria for the French where lesser commanders had failed—a legendwhose foundational nature kept it alive until Algerian independence.15

But it was not just as a military exemplar that the Roman legacy was souseful.

The capture of Algiers in 1830 was followed by a period of indeci-sion and debate in the Chamber of Deputies as to whether to advancefarther.While this, too, had parallels in the Roman experience, the rele-vance of the Roman legacy to the French decision to press on is un-certain.16 In any event, in 1832 the French moved eastward to Bougie,which was taken in September of the following year. On 20 September1833, nine days prior to the final collapse of the town, an order fromthe king incited the army ‘‘to complete the conquest of Algeria in orderto return to the civilized world the bank of the Mediterranean, whichhad been in the grips of anarchy and barbaric methods since the fall ofthe Roman Empire.’’17 In accordance with the directive, the final thruston Bougie was made, and the army then moved inland to Constantine,which fell in 1837. Both towns had been important Roman centers, and,

13 For a description of his methods, see Bugeaud, ‘‘De la stratégie, de la tactique, desretraites et du passage des défilés dans les montagnes des kabyles,’’ in Par l’épée et par la charrue: Ecritset discours, ed. P. Azan (Paris, 1948), and Comte Henri Amédée d’Ideville, Le maréchal Bugeaud,d’après sa correspondance intime et des documents inédits, 1784–1849, 3 vols. (Paris, 1882), 2:263–65.

14 See Azan, Par l’épée.15 Bugeaud’s legendary military status was well on the way to being established by 1842. Its

impact on the military, both in Algeria and elsewhere, was profound. See Antony Thrall Sullivan,Thomas-Robert Bugeaud, France and Algeria, 1784–1849: Politics, Power, and the Good Society (Hamden,Conn., 1983), 90, 164.

16 For the similarities between the debates in the Roman Senate and those in the FrenchChamber of Deputies, see Boissier, Roman Africa , 95.

17 Quoted by Edouard Lapène, Vingt-six mois à Bougie ou collections de mémoires sur sa conquête,son occupation, et son avenir: Notice historique, morale, politique, et militaire sur les Kabaïles (Paris, 1838),197. Lapène was in active service during the conquest and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonelin 1839. Little is known of Lapène beyond the works he produced as a result of his military serviceboth in France and in Algeria. His Vingt-six mois à Bougie became a reference for subsequent workson Kabylia and the Kabyles.


as a result, their acquisition was deemed to be a prestigious achieve-ment. As Edouard Lapène, a lieutenant colonel in the artillery whoserved as commanding officer in Bougie, put it: ‘‘not only had Bougiebeen strategically important . . . it had been a center for a varied andlucrative export trade . . . and, as such, has a distinguished place inour African possessions.’’18 Among his sources, Lapène cited a mémoirepublished by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1835.

The academy’s mandate was ‘‘to throw light on documents andantiquities of French history and the history of other nations, princi-pally those whose political interests are or were connected to those ofFrance.’’19 In consequence, the academy became involved in activitiesin Algeria within a few years of the French arrival. The fall of Bougiehad prompted Maréchal Soult, French minister of war, to ask the Aca-démie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres to undertake a study with aview to producing a good geographical outline of the area, a historyof its colonization by the Romans, as well as an account of ‘‘the insti-tutions they founded and their relations with the indigenous popula-tion.’’20 The request had relevance to both the short- and long-termgoals of the French in Algeria. The geographical focus of such recon-naissance had immediate significance in that it furnished details of whatremained of the infrastructure of Roman settlements. The ruins of Ro-man roads and garrisons provided the French with the material where-withal for advancing across the area, which they used to their advan-tage, and an ideological rallying point. Recent research indicates thatFrench use of Roman roads, forts, cisterns, and aqueducts was wide-spread.21 In the longer term, the knowledge of Roman institutions andlocal interactions would serve as a useful yardstick with which to mea-sure French success or failure in its colonial endeavors.The commissionentrusted with the work was headed byDureau de laMalle and includeda number of renowned scholars. The final result was not the in-depth

18 Ibid., vi.19 ‘‘Ordonnance du Roi approvant le règlement pour l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-

lettres, 16 mai 1830,’’ in Institut de France: Lois, statuts, et règlements concernant les Anciennes Académieset l’Institut de 1635 à 1889: Tableau des fondations, ed. Léon Aucoc (Paris, 1889), 236. The Académiedes Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres—originally called the Académie des Inscriptions et Médailles—was founded in 1663. Its original mandate, rules, and regulations were approved in 1701. Theywere subsequently updated at intervals during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

20 Mémoires de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (Paris, 1831–33), 12:98, quoted byNabilaOulebsir, ‘‘Rome ou la Méditerranée? Les relevés d’architecture d’Amble Ravoisié en Algérie,1840–1842,’’ inL’invention scientifique de la Méditerranée: Egypte, Morée, Algérie, ed.Marie-Noëlle Bour-guet (Paris, 1998), 241. See also Frédéric Lacroix, ‘‘Colonisation et administration romanes dansl’Afrique septentrionale,’’ Revue africaine 41 (1863): 363–83, 415–32, esp. 364.

21 Michael Greenhalgh, ‘‘The French Invasion of Algeria and the Roman Past’’ (paper pre-sented at the twenty-eighth annual meeting of theWestern Society for French History, Universityof California at Los Angeles, 8–11 November 2000). Greenhalgh, who is an art historian, arguesthat without this infrastructure the French conquest of Algeria would not have succeeded.


study originally demanded, but a short exposé of geographical and his-torical questions.22 Although the project was abandoned in 1835 due toits magnitude and time-consuming nature, it was not the last of suchinvestigations.

During the first decade of conquest and gradual encroachment,the questions of whether or not to colonize and how and where to colo-nize caused considerable debate in France.23 It was not until 1848—when Algeria was divided into three French departments and was ab-sorbed into the French spatial and administrative territory—that thedebate subsided, although it did not disappear altogether. In an effortto resolve these debates, a series of commissions was formed, the first ofwhich coincided with the conquest of Bougie. The French governmentwas in favor of permanent occupation, the rapid development of colo-nization, and a watchful administration that would encourage nascentcommerce and industry. It gave free rein to its two commissioners, whowent about their task from September through November 1833.24 Theresults of the commission, presented in a final report, found that themilitary administration fell seriously short of the French government’svision for its new acquisition. At the time the commission was conclud-ing its task, in mid-November 1833, the war ministry made its request tothe Académie des Inscriptions. If French endeavors in Algeria were tobe the focus of continuing debate, it made sense to look to the past forprecedents of military colonization. Rome provided the only ‘‘civilized’’example in the Western tradition. What had Rome achieved and howhad it managed its colony for so long? These were pertinent questionsto which the minister sought answers.

With the conquest in 1837 of Constantine, the ancient city of Cirtaand an important archaeological site, the minister’s directive was fol-lowed up by formal instructions from the Académie des Inscriptionsregarding the manner in which archaeological, historical, and geo-graphical research was to be undertaken in the area.25 Among theprojects initiated at this time was the tracking down, classification,and publication of all Roman inscriptions throughout Algeria. Thefirst work on the subject, cataloging 4,417 inscriptions, was publishedin 1858.26 An examination of the work shows that it was a collabora-tive exercise of considerable amplitude. Sixty-seven people contrib-

22 Lacroix, ‘‘Colonisation et administration romanes,’’ 365.23 For the different factions and issues involved, see Charles-André Julien, La conquête et les

débuts de la colonisation (1827–1871), vol. 1 of Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine (Paris, 1979), 106–37.24 Ibid., 108–9.25 Oulebsir, ‘‘Rome ou la Méditerranée?’’ 245.26 Léon Renier, Inscriptions romaines de l’Algérie (Paris, 1858). Renier, who edited the work,

was the librarian at the Sorbonne and a member of the Committee of French Language, History,


uted to the project by collecting, inscribing, and transmitting the in-scriptions to Léon Renier for publication.The three main contributorswere Renier, Captain Delamare, and General Creully, whose passionfor archeology led him to found the Société Archéologique de Con-stantine in 1853. While it is to be expected that the main contributorsshould have a professional or semiprofessional interest in archaeology,what is striking about the remainder is the fact they are nearly all mili-tary personnel who took part in the project on a casual basis. Officers,physicians, interpreters, and even priests collected inscriptions in theregion to which they were posted and then either sent their informa-tion to Renier directly or published their findings in scholarly journals,which Renier then used as his sources.27 A perusal of these sources in-dicates, furthermore, that interest in Roman inscriptions and archae-ology got underway well before the end of the first decade of occupa-tion, a fact that would appear to coincide with an outcome to Soult’sinitial request to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in1833.28 The collecting of Roman inscriptions did not stop there. By theend of the nineteenth century the corpus of the collection exceededten thousand. Considered to be the equivalent of ‘‘official records’’ and‘‘newspapers,’’ the inscriptions were valued for their ‘‘statistical’’ quali-ties. If interpreted with care they would, the French believed, providea vital source of information on a past colonization that most closelyresembled their own.29

In accordance with the 1837 directives of the academy and withinthe framework of another far more significant commission, the Scien-tific Commission for the Exploration of Algeria, which was undertakenfrom 1840 to 1842, two Frenchmen, the polytechnicien Captain Dela-mare and the architect Amble Ravoisié, undertook major archaeologi-cal studies.30 A third, Captain Baccuet, concentrated on the regions of

and Arts.The work was published under the aegis of Hippolyte Fortoul, minister of education andreligious affairs (ministre de l’instruction publique et des cultes).

27 For example, Doctor Raymon sent inscriptions from the Constantine area, Doctor Le-clerc, from the Sitifis area, and the Bureau arab officer, Azéma de Montravier, from around Tlem-cen (Renier, Inscriptions romaines, 388, 390–92, 427). Among the sources that Renier used were:Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de France, Revue archéologique, Archives des missions, Moniteur algé-rien, Revue africaine, and Journal des savants.

28 One of the earlier references is to the 1837 edition of the Journal des savants; Renier,Inscriptions romaines, 325.

29 Boissier, Roman Africa, 292–93.30 The Scientific Commission was originally conceived by the ministry of war in 1837. It was

headed by the renowned naturalist Lt. Col. Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent (1778–1846) andcomprised artists, biologists, archaeologists, and ethnographers. Many of its members were poly-techniciens and Saint-Simonians, and all were considered experts in their field. The commission,which included Prosper Enfantin, Henri Fournel, Captain (later General) AdolpheHanoteau, andBaron W. M-G. de Slane, produced thirty-nine volumes entitled Exploration scientifique de l’Algériependant les années 1840, 1841, 1842 publiée par ordre du gouvernement (Paris, 1844–67).


Algiers and Oran.31 Delamare remained in Algeria for three years afterthe official dissolution of the Scientific Commission in 1842, perfect-ing his drawings and adding data to his catalog of antiquities. He re-turned to Algeria for further research from 1850 to 1851 and continuedto work on archaeology in the colony until his sudden death in 1861.32

Ravoisié was the first French architect to be commissioned for such atask in Africa. One of the aims of Ravoisié’s undertaking was to recordthe sites and structures of all archaeological remains before their de-struction or disappearance. This concern was related to the fact thatstones and columns from the ruins were used as building materials. In-deed, in an expression of intent that appears symbolic in the light of thepresent article, Bugeaud had stated that the material from the Romanruins could be used as the cornerstones and archways for the perma-nent structures and buildings that France would soon build.33 Further-more, certain officers, in keeping with the traditional military practiceof plundering conquered territories, were keen to transport the bestarcheological pieces back to France.34 The duc de Dalmatie, one of theadvocates of such action, had wanted to take the third-century Romantriumphal arch at Djemila back to the metropole, while Bugeaud had en-visaged establishing an Algerian museum in Paris.35 Among Ravoisié’ssuggestions was the restoration of the arch at Djemila in situ. The workwas never undertaken, but the gesture of restoring the past glory ofRome was not made in vain.36 Equaling and even surpassing the Ro-man achievement was a significant theme in the comparisons betweenthe colonial oeuvres of the two empires. Although the main focus ofcomparison, in the first two decades of French occupation, was to evalu-ate the extent of Roman colonization both spatially and administra-tively, the outcome of such studies would help determine the viabilityof French colonization.

31 Stéphane Gsell, Texte explicatif des planches de Ad. H.-Al. Delamare, exploration scientifique del’Algérie pendant les années, 1840–1845, (Paris, 1912), vii (text and n. 3).

32 For the achievements of Captain Delamare, see Monique Dondin-Payre, ‘‘La productiond’images sur l’espace méditerranéen dans la Commission d’exploration scientifique d’Algérie: Lesdessins du Capitaine Delamare,’’ in Bourguet, L’invention scientifique de la Méditerranée, 223–38.

33 Quoted by Julien, La conquête et les débuts, 193.34 The antagonism aroused by archaeologists is evident from the observation of one un-

sympathetic contemporary: ‘‘In the interest of their great work which never gets published, thesescholars create disorder everywhere with their demands.’’ Marginal annotation in an official letter,attributed to Bugeaud by Gsell, Texte explicatif, iii.

35 The duc de Dalmatie’s plan for the Djemila arch was published in an arrêté dated 29 No-vember 1842. Had it been carried through, it would have ended up not far from the Luxor obeliskand the banks of the Seine near the projected site of Bugeaud’s museum. Neither scheme was everimplemented. See ‘‘Introduction and Preamble,’’ Revue africaine, 1 (1856): 3–11, esp. 7. See alsoGabriel Esquer, ‘‘Histoire et souvenirs,’’ in the centenary edition of the Revue africaine: Centenairede la Société Historique Algérienne, 1856–1956 (Algiers, 1956), 193–226, esp. 194.

36 Oulebsir, ‘‘Rome ou la Méditerranée?’’ 267.


The aim of the Scientific Commission, the largest and most impor-tant of its kind, was to explore and expose the terrain of the new colonyas thoroughly as possible.37 By doing so, the members of the missionachieved a number of things. First, they uncovered the ‘‘mysteries’’ ofthe newly acquired territory, thus facilitating eventual administration.Second, they situated the terrain in a European intellectual discourse.Third, they provided a body of scholarship that served as the founda-tion for future development.Throughout the colonial period, the stan-dards set by the commission were emulated and improved upon. AsErnest Renan put it, the work started by the commission was ‘‘one ofthe titles to glory of France in the nineteenth century.’’38 The task ofexploring Algeria was an ongoing project that was integral to France’scivilizing mission. Allusions to Rome apart, the very activity of mappingout the newly occupied terrain in a French intellectual framework wasin itself a way of recovering the area for Western civilization. But theadded bonus of being able to refer to Rome as an illustrious precursorwas a way of reinforcing the spatial and ideological transition from Eastto West.

Colonization did not just concern spatial and ideological impo-sitions, however. There was the ever-present problem of the ‘‘indige-nous population’’ and how it would respond to the French presence.Any information regarding former relations between ‘‘colonizing’’ and‘‘colonized,’’ in situations of both war and peace, was therefore carefullyexamined. As the journalist and author Saint-Marc Girardin put it inthe Revue des deux mondes, a careful reading of the classics would helpto ‘‘clarify the difficulties that French domination was encountering inNorth Africa.’’39 While Livy and Sallust helped elucidate precedents inwarfare, for an understanding of the interaction between the Romansand their subject peoples in North Africa the two works most widelyused were Sallust’s The Jurgurthine War and Tacitus’s The Germania.

As late as 1898, when conquest was long since complete and themilitary administration had been replaced by a civilian government,Sallust was still a point of reference. Boissier, for example, incited hiscompatriots to read Sallust’s work not only for its literary merit but alsofor its ‘‘special interest’’ in relation to Africa.40 For works on Algeria,published in the first two decades of French rule, The Jurgurthine War

37 For the role of the Scientific Commission in creating a French space, see Lorcin, ImperialIdentities, 41–52.

38 Quoted by Boissier, Roman Africa, vii.39 Saint-Marc Girardin, ‘‘De la domination des Carthiginois et des Romains en Afrique com-

parée avec la domination française,’’ Revue des deux mondes, 26 (1841): 408–45, esp. 409.40 Ibid., 20.


had been, in the words of one author, ‘‘a mine of rich information.’’41

With regard to the indigenous population, the French were above allinterested in the origin of the Berbers and their possible role in thecolonial oeuvre. The Arabs were considered latecomers who had sweptacross North Africa in two waves in the seventh and eleventh centuries,but the Berbers, thought to be the original inhabitants of the area,were something of an enigma, which the classics could possibly eluci-date.Unraveling the past and understanding the culture of the Berberswould permit the French to administer their subject peoples more suc-cessfully.

Among the first officers to carry out research in this area wasLapène, who had taken part in the Bougie campaign. His Vingt-six moisà Bougie, published in 1838, contained a section on the Kabyles (Ber-bers living in the mountainous region of the Djurjura), which was re-printed separately, eight years later, on the eve of the first major assaulton Kabylia.42 In his analysis of the Kablyes, Lapène relied heavily onSallust and Tacitus, accompanying his observations with lengthy cita-tions.43 One section of the study was devoted to a comparison betweenthe early nineteenth-century Kabyles and the peoples who inhabitedthe area during Roman occupation.44 While the use of Sallust is under-standable, the use of Tacitus’sGermania to link theKabyles with theGer-manic tribes signified an ideological leap that was racial in its overtones.Quoting from Tacitus, Lapène enumerated a series of customs charac-teristic of the Germanic tribes that, he declared, were shared by theKabyles.The list was long, ranging from distinctive war cries and meth-ods of fighting, through a love of independence and a similar sense ofjustice and religious structures, to rudimentary economic and decision-making institutions.45 The importance of Lapène’s analysis lies not somuch in its accuracy, or lack of it, but in the fact that he was drawingthe Kabyles into the ‘‘Western camp.’’ This was an ideological maneu-ver that would assume considerable significance in the ensuing decadeswhen a pro-Berber element emerged in colonial circles, claiming thatthe Berbers could be assimilated more easily than the Arabs due to

41 Dureau de la Malle, Histoire des guerres, 6.42 Edouard Lapène, Tableau historique, moral et politique sur les Kabyles (Metz, 1846). Lapène

wrote historical works on France, Spain, and Algeria. As far as the latter was concerned, in addi-tion to Vingt-six mois à Bougie and his work on the Kabyles he wrote ‘‘Tableau historique de l’Algériedepuis l’occupation romaine,’’Mémoires de l’académie de Metz 25 (1843–44): 158–244, and 26 (1844–45): 107–315; and ‘‘Tableau historique de la province d’Oran,’’ Mémoires de l’académie de Metz 23(1841–42): 43–92.

43 See, for example, Lapène, ‘‘Tableau historique . . . ,’’ in Vingt-six mois, 178–79, 186–92.44 Lapène, ‘‘Comparison des Kabaïles [sic] modernes avec les anciens peuples d’où ils sont

présumés tirer leur origine,’’ in ibid., 177–92.45 Ibid., 186–92.


similarity of disposition with the Europeans. Lapène’s work, as one ofthe earliest on the Kabyles, became a reference for future studies, andmany of his conclusions were incorporated into the canon of thoughton the Berbers.46 Indeed, one of themost important works of ethnologyto emerge from the colonial period on the Berbers, Emile Masqueray’sFormation des cités chez les populations sédentaires de l’Algérie, was shaped byan intellectual deference to Roman civilization. He compared Kabylesocial organization to that of the primitive Romans and believed that acareful study of Berber villages (the tiddar in Kabylia, the thaquelathin inthe Aurès, and the qçour of the M’zab) would shed light on the institu-tional origins of Western civilization.47

By the end of the second decade of French occupation, the mesh-ing together of Rome and France, as different stages of the same oeuvre,was well established. Two developments shaped the ensuing period ofthe Rome-France comparison. First, the incorporation of Algeria intoFrance as three departments put an end to the debate on whether ornot to colonize. The question now became how to colonize. Here againFrench officers looked to Rome for some of the answers.Was the Romanregime of the garrisons, whereby the military maintained dominationand protected civilian colonization, a viable solution for the French?Bugeaud had certainly thought so. ‘‘Military colonization . . . seemsto me to be fundamental,’’ he had informed the Chamber of Depu-ties in 1844.48 His vision of colonization was by the sword and the plow(Par Ense et Aratro), implemented by means of agricultural committees(comices agricoles), the development of which was his ‘‘Delenda Carthago,’’he told the deputies.49 Second, the period saw the institutionalization ofAlgeria as spatially French via the establishment of a series of scholarlysocieties whose main preoccupation was to map out, record, and clas-sify the colony’s archaeological and historical terrain. In the process,

46 For the ramifications of the Arab-Berber dichotomy and Lapène’s work on the Kabyles,see Lorcin, Imperial Identities, esp. 17–96.

47 EmileMasqueray, Formation des cités chez les populations sédentaires de l’Algérie (Kabyles du Djur-jura, Chaouia de l’Aurès. Beni M’zab) (Paris, 1886), 221–22, 226.

48 Azan, Par l’épée, 196. For an exposé of Bugeaud’s ideas on colonization, see Thomas Bu-geaud de la Piconnerie, ‘‘De la colonisation européenne en Afrique,’’ in Quelques réflexions sur troisquestions fondamentales de notre établissement en Algérie (Algiers, 1846), 22–36.

49 See Bugeaud’s speeches to the Chamber in Azan, Par l’épée, 199–201, and in D’Ideville, Lemaréchal Bugeaud, 158–77. It was in 1832 that Bugeaud first proposed his idea of the comices agri-coles, whereby military units would be transformed into soldier-laborers in peacetime. He had inmind not only Algeria but also the marsh areas of Brittany and Bordeaux. The soldier as laborerand as executor of public works were ideas that were picked up by the Bureaux arabes in Algeria.See Lorcin, Imperial Identities, 79–84; X. Yacono, Les bureaux arabes et l’évolution des genres de vie in-digènes dans l’ouest duTell algérois (Paris, 1953).The phraseDelenda Carthago is a reference to Cato theElder’s insistence in the Senate that Rome undertake the third Punic War. Bugeaud is comparinghis obsession with creating the comices agricoles to Cato’s obsession with destroying Carthage.


Algeria’s immediate Islamic past receded in importance as earlier pastswere reclaimed and exposed as evidence of an area destined for colo-nization.The substitution of a remoteWestern past for a recent Islamicone and the institutionalization of Algeria as spatially French were im-portant steps in marginalizing the presence and culture of the Arabsand Berbers.

In 1851 Field Marshal Randon was appointed governor-general ofAlgeria and commander of the army, a post he held for the ensuingsix and a half years. During his governorship, the mountainous regionof Kabylia, the final seat of resistance, was conquered and land distri-bution in favor of the Europeans greatly increased. In the decade ofthe 1850s alone, European holdings increased from 115,000 to 340,000hectares.50 Among the first tasks Randon assigned on arrival was theundertaking of a detailed study of the Roman methods of colonization.It was to include their organization of the country and their agricul-tural, administrative, judicial, political, religious, and military policies.The economic results of Roman domination as well as their influenceon the indigenous population were further points of interest. In short,it was to be ‘‘a physiology of Romano-African colonization with the aimof highlighting potential consequences of French domination.’’51 Thestudy was undertaken by Frédéric Lacroix, and in 1852 he drew up apreliminary report, which was published posthumously in the Revueafricaine. In it he outlined his initial findings and the direction the finalstudy would take. It was comprehensive, touching on every aspect ofRoman colonization, including the role of the military, the importanceof agriculture, and the prospects for assimilation, all of special inter-est to the French. Some of Lacroix’s most prescient observations weremade in his discussion of agriculture. His reflections on Roman viticul-ture and the clearing of the marshlands of the Mitidja foreshadoweddevelopments in the colony at the end of the century. With regard tothe latter, Lacroix pointed out that during Roman times theMitidja hadbeen salubrious. Drained and cultivated, it had not posed the sort ofhealth problem to the Romans that it did to the French. It was Lacroix’sintention to develop this theme of draining theMitidja in his final studyin order to demonstrate how this would favor French colonization.52

The Mitidja was in fact cleared at the end of the century, becoming thecolony’s leading agricultural area. Vineyards, citrus, and grain were itsleading products, the latter of which had been the main Roman staple,earning the North African province the sobriquet, ‘‘granary of Rome.’’

50 John Ruedy, Modern Algeria (Bloomington, Ind., 1992), 69.51 Lacroix, ‘‘Colonisation et administration romanes,’’ 365–66.52 Ibid., 420–22.


Lacroix died prematurely in 1863, and his work was taken over byErnest Carette, a highly productive member of the 1840–42 ScientificCommission. By this time, however, Randon had left Algeria, and, inspite of Carette’s contribution, the study was never published. Nonethe-less, its significance was not overlooked. Carette believed the study ofRoman colonization was useful as an example rather than a blueprint,the conditions and circumstances of the two periods being too differentto recreate Roman methods exactly.53 If the study did not provide theanswers sought, the debate on the pros and cons of military or civiliancolonization continued. Indeed, the military versus civilian coloniza-tion debate was itself a reflection of Roman debates.54 Roman Africa,therefore, remained at the center of colonial cultural configurations.

It was during Randon’s governorship that the first scholarly insti-tutions were set up to serve as the depository for the work produced asa result of historical and archaeological research in the colony and toensure its dissemination to a wider public.The twomost significant soci-eties, the Société archéologique de Constantine and the Société histo-rique algérienne, were founded in 1853 and 1856, respectively. Randon,who was a founding member and first honorary president of the latter,was instrumental in the establishment of both. Similar societies werelater set up in Bône, Oran, and Algiers.55 All had their own scholarlyjournals, which circulated in Algeria and France. Of these, the Revueafricaine, journal of the Algerian historical society, had an internationalreputation andmembership. In its opening preamble the journal statedthat ‘‘the French understood the magnitude of the civilizing mission,which had devolved upon them.’’56 The Western tradition of Romancivilization would be perpetrated in French Algeria. A perusal of thecontents of all these journals reveals the importance of Rome to Frenchinterest in Algeria’s past. Articles about Arab finds or vestiges of Celticor Vandal presence were outnumbered by those on the Roman periodof Algeria’s history.

Adrien Berbrugger, the historical society’s president from its foun-dation to his death, was a driving force behind the institutionalizationof the archaeological and historical exploration of Algeria.57He had ar-

53 Cited by Jacques Frémeaux, ‘‘Souvenirs de Rome et présence française auMaghreb: Essaid’investigation,’’ in Connaissances du Maghreb, ed. Jean-Claude Vatin (Paris, 1984), 35.

54 Boissier, Roman Africa, 102–3.55 Académie d’Hippone (1865); Société de Géographie et d’Archéologie de la Province

d’Oran (1878); and Société de Géographie d’Alger (1903).56 Revue africaine 1 (1856): 9.57 Berbrugger was a graduate of the Ecole de Chartes, a Fouriérist by philosophical incli-

nation, and an Arabist. He was a high-profile figure in the colony, becoming a member of a widerange of academic and nonacademic societies and civic groups. He was editor of the Moniteur al-


rived in Algeria as personal secretary to Clauzel in 1835 and set up theBibliothèque nationale d’Alger in the same year. By 1837 hewas workingon archaeological digs around Constantine, fromwhere he would bringback eight hundred manuscripts, which would form the basis of themanuscript collection of the Bibliothèque nationale in Algiers. A yearlater, as a recompense, he was awarded the annual gold medal of theInstitut (Section Inscriptions et Belle Lettres) for his work on ‘‘nationalantiquities.’’58 Henceforth, he would ceaselessly work toward the un-covering of Algeria’s past, both on archaeological sites and through thescholarly institutions to which he belonged.59His scholarly explorationsled him to the Algerian south, Tunisia (1850), and Morocco (1862). In1856 Berbrugger was elected amember of the Legion d’honneur for his‘‘important archeological work.’’60 It was the same year he establishedthe Société historique algérienne and its journal, La revue africaine: Jour-nal des travaux de la Société historique algérienne, remaining president ofthe society and editor of the journal until his death. His mandate inthe latter capacity was to inform the public of new developments, re-cently discovered documents, and all other information pertaining tolocal history.61 In short, it was to create an archive of France’s newestand least-known region, a region that would eventually hold pride ofplace in la France d’outre-mer. Berbrugger was a transitional figure be-tween military rule, the end of which coincided with his death in 1869,and civilian rule. He had lived and worked within a military framework,but his oeuvre pointed to the future ideological development of thecolony that would define itself as a region of France with amarked speci-ficity that both bound it to and distinguished it from the mainland. Ar-chaeological activity would continue to thrive, paralleled and comple-mented by an ideology of difference that was grounded in concepts ofLatinity. The parallels between the Roman regime of the garrisons andthe French military administration, between the Pax Romana and themission civilisatrice, were reworked so that the continuity between Romeand France acquired a new dimension.While the concept of similarityinherent in the notion of assuming Rome’s mantle did not subside, a

gérien, a paper that chronicled the major events in the colony. He was elected a member of theRoyal Geographical Society. His prestige in Algeria was such that when he died, he lay in stateat the national library he had founded and was given an official funeral presided over by thengovernor-general Field Marshal MacMahon.

58 Robert Dournon, Autour du tombeau de la chrétienne: Documents pour servir à l’histoire del’Afrique du nord (Paris, 1946), 14.

59 See ibid., 13–18.60 Ibid.61 Preamble, Revue africaine 1 (1856): 10.


One of the museums of colonial Algeria with some of its Roman artifacts. From Cardi-nal, Les pieds-noirs. Reprinted with permission

more nuanced interpretation developed that accommodated differen-tiation from the Muslim heritage and incorporation into the spiritualand national heritage of France.

The Civilian Era: Legacy As Difference

In 1871, following the demise of the Second Empire in France and thegreat Kabyle insurrection in Algeria, the administration of the colonypassed into civilian hands. The transition signaled the advent of majordemographic, political, and economic changes as the European popu-lation increased, settler power over the Algerians was extended, andland sequestration was stepped up. A series of decrees greatly extendedFrench judicial power and enlarged the legislative and executive au-thority of the colonial administration.62 Among the land allocationsfollowing the insurrection, one hundred thousand hectares in Kabyliawere handed over to refugees from Alsace-Lorraine, about twelve hun-dred families in all.63 As for the European population, it increasedthreefold in the first three decades alone, jumping from 236,000 to

62 Ruedy, Modern Algeria, 76.63 Ibid., 80.


621,000.64 Although improved medical and sanitary conditions had re-duced mortality, the increase was due largely to an influx of workersseeking employment in the lively public works sector of the colony.Most were from the countries along the northern shores of the Medi-terranean: Spaniards, Sardinians, Italians, Corsicans, and Maltese, orthe ‘‘Latins of Africa’’ as they came to be called.65 In 1894, in a study onthe Latin literature of Africa, Paul Monceaux declared with some sat-isfaction: ‘‘Roman Africa has, in large part, become French territory,’’adding that ‘‘all things relating to the history of Algeria are of impor-tance to us, in the same way as all our national antiquities.’’66 It wasno coincidence that the title of his literary study was Les Africains. Thenotion of the ‘‘Latins of Africa,’’ a new race formed of the interminglingof the peoples of the northern shores of the Mediterranean, had seenthe anthropological light of day as early as 1873.67 But the concept wasto find its ideological champion, and the notion of Latin Africa wouldbecome entrenched in the colonial narrative with the arrival in Algeriaof Louis Bertrand in 1891. Coincidentally, two years earlier, the chil-dren of Algeria’s non-French settlers had been legally naturalized in ameasure designed to increase the French element of the population,which was not growing at the pace of the non-French element, and tocounterbalance the impact of the unpopular Crémieux Law of 1870,which had naturalized the Algerian Jews who were perceived by thesettlers to be more indigenous than European.68 The sociocultural di-versity of these new citizens and the fact that most were unfamiliar withthe metropole militated against a rapid acquisition of French culturaland social norms.69 Bertrand’s arrival was timely.The ‘‘Latins of Africa’’would provide him with the necessary material to create his life’s work,while Bertrand would provide them with the ‘‘imagined’’ bonds thatwould link them to France.

Although Bertrand’s contribution was ideologically decisive, his

64 Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine: De l’insurrection de 1871 au dé-clenchement de la guerre de libération (Paris, 1979), 2:119, 121.

65 Of the 236,000 Europeans present at the beginning of civilian administration, 121,600were French and 115,000 were of other European nationalities (Spanish, Italian, Maltese, andGreek). Of the 621,000 Europeans in Algeria in 1900, 384,000 were French and 237,000 werenon-French.

66 Paul Monceaux, Les Africains: Etude sur la littérature latine d’Afrique (Paris, 1894), 3.67 Louis Faidherbe and Paul Topinard, ‘‘Instructions sur l’anthropologie de l’Algérie,’’ Bul-

letin de la société d’anthropologie de Paris, 2d ser., 8 (1873): 603–65, esp. 654.68 For the details of the 1889 law, see Ageron, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine, 118–20; for

anti-Semitism in the colony, see 60–67. For the colonial reaction to the Crémieux decree, seeRuedy, Modern Algeria, 77.

69 For an understanding of the way in which the culture of these immigrants developed, seeDavid Prochaska, ‘‘History As Literature, Literature As History: Cagayous of Algiers,’’ AmericanHistorical Review 101 (1996): 671–711.


ideas did not evolve in isolation but were influenced by developmentsin the colony. The archeological activity set in motion by the likes ofBerbrugger—and stepped up under the civilian regime—provided thematerial ballast to support his arguments. Among the most prominentfigures to follow in Berbrugger’s archeological footsteps were AlbertBallu and Stéphane Gsell. Ballu, who was the architect in charge of un-earthing Algeria’s historical monuments, spent twenty years on digs inthe colony. During this time he produced regular reports for the minis-ter of education and the arts (ministre de l’instruction publique et des beaux-arts). These reports served the dual purpose of recording his effortsand supporting requests for subsidies to continue expanding his work.70

Stéphane Gsell, archaeologist and professor at both the Ecole supé-rieure des lettres of Algiers and the Collège de France, was to becomea close friend of Bertrand. His numerous works on the historical sitesof Algeria included an explanatory text for Delamare’s archaeologicaldrawings for the Scientific Commission, L’Algérie dans l’antiquité (prob-ably his best-known volume), and the collaborative Histoire d’Algérie,published in the series Les vieilles provinces de France. Gsell’s work formedthe basis of all subsequent work in the colony on Roman archaeology.71

Both Ballu and Gsell were important contributors to the process of re-claiming the Western heritage of Algeria, which as a region of Francewas deemed to be a part of the patrimoine national. As a visual reminderof Algeria’s Roman past, the stones and inscriptions were an essentialpart of the colony’s historical record and, as such, were important sym-bols for the development of Bertrand’s ideology of Latinity, symbolsthat would eventually be transformed into colonial sites of memory.

Equally important though was the spiritual coupling of France andRome contributed by Cardinal Lavigerie. Indeed, it set the scene forBertrand’s work. In 1867, on the eve of the civilian takeover, CharlesMarchand Lavigerie was appointed to the archbishopric of Algiers.Within fifteen years he was primate of all Africa. Until his death in1892, Lavigerie worked to restore the Roman Church to its former Au-gustinian glory. His two-pronged approach of proselytization and colo-nization led to the development of a civilizing message with religiousunderpinning, which he buttressed with references to North Africa’sChristian past. As spiritual representative of Rome, Lavigerie assumedthe mantle of the fathers of the early Christian Church. Cyprian (200–

70 Agnès Groslambert, ed., L’archéologie algérienne de 1895 à 1915: Les rapports d’Albert Ballupubliés au journal officiel de la République française de 1896 à 1916, Collection du Centre d’EtudesRomaines et Gallo-Romaines, l’Université Lyon III, n.s., 16 (Lyon, 1997). See, for example, 11.

71 Jean Lassus, ‘‘L’antiquité,’’ in Revue africaine, 81–119, esp. 81.


258), Bishop of Carthage and Augustine (354–430), Bishop of HippoRegius, and ‘‘seven hundred other bishops’’ had been his precursors,and he took up the cross in their name to revitalize the message ofRome. In the pastoral letter delivered on assuming his appointment inAlgiers, Lavigerie drew attention to the Roman ruins that covered theAlgerian countryside and reminded the members of his new diocesethat ‘‘they were the sacred souvenirs of the courage, saintliness, andgenius of the heroes of our faith.’’72 Roman Africa had been a Chris-tian Africa, and it was France’s mission to ‘‘liberate’’ it from the fiercefanaticism of Islam and inveterate hatred of the Arab.73 If the Church,crushed, dispersed, and martyred, had ceased to exist centuries ago, ithad vanished completely under the ‘‘shroud’’ of the Muslim invasion.Immobilized by death, what remained of the Church—the seven hun-dred basilicas, sacred inscriptions, and tombs of the faithful—was stillburied.74 The return of the Roman faith would resurrect this legacy anduncover the immeasurable riches of the past.

Augustine was a Berber, a pertinent detail Lavigerie chose toignore, thus underscoring the fact that his vision of restoring the area toChristendom overrode other considerations. Certainly his desire to re-suscitate the Roman Church in Africa was not just a question of endors-ing the civilizing mission. His message also served to define his vision ofChurch doctrine. He believed that the ways of the ancient Church werethose of the true faith. By maintaining the purity of the traditions ofthe ancients, the Church would be strengthened and would confoundcontemporary critics.75 On the one hand, therefore, he looked to thepast as a means of revitalizing Catholicism and endorsing his conserva-tive doctrinal stance. On the other, he strove to transform Algeria into‘‘the birthplace of a great, generous, and Christian nation—anotherFrance . . . happy to walk in the paths of French justice and honor, and tospread the true light of civilization with the ardent initiative with whichthe French race and faith were blessed.’’76 To assist him in the processof reclaiming Africa for the Roman faith, Lavigerie established the mis-sionary orders of the Père Blancs and the Soeurs Blanches in 1869 and1870, respectively.

The archaeological and spiritual legacy of Rome came together in

72 Cardinal Lavigerie, ‘‘Lettre pastorale pour la prise de possession du diocèse d’Alger’’(5 May 1867), in Oeuvres choisies (Paris, 1884), 1:1–22, esp. 3 (also in Recueil de lettres publiées par Mgr.L’archevêque sur les oeuvres et missions africaines [Paris, 1869], 8–9).

73 Lavigerie, Oeuvres choisies, 5–6.74 Cardinal Lavigerie, ‘‘Ancienne et nouvelle église d’Afrique: Discours pour l’ouverture du

premier concile provincial d’Algérie,’’ in ibid., 87–131, esp. 92.75 Ibid., 114.76 Lavigerie, ‘‘Lettre pastorale,’’ 9.


‘‘TheRomanChurch restored to its former glory’’: NotreDamed’Afrique, Algiers. FromCardinal, Les pieds-noirs. Reprinted with permission

Louis Bertrand’s vision of a Latin Africa. The metaphors of death andresurrection, of burial and ‘‘disinterment,’’ used by Lavigerie as part ofreligious discourse were reformulated in secular terms by Louis Bert-rand. Bertrand greatly admired Lavigerie, whose influence he readilyadmitted.77 But whereas Lavigerie’s message resonated in religious cir-cles, where he sought to unify the diversification of the immigrantsfrom the northern shores of the Mediterranean through the religiouslegacy and observances of Rome, the bond Bertrand sought to createwas one of a cultural and racial ‘‘spirituality’’ rather than a religiousone. The strong anticlerical streak in the colony, coupled with Lavi-gerie’s controversial personality, created a terrain more receptive toBertrand’s unifying discourse than to Lavigerie’s. The Roman past re-claimed by Bertrand was, in the image of the colony, one of power, land,and blood.

In 1895, Bertrand, then a young teacher, visited the Roman ruinsof Tipasa, in the company of Stéphane Gsell. Gsell believed that colo-nial conditions for Rome and France in Africa were totally different.‘‘Whereas in 1830 France had found an uncivilized land (contrée bar-bare), the Romans had encountered prosperous towns and cultivatedland. . . . Unlike the French they did not have to deal with national

77 See, for example, Louis Bertrand, ‘‘Le centenaire du cardinal Lavigerie,’’ in Devant l’Islam(Paris, 1926), 80–126, and ‘‘L’église d’Afrique,’’ Revue des deux mondes 57 (1930): 402–15, esp. 402.


‘‘The manifestation of the true North Africa, a Latin Africa’’: The ruins at Tipasa onthe Mediterranean coast, west of Algiers. From Cardinal, Les pieds-noirs. Reprinted withpermission

and religious hatreds.’’78 Gsell’s notion of an ‘‘uncivilized’’ inheritancewas later picked up by Bertrand, but on seeing the ruins for the firsttime he echoed Monceaux’s sentiments declaring that Tipasa had beenhis intellectual watershed. He had rediscovered ‘‘the men who spokehis language and believed in his gods.’’ Tipasa was the architectural,cultural, and linguistic manifestation of the true North Africa, a LatinAfrica, whose existence he had hitherto only imagined.79 It was, how-ever, at the site’s necropolis that Bertrand had his most trenchant reve-lation. It was not just stones he encountered there but living beings,human forms whose contours were etched in the funereal strata: Chris-tians, men of his faith, who shared the same sacraments and rites.80 Thelearnedmen of the Church of Carthage had shaped the churches of theWest and, on the eve of the barbarian invasions, the city had been animportant seat of intellectual activity.81 When the barbarians did even-tually invade, the elite of the land had emigrated to Italy, to Spain, to

78 Stéphane Gsell, L’Algérie dans l’antiquité (Algiers, 1903), 144.79 Louis Bertrand, Sur les routes du sud, 9th ed. (Paris, 1936), 217, 219.80 Bertrand, ‘‘L’église d’Afrique,’’ 404.81 Ibid., 413–14.


Sardinia, to Corsica, and to Gaul, taking with them their libraries, theirrelics, and thememory of their martyrs.82Now the descendants of thosevery people had returned to reclaim their lost patrimony. It was a spiri-tual homecoming as much as a physical one.

The attribution of Latin/Roman antecedents to the settlers was areflection of debates in France concerning the origins of the Frenchnation and its people. From the sixteenth century onward, French his-torians and scholars interested in the early Middle Ages had adoptedeither a ‘‘Germanist’’ or a ‘‘Romanist’’ approach in their interpreta-tions.83 The debate revolved around whether or not the origins ofmedieval French institutions were Germanic, Celtic, or Roman. Dur-ing the nineteenth century, questions concerning the racial origins ofthe French were introduced into the formula.The relationship betweenthe Gauls and the Franks, the poetry of the Celts, and the legacy ofRoman Gauls were some of the subtexts of a debate that was as muchabout French nationhood as about what it signified to be French.84 Theloss of Alsace-Lorraine had, of course, accentuated the trend, raisingnew questions about the meaning of the nation and introducing theproblematic of the borderland and its mythologies. In his ‘‘What Is aNation?’’ lecture, delivered at the Sorbonne in 1882, Ernest Renan de-clared that a nation was ‘‘a soul, a spiritual principle.’’ Two componentswere vital to its development, namely ‘‘the possession in common of arich legacy of memories’’ and ‘‘the desire to live together, the will toperpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in undividedform.’’85 The concept of a nation as having a spiritual soul developed bythe possession of a heritage of memories and the will to live togetherwas one that Bertrand developed to the full.

Fustel de Coulanges, who taught at the Ecole Normale Supérieureduring Bertrand’s early years there, was a Romanist.86 His Ancient City:A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (1864),which quickly ran into twelve editions, presents a society whose mem-bers, claiming a common ancestry, live together on privately ownedland sanctified by the sepulchres of their ancestors. The dead are im-

82 Ibid., 414.83 Martin Thom, ‘‘Tribes within Nations: The Ancient Germans and the History of Modern

France,’’ in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi Bhabha (London, 1990), 23–43, esp. 23.84 See, for example: Mme de Staël, ‘‘On Germany’’ (1813), in Major Writings of Germaine de

Staël, trans.Vivian Folkenflik (NewYork, 1987), 292–324; Augustin Thierry,Histoire de la conquète del’Angleterre par les Normands (Paris, 1825); Amédée Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois (Paris, 1828); ErnestRenan, ‘‘The Poetry of the Celtic Races’’ (1886), in Poetry of the Celtic Races and Other Essays, trans.William G. Hutchinson (London, 1896), 1–60; Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des insti-tutions politiques de l’ancienne France: L’invasion germanique et la fin de l’empire (Paris, 1875).

85 Renan, ‘‘What Is a Nation?’’ in Poetry of the Celtic Races, 61–83, esp. 80.86 He died prematurely in 1889, when Bertrand was twenty-three.


mortalized by their descendents. The tomb links the land and its in-habitants, both as a site of memory and as a cult site.87 The outcome ofthe Franco-PrussianWar accentuated Fustel’s anti-Germanic approach,and his ensuing work marked him out as the leader of a new nationalisthistoriography.88 Fustel de Coulanges’s Romanist approach and manyof his themes are echoed in Bertrand. As a Lorrainer and a graduate ofthe Ecole Normale Supérieure, Bertrand was conversant with the worksof both Renan and Fustel and the debates into which their work fed.Indeed,many years later Bertrandwas to claim that in the sameway Fus-tel had torn away the veil of errors spun by romantic historians aroundGaul, he had ripped off the false mask placed on the face of Africa bylovers of ‘‘local’’ color.89 Here he was alluding to what he considered tobe the romantic exoticism of figures such as Fromentin and Loti.

The homecoming that Bertrand attributed to the ‘‘Latins’’ of Alge-ria was not just a refashioning of contemporary themes. It was also theideological manifestation of his own spiritual rebirth in the necropo-lis of Tipasa. Raised in a reactionary and highly religious family fromLorraine, the youthful Bertrand had rebelled, assuming an indiffer-ence to religion and a firm republican stance.90 The Paris of the LycéeHenri IV and the Ecole Normale Supérieure at the fin de siècle didnothing to alter Bertrand’s early convictions.91 Like Maurice Barrès’sderacinés, the provincial Bertrand felt dislocated and disillusioned inParis, where he was cut off from his native traditions. Unlike Barrès’scharacters, however, Bertrand was not doomed to failure. ColonialAlgeria provided him with the opportunity to reorient himself spiritu-ally and ideologically and in so doing to create a literary oeuvre thatwas to lead him to the Académie Française. ‘‘All I did was exchangeour eastern frontier for our southern one,’’ he wrote in Souvenirs sur laLorraine.92 The mythology of the borderland as a site under constantthreat of invasion, as an area of blurred identity where origins and tra-ditions assumed a particular importance in self-definition, became cen-tral to Bertrand’s work.The origins and traditions that Bertrand soughtto recreate were those of North Africa’s Roman past: ‘‘I ignored all thatwas not Latin or French in order to exalt the traditions of my own race

87 Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greeceand Rome (Baltimore, Md., 1980), xii–xiii.

88 Ibid., x. See especially Fustel’s Histoire des institutions politiques.89 Louis Bertrand, ‘‘Discours à la nation africaine,’’ Revue des deux mondes 6 (1921): 481–95,

esp. 487.90 André Bellessort, ‘‘Portrait d’écrivains: Louis Bertrand,’’ Revue bleue 12, no. 58 (1920):

364–68, esp. 364.91 Ibid.92 Quoted in ibid., 366.


and to uncover, in this land invaded by the nomad and the barbarian,our illustrious history and that of its early inhabitants.’’93

Tipasa was the site at which he found his cultural roots, but it wasalso there that his sense of cultural alienation toward the indigenouspopulation of Algeria was reinforced.Whywas it, he later surmised, thatthe EgyptianMuslims could lay claim with pride to their pharaonic pastwhile the Algerian Arabs could not do the same for Rome? For Bert-rand it was a rhetorical question that needed no answer; he believedthe French should rejoice in the fact that ‘‘their Arabs’’ were unable tosay, ‘‘This is what our ancestors the Romans achieved.’’ It emphasizedtheir difference. France had reclaimed a lost Latin province that, asheir to Rome, gave it precedence over Islam. Faced with the ‘‘usurpingArab,’’ or even the subjugated original inhabitant (l’Indigène asservi), itwas the Frenchwho held pride of place as ‘‘the truemasters’’ of the land.France represented the most revered and ancient Africa, whose sym-bolic monument was the triumphal arch, not the mosque.94 The Arabconquerors had added nothing to the Roman heritage; rather, they hadtried to destroy it.TheRoman ruins demonstrated that the seal of Romewas indelible.Thus the ‘‘Latins’’ who came to Algeria in the wake of theconquest could well imagine they were returning to their abandoneddomain to repossess their property (leur bien).95 For Bertrand, the stoneand mortar of Rome were the symbolic building blocks of the colony’slegacy of memories, which would form its ‘‘national’’ heritage and ce-ment the disparate sectors of its immigrant population, together cre-ating a cohesive whole. They were its sites of ancestral memory.

Such sentiments weremore than a grandiose justification of Frenchpresence in Africa. They were the backdrop for Bertrand’s life’s work:his ideology of the ‘‘Latins of Africa’’ as the regenerating force ofFrance, which he was to dub rebarbarization.96 ‘‘French Africa,’’ he de-clared, was a rejuvenated land where a vigorous strain of humanitywas developing with great promise.97 Bertrand’s Latins, the immigrantsfrom the northern shores of the Mediterranean, had intermarriedand produced a handsome, hardworking, ardent race.98 Bertrand had

93 Ibid. (‘‘nos Lettres de noblesse et de premiers occupants’’).94 Louis Bertrand, Les villes d’or: Algérie et Tunisie romaines (Paris, 1921), 8–9.95 Idem, ‘‘Préface,’’ in Le cycle africain: Le jardin de la mort (Paris, 1921), vii–ix. Le jardin de la

mort was first published in 1904. It was reissued under the title Africa in 1933.96 For a detailed account of Bertrand’s theory of rebarbarization and its links to fin de

siècle thought in France, see Patricia Lorcin, ‘‘Decadence and Renascence: Louis Bertrand andthe Concept of Rebarbarisation in Algeria,’’ in New Perspectives on the Fin de Siècle in Nineteenth- andTwentieth-Century France, ed. K. Chadwick and T.Unwin (London, 2000).

97 Bertrand, ‘‘Préface,’’ i.98 Idem, Sur les routes du sud, 52.


‘‘France represented the most revered and ancient Africa whose symbolic monumentwas the triumphal arch, not the mosque.’’ Arch of Septimius Severus at Lambessa(present-day Tazoult-Lambèse). From Cardinal, Les pieds-noirs. Reprinted with per-mission

discovered the merits of these quick-witted, pragmatic people in themonths following his arrival when he had fully explored Algeria. Intotal contrast to ‘‘the indolent Orientals who succumbed to laziness andan endless pursuit of pleasure,’’ the Latins were the colony’s life force.99

The product of both environment and blood, they were invigorated notenervated by the taxing climatic conditions.The ‘‘harshness of the Afri-can steppes, the burning sun and sand, and the mysterious influence ofancient Latin imperialism, with its love of pomp and ostentation, its au-thoritarianism, its individualism, and its cult of the family’’; these werethe formative forces of Bertrand’s Latin race.100 The indigenous popu-lation with no cultural link to Rome, imperial and Christian, could inno way measure up.

Arabs and Berbers were absent from Bertrand’s scheme of things.The Arabs, he believed, had brought poverty, endemic warfare, andbarbarism to North Africa. Centuries of Islam had destroyed the agri-

99 Idem, Les villes d’or, 243.100 Idem, ‘‘Préface,’’ xii.


cultural achievements of the Carthaginians and Romans and the signifi-cant legacy of Rome.101 Furthermore, Bertrand gave no cultural creditto either the Arabs or the Berbers. ‘‘What I first thought was Arab orOriental is really benighted Latin,’’ he wrote, ‘‘eroded by the rust of cen-turies.’’102 In a curious sleight of hand, Bertrand underlined the lackof originality of the indigenous population by stating that while thecultural legacy of Rome had been destroyed by the Arabs, a borrowedlegacy of cultural objects remained. ‘‘The jewelry, dress, baths, build-ings, universities, (even!) its mosques were all based on ancient Latindesigns.’’103 Culturally, the indigenous population was, therefore, twicedamned: as destructive and as lacking in imagination. The notion thatIslam was uninventive was not new. Arthur de Gobineau had said asmuch in his The Inequality of Human Races (1859), stating that Islam’s cul-tural aridity and lack of originality were due to its emergence from thedesert and the fact that its civilization was residual Greco-Asiatic.104

For Bertrand the ‘‘question of race [was] all important.’’105 As aliterary man he was less inclined to use the contemporary criteria ofphysical anthropology as a means of definition.Yet he overtly linked histhought to that of Gobineau, stating that ‘‘race is a spiritual and evena metaphysical entity, the originality of which is irreducible and resis-tant to all intermixing.When adulteration occurs, authority and powerpass into other hands. Let us remain Latin to keep the Empire in-tact.’’106 Echoing Gobineau, who believed that miscegenation was ulti-mately debilitating, he declared that intermingling with the Arabs andBerbers would erode French power. There had always been a masterrace in (North) Africa.107 Latin Africa was merely a continuation of thattradition.

The ‘‘Latins of Africa’’ were the inspiration of Bertrand’s first novel,Le sang des races, which was first serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1898and then published in 1899. It was the first in a series of works of fictionand nonfiction that together made up Le cycle africain, in which Bert-rand elaborated his ideology of Latin Africa. His ideas on the Latinsof Africa, his views on the indigenous population of Algeria, and hisdistrust of Islam spilled over into his other works, namely Le cycle de laMediterranée, the series of works entitled La terre natale, and his essaysand criticism. It was a substantial body of work that was well received

101 Idem, Les villes d’or, 23.102 Idem, Sur les routes du sud, 60.103 Idem, Les villes d’or, 24.104 Arthur de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races (New York, 1999), 178.105 Bertrand, Sur les routes du sud, 61.106 Ibid., 218.107 Ibid.


Two of Louis Bertrand’s ‘‘Latins.’’ From Cardinal, Les pieds-noirs. Reprinted with per-mission

in both intellectual and popular circles. Both his fiction and nonfictionran into several editions. His Sur les routes du sud, in which his ideology ismost cogently presented, was reprinted nine times.When Bertrand waselected to the Académie Française in 1925, Jules Cambon, fellow acade-mician and colonialist, replied to his maiden speech, stating that Bert-rand’s literary originality lay in his understanding of the settlers and hisability to convey the resonance of theMediterranean, which permeatedtheir lives as it had in the time of Rome and Carthage.108 Five years later,

108 Quoted by Odile Husson, Lorraine et Afrique dans l’œuvre de Louis Bertrand (Nancy, 1966),161.


on the occasion of the centenary celebrations, the dean of the facultyof letters of Algiers University drew attention to Bertrand’s work, sug-gesting that Bertrand’s accomplishments were comparable to Zola’s intheir detailed precision and their portrayal of Algerian realities. Bert-rand had produced an ‘‘epic of a new race.’’ 109 Bertrand himself sawhis oeuvre as being more complex than the mere depiction of the cus-toms and mores of a new race. He claimed to have been the instigatorof the very idea of Latin Africa. French Africa was a continuation ofthe Latin tradition. He had ennobled the settler by demonstrating thatAfrica was the source from which French civilization could draw newforce.110 Thus, with a characteristic lack of modesty, Bertrand spelledout his contribution to colonial thought. He had transformed his be-lief that the future of the Latins was closely linked to maintaining theirAfrican supremacy into a complex ideology.

Bertrand’s ideology was the pillar on which the myths of origin ofthe settler state were constructed. The selective use of the past to bol-ster the illusions of the present is par for the course in all societies. Inone as heterogeneous and recent as colonial Algeria, ancestral mem-ory could only be a hybrid of an imagined past and an indeterminatepresent. Bertrand’s ‘‘Latins’’ were the personification of this temporalhybridity. Culturally alienated from both the metropolitan French andthe native Algerians, the settlers strove to anchor their present in theneutral zone of a distant Mediterranean past.

Bertrand’s influence was considerable. While successive literaryschools in colonial Algeria, namely the Algerianist School and theEcole d’Alger, sought to delineate themselves from Bertrand’s thought,echoes of the Latin myth persisted. His ideas were developed in avariety of ways by the algérianiste school of colonial literature, whichemerged in the interwar period.111 Whatever their individualities, theauthors adhering to this school strove to create an image of settlerconnaturality based on the mirage of shared experience and commu-nality of character.112AsRobert Randau, one of the leading Algerianists,put it: ‘‘Children of the conquest . . . rapacious merchants . . . tena-cious cultivators . . . we are patient and energetic . . . like the Romans,

109 Pierre Martino, ‘‘La littérature algérienne,’’ in Alazard, Histoire et historiens, 331–48,esp. 341.

110 Bertrand, Les villes d’or, 5–10.111 There are a number of works on literature in colonial Algeria. Among the more recent

are: Ahmed Lanasri, La littérature algérienne de l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris, 1995); Prochaska, ‘‘HistoryAs Literature’’; and Dunwoodie,Writing French Algeria. For a bibliography of colonial literature, seeJean Dejeux, Bibliographie de la littérature ‘‘algérienne’’ des Français (Paris, 1978). Dejeux has publishedover a dozen books on different aspects of North African francophone literature.

112 Some of the leading figures of the school were Robert Randau, Magali Boisnard, Ray-mond Marival, and Ferdinand Duchêne.


Robert Randau, Louis Bertrand, and Albert Camus (clockwise from upper left).From Cardinal, Les pieds-noirs. Reprinted with permission


our masters.’’113 The desire for communality was also a feature of thelonger-lasting Ecole d’Alger, which included Albert Camus among itsadherents. The emphasis in this case was on the Mediterranean as aunifying cultural concept. While this suggested an all-encompassingethnic vision, it was the Western roots of the Mediterranean that wereprivileged. In a lecture at the 1937 inauguration of the Algiers Maisonde Culture, Camus presented his vision of the new Mediterranean cul-ture. It was a regionalism set in opposition to the nationalist doctrineof latinité promoted by Maurras and his fellow travelers of the Right.Camus repudiated the nationalism of latinité for its exaltation of theunimaginative military might of Rome, setting in its place the imagina-tive spontaneity of aMediterranean culture whose roots were in ancientGreece—the Greece of Aeschylus the precursor and not Euripedes thedisciple. At the core of Camus’s vision lay the concept of unbridled cre-ativity in all its forms. The conventionality and order of the new emu-lators of Rome were its abnegation. It was represented by landscapesflooded with sunlight and not theatrical settings where dictators, drunkon the sound of their own voices, subjugated crowds.What was neededwas not the lie that was triumphing in Ethiopia, but the truth that wasbeing assassinated in Spain.114

The political nature of Camus’s lecture, in which he distances him-self from latinité and the authoritarian traditions of Rome, obscures itsconnection to Bertrand’s ideology of the Latin melting pot. AlthoughCamus repudiates Rome, his rehabilitation of Mediterranean culture isnot truly universalist. He states that North Africa is the only country(pays) where East andWest cohabit. Although he sees little difference inthe lifestyles of the Italian and Spanish dockers of Algiers and the Arabsthat surround them, he does not see the latter as part of the tradition heseeks to rehabilitate.115 The essence of Camus’s Mediterranean culturerests on a unity of language and origin.The linguistic unity is that of theromance languages.116This effectively excludes the unassimilated Arabsand Berbers from his privileged space. The unity of origin is groundedin the ‘‘prodigious collectivism of the Middle Ages with its chivalricand religious orders and its feudalities.’’117 This makes no allowances fornon-Western traditions. Camus’s Mediterranean culture is vibrant andvariegated (bariolée), absorbing ideas and transforming doctrines with-

113 Robert Randau, Les algérianistes: Roman de la patrie algériénne (Paris, 1911), 170.114 Albert Camus, ‘‘La culture indigène: La nouvelle culture méditerranéenne: Cadres de

la conférence inaugurale faite à la ‘Maison de la Culture’ le 8 février 1937,’’ in Essais, ed. RogerQuilliot (Paris, 1990), 1321–27, esp. 1322.

115 Ibid., 1325.116 Ibid.117 Ibid.


out ever losing its true character.118 Camus’s ‘‘melting pot’’ departs fromthat of Bertrand in that it appears to make room for the Arabs, but itstrue image reflects Bertrand’s concepts of the ‘‘Latin race.’’

Bertrand’s refrains are clearest, however, in Camus’s second work,the collection of essays entitled Noces, published in 1938. It is no co-incidence that the opening essay of the collection is situated at Tipasa.Like Bertrand, Camus had a cultural awakening among its ruins. Hefirst visited the site in spring, when ‘‘it is inhabited by the gods, whosevoices emanate from the sun, the sea, the sky, and the pungent aro-matic herbs.’’119 From its opening paragraph to its closing lines, the essayis a paean to a sensuality provoked by the environment; a sentimentaleducation during whichCamus is ‘‘completely engulfed’’ (m’accapare toutentier) by ‘‘the wantonness (le grand libertinage) of nature’’ and initiatedinto the joys of creativity (sexual and artistic).120 But Camus’s awakeningis not just a virile response to the sun, the sea, and the sky. The ruinsthemselves are an essential part of his experience. In a symbolic passagehe describes the remains of the Roman forum where white heliotropes(symbol of sun, passion, and intoxication of the spirit) push through thestones, and red geraniums ‘‘spill their blood on what were once houses,temples, and public places. Like those men brought back to God byan excess of science, the long years have returned the ruins to theirmother’s home.’’121 The blooms of the present have overrun the ruinsof the past so that the two can no longer be separated. In short, the Ro-man past has become an integral part of the colonial present. At Tipasa‘‘seeing is believing,’’ Camus wrote.The ruins resemble ‘‘a character whosymbolizes a certain viewpoint’’ and ‘‘bears witness with virility.’’ Dur-ing that first visit, Tipasa became a character for him (mon personnage),and he knew that by continually ‘‘caressing and describing’’ it his in-toxication (ivresse) would never end.122 There was a time to experiencelife (vivre), a time to bear witness, and a time to create. He had experi-enced Tipasa; bearing witness and creating would come later.123 Camusends his essay by stating that the sensuality awakened in him that daywas a shared experience, ‘‘common to a whole race, born of the sun andthe sea, whose grandeur was drawn from its simplicity.’’124 On leaving,

118 Ibid.119 Albert Camus, ‘‘Noces à Tipasa,’’ in Noces (Paris, 1959), 11.120 Ibid., 13.121 Ibid. In Greek mythology the nymph Leucothoé was loved and abandoned by the God

of the Sun. Inconsolable, she died and was transformed into a heliotrope, a flower that always re-volves to face the sun like a lover gravitating toward its lost love.The heliotrope’s scent symbolizesintoxication of the spirit, especially by love and glory.

122 Ibid., 18.123 Ibid., 18–19.124 Ibid., 21.


Camus was ‘‘conscious that he had fulfilled his role; he had done hisduty as a man.’’125 His sensual arousal had been consummated, liberat-ing him to create.

In Retour à Tipasa, written in 1952, Camus describes a series of pil-grimages to ‘‘his ruins’’ after the Second World War. The exuberantinnocence of his youth has been shattered by events, but he repeatedlyreturns in search of a renewal that initially seems to elude him. As hewanders about on the last of these visits he realizes that he has foundwhat he is looking for. ‘‘Within me I heard an almost forgotten sound,as if my heart, stopped long since, had slowly started to beat again. . . .it seemed to me that I had returned to port, for an instant at least, andthat from now on this instant would never end.’’126 He had returnedto his roots and been renewed. Camus found his voice at the Romansite of Tipasa, as Louis Bertrand had done before him. But whereasBertrand’s literary awakening was a spiritual one drawing its strengthfrom a communion with a past rediscovered, Camus’s was an erotic onein which a past, fully appropriated by the present, triggered a sensualvision of theMediterranean as an escape from the troubled present anda promise of the future. Bertrand’s ardent Latin, with his zest for lifeand regenerative power, had come of age.

Conclusion

France’s appropriation of Rome and its legacy was a multidirectionalprocess whose disparate components came together gradually. It wasnot a predetermined justification of colonization; rather, it was engen-dered by the circumstances of conquest and occupation. The connec-tion between France and Rome emerged fairly soon after French con-quest due to the education of the officers who related both ideologicallyand practically to classical texts with more ease than to Arabic ones. Inthe early stage of French occupation, when unfamiliarity of terrain andignorance of colonizing methods created a degree of uncertainty, textson Roman activities in the area were a reassuring point of reference.They were an aid to unraveling the mysteries of the newly conqueredterritory. Roman literature served as a guide to the methods and poten-tial of colonization rather than as a blueprint. Rome buttressed Frenchactivity theoretically rather than defining it practically. By 1860, twelveyears after the occupied parts of Algeria had been transformed intoFrench departments, the concept of the Roman legacy as integral to theWestern tradition that bound Algeria to France had taken shape. Ar-

125 Ibid., 20.126 Camus, ‘‘Retour à Tipasa’’ in Noces, 162–63.


chaeological activity, from its early beginnings in 1833, had emerged asan important ‘‘regional’’ pursuit. The collection of Roman remains andtheir concentration in the colony’s museums and institutions of learn-ing was a way of establishing a Western-cum-Christian–oriented cul-tural regionality. But as time progressed, and the French became firmlyentrenched in Algeria, a consensus emerged that France’s oeuvre hadimproved on and even surpassed that of Rome.127 The praxis of Romancolonization no longer mattered. The prototypical dimension of theFrance-Rome connection, which had been a feature of the military era,was therefore eclipsed by a more ideological approach that incorpo-rated spiritual and temporal attributes, which effectively marginalizedthe Arabs and Berbers.

Under civilian administration, settler society emerged from thecolonial shadows to claim its place on Algerian soil. The process ofincorporating the Roman legacy into the ‘‘collective memory’’ of thecolony now came into focus. The influx of immigrants with ‘‘Latin’’cultural roots from the northern shores of the Mediterranean co-incided with intellectual developments in France that tended to privi-lege France’s Latin heritage over its Germanic one, and with a resur-gence of preoccupations concerning French decadence and decline.The ideology that emerged in the colony anchored the ‘‘Latins’’ inAlgerian soil, both temporally and spiritually, as its ‘‘rightful’’ ownersand responded to metropole anxieties by emphasizing the regenera-tive capacities of this ‘‘newly emerging race.’’ By the interwar period,the ‘‘lost Latin tradition’’ had been not only rediscovered but fully re-claimed.128 The archaeological activity, which had started under themilitary as a way of ‘‘accumulating information’’ on Rome’s oeuvre inAfrica and had developed into an ongoing ‘‘regional’’ activity, now ac-quired a commemorative dimension. Roman archaeological sites, suchas Tipasa, were perceived as sites of ‘‘ancestral memory’’ that linkedAlgeria to the Western tradition and reinforced its French regionality.The ‘‘Latin/Mediterranean myth’’ elaborated in Algeria sought to cre-ate unity where none existed.Whether it was the spiritual regenerationof Lavigerie, the strident racial overtones of Bertrand, or the culturaluniversalism of Camus, the desire was to stabilize an essentially un-stable situation by creating social and cultural myths around which the

127 See, for example, Leynadier andClausel,Histoire de l’Algérie française (Paris, 1846), 47–49;Masqueray, Formation des cités, 13–14.

128 This argument was of course largely spurious. Although the Romans had possessednearly all the cultivable lands north of the Sahara, modern historians have shown that the RomanEmpire in Africa had no meaning or unity of its own, and the motivating force of much of its con-quest in the area was defensive action against marauding nomadic and seminomadic tribes. See,for example, Roland Oliver and J. D. Fage, A Short History of Africa (London, 1995), 43.


society could coalesce. In the long run, however, the restricted ideo-logical space provided for the Arabs and Berbers militated against theirsuccess.

Beyond the spatial and ideological transformation of Algeria towhich the Rome-France connection contributed, there was a wider sig-nificance. The positive evaluation of Rome’s oeuvre in North Africaand its continuity by France was an endorsement of a Western im-perial tradition that was in contrast to the Eastern tradition of conquestby the Arabs or the Ottoman Turks, depicted respectively as barbaricand retrograde. Although there was certainly a religious dimension tothis opposition, the notion of the primacy of Western civilization, andhence Europe’s obligation to extend it across the globe, was more com-plex and involved Eurocentric notions of cultural superiority. The con-cept of a modern ‘‘Latin Africa’’ as a continuation of an ancient RomanAfrica fed into the Eurocentric imperial narratives of the mission civili-satrice or the ‘‘white man’s burden.’’ Colonial Algeria was a cornerstonein their ideological construction.