Law, territory, and the legal geography of French rule in Algeria: The forestry domain, 1830--1903

This dissertation seeks to analyze the relationship between law, territory, and jurisdiction in Algeria during the French colonial period. It undertakes this task through a detailed examination of the forestry regime imposed upon the colony. Forests provide a unique spatial framework to analyze the geography of colonial power. On the one hand, they offered seemingly bountiful economic opportunities: forests in general, and especially the cork-oak forests of Eastern Algeria, were seen as cash crops of no small importance for the well-being of the colony and of the metropolitan state. On the other hand, the practical difficulties of actually extracting value from the forests often exposed the weak and incomplete territorial sovereignty of the colonial state in Algeria. Dreams of a "smooth" imperial landscape of investment and cash-crop extraction, in short, abruptly confronted the de facto limits of colonial power and legal jurisdiction on the ground. Unpacking the kinds of confrontations that took place and how the colonial state sought to mediate, resolve, and overcome these is the focus of this dissertation.;Drawing on a mix of approaches from legal, historical, and political geography, this dissertation tracks the development of forestry laws from the early years of conquest and colonization until 1903, when an Algerian forestry code was put into effect. As with previous legislative efforts, the code sought to "script" colonial space as a smooth investment surface awaiting labor and capital. Yet, the vagaries of French territorial sovereignty, native resistance, and the corruption of colonial authorities meant that such efforts were complicated on the ground. Drawing on the archives of the CAOM, the Algerian National Archives, and the archives of the Department of Constantine, this dissertation highlights both the importance of the forestry question in and of itself as well as its relationship to broader questions of law, property, and forms of social control.;While much of this dissertation is devoted to analyses of empirical material, it also takes up the question of whether the laws and policies examined can be usefully understood as a "state of emergency" or a "state of exception," in the senses popularized by Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben. Here I argue that the Algerian case, in which "exceptional" and "emergency" legal measures extended over decades, in some ways challenges current academic interpretations of these terms by Geographers and other social scientists.