The politics of Frenchness in colonial Algeria, 1930-195

This dissertation examines French citizenship and cultural identity in Algeria during the last quarter-century of colonial rule. It seeks to discover whether centralized French institutions such as public schools and the army were powerful enough to assimilate residing populations of Arabic, Spanish, Jewish, Berber and Italian descent. Using novels, essays, census data, school textbooks, newspapers and administrative documents, this study assesses the Frenchness of Algeria's indigenous elite and its diverse European settlers.;French colonial activity in North Africa had begun in 1830. Algeria acquired French departmental status two decades later, in 1848. Algeria was a central part of a vast colonial commonwealth, often referred to as "Greater France." French citizens formed a minority in colonial Algerian society, a fraction of a much larger population of Muslim subjects. This dissertation examines the role played by schools in instilling in naturalized citizens and subjects a sense of Frenchness. A set of specialized primary school textbooks encouraged the acculturation process. Colonial newspapers translated how settler and indigenous groups defined French identity in North Africa. Newspapers destined for European populations drew readers into French social, political and cultural life. Arab and Berber journalists used their papers as a platform from which to demand collective naturalization, i.e. French citizenship, for all Algerian Muslims. Literature, political tracts and administrative reports provide more interpretations of identity. While official statements declared that all groups had assimilated, other sources indicate that non-French cultural traditions persisted. All foreign groups and affinities were suspect under French colonial rule.;This study suggests that although Algeria had become officially French, the vehicles of assimilation could not eradicate doubts about "phony" Frenchness. A perceived threat to French influence in Algeria, arising from both settler and indigenous populations, lingered on well into the twentieth-century. French Algeria was more diverse and more contested than its title suggests.