Abstract
By early 1938 political normalcy seemed to have returned to Algeria. Visibly strengthened in the aftermath of the June 1936 Popular Front electoral victory, the Left receded once again in the wake of staunch European resistance to the Blum-Viollette plan, the increasing popularity of the Etoile nord-africaine (ENA) and the ‘ulamā among Muslims, and the waning economic crisis. In June–July 1936, authorities recorded almost 40,000 workdays lost due to strikes in all three departments; in January 1937, they noted only a two-day tilt in an Oran chemical factory. The PCA met its Waterloo in October 1937 cantonal elections, losing its hold over rural labour and the urban proletariat in equal measure. Communists fared especially poorly with Muslims, capturing only 756 of 30,000 votes. The party’s subsequent plans to “Arabize” the party yielded little, as non-Europeans increasingly defected to Messali Hadj’s camp and sales of the communist press plummeted.1 Prefectorial and police reports further noted the decline in attendance at Popular Front meetings, often in the dozens as opposed to hundreds or thousands just two years earlier.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Benjamin Stora, Messali Hadj (Paris: Hachette, 2004), 149, 157–166;
Mahfoud Kaddache, Histoire du nationalisme algérien (Paris: Éditions Paris-Méditerranée, 2000), 495;
Jacques Bouvaresse, Un parlement colonial? Les Délégations financières, 1898–1945 (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2008), 905–906.
Ibid., 173–184; Rabah Aissaoui, Immigration and National Identity: North African Political Movements in Colonial and Postcolonial France (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 30.
Daniel Lefeuvre, Chère Algérie: la France et sa colonie, 1930–1962 (Paris: Flammarion, 2005), 71.
On La Rocque’s strategy and the factionalization of the CF/PSF, see Samuel Kalman, The Extreme Right in Interwar France: The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu (Burlington and Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
Laurent Kestel, La Conversion politique: Doriot, le PPF, et la question du fascisme français (Paris: Raisons d’agir, 2012), part one;
Robert Soucy, French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 205–210;
Paul Schue, “The Prodigal Sons of Communism: Parti populaire français narratives of Communist Recruitment for the Spanish Civil War and the Everyday Functioning of Party Ideology,” French Historical Studies 24 (2001), 90–91.
Thérèse Charles-Vallin, “Les Droites en Algérie, 1934–1939,” Doctoral Dissertation, Université de Paris VII1, 1975, 39; Soucy, French Fascism, 231; “Le Bureau colonial du parti est créé à Paris,” Le Pionnier, November 18, 1937.
Laurent Kestel, “The Emergence of Anti-Semitism within the Parti populaire français: Party Intellectuals, Peripheral Leaders, and National Figures,” French History 19 (2005), 378;
Jacques Cantier, L’Algérie sous le régime de Vichy (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2002), 227–228;
Ibid., 379–381; Soucy, French Fascism, 278; William D. Irvine, “Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix de Feu,” Journal of Modern History 63 (1991), 292–293.
Robert Loustau, Notre doctrine devant le probl è me social (Paris, 1937); Oran/84, Tract—“Le Parti populaire fran ç ais avec les travailleurs fran ç ais,” n.d. (1938). The libres contrats recalled the practices of the an ç ien regime.
Laurent Kestel, “De la conversion en politique: Genè se et institutionnalisation du Parti populaire fran ç ais, 1936–1940,” Doctoral Dissertation, Universit é Paris-I, 2006, 449.
For an overview of La Rocque’s platform, and the opposition that it engendered, see Samuel Kalman, The Extreme Right in Interwar France: The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu (Burlington and Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
Martin Thomas, The French Empire between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics, and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 251–252, 260–268; Lefeuvre, Ch è re Alg é rie , 14. Ben-Bâdis quoted in Kaddache, Histoire , 12.
Oran/70, Commissaire de Police du 1er Arrt. de la ville de Mostaganem to Commissaire Central, December 13, 1936; Joëlle Hureau, La Mémoire des Pied-noirs de 1830 à nos jours (Paris: Perrin, 2001), 114
John Ruedy, Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 121.
Jacques Marseilles, Empire colonial et capitalisme français (Paris: Albin Michel, 1984), 59–60, 75–77;
Jacques Berque, French North Africa: The Maghrib between Two World Wars (New York: Prager, 1967), 40–43.
Pierre Mannoni, Les Français d’Algérie: vie, moeurs, mentalité(Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993), 131–140.
Le PSF et les problè mes alg é riens,” La Flamme , January 15, 1937. On the Sénatus-Consulte , see Neil Macmaster, Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900–1962 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 27–29
Julia Clancy-Smith, “Islam, Gender, and Identities in the Making of French Algeria, 1830–1962,” Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda, eds., Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998), 163, 173,
Jeanne Bowlan, “Polygamists Need Not Apply: Becoming a French Citizen in Colonial Algeria, 1918–1938,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 24 (1997), 111–113.
Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 132. On racial/socioeconomic segregation, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Algerians (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 132.
David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 153–179.
Emanuel Sivan, ““Stéreotypes antijuifs dans la mentalité Pied-noir,” Les Relations entre Juifs et musulmans en Afrique du nord, XIXe—XXe siècles: actes du Colloque international de l’institut d’histoire des pays d’outre-mer (Paris, 1980), 166.
Thomas, The French Empire , 297–302; Malcolm Richardson, “Algeria and the Popular Front: Radicals, Socialists, and the Blum-Viollette Project,” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History , 5 (1977), 356. That the provision against the practice of Koranic law had protected the settlers by preserving their monopoly on citizenship was never discussed. It is also worth noting that the actual interest of the Popular Front government in colonial reform was miniscule at best. Few ministers actively opposed imperialism, and no voice advocated a major role in government for the indig è nes (including Blum and Viollette).
Pierre Machefer, “Autour du problème algérien en 1936–1938: La Doctrine algérienne du PSF: Le PSF et le projet Blum-Viollette,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 10 (1963), 147–156.
Sean Kennedy, Reconciling France against Democracy: The Croix de Feu and the Parti social français, 1927–1945 (Kingston-Montréal, 2007).
Azzedine Haddour, ColonialMyths: Historyand Narrative (Manchester, 2000), 83
Jonathan K. Gosnell, The Politics of Frenchness in Colonial Algeria (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 186–190;
Emmanuel Sivan, “Colonialism and Popular Culture in Algeria,” Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979), 32.
Louis Bertrand, Le Sang des races (Paris, 1921), 238.
Copyright information
© 2013 Samuel Kalman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kalman, S. (2013). The Transformation of Metropolitan Strategy into Colonial Practice: The Parti Populaire Français and the Parti Social Français. In: French Colonial Fascism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137307095_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137307095_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45541-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30709-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)