Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

French Colonial Fascism: the Extreme Right in Algeria, 1919-1939

2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/fh/cru095

1477-4542

Chris Millington,

North African History and Literature

Samuel Kalman’s French Colonial Fascism is an important book that will be required reading not only for scholars and students of interwar fascism but also for researchers of the later war in Algeria. It investigates the political culture of the European settler population, which believed itself to be caught between the perceived threat of an independent Algeria under the leadership of Arab Muslim hordes, Jews, communists and socialists and a metropolitan government whose Republican democracy the colons rejected. The response of the settlers came in the form of a ‘colonial’ fascism that prioritized anti-Semitism, Latin racial hegemony and algérianité. For the Europeans in Algeria, Algérie française did not mean the inclusion of the territory within some Republican ‘Greater France’ but rather ‘...the domination of European settlers over Algerians and Jews, backed by an authoritarian regime that virulently opposed the Left while exclusively defending local economic and cultural interests.’ During the 1920s, this colonial brand of fascism was best exploited by mayor of Oran-Ville and leader of the Unions latines (UL) Jules Molle. Molle urged the settlers to throw off the tutelage of their French Republican masters and establish an authoritarian regime based on the superiority of Latin blood and civilization. Kalman makes a compelling case for the genuine specificity of this type of fascism, which focused on the colonial political reality rather than merely transposing fascist tropes from Europe. Indeed, political groups ignored local concerns at their peril. The monarchist Action française and the nationalist Jeunesses patriotes, both of whom enjoyed moderate success on the French mainland, found their efforts to transfer their metropolitan campaigns against the Republic to Algeria hobbled by an ignorance of colonial concerns.