Tag: Algeria

Investigating the history of the 1990s in Algeria through the issue of repression – a talk by Dr Saphia Arezki

Published on by CIGH Exeter

Investigating the history of the 1990s in Algeria through the issue of repression:  the case of internment camps (1991-1995)

Dr. Saphia Arezki, Associate researcher (IREMAM and CHERPA ,Aix-en-Provence)

When: 4-5:30pm, Wed. Jan. 22, 2020

Where: Queens building MR2+3, Streatham Campus, University of Exeter 

Abstract

Having completed a thesis on the role of Algerian officers in the construction of a national army between 1954 and 1991, the focus of my postdoctoral research shifted to the 1990s in Algeria. Over the course of this decade, nearly 150,000 Algerians died, and the 1990s have come to be known as Algeria’s “black decade”. The precise nature of what took place remains a matter of debate. Was it a civil war? A war against civilians? Was it a fight against terrorism? While the term civil war is discussed but far from agreed upon, this broad descriptor perhaps best describes the reality that the country went through during the decade in question. The jurist Mouloud Boumghar justifies the use of this terminology in a way that seems convincing: “The term ‘war’ is used here in a non-legal sense of armed struggle between social and/or political groups with a goal of imposing by force a determined will on the adversary. It is described as civilian in order to mark its character as a non-international war between an established government and an insurrectional movement that challenges the former for the power of the state”[1]. Political scientists Adam Baczko and Gilles Dorronsoro propose a definition of civil war “as the coexistence on the same national territory of different social orders maintaining a violent relationship”[2] which is relevant in the Algerian context. Continue reading “Investigating the history of the 1990s in Algeria through the issue of repression – a talk by Dr Saphia Arezki” →

This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History

Published on by CIGH Exeter
150 surviving prints of the anti-Vietnam war artworks made at University of California, Berkeley, are to be shown in a new exhibition at Shapero Modern, London, as featured on the Guardian
One of 150 surviving prints of the anti-Vietnam war artworks made at University of California, Berkeley, are to be shown in a new exhibition at Shapero Modern, London, as featured on the Guardian.

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter
Follow on Twitter @MWPalen

From militant Third World liberation to the fallacy of collective memory, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history. Continue reading “This Week’s Top Picks in Imperial & Global History” →

Charlie Hebdo’s Anti-Imperialist Roots

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L’Assiette au Beurre, Terre à Galons ("A place to earn stripes"), March 14, 1908.
L’Assiette au Beurre, Terre à Galons (“A place to Earn Stripes”), March 14, 1908.

Daniel Foliard
Assistant Professor, Paris Ouest-Nanterre la Défense University

In a recent interview, George Wolinski (1934-2015), one of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists killed in the Paris terrorist attacks on January 7, 2015, had claimed his magazine’s work was the legacy of L’Assiette au Beurre, an innovative satirical weekly published in France between 1901 and 1912.[1]

Both stylistically and politically, the two periodicals, separated by more than a century, could also claim an affiliation with a long French tradition of dissent. Accordingly, although Charlie Hebdo is now known around the globe for its unmediated satire on religions, we should not overlook its position in the longer history of French anti-imperialism. Continue reading “Charlie Hebdo’s Anti-Imperialist Roots” →

The Secret History Behind Today’s Algeria-Germany #WorldCup Match

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The Algerian team in 1982
The Algerian team in 1982

Mathilde von Bülow
Lecturer in International and Imperial history, University of Nottingham

Today, Germany’s Mannschaft will face Algeria’s Fennecs at Porto Alegre, after both teams made it through the group stage of the FIFA World Cup. Though it has yet to be played, the match is already being hailed as an historic, even epic, event. Why? Because it represents the first time the Algerian squad has progressed to the final sixteen at a World Cup. Its larger symbolism, however, is rooted in a longstanding Algerian resistance to French colonialism, which underpinned the secret history of Algerian-German football relations. Continue reading “The Secret History Behind Today’s Algeria-Germany #WorldCup Match” →

Rhetoric of Massacre and Reprisal in Algeria’s War of Independence

Published on by CIGH Exeter

Martin Thomas
Director, Centre for War, State, and Society
University of Exeter

There has long been agreement among historians of Algeria’s violent decolonization that particular massacres and, more particularly, the retributions they provoked, decisively altered the nature of the conflict. Massacre, it is averred, changed the cultural codes, the military rules, and the permissible limits to mass violence within Algeria’s population and between French security forces and local insurgents.

Why this should be the case remains harder to explain. The demonstrative horror of mass killing intentionally shrinks the middle ground. It destroys the prospects for compromise, denying political and personal space to the otherwise non-committal. Meant to polarize, its violence signifies the ultimate rhetoric of shock. Little wonder that historians of Algeria’s war concur that massacres served as decisive conflict escalators, whether strategically, symbolically, or both. Continue reading “Rhetoric of Massacre and Reprisal in Algeria’s War of Independence” →