Abstract
English-language historians have argued that the category of gender is particularly useful and relevant for understanding the violence of war,1 with rape now clearly identified as a ‘gendered war crime’.2 Very few French historians of the modern period, however, have examined past conflicts from a gender-based perspective. Still, times are changing and analyses of rape and sexual violence, and, more generally, a gender-based approach to wars are becoming less and less unusual in French historical studies.3
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A. L. Barstow, ed., War’s Dirty Secret: Rape, Prostitution, and Other Crimes against Women (Cleveland, 2000), p. 257
and C. O. N. Moser and F. C. Clark (dir.), Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence (London and New York, 2001), p. 243.
R. Copelon, ‘Gendered War Crimes: Reconceptualizing Rape in Time of War’, in J. Peters and A. Wolper, eds, Women’s Rights, Human Rights (New York, 1995), p. 372. However, the newer emphasis on ‘gender’ should not cause us to downplay the sexual specificity of this violence.
S. Audoin-Rouzeau, L’enfant de l’ennemi (1914–1918) (Paris, 1995), p. 222;
G. Vigarello, Histoire du viol, XIX–XX e (Paris, 1998), p. 358;
J. Martin, ‘Violences sexuelles, étude des archives, pratiques de l’histoire’, Annales HSS, 3 (Mai–Juin 1996), 643–661.
The rapes committed by the Red Army while conquering Eastern Europe and Germany have been studied by some historians. See N. M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany. A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Boston, 1995);
A. Grossman, ‘A Question of Silence: The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers’, in R. G. Moeller, ed., West Germany under Construction: Politics, Society and Culture in the Adenauer Era (Ann Arbor, 1997);
J. Mark, ‘Remembering Rape; Divided Social Memory and the Red Army in Hungary, 1944–1945’, Past and Present, 188 (August 2005). About the massacre of Nanking by the Japanese Army in 1937 and the central place of rapes in the violence and its memory, see D. Yang, ‘Convergence or Divergence?: Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing’, American Historical Review, 104, 3 (June 1999), 842–865;
and M. Yamamoto, ‘History and Historiography of the Rape of Nanking’ (PhD, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1998). As an introduction to a historical study of the more recent conflict in former Yugoslavia, see R. Van Boeschoten, ‘The Trauma of War Rape: A Comparative View on the Bosnian Conflict and The Greek Civil War’, History and Anthropology, 14, 1 (2003).
S. Thénault, Une drôle de justice. Les magistrats dans la guerre d’Algérie (Paris, 2001), p. 347.
L. Devred, Une certaine présence. Au nom de l’épikié (Paris, 1997), p. 255;
and R. Trouchaud, Haine et passion en Kabylie, en hommage à tous les combattants d’AFN (Nîmes, 1994), pp. 137, 157.
D. Amrane, Les Femmes algériennes dans la guerre (Paris, 1991), p. 218; and ‘Les femmes face à la violence dans la guerre de libération’, Confluences. Méditerranée, 17 (1996), 87–96.
‘Fighter’ is the way they are described until now (‘mudjahidate’) but the reality needs to be studied very precisely for, apparently, they were almost everywhere forbidden to carry weapons. See R. Seferdjeli, ‘The French Army and Muslim Women during the Algerian War’, Hawwa: Journal of Women in the Middle East and Islamic World, 3, 1 (2005), 40–78.
D. Blatt, ‘Recognizing Rape as Method of Torture’, Review of Law and Social Change, 19, 4 (1992), 821–865.
See V. Nahoum-Grappe and B. Allen, Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (Minneapolis, 1996), p. 180; and V. Nahoum-Grappe, CLIO. Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés, 5 (1997), 163–175.
‘Vous pouvez violer, mais faites-ça discrètement’. B. Rey, Les égorgeurs (Paris, 1961), p. 19.
M. Feraoun, Journal 1955–1962 (Paris, 1962, 2nd edn 1994), p. 348, entry for 20 February 1959.
R. Branche, La Torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie (Paris, 2001), p. 461.
‘C’est un fait qu’une susceptibilité collective et individuelle exacerbee accompagne partout, aujourd’hui encore, un certain idéal de brutalité virile, dont le complément est une dramatisation de la vertu féminine. Ils s’intègrent l’un et l’autre dans un orgueil familial qui s’abreuve de sang et se projette hors de soi sur deux mythes: l’ascendance, la descendance’. G. Tillion, Le Harem et les cousins (Paris, 1966), pp. 67, 218.
‘Tout entier dans la relation sexuelle, dans la régulation de cette relation’. M. H. Benkheira, ‘Allah, ses hommes et leurs femmes: notes sur le dispositif de sexualité en islam’, Peuples méditerranéens, 35 (October–December 1983), 35–46.
In Algeria, Muslims endured social, economic, and political inequalities as members of the native population. But this was not the case for the other religious groups. Algerian Jews, in particular, enjoyed full citizenship since 1870. They were given full citizenship collectively and without being asked individually. By contrast, a Muslim had to apply for citizenship individually, and this process would also lead him to give up his Muslim judicial status. Therefore, being a Muslim and being a native became more related and also meant being discriminated against specifically. The role of Islam in the resistance against the French had been very important already at the beginning of the colonization. It stayed so until the end and was part of the birth of the concept of the Algerian nation from the end of the nineteenth century and even more from the 1920s and 1930s on. See J. McDougall, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge, 2006), p. 266.
S. Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York, 1993), p. 472.
See G. Tillion, Le Harem et les cousins, op. cit.; R. Jamous, ‘Interdit, violence et baraka. Le problème de la souveraineté dans le Maroc traditionnel’, in E. Gellner, ed., Islam, société et communauté. Anthropologies du Maghreb (Paris, 1981), p. 163; ‘Le corps dominé des femmes ou la valeur de la virginité’, in M. Gadant, ed., Le nationalisme algérien et les femmes (Paris, 1995), pp. 302, 245–268.
G. Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York, 1986), pp. 80, 318.
C. Lacoste-Dujardin, Opération ‘oiseau bleu’: Des Kabyles, des ethnologues et la guerre d’Algérie (Paris, 1997), p. 308.
A. Sohn, Du premier baiser à l’alcôve. La sexualité des Français au quotidien (1850–1950) (Paris, 1996), p. 310.
O. Roynette, ‘Bons pour le service’. L’expérience de la caserne en France à la fin du XIXe siècle (Paris, 2000), p. 458.
See in this contest also A. Parrot, Coping with Date Rape and Acquaintance Rape (New York, 1999), p. 190;
S. K. Ward, et al., Acquaintance and Date Rape: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT, 1994), p. 218.
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© 2009 Raphaëlle Branche
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Branche, R. (2009). Sexual Violence in the Algerian War. In: Herzog, D. (eds) Brutality and Desire. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234291_10
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