Abstract
The territories of Algeria and Kenya lie on either side of the Sahara desert; the former to the north, the latter to the south. Geographically Algeria can be divided into two regions, the temperate coastal plains bordering the Mediterranean and the arid southern desert. The two regions are separated by a series of mountainous sections that form part of the Atlas range. With the exception of a short border with Libya to the east, during the colonial period covered by this study, the remaining land borders were with territories occupied by the French, providing a sense of French continuity along the southern Mediterranean shore. As the bulk of the colony’s territory lay in the arid south, existence for Europeans was difficult and settlers gravitated to the temperate Mediterranean region settling first in towns along the coast before moving more slowly inland. Arabs and the Berbers were the predominant ethnic groups, both being followers of Islam. Although a small number of other ethnicities existed, the indigenous Jews formed the only other group relevant to this study.1 When the French first moved into Algeria the territory was not a complete unknown. Economic and migratory relations had existed with North Africa and in particular the Regency of Algiers for centuries.2 If the image of the area, largely shaped by Western perceptions of Islam, that had developed over time was a distorted one, there was nonetheless a sense of a shared Mediterranean history, and hence of some familiarity with the region.3
L’Afrique est le pays de mon imagination, la France la patrie de mon coeur.
Pauline Noirfontaine (1856)
We felt at times as if we might be living in the Garden of Eden …
Marion Dobbs (c. 1920)
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Notes
Julia Ann Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration 1800–1900 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).
John Ruedy, Modern Algeria. The Origins and Development of a Nation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992), 69.
Robert M. Maxon, Struggle for Kenya. The Loss and Reassertion of Imperial Initiative, 1912–1923 (London/Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993), 13.
Diana Holmes, French Women’s Writing, 1848–1994 (London/Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone, 1996), xi.
Ann Curtis, “Civilizing Habits: Women Missionaries and the Revival of French Empire” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Pauline de Noirfontaine, Algérie. Un Regard Écrit (Havre: A. Lemale, 1856).
Steven C. Hause, Hubertine Auclert: The French Suffragette (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 139–140.
Hubertine Auclert, Les Femmes Arabes en Algérie (Paris: Société d’Èditions littéraires, 1900), 31.
W. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (New York/London, 1987), 203–205.
Jean Pommerol, Une Femme Chez les Sahariennes: Entre Laghouat et in-Salah (Paris: E. Flammarion, 1900).
Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism. Race, Femininity and Representation (London/New York: Routledge, 1996).
C. S. Nicholls, Elspeth Huxley. A Biography (London: St. Martins, 2002), 12.
Eleanor Cole, Random Recollections of a Pioneer Kenya Settler (1975), 40.
Gretchen Cron, The Roaring Veldt (New York/London: Putnam, 1938), 14.
Alyse Simpson, The Land That Never Was (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1937), 152–153.
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 134.
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© 2012 Patricia M. E. Lorcin
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Lorcin, P.M.E. (2012). Paradoxical Lives: Women and Their Colonial Worlds. In: Historicizing Colonial Nostalgia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137013040_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137013040_2
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