Page:EB1911 - Volume 01.djvu/692

 be quelled. But at the end of the reign of Louis Philippe the essential work was accomplished. All that remained was to complete and to secure it.

Under the second republic Algeria was governed successively by Generals L. E. Cavaignac (February to April 1848), N. A. T. Changarnier (April to September 1848), V. Charon (September 1848 to October 1850), and A. H. d’Hautpoul (October 1850 to December 1851). The policy followed at this period consisted in assimilating Algeria to France. Important efforts were made to attract French colonists to the country, the colonization of Algeria appearing as a means towards the extinction of pauperism in the mother-country. This point of view suggested numerous projects, as chimerical as they were generous; two millions sterling (50 million francs) were expended with a view to installing Parisian unemployed workmen as colonists, but this attempt failed miserably. The most remarkable military events of this period were (1) the siege and destruction of the oasis of Zaatcha, where the inhabitants, displeased by an alteration in the tax on palms, rose at the voice of a fanatic named Bu-Zian; (2) the ineffectual campaign of Marshal Saint Arnaud in Little Kabylia, where the tribes rose at the instigation of Bu-Magla (“the mule man”) in 1851.

Marshal J. L. C. A. Randon (1795–1871), named governor-general of Algeria after the coup d’état, had at first to repress in the south a rising of a new “master of the hour,” Mahomet ben Abdallah, the sherif of Wargla. A column seized Laghouat (El Aghuat) in December 1852. Si-Hamza, leader of the Walid-sidi-Sheikh, an ally of France, indignant at the growing influence of a base-born agitator, pursued him and seized Wargla (1853). In 1854 General Desvaux entered Tuggurt. Henceforth matters remained quiet in the region of the Sahara, and Marshal Randon turned his efforts towards Kabylia. Neither the Romans nor the Turks had been able to subdue this square mountainous tract, of which Bougie, Setif, Aumâle and Dellys form the four corners. But in two months (May to June 1857) Marshal Randon made himself master of it, and built in the heart of this country Fort Napoleon (now Fort National), “the thorn in the side of Kabylia,” whose batteries commanded all the Kabyle villages of the region.

In 1858 the creation of a “ministry of Algeria and of the colonies” brought about the resignation of Marshal Randon. The administrative headquarters of Algeria was then transferred from Algiers to Paris. The ministry of Algeria was entrusted first to Prince Napoleon, and afterwards to the marquis J. N. S. P. de Chasseloup-Laubat (1805–1873). But this office, created at the least prematurely, soon disappeared without causing any regrets. This ephemeral régime lasted from the 24th of June 1858 to the 24th of November 1860. The decree of the 24th of November 1860 transferred the services from Paris back to Algiers, and re-established the functions of governor-general, which were exercised at the end of the second empire first by Marshal Pélissier, duc de Malakoff (December 1860 to September 1864) and then by Marshal MacMahon, duc de Magenta (September 1864 to July 1870). At this period the conception of the Arab kingdom was prevalent. The emperor Napoleon III., in a celebrated letter, wrote that he was as much the emperor of the Arabs as the emperor of the French. Algeria was considered as a kind of great military fief, and the officers who ruled there commonly took the side of the native chieftains against the civil population. European colonization, hampered by the ill-will of the Arab bureaux, then made little progress.

It was at this period that the great insurrection of the Walid-sidi-Sheikh broke out in the Sud Oranais. This powerful family had lived up to that time on a good understanding with France; Si-Hamza, chief of the elder branch, had remained until his death (1861) a faithful ally of France. Thanks to him, the security of the southern frontier was assured. But after his death his son, Si-Sliman, imbued with anti-French sentiments, revolted in 1864 and massacred the Beauprêtre column. Several years were occupied in quelling the insurrection. Compelled to guard themselves on the south against the Walid-sidi-Sheikh,the French realized how much they lost by not having the support of these great chieftains. They then accepted the services offered to them by Si-Sliman-ben-Kadour, chief of the younger branch of the Walid-sidi-Sheikh, who maintained tranquillity in the Sud Oranais during the great insurrection of Kabylia in 1871.

The causes of this insurrection were manifold, and, moreover, interdependent: the injury done to the military prestige of France by its defeats in Europe; the fall of the imperial government, in which, in the eyes of the natives, the authority of France was incarnate; and the insults offered with impunity in the streets by the civil population to the officers, who were loved and respected by the Arabs, at the same time that the decree of Adolphe Cremieux accorded to the Algerine Jews the rights of French citizens. The great native chiefs, bewildered and disquieted, thought themselves menaced. The insurrection was inevitable. Mokrani, bach-agha of the Mejana, whom the imperial government had loaded with honours, gave the signal. He had an interview with El Haddad, the sheikh of the Khuans, the religious confraternity of Sidi-Abd-er-Rahman, whose influence was great, and having secured his support in April 1871, Mokrani proclaimed the holy war. At the bidding of El Haddad the whole of Kabylia rose, and numbers of French colonists were massacred; the columns of Colonel Cérez and General F. G. Saussier had to engage in numerous fights. The death of the bach-agha at the battle of Suflat, the submission of the Sheikh El Haddad, and finally the arrest of Bu-Meyrag, brother of Mokrani, mark the declining stages of the insurrection, which was completely suppressed by August 1871. A heavy war contribution was imposed upon the rebels and their lands were sequestrated. The Beni-Manassir, who rose almost at the same time in the Dahra, were subdued soon after. Subsequently the native population of the Algerine Tell remained quiet, the massacre of the colonists at Margueritte many years later being a local and isolated movement.

Under the third republic Algeria was governed successively by Admiral L. H. de Gueydon (March 1871 to June 1873), General A. E. A. Chanzy (June 1873 to February 1879), J. P. L. Albert Grévy (March 1879 to November 1881, Tirman (November 1881 to April 1891), Jules Cambon (April 1891 to September 1897), Louis Lépine (September 1897 to August 1898), E. J. Laferrière (August 1898 to October 1900), Charles Jonnart (October 1900 to June 1901), A. J. P. Révoil (June 1901 to April 1903), and again Jonnart. During the first years of the new régime a keen reaction was produced against the political system of the imperial government in Africa. The civil territory was considerably enlarged at the expense of the military. An effort was made to attract French colonists to Algeria by gratuitous concessions of land. Some lands were granted in particular to natives of Alsace-Lorraine, who preferred to retain French nationality after the war. Peasants from the south of France, whose vines had been destroyed by the phylloxera, crossed the Mediterranean and established in Algeria an important vineyard. This double current of immigration notably increased the French population of North Africa. The tendency then was to treat Algeria as a piece of France. This assimilative policy attained its culminating point in the so-called decrees of rattachement (1881), in pursuance of which each ministerial department in France was made responsible for Algerine affairs which came by their nature within its jurisdiction.

After a great inquiry held in 1892 by a senatorial committee a reaction was produced in France against this excessive assimilation. The system of rattachement was in great part abandoned, and decentralization was obtained by augmenting the powers of the governor-general, and by granting to Algeria legal personality and a special budget (see above, Central Government). These reforms appear to have given satisfaction to Algerian opinion. Profoundly troubled as Algeria was in the last years of the 19th century by the anti-Semitic agitation, which occasioned frequent changes of governors, it appears to-day to have turned aside from sterile political struggles to interest itself exclusively in the economic development of the country.

The movement of expansion towards the south was continued