| Description |
1 online resource : illustrations, maps |
| Contents |
Introduction: twoards a social history of peasant society -- Separate worlds?: European domination of the Chelif Plain -- Separate worlds?: peasant society in the mountains -- The caids and the commune mixte system -- The Janus-faced politics of the caids, c.1936 to 1954 -- Lucien Paye's commune reform: the failure of the peasant modernization programme, 1944-8 -- Fraction resistance as everyday politics -- The Communist Party and peasant mobilization, c.1932-48 -- Peasant organization in the urban centres -- The battle for the douars and the djemâa elections of 1947 -- The nationalists go underground: clandestine organization in the Ouarsenis Mountains, 1948-54 -- Popular religion: the rural battleground -- From earthquake to 'Red Maquis', September 1954 to June 1956 -- The Zitoufi Maquis -- Organization of the early ALN guerrilla, 1954-7 -- Creating the FLN counter-state -- The genesis of Opération Pilote -- Psychological warfare and the Dahra peasants -- The Arzew camp: anthropology or 'brainwashing'? -- Modernity or neo-tribalism?: 'Third force' strategies in the Ouarsenis -- The regroupements camps and the collapse of Pilote 1 |
| Summary |
"The role of the peasantry during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) has been long neglected by historians, in part because they have been viewed as a ‘primitive’ mass devoid of political consciousness. This ground-breaking social history challenges this conventional understanding by tracing the ability of the peasant community to sustain an autonomous political culture through family, clan, and village assemblies (djemâa), organizations that were eventually harnessed by emerging guerrilla forces. The long-established system of indirect rule by which the colonial state controlled and policed the vast mountainous interior through an ‘intelligence state’ began to break down after the 1920s as the djemâas formed a pole of opposition to the patron-client relations of the rural élites. Clandestine urban-rural networks emerged that prepared the way for armed resistance and a system of rebel governance. The anthropologist Jean Servier, recognizing the dynamics of the peasant community, in 1957 masterminded a major counterinsurgency experiment, Opération Pilote, that sought to defeat the guerilla forces by constructing a parallel ‘hearts and minds’ strategy. The army, unable to implement a programme of ‘pacification’ of dispersed mountain populations, reversed its policy by the forced evacuation of the peasants into regroupement camps. Contrary to the accepted historical analysis of Pierre Bourdieu and others that rural society was massively uprooted and dislocated, the peasantry continued to demonstrate a high level of social cohesion and resistance based on powerful family and kin networks"--Publisher's description |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from web page (Oxford Scholarship Online, viewed on December 22, 2020) |
| Subject |
Peasants -- Algeria -- History -- 20th century
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Insurgency -- Algeria
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Insurgency
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Peasants
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| SUBJECT |
Algeria -- History -- 20th century
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Algeria -- History -- Revolution, 1954-1962.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85003462
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| Subject |
Algeria
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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History
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780192604026 |
|
0192604023 |
|
9780192604019 |
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0192604015 |
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