Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T19:23:50.427Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

EXPRESSING ENTITLEMENT IN COLONIAL ALGERIA: VILLAGERS, MEDICAL DOCTORS, AND THE STATE IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2016

Hannah-Louise Clark
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article expands our understanding of state–society interactions in rural Algeria under French colonial rule, focusing specifically on villages in the eastern department of Constantine. I analyze previously unstudied administrative records, newspapers, petitions, and complaints to show how sanitary regulations and medical expertise came to shape relationships among villagers, local elites, and the colonial state from the early 20th century. Villagers responded to state-led medicalization by seeking the protection of medical doctors, not only from disease but also from the state itself. In particular, they sought to avoid heavy-handed treatment by qaʾids and local elites who applied disease control measures without appropriate medical knowledge. Furthermore, close examination of petitions sent during World War I suggests that hardships experienced by rural communities during the war accentuated nascent feelings of entitlement across demographic, ethnic, and religious communal boundaries toward state medical treatment.

Keywords

colonialismmedicinepeasantssocial historyWorld War I
Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , August 2016 , pp. 445 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

Author's note: The research for this article was funded by a Fulbright–Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship; the Department of History, Princeton University; and the Faculty of History, University of Oxford. I am indebted to the staff at the following institutions for their support and cooperation: Archives Nationales d'Algérie, Archives régionales de Constantine, Service des archives de la Wilaya d'Alger, and Bibliothèque de l'université d'Alger, Algeria; Archives nationales d'Outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France; Pitt Rivers Museum Archives, Oxford, United Kingdom. Fellow panellists and the audience at “New Perspectives on the History of Medicine in Colonial Algeria,” Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, La., 10 October 2013 offered helpful suggestions in the early stages of conceptualizing this article. Larbi Abid, Nathan Fonder, Katja Guenther, James McDougall, M'hamed Oualdi, Donovan Schaefer, Margaret Schotte, and Helen Tilley provided much appreciated advice and feedback as the article evolved. I thank Christine Moore for providing expertly drawn maps in record time. I am also extremely grateful to the three anonymous IJMES reviewers and the IJMES editors for their invaluable comments, suggestions, and guidance.

1 Duwwār (Fr. douar), literally meaning “circles,” was an administrative term used to delimit a group of “native” dwellings or encampments. The duwwār discussed in this article were attached to communes mixtes (CM), a form of administrative unit in existence from 1858 to 1956 (although different territories were incorporated into communes mixtes at different times, and boundaries shifted over time). Each commune mixte comprised a centre de colonisation, inhabited by a “mixed” population of Europeans, Jews, and Muslims, and a number of outlying duwwār, the entirety under the sole charge of an administrator appointed in Algiers. Another administrative entity referred to in this article is the commune de plein exercice (CPE). These units were comparable in size and organization to French communes, and were governed by an elected mayor and municipal councils. On the commune mixte, see Mussard, Christine, “La commune mixte: l'espace d'une rencontre,” in Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale, 1830–1962, ed. Bouchène, Abderrahmane, Peyroulou, Jean-Pierre, Tengour, Ouanassa Siari, and Thénault, Sylvie (Paris: Découverte, 2012)Google Scholar.

2 Technically the agha should have written to the administrator of the Commune mixte of the Aurès, into which duwwār Ghassira had been incorporated in 1912.

3 Archives nationales d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France (hereafter ANOM) CONST B/3/241, letter Agha Bani bu Sliman to Administrator CM Belezma, 19 March 1917. Al-ḥabb al-sūdāʾ (the black pustule) conventionally referred to variety of smallpox. In certain regions of the Aurès, the term bū zagāgh denoted measles. I am grateful to Professor Larbi Abid for this information.

4 Compulsory conscription for Algerian Muslim male subjects was introduced in 1912, but the contingent was only selectively levied until decrees of 7 and 14 September 1916 authorized full conscription in 1917. See Gilbert Meynier, “Les Algériens et la guerre de 1914–1918,” in Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale, 229–34. A detailed account of insurrections against conscription is given in Meynier, Gilbert,L'Algérie révélée, 2nd ed. (Paris: Editions Bouchène, 2015), 559–86Google Scholar. See also Ageron, Charles-Robert, “Les troubles insurrectionnels du sud Constantinois Novembre 1916–Janvier 1917,” in Genèse de l'Algérie algérienne, ed. Ageron, Charles-Robert (Paris: Éditions Bouchène, 2005), 89–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Figures are taken from Ouanassa Siari Tengour, “La révolte de 1916 dans l'Aurès,” Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale, 255–60, reference on 257. The repression officially ran from November 1916 to autumn 1917, but patrols of black troops were used to “pacify” rural unrest years after the armistice. See ANOM ALG CONST B3/452 CM Fedj M'Zala, “Surveillance politique des indigenes,” 31 May 1920.

6 On the severity of the official response, see Tengour, “La révolte de 1916 dans l'Aurès,” 255–60.

7 A further thirty of the hostages died from dysentery; twenty-five from smallpox; ten from influenza; and five from pneumonia. ANOM ALG CONST B3/214, “Indigènes en prévention de Commission disciplinaire décédés du typhus” and “CM de Belezma. Année 1917. Mois de février. Déclarations des maladies épidémiques transmises à l'Inspecteur d'Hygiène.”

8 The letter from the agha of the Bani Bu Sliman was archived alongside tabulated typhus deaths from the prison, which suggests that record keepers associated the mysterious deaths in Runda with the epidemic of typhus in the prison, even if villagers did not possess this information.

9 Examples of work that take a subaltern perspective on colonial medicine in sub-Saharan Africa include inter alia, Hunt, Nancy Rose, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, Luise, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Livingston, Julie, Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. For the case of Egypt, see Fahmy, Khaled, “Dissecting the Modern Egyptian State,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (2015): 559–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kozma, Liat, Policing Egyptian Women: Sex, Law and Medicine in Khedival Egypt (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

10 Previous work on medicine in rural Algeria has concentrated on 19th-century developments. See, for example, Turin, Yvonne, Affrontements culturels dans l'Algérie coloniale: écoles, médecines, religion, 1830–1880 (Paris: F. Maspero, 1971)Google Scholar; Gallois, William, “Local Responses to French Medical Imperialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Algeria,” Social History of Medicine 20 (2007): 315–31CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Taithe, Bertrand, “Entre deux mondes: médecins indigènes et médecine indigène en Algérie, 1860–1905,” in La santé des populations civiles et militaires: Nouvelles approches et nouvelles sources hospitalières, XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles, ed. Belmas, Élisabeth and Nonnis-Vigilante, Serenella (Villeneuve d'Ascq, France: Presses Univ. Septentrion, 2010), 99–112Google Scholar. Insofar as these studies rely exclusively on French archives and the records of religious societies, and do not use Arabic-language sources, the complexity of individuals’ motivations and responses are not fully considered. The potential of using archives located in Algeria and nongovernment sources such as oral histories is exemplified by Johnson, Jennifer, The Battle for Algeria: Sovereignty, Health Care, and Humanitarianism (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 The sources examined in this article span the period from c. 1900 to the late 1930s.

12 I owe this term to Linker, Beth, War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War 1 America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 126. A more common use of the term “medicalization,” particularly among sociologists, refers to the process by which social or personal problems are reframed as medical issues requiring therapeutic management. Like Linker, I use “medicalization from above/below” to mean the demand for medical care and its institutions.

13 I owe this phrase to Colonna, Fanny, “Une véritable Histoire sociale de l'Algérie coloniale rendrait-elle possible une approche plus réaliste du present?,” Réflexions et perspectives 1 (2012): 485–97Google Scholar, reference on 486.

14 Works that insist on internal divisions among the categories “Muslim,” “settler,” and “Jew” include Brett, Michael, “The Colonial Period in the Maghrib and Its Aftermath: The Present State of Historical Writing,” Journal of African History 17 (1976): 291–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prochaska, David, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Stein, Sarah Abrevaya, Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Meynier, L'Algérie révélée, 519.

16 Scholars who have engaged in rethinking social history under colonialism, including the problem of sources and scales of analysis, are Bahloul, Joëlle, The Architecture of Memory: A Jewish–Muslim Household in Colonial Algeria, 1937–1962 (Cambridge: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and Cambridge University Press, 1996Google Scholar [1992]); Colonna, Fanny, for example, Le meunier, les moines et le bandit: des vies quotidiennes dans les Aurès (Algérie) du XXe siècle: récits (Paris: Actes Sud, 2010)Google Scholar; and McDougall, James and Parks, Robert P., “Locating Social Analysis in the Maghrib,” Journal of North African Studies 18.5 (2013): 631–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The nature and extent of political and social contacts across religious and racial boundaries was problematized by Blanchard, Emmanuel and Thenault, Sylvie, “Quel ‘monde du contact’? Pour une histoire sociale de l'Algérie pendant la période coloniale,” Le Mouvement social 236 (2011): 3–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The records of communes mixtes are filled with petitions and letters composed in both classical Arabic and the Arabic of everyday speech. Comparison of materials from the arrondissement of Bougie (present-day Bijaya) and the communes mixtes of Aïn Témouchent (ʿAyn Timushant) and Tiaret (Tiyarat) suggests that qaʾids in the Berberophone region of Kabylia prepared reports and correspondence in Arabic until the 1930s and 1940s, while those in predominantly Arabophone regions of western Algeria used Arabic until at least the 1950s.

18 See, for example, Lafi, Nora, “La gouvernance ottomane des équilibres locaux: le rôle du bureau central des pétitions à Istanbul et l'usage de ses archives,” in Les archives, la société et les Sciences humaine: Actes du colloque international tenu à Tunis de 22 au 24 février 2010, ed. Bendana-Kchir, Kmar, El-Annabi, Hassan, Belaid, Habib, Jallab, Hédi, and Jebahi, Mabrouk (Tunis: Cahier de CERES, 2010), 261–74Google Scholar. Work that examines state–society relations by paying close attention to the form and content of popular petitions include Chalcraft, John, “The Coal-Heavers of Port Saʿid: State-Making and Worker Protest, 1869–1914,” International Labour and Working Class History 60 (2001): 110–24Google Scholar; Chalcraft, , The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories: Crafts and Guilds in Egypt, 1863–1914 (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Chalcraft, , “Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt on the Eve of Colonial Rule,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 303–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zachs, Fruma and Ben-Bassat, Yuval, “Women's Visibility in Petitions from Greater Syria during the Late Ottoman Period,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (2015): 765–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Petitions by Algerian notables and high-profile figures such as Hamdan bin ʿUthman Khuja have drawn the attention of scholars. See, e.g., Ageron, Charles-Robert, Les Algériens musulmans et la France, 1871–1919, vol. 2 (Algiers: Éditions Bouchène, 2005Google Scholar [1968]); and James McDougall, “A World No Longer Shared: Losing the droit de cité in Nineteenth-Century Algiers,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, forthcoming. Schreier, Joshua, Arabs of the Jewish Faith: The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria (Rutgers, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010)Google Scholar contains extended analysis of petitions from urban Jews, and Stein, Saharan Jews those of Mzabi Jews.

20 See Hannah-Louise Clark, “Doctoring the Bled: Medical Auxiliaries and the Administration of Rural Life, 1904–1954” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2014), introduction.

21 This section draws extensively on Clark, “Doctoring the Bled,” which discusses the varied backgrounds and career trajectories of médecins de colonisation. The figure of the médecin de colonisation is examined in detail in Chopin, Charlotte, “Embodying ‘the New White Race’: Colonial Doctors and Settler Society in Algeria, 1878–1911,” Social History of Medicine 29 (2016): 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Medical auxiliary training comprised two years of study and one year of apprenticeship. In contrast, university studies in medicine, which were open only to holders of the baccalauréat, required four years of study and completion of a doctoral thesis. Auxiliary recruitment and training is discussed in Clark, “Doctoring the Bled.”

23 On the origins of these laws, see Antoniotti, S., Pellisier, V., Siméoni, M. C., and Manuel, C., “Déclaration obligatoire des maladies infectieuses. Des maladies «pestilentielles» aux maladies «émergentes»,” Santé publique 14 (2002): 165–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the full text of the law, see “La loi de santé publique de 1902,” Le Tribunes de la santé 4.25 (2009): 129, accessed 29 March 2016, http://www.cairn.info/revue-les-tribunes-de-la-sante-2009-4-page-129.htm. Articles 5 and 7 of the 1902 law stipulate obligatory declaration and disinfection.

24 The Délégations financières algériennes were founded in 1898 to devolve some degree of autonomy to the three départements of Algeria. The assembly comprised three groups of speakers, whose debates were conducted in isolation from one another, representing the interests of rural settlers (délégation des colons, with twenty-four members), urban settlers (délégation des non-colons, with twenty-four members), and the autochthonous population (with only twenty-one members—fifteen in the Section arabe and six in the Section kabyle). A purely consultative body at its inception, in 1901 the délégations were granted voting rights to determine the colonial budget, a right which became effective from 1902. The inbuilt distortions within the system of representation ensured that the agenda and interests of settlers and large landowners always prevailed. A detailed account of the institution is provided in Bouveresse, Jacques, Un parlement colonial? Les délégations financières algériennes (1898–1945), 2 vols. (Mont Saint-Aignan: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2008 and 2010)Google Scholar.

25 Assistance médicale des indigènes. Circulaire du Gouverneur général aux Préfets (5 Décembre 1904). Infirmeries indigènes—Consultations gratuites—Ophtalmies—Vaccinations—Aménagement des sources thermo-minérales—Hygiène (Algiers: Imprimerie Victor Heinz, 1904).

26 Infirmaries were given limited funding from the central colonial budget, and were mostly supported by municipal receipts and private donations. This was consistent with the manner in which medical assistance was financed in France. See Ramsey, Matthew, “Public Health in France,” in The History of Public Health and the Modern State, ed. Porter, Dorothy (Atlanta, Ga.: Editions Rodopi, 1994), 45–118Google Scholar.

27 Dubouloz, Henri, Premiers soins à donner aux malades et conseils pratiques d'hygiène / Jamaʿa Maʿrufa Hafz al-Sihha wa-Hiyya Faransawiyya (Constantine: Imprimerie Adolphe Braham, 1897)Google Scholar.

28 “Aventures d'un Règlement Sanitaire,” al-Akhbar, 20 February 1910.

29 Edmond Bruch, “Étude sur l'application à l'Algérie de la loi sur la protection de la Santé publique du 15 février 1902,” Archives de Thérapeutique et d'Hygiène coloniales (1908): 256–64, 289–300.

30 In fact, structural inequalities under colonialism and conditions of existence created by the colonial labor market (including poverty, hunger, poor housing, and overcrowding) not only fostered disease but also encouraged the transmission of diseases such as tuberculosis from Europeans to Algerian Muslims. See, for example, Matthieu Fintz, “Épidémiologie de l'invasion et constitution de l'identité biosociale des fellahin dans l'Algérie coloniale (1910–1962). La lutte contre le paludisme au regard des recherches sur la production des savoirs,” in Chantiers et defis de la recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain, ed. Pierre Robert Baduel (Paris: IRMC–Karthala, 2008), 117–33; and Clifford Rosenberg, Infection, Inequality, and the Colonial State: The Spread of TB From France to Algeria and Back, 1830–Present (work in progress).

31 Clark, Hannah-Louise, “Administering Vaccination in Interwar Algeria: Auxiliaires médicaux, Smallpox, and the Colonial State in the Communes mixtes,” French Politics, Culture & Society 34.2 (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

32 Archives régionales de Constantine, Constantine, Algeria (hereafter ARC), Règlements sanitaires communaux 1910–11 and CM règlement sanitaires E à A 1910–20. See Commune Mixte d'Aïn-el-Ksar. Hygiène publique. Règlement sanitaire municipal (Batna, Algeria: Imprimerie administrative et commercial Beun, 1910)Google Scholar.

33 See, for example, “Commune Mixte El-Mila. Règlement sanitaire,” 346–47; “Commune Mixte d'Aïn-el-Ksar. Hygiène publique. Règlement sanitaire municipal,” 13; and “Règlement sanitaire de la Commune Mixte de Fedj-M'Zala,” 7–9.

34 Boet, “al-Qanun al-Hawz fi Hafz al-Sihha” for al-Hamma, 16 January 1910. Cf. Cortade, “Règlement sanitaire de la Commune mixte de Fedj M'zala,” 9 October 1910.

35 Reparations were offered when sick livestock had to be slaughtered; see discussion of animals with glanders in ANOM ALG AINTE I/9.

36 Murard, Lion and Zylberman, Patrick, L'Hygiène dans la République: la santé publique en France, ou, l'utopie contrarié: 1870–1918 (Paris: Fayard, 1996)Google Scholar; Zylberman, Patrick and Murard, Lion, “Experts et notables. Les bureaux municipaux d'hygiène en France (1879–1914),” Gèneses 10.10 (1993): 53–73Google Scholar.

37 Lee Hildreth, Martha, Doctors, Bureaucrats, and Public Health in France, 1888–1902 (New York: Garland, 1987)Google Scholar.

38 ANOM CM Tiaret (uncatalogued), letter Commissaire de Police to Mayor of Tiaret, 28 July 1921.

39 ARC Archives communales 685, “Commune de Mila, Règlement sanitaire, Règlement Rural,” 25 January 1911, 346.

40 Each khabr was typically handwritten on a sheet of lined or blank paper folded vertically in half: the left side reserved for the qaʾid's handwriting, the right side for a French translation carried out by a secretary. The more sophisticated of these documents were prepared on official communal letterhead (on which a vertical line was traced by black ink or perforations) and signed with an official seal. But many akhbār were written hastily on reused paper scraps. Akhbār found in ANOM ALG AINTE and Tiaret (uncatalogued) and in ARC 56 Akbou cluster in the 1920s and 1930s. The lack of counterparts in the post–World War II era may be a consequence of the vagaries of archivization, but is plausibly the result of the introduction of the telephone and its generalization in these decades.

41 Archives nationales d'Algérie, Birkhadem, Algiers, Algeria (henceforth ANA) DZ/AN/17E/1395, “Rapport de Tournée, Inspecteur Général des Services d'Hygiène de l'Algérie,” 5 November 1921. See also ANOM CM Tiaret 34/Santé Publique (uncatalogued), circular “Typhus. Mesures de defense et de protection.”

42 One such investigation features in ARC Archives Communales 631, letter Administrator CM Takitount to Préfet de Constantine, “La Typhus au Douar Maouia,” 25 July 1936. Another appears in ANOM ALG AINTE I/9, Circular, “Surveillance à exercer sur les populations indigènes,” 5 March 1931. A dismissal is mentioned in ANOM ALG AINTE I/9, letter Administrator CM Aïn el Arba to Préfet d'Oran, 6 December 1926.

43 See, for example, CM Tiaret (uncatalogued), ARC 56 Akbou and Archives Communales 631, letter 21 March 1937, qaʾid of duwwār Oukaour to Administrator CM Akbou.

44 ANOM CM Tiaret (uncatalogued) Archives I/21, Santé publique, letter 31 January 1929.

45 ANOM ALG AINTE/I/9, see correspondence regarding Oued Sebbah, November and December 1926. The prefect of Oran ordered 150 armed sentries to camp around duwwār al-ʿAyisha for more than a week to prevent the movement of villagers, in response to a panicked letter from the administrator of CM Aïn Temouchent speculating that the village was infected by plague. The file contains no evidence, medical or other, that supports the administrator's claim.

46 Hilton-Simpson was not a medic but had formed an interest in medical practice among the Shawi Berbers after reading a paper in the journal L'anthropologie that discussed Shawi practices of skull trepanation. Malbot, Henri and Verneau, René, “Les Chaouias et la trépanation du crâne dans l'Aurès. Les trépaneurs et la trépanation,” L'Anthropologie 8 (1897): 174–204Google Scholar.

47 Pitt Rivers Museum Manuscript Collections, University of Oxford (henceforth PRMMC), Hilton-Simpson Papers (H-SP), item A: thesis, “Medicine among the Berbers of the Aurès,” 5.

48 ANA Territoires du Sud (henceforth TDS) 0531.

49 ANA DZ/AN/17E/2026, Governor General Jules Cambon, cited in Secrétaire générale délégué pour le Préfet d'Alger to sous-préfets, “Recueil des Actes Administratifs. No 113. 1er Bureau. Police des Professions Médicales – Indigènes musulmans,” 9 September 1897.

50 PRMMC H-SP, item A, 5.

51 Ibid., 5, 7–8.

52 Ibid., 11.

53 The villagers may also have been aware of a number of hadith that offered advice on correct behavior in the face of epidemics (al-wabāʾ) and plague (al-ṭaʿūn), such as those from the highly respected collections of al-Bukhari and al-Hajjaj, Muslim ibn. These were discussed in a text by Muhammad bin Mustafa ibn al-Khuja Kamal, Tanwir al-Adhhan fi al-Hathth ʿala al-Taharraz wa-Hafz al-Abdan (Algiers: Imprimerie Fontana Frères, 1896)Google Scholar, which circulated widely in Algeria at the turn of the 20th century.

54 PRMMC H-SP, item G, working slip number 72.

55 Jane Murphy, “Natural History and Materia Medica in Eighteenth-Century North Africa” (paper presented at the conference “The Historical Career of Mike Mahoney,” Princeton University, 15–16 May 2009).

56 PRMMC H-SP, item A, 12–13.

57 Janzen, John, The Quest for Therapy: Medical Pluralism in Lower Zaire (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1978)Google Scholar, xviii.

58 Medical pluralism presents an interesting parallel with legal forum shopping. See, for example, Marglin, Jessica M., Across Legal Lines: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 See Vaughan, Megan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Vaughan, “Healing and Curing: Issues in the Social History and Anthropology of Medicine in Africa,” Social History of Medicine 7 (1994): 283–95CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, reference on 288.

60 ANOM CONST B/2/214, undated petition, duwwār Zillatou.

61 ANOM ALG CONST B3/214, letter Administrator CM Aurès to Sous-Préfet Batna, 16 March 1917.

62 Chellier, Dorothée, Voyage dans l'Aurès: notes d'un médecin envoyé en mission chez les femmes arabes (Tizi Ouzou: Imprimerie J. Chellier, 1895)Google Scholar; Chellier, , Notes de voyage et rapport a M. le gouverneur général d'une mission médicale chez les indigènes de l'algérie 1896 (Montélimar: Bourbon, 1897)Google Scholar.

63 Figures drawn from Debue-Barazer, Christine and Perrolat, Sébastien, “1914–18: guerre, chirurgie, image. Le Service de Santé et ses répresentations dans la société militaire,” Sociétés & Représentations 25 (2008): 233–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Military service records for a number of auxiliaires médicaux were found in the Service des archives de la wilaya d'Alger, Algeria (henceforth SAWA), 3V61.

65 ANA TDS 0531, letter Sous-Préfet Mostaganem to Préfet d'Alger, 21 April 1915.

66 See ANOM B3/430, Médecin inspecteur général Calmette, “Concours des médecins militaires au service médical des populations civiles,” 21 April 1916. Figures of médecins de colonisation are given in Meynier, L'Algérie révelée, 509.

67 ANA CK 079, Statistique du personnel médical et pharmaceutique de France et d'Algérie, année 1906; ANOM ALG/CONST B3/430 Novembre–Décembre 1914, “Liste nominative des Médecins, Chirurgiens, Officiers de Santé, Pharmaciens, Sages-Femmes, Dentistes et Vétérinaires exerçant dans le département de Constantine au 1er janvier 1914,” 10 February 1914.

68 ANOM ALG/CONST B3/430 1914/Novembre–Décembre 1914.

69 ANOM ALG CONST B3/452, telegram Préfet de Constantine to Governor General, 25 January 1915.

70 Ibid., letter Maire de la commune de pleine exercice d'Oued-Zenati to Préfet de Constantine, 28 December 1914.

71 ANOM ALG/CONST B3/430, letter Maire Robertville to Sous-préfet Philippeville, 9 September 1915.

72 ANA TDS 0531, telegram Procureur général Mostaganem to Justice de la paix Trézel, August 1914. See also letter, Sous-préfet Mostaganem to Préfet d'Oran, 21 April 1915; and letter Procureur Général près de la Cour d'Appel d'Alger to Governor General, 25 May 1915.

73 Ibid., letter Sous-préfet Mostaganem to Préfet d'Oran, 21 April 1915.

74 ANOM ALG CONST B3/430, letter Administrator CM Oued-Marsa to Préfet de Constantine, 5 August 1916.

75 ANOM ALG CONST B3/452, letter Administrator CM La Meskiana to Préfet de Constantine, 17 August 1917.

76 Ibid., letter Administrator CM Oued-Cherf to Sous-préfet Guelma, 6 March 1917.

77 Ibid., telegraph Préfet de Constantine to Governor General, 25 January 1915.

78 ANOM ALG/CONST B3/430 1915/2e sem, letter Dr. Attal to Préfet de Constantine, 23 March 1915.

79 Ibid., letter no. 935M, Médecin Principal 1e classe Bouchereau to Préfet de Constantine, 7 September 1915.

80 See Nouschi, André, Enquête sur le niveau de vie des populations rurales constantinois de la conquete jusqu'en 1919 (Paris: Presses Universitaires des France, 1961)Google Scholar, chaps. 4–9 for a detailed description of the commune.

81 ANOM ALG/CONST B3/430, petition, no date.

82 Information on European and Jewish inhabitants of Châteaudun-du-Rhumel was consulted at ANOM, via IREL (instruments de recherché en ligne) état civil records, accessed 29 March 2016, http://anom.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/caomec2/recherche.php?territoire=ALGERIE. It has not yet been possible to consult the état civil for the Muslim population of Châteaudun-du-Rhumel, which is held in the ANA.

83 Henri Soulié and Lucien Raynaud, “De la nécessité d'organiser en Algérie un corps d'infirmiers ou aides-médecins indigènes,” Compte-rendu du Congrès colonial français, 29 May–5 June 1901, Section de Médecine et d'Hygiène coloniales, 245–50, figures on 245.

84 Guignard, Didier, L'Abus du pouvoir dans l'Algérie coloniale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 74.

85 Description taken from Soulié, Henri, “L'Assistance publique chez les Indigènes musulmans de l'Algérie,” Bulletin médical de l'Algérie 14.10 (1903): 384–85Google Scholar.

86 ANOM ALG CONST B3/452, shikāya, inhabitants of La Meskiana, 29 July 1917.

87 Ibid., French translation.

88 Colette Establet's study of qaʾids in the cercle of Tébessa (Tibissa) described how this region was drawn into the French administrative net between 1851 and 1915. Establet identified a bureaucratic formalism emerging in the correspondence of the Bureaux arabes, which she argued reflected qaʾids’ transformation from charismatic and traditional power figures into bureaucratic brokers of the French state. Establet, Colette, Être Caïd dans l'Algérie Coloniale (Paris: Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1991), 227–52Google Scholar.

89 ANA TDS 0531 Questionnaire, Marc Savin-Vaillant, La Meskiana, 3 May 1911.

90 ANOM ALG/CONST B3/430 Novembre–Décembre 1914, “Liste nominative des médecins communaux du département de Constantine; Liste des autres médecins se trouvant dans les Communes du département et non appelés sous les drapeaux; infirmeries indigènes,” October 1914 (no date).

91 ANOM ALG/CONST B3/452, letter Administrator CM La Meskiana to Préfet de Constantine, 5 December 1916 and reference to complaint made on 27 November 1916. New charges were addressed to the Préfet on 5 December 1916 in response to a complaint made by Schmitko against the administrator. Schmitko's original letter has not come to light and so it is not possible to see his defense.

92 Ibid., letter Administrator CM de La Meskiana to Préfet de Constantine, 5 December 1916.

93 Ibid., letter Mrs. Tomati to Préfet de Constantine, 25 August 1916.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid., letter Administrator CM La Meskiana to Préfet de Constantine, 5 December 1916.

96 ANOM ALG/CONST B3/452, letter Administrator CM Arris to Sous-préfet Batna, 16 March 1917.

97 George Coppolani, “Ain-Beida—La Source Blanche—Souvenirs d'en face,” ʿAin al-Baydaʾ Tarikh, accessed 29 March 2016, http://ainbeidahistoire.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page_6.html.

98 On the political consequences of wartime services, see Aissaoui, Rabah, “Exile and the Politics of Return and Liberation: Algerian Colonial Workers and Anti-Colonialism in France during the Inter-War Period,” French History 25 (2011): 214–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meynier, L'Algérie Révelée; Meynier, “Les Algériens et la guerre de 1914-1919”; and Nouschi, André, L'Algérie amère 1914–1994 (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'homme, 1995)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

99 For activities carried out by the burj in the cercle of Tébessa from 1872 to 1890, see Establet, Être Caïd dans l'Algérie Coloniale, 177–90.

100 Similarly, it is possible to find evidence in the archives of distressed Europeans who stepped into an ambiguous position beneath that of citizen deliberately—for example, by marrying a Muslim.