Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers Under French Rule

Zeynep Celik. Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers Under French Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xiv + 236 pp. $40.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-520-20457-7. Reviewed by Patricia M. E. Lorcin Published on H-France (February, 1998) In her study of French colonial urbanism, and control over local populations; the impor‐ Gwendolyn Wright states that much can be tance of ethnography in the colonial enterprise; learned "about the European response to imperi‐ the ways and means, intentional or inadvertent, alism by focusing on French colonial cities. The of marginalizing local populations; the promotion widespread endorsement of colonialism had as of the concept of "the Other" (in this case the in‐ much to do with culture and imagery as it did digenous population). with economic advantage and political Its originality lies in the narrowness of its strength."[1] Zeynep Celik has taken up the chal‐ subject, namely Algiers. Algiers was not just any lenge of this hypothesis by concentrating her at‐ colonial city, it was the leading city of what tention on Algiers under French rule. The result is France considered to be its Southern Mediter‐ a detailed examination of the way in which the ranean "departements." Whatever the local popu‐ architecture and urban forms of the capital city of lation may have thought, from 1848 onwards the France's longest-standing and most important city was considered to be "French", with the colony contributed to imposing and perpetrating added bonus of an exotic ambience. The urban a colonial identity on Algeria. transformation of the city therefore had a dimen‐ Cultural imperialism, practically an unchart‐ sion which other French cities did not have. ed territory two decades ago, is now a bustling di‐ While the French architect Joseph Marrast vision of historical activity. Colonial urbanism is could, in 1920, claim that his respect and use of just one of its sub-divisions. Celik's contribution to Moroccan-style architecture in Casablanca would this literature is to focus on one particular colo‐ "conquer the fears of the natives and win their af‐ nial city. Using the case of urban design, the book fection" (Wright p. 1), as far as Algeria was con‐ reiterates many of the well-worn themes found in cerned any consideration of the sensibilities of the any analysis of cultural imperialism: the use of local population, in the 19th century at least, was colonial projects to establish and express power more from anxiety about possible unrest than H-Net Reviews from a desire to win its affection. Hence, Celik Celik's goal is to "gain a better understanding tells us that the architect (identified merely as Lu‐ of architectural and urban forms by situating vini) who put forward the frst proposal for the them in their historical, political and cultural con‐ place du Gouvernement shortly after conquest in texts" and she sets out to achieve this through the 1830 felt little compunction at suggesting the de‐ use of inter-disciplinary source material, "particu‐ molition of the al-Jadid and al-Sayyida mosques to larly ethnography" (p. 6). The monograph has a clear the area for construction. Eventually the lat‐ good selection of illustrations and plans. The se‐ ter was torn down and the former, left standing to lect bibliography is amplified by material in the appease the religious sentiments of the Arab pop‐ footnotes. ulation. This was at the insistence of one Colonel One of the most interesting aspects of the Lemercier (about whom we are told nothing and book is the discussion of the way spatial and ar‐ whose role in Algiers is left entirely to the reader's chitectural forms were used to segregate Algeri‐ imagination). ans from Europeans. Be it the belief that horizon‐ By 1855 major alterations of the city were un‐ tal housing was more suited to the Muslim popu‐ der way. Among the new thoroughfares was the lation and vertical to the European, or that the Al‐ rue de la Lyre. "Its architectural qualities made it gerian accustomed to the interior courts and in‐ especially significant to the French as a reminder ward looking spaces of his traditional house of the Rue de Rivoli, a cherished fragment from would fnd European lay-outs awkward, urban Paris now implanted in Algiers" (p. 37). A corner planning effectively cordoned off the Muslims. of France was being constructed in Algeria. The Whether this was in the form of respect for Mus‐ one area of the city which remained relatively in‐ lim sensibilities, as was initially the case, or in the tact, was the casbah. Not only were "interventions form of policies which ignored such sensibilities, in the casbah relatively few", but it was consid‐ was irrelevant. The result was the same: the Mus‐ ered to be exotically enchanting and historically lims were short-changed in their housing. The en‐ interesting. In short, it was in the interests of deavour to accommodate cultural difference or French administrators to preserve the casbah as a maintain the "exotic" dimension of Arab living tourist attraction and this they did. quarters nearly always translated into inadequate Celik's monograph is, therefore, a presenta‐ sanitation, small kitchens, and cramped living tion of these parallel endeavours, namely the cre‐ quarters. ation of a French urban environment and the The myth of the casbah, the heart of Muslim preservation of the "mythical" casbah. Inevitably Algiers, is another noteworthy point. In this con‐ the former eventually encroached upon the latter text Celik also discusses gendering as a colonial and this too features in the account. In the frst tool. "The gendering of Algerian society," she two chapters Celik situates her material and states, "became blatantly referential to power blocks out the background of French urbanism in structure" (p. 22). As all that was feminized had to Algeria, drawing attention to its close ties with de‐ do with the colonized, what was construed as velopments in the metropolis. In the following feminine carried with it not only the connotation three chapters she examines in detail the question of difference to the inferred masculinity of the of "indigenous" housing policies and design and colonizer but also of subordination. The casbah the altering shape of the city at different stages of exemplified this subordination. "It was colonial‐ its development. The epilogue is a discussion of ism that framed the casbah with certain concepts the predominant trends in urbanism and housing (gender, mystery and difference), which in turn since independence. shaped colonial policies regarding the casbah" (p. 2 H-Net Reviews 21). In explaining these three concepts Celik is its imagery, as a citadel of resistance, in the colo‐ least convincing with regard to gender. nized/colonizer urban relationship than the more In the frst place, Celik's choice of sources to ubiquitous one of gendering. illustrate her argument is unsatisfactory. She re‐ Far more successful, in this domain, are the lies on the travelogues of Dr. Marius Bernard, and author's arguments concerning the gendering of the works of the architect Edouard Le Corbusier private space in connection to colonial urban poli‐ and the novelist Lucienne Favre. Of these only cy. The "interiority," as Celik puts it (p. 104), of the Favre's is specifically about the casbah; Bernard's traditional Muslim home, as described above, and and Le Corbusier's are about the city of Algiers the French desire to perpetrate this tradition was (although one quotation from the latter does in‐ tied to the image of the encloistered Muslim wom‐ clude the casbah). Furthermore, all quotes come an who was simultaneously mysterious and unlib‐ from works published between 1893 and 1950.[2] erated. Even when Algerian women's active par‐ The point is that the encircling of the casbah by ticipation in the war of independence called this Parisian-style boulevards, of which the rue de image into question, French architects, urban Lyre was but the most nostalgic example, started planners and policy makers refused to acknowl‐ in the 1840s (p. 37). The gendering of the casbah edge the change (p. 178). To be sure, the circum‐ was one of the conceptual tools shaping colonial stances of war were hardly conducive to a radical urban policies which differentiated between the reassessment of such positions, but it is still a Muslim and European districts in urban planning, measure of how entrenched certain colonial according to Cecik. It is misleading to imply that tropes had become. this gendering was merely of the Muslim casbah, In her discussions on Algerian ethnography and was therefore a way of psychologically dimin‐ and its connections to the construction of colonial ishing the urban space of the colonized when the policy on the indigenous habitat, especially in the quotations provided by the author to support her rural setting, Celik would have done better to go argument concern Algiers as a whole. Moreover, directly to the primary sources rather than rely the quotations are taken from works written at on Philippe Lucas and Jean-Claude Vatin's the end of the 19th or in the 20th century, when L'Algerie des anthropologues, a compilation of an‐ Algiers was no longer merely a "Muslim" city, but notated extracts which reflect the authors' unnu‐ a markedly French one. To confuse the issue fur‐ anced view of the links between colonialism and ther, the author's analysis of the gendering of the anthropology.[4] Celik starts with Emile Mas‐ casbah comes at the beginning of her book when query's classic on the Kabyles (or the sedentary she is discussing developments after conquest people of the mountains of Kabylia), but his work (1830).

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