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The Postal Service in the Douar: Noncitizen Users and the Colonial State in Rural Algeria from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Second World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2018

Annick Lacroix
Annick Lacroix*
Affiliation:
Université Paris Nanterre – IDHES
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Abstract

Throughout the colonial period, Algerian users are largely absent from the administrative archives of the Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone Service (PTT). If the French conquest did not spur colonized populations, with their ancient writing practices, to “enter into communication,” should this absence be understood as the refusal of a progress that was itself colonialist? The period between the two world wars marked a turning point: pressure from local representatives and a wave of petitions from noncitizen (Algerian) villagers reconfigured a public service previously monopolized by European users. Belatedly, and with as little expense as possible, the administration finally supported postal services for isolated areas.

Observing the colonial configuration in the most situated and ordinary of its manifestations, this article sheds light on everyday writing practices and reinstates the “thickness” of a local service. Rather than limiting the study to the French presence in Algeria, this depends on pressing the colonial documentation to reveal the workings of Algerian society and the reorganizations prompted by the colonial encounter. Complaints and petitions thus illuminate the relation of noncitizen, rural, and mostly illiterate populations to the colonial state. The unexpected utilization of the postal service and subversive demands for access to it led colonized populations to piece together a political identity that borrowed certain practices from active citizens and drove the French authorities to propose unprecedented adjustments.

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Type
Colonial Algeria
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 469 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Éditions EHESS 2018 

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63. AWA, 6O/2, letter from the principal inspector to the prefect of Algiers, May 21, 1917, with an extract from the register of deliberations of the municipal commission of Chellala, April 27, 1917.

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67. AWA, 6O/14, petitions from inhabitants and tradesmen originating from the region of the Djurdjura, addressed to the director of the PTT and the chambers of commerce, 1935 – 1936.

68. Sayad, Abdelmalek, “Les trois ‘âges’ de l’émigration algérienne en France,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 15, no. 1 (1977): 59 – 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 65, considers that emigration encouraged monetary circulation in rural areas and transformed the peasant way of life.

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72. In 1936, 2.1 percent of Algerian men could write in French. See Colonna, Fanny, Instituteurs algériens, 1883 – 1939 (Paris: Presses de la Fnsp, 1975), 56Google Scholar.

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74. The practice was also common in France in the nineteenth century. See Chartier, Roger, ed., La correspondance. Les usages de la lettre au xixe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 66Google Scholar.

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78. Feraoun, The Poor Man's Son, 88.

79. Barber, Africa's Hidden Histories.

80. Al-Nadjah, May 7, 1926, and Wādī Mīzāb 26, April 1, 1927, “Open letter to the director of the PTT (mudir al-būsta) in Algeria.” I would like to thank Hannah Louise Clark and Augustin Jomier for providing me with the references to these Arab-language newspapers, and Charlotte Courreyre for translating them.

81. The introduction of these technologies from the West roused controversy across the Arabo-Muslim world. See Sheikh Bayyūd, Al-Umma 58, January 17, 1935, and 60, January 28, 1936; Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob, Defining Islam for the Egyptian State: Muftis and Fatwas of the Dār al-Iftā (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 82 – 84Google Scholar.

82. AWA, 6O/14, copy of the petition from the inhabitants of Yakouren addressed to the inspector-general of the PTT, October 17, 1918.

83. AWA, 6O/16, petition by the inhabitants of Aïn-Oussera addressed to the administrator of the mixed commune of Chellala, April 26, 1925.

84. AWA, 6O/17, letter from the inhabitants of Aïn-Oussera addressed to the prefect of Algiers, May 16, 1927; information provided by the administrator of the mixed commune of Chellala, June 4, 1927; letter from the administrator to the subprefect, June 18, 1927.

85. ANA, 18-75/130, letter from the inhabitants of Adeni to the director of the PTT, September 22, 1932.

86. AWA, 6O/13, protestation by the djamā’a of the douar of Tachachit addressed to the prefect of Algiers, November 5, 1938.

87. ANOM, 23H257/320, request written in Arabic by the professional letter-writer Tahar Mansouri ben Maceur ben Djalallah, for the inhabitants of the village of Azzeguem (Oulad Saoud tribe), translated into French and conveyed to the director of the PTT, February 22, 1946.

88. Fassin, Didier, “La supplique. Stratégies rhétoriques et constructions identitaires dans les demandes d'aide d'urgence,” Annales HSS 55, no. 5 (2000): 955 – 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 959, emphasizes the role of intermediaries who formulated “the request in the rhetoric that seemed to them the most effective.”

89. ANA, 18-75/130, letter from the inhabitants of the douar of Iraten addressed to the governor-general, August 14, 1929.

90. AWA, 6O/55, extract from the register of the deliberations of the municipal commission of Dra-el-Mizan, June 24, 1937; letter from the departmental director of the PTT to the prefect of Algiers, August 21, 1937.

91. AWA, 6O/13, protestation by the djamā’a of the douar of Tigherent addressed to the governor-general, November 15, 1933; protestation by the djamā’a of the douar of Tachachit addressed to the prefect of Algiers, November 5, 1938.

92. Sievert likens the petitions to an “effective political weapon” in “Intermediaries and Local Knowledge in a Changing Political Environment,” 362. The use of communication technologies in Egypt under the British protectorate is also illuminating: see Barak, On Time.

93. On the eve of independence, one-fifth of the inhabitants of the conurbation of Algiers had been born in a Kabyle commune and the arrondissement of Tizi-Ouzou was the rural district with the lowest rate of illiteracy, according to the 1954 census cited in Favret-Saada, Jeanne, Algérie 1962 – 1964. Essais d'anthropologie politique (Saint-Denis: Bouchène, 2005), 54Google Scholar.

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98. ANOM, 93502/38/1, letter from the governor-general to the prefect of Constantine, mixed commune of La Séfia, February 17, 1922.

99. Denis Cantin, “Le service des postes et télégraphes en Indochine. Des origines aux années trente” (DEA diss., Université d'Aix-Marseille, 1997), 77.

100. ANOM, 93502/38/1, circular of November 6, 1923, issued by the governor-general of Algeria. For the distinction between mixed communes and full exercise communes, see above, n. 15.

101. Order by the governor-general issued May 12, 1924. The sum was charged under section VI (chap. 4, § 6). ANOM, 93502/38/1, letter from the government-general to the prefect of Constantine, mixed commune of La Séfia, May 14, 1924.

102. ANA, CCA, Bi/159, report presented to the council of the PTT by the head of the central PTT service, n.d. (circa 1928), p. 29.

103. AWA, 6O/66, order by the governor-general issued February 6, 1930, and letter from the prefect of Algiers to the central PTT service, May 12, 1929; ANA, CCA, Bi/159, draft budget for the financial year 1930 (art. 5-5).

104. Motion by Emir Khaled el-Hassani ben el-Hachemi at the session of 1920, cited in Bouveresse, Un parlement colonial, 2:685.

105. AWA, 6O/55, letter from the administrator of Mizrana to the director of the PTT in Algiers, May 17, 1929.

106. In the budget of 1931, the funds allocated to the distribution of mail in the douars equaled a third of the transport allowances granted for tenured staff's leave to metropolitan France or Corsica. GGA, PTT service, Budget annexe des PTT, Projet de budget pour l'exercice 1931, 1st section (Algiers: É. Pfister, 1930), 38, chap. 5, art. 5.

107. At the start of the conquest, this mountainous area located in northern Algeria was identified as the only colonizable region. To the south of the Tell stretched the High Plateaus and then the Sahara proper.

108. Lacroix, “Une histoire sociale et spatiale de l’État dans l'Algérie colonisée,” 192 sq.

109. GGA, Délégations financières algériennes. Délégation des non-colons (Algiers: V. Heintz, 1912), 144, session of May 13, 1912, motion by Émile Morinaud.

110. AWA, 6O/1, letter from the undersecretary of state for the PTT to the prefects of the metropole and Algeria, August 8, 1923.

111. In addition to selling stamps, envelopes, and postcards, the clerk dealt with recorded deliveries, the issuance and payment of money orders, and the distribution and dispatch of correspondence. He also acted as an intermediary with the national savings bank (the Caisse nationale d’épargne) when opening current accounts and making transfers into savings accounts.

112. GGA, PTT service, Rapport sur la gestion financière pendant l'exercice 1925 et sur la marche générale du service des PTT, présenté par le Gouverneur général de l'Algérie (Algiers: É. Pfister, 1933), 73.

113. Verdier, “Poste et territoires,” 74.

114. Bulletin officiel des PTT, “Liste des bureaux d'Algérie en 1938,” 579 – 80.

115. Tamazirt was a “native village” belonging to the douar of Iraten. In 1936, it was inhabited by around one hundred French citizens and almost 13,000 “natives,” and was one of the ten douars of the mixed commune of Fort-National. AWA, 6O/17, minutes of the Conseil général at Algiers, October 21, 1925; ANA, CCA, B72, letter from the director of the central PTT service to the president of the Chamber of Commerce of Algiers, December 8, 1925.

116. ANA, 18-75/130, letter from the inhabitants of the douar of Iraten addressed to the governor-general, August 14, 1929.

117. ANA, 18-75/130, breakdown of operations performed for Tamazirt by the Fort-National office, letter from the PTT inspector, Mr. Tardos, to the departmental director of the PTT in Algiers, January 25, 1930.

118. ANA, 18-75/130, letter from the administrator of Fort-National to the director of the PTT, December 4, 1930; deliberations of the mixed commune of Fort-National, February 13, 1930.

119. ANA, 18-75/130, letter from the PTT inspector, Mr. Tardos, to the departmental director in Algiers, January 25, 1930; report of the supervisory postal agent, Mr. Di Méglio, April 1, 1930.

120. ANOM, 23H257/320, petition by the inhabitants of the village of Azzeguem (Southern Territories), conveyed to the director of the PTT, February 22, 1946.

121. Each year, over a two-week period, the correspondence distributed in the douars was tallied, making it possible to adjust their remuneration, now proportional to the volume of mail delivered. ANA, 18-75/41, order of May 10, 1951, by the governor-general concerning the remuneration of commune personnel; ANA, 18-75/210, tally of correspondence from January 4 to January 16, 1960, pursuant to the departmental circular of December 19, 1959.

122. ANA, 18-75/41, tally of March 3 to March 15, 1958, in the village of Chabet-el-Ameur, March 15, 1958.

123. ANOM, 93502/38/1, letter from the administrator of civic services to the rural constabulary of La Séfia, January 6, 1950.

124. ANA, 18-75/41, draft letter from the departmental director of the PTT in Tizi-Ouzou, Mr. Ayat, to the prefect of Greater Kabylia, March 6, 1958.

125. AWA, 6O/1, PTT service, “Minutes of the regional conference of the PTT,” session of June 25, 1946, 17 – 19; ANA, 18-75/41, letter from the departmental director of the PTT in Tizi-Ouzou to the chief engineer and director-general of the PTT, July 28, 1958.

126. ANOM, 81F/1257, figures for the year, lecture by the director of postal and telecommunications services, J. Gastebois, January 4, 1961.

127. Brochure issued by the Ministry of Information and Culture of the Algerian Republic, “Visages de l'Algérie,” Les postes et télécommunications (November 1970), p. 8.

128. It would be interesting to study the morphology of the network in the 1970s and 1980s to see how these declarations of intent materialized.

129. In 1926, the proportion of Europeans in the mixed communes was 1.96 percent, according to Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 2:475.

130. Annick Lacroix, “Au contact. Postiers non-citoyens dans l'Algérie colonisée (vers 1900 – 1939),” in Cohen and Lacroix, “Between France and Algeria,” 11 – 31.

131. ANA, 18-75/41, memorandum from the prefect of Tizi-Ouzou to remedy the shortcomings of the postal service in order to avoid any “unfortunate impression on public opinion,” May 9, 1958.