Politics, identity and temporality in colonial Algeria in the early twentieth century

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, colonial Algeria was marked by profound social, cultural and political tensions that were compounded by a concatenation of events triggered by the First World War. Within a context marked by the determination of settlers and the colonial administration to maintain the colonial status quo, a small group of French-educated Algerian political activists known as the Jeunes Algériens (Young Algerians) emerged onto the political scene and called for reform and for more rights for the colonised. This study examines aspects of political discourse in the colony during that period and considers how notions of temporality were invoked on both sides of the colonial divide and shaped political debate at the time. It discusses some of the ways in which history and memory as well as conceptions of Algeria’s future were conjured up, on the one hand, by French politicians, settlers and writers in ways that sustained France’s hegemonic colonial discourse, and, on the other, by the Jeunes Algériens in order to emphasise the inequity of the colonial order, seek acceptance within the French nation and foreground specific political claims and demands.