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  • An Empire of Facts: Colonial Power, Cultural Knowledge and Islam in Algeria, 1870–1914
  • David Robinson
An Empire of Facts: Colonial Power, Cultural Knowledge and Islam in Algeria, 1870–1914. By George R. Trumbull IV (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009) 328 pp. $94.99 cloth $32.99 paper

Trumbull has compiled a remarkable study of knowledge and power in the premier French colony in Africa, examining Algeria, Algerians, and the practice of Islam through ethnographies composed by French professionals and amateurs during the Third Republic. In the period that he covers, the French occupation of most of Algeria, north of the Sahara, was certainly in place, if not completely secure. The French system of administration and observation required the production of ethnographies about the groups now under French rule. As the first French colony in Africa, Algeria was the laboratory of experience and “wisdom” that taught the French how to deal with other territories, particularly those where Islam was important. “Algeriens,” the code for French officials with Algerian expertise, operated extensively in Morocco and West Africa, often with great authority.

In the first chapter, entitled “Writing like a State,” Trumbull shows how intimately the government was involved in all aspects of the production and dissemination of ethnography. With the governor general’s encouragement, Louis Rinn’s Marabouts et Khouan: Étude sur l’Islam en Algérie (Alger, 1884) became the indispensable companion for French administrators in Algeria. Trumbull begins with a citation from Rinn about the absence of contestation of French rule to show how little the government and its intellectuals understood about the resistance and resentments of Algerians.

Trumball gives a great deal of attention to religion, mainly the Sufi orders, and to the exploration and conquest of the Sahara, which reinforced and modified the stereotypes that the French held about Algeria. He links the religious theme to the metropole and the ongoing struggle of republicans with the Catholic church and its schools, devoting some attention to the Dreyfus Affair and antisemitic attitudes.

Trumbull thoroughly researched the careers and writings of the ethnographers and the audiences for which they wrote, composing a convincing picture not of Algeria but of the French intellectual world about Algeria. His subjects mainly worked outside the academic setting, in some cases as members of the Algerian or metropolitan government. Most of them were male explorers with a connection to the settler community of Algeria, and some of them had apparently done fieldwork before. Trumbull provides useful portraits of such well-known figures as Alfred Bel, Edmond Doutté, Arnold Van Gennep, and particularly Henri Duveyrier, who came to prominence through his positive portrayal of the Tuareg in Les Touareg du Nord (Paris, 1864) when he was in his early twenties and committed suicide in 1892. Trumbull also gives extensive treatment to the massacre of Paul Flatters and his command in 1880 and the negative and “criminal” portrayal of the Tuareg “culture” that emerged as a result. [End Page 673]

Trumbull builds a chapter around the Sufi orders that were prominent in the Maghreb, especially the Tijaniyya, who became “allies” of French conquest and expansion, unlike their confreres in Morocco and West Africa. He has much to say about Aurelie Picard, the Bordelese woman who married Ahmad al-Tijani—one of the main Tijaniyya leaders—in the early years of the Third Republic, and became a source of French intelligence for several decades thereafter. Other chapters deal with popular religious practices and with gender. The final chapter treats collective stereotypes and criminality, particularly associated with the conquest of the Sahara, the missions of Duveyrier, Flatters, and others.

Trumbull’s work has implications for future research about other parts of the French Empire, as well as other European imperial territories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In my own work on Senegal and Mauritania, and Muslim societies coming under French colonial rule, I can clearly see the influence and authority wielded by “les algeriens.” 1 In establishing protectorates in Tunisia and Morocco, the French probably became more aware of the limitations of their Algerian models.

Trumbull’s brief conclusion does little justice to his findings, offering questionable generalizations about the construction of ethnography. How...

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