The Battle for Algeria
Sovereignty, Health Care, and Humanitarianism
Publication Year: 2015
In The Battle for Algeria Jennifer Johnson reinterprets one of the most violent wars of decolonization: the Algerian War (1954-1962). Johnson argues that the conflict was about who—France or the National Liberation Front (FLN)—would exercise sovereignty of Algeria. The fight between the two sides was not simply a military affair; it also involved diverse and competing claims about who was positioned to better care for the Algerian people's health and welfare. Johnson focuses on French and Algerian efforts to engage one another off the physical battlefield and highlights the social dimensions of the FLN's winning strategy, which targeted the local and international arenas. Relying on Algerian sources, which make clear the centrality of health and humanitarianism to the nationalists' war effort, Johnson shows how the FLN leadership constructed national health care institutions that provided critical care for the population and functioned as a protostate. Moreover, Johnson demonstrates how the FLN's representatives used postwar rhetoric about rights and national self-determination to legitimize their claims, which led to international recognition of Algerian sovereignty.
By examining the local context of the war as well as its international dimensions, Johnson deprovincializes North Africa and proposes a new way to analyze how newly independent countries and nationalist movements engage with the international order. The Algerian case exposed the hypocrisy of selectively applying universal discourse and provided a blueprint for claim-making that nonstate actors and anticolonial leaders throughout the Third World emulated. Consequently, The Battle for Algeria explains the FLN's broad appeal and offers new directions for studying nationalism, decolonization, human rights, public health movements, and concepts of sovereignty.
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Series: Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights
Cover
Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
Introduction
On 24 September 1958, Ferhat Abbas (Figure 1), the newly appointed president of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) and longtime figure in Algerian nationalist politics, wrote a memorandum from Cairo to Léopold Boissier, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Abbas was responding to Boissier’s letter from May of that year, in which Boissier proposed to...
1. The Long Road to War
On Monday, 20 August 1956, a warm summer day two years into the Algerian war, six National Liberation Front (FLN) leaders, Mohamed Larbi Ben M’hidi, Ramdane Abane, Amar Ouamrane, Belkacem Krim, Lakhdar Bentobbal, and Youcef Zighoud, gathered in northern Algeria, in the Soummam Valley, to convene the Soummam Congress and discuss the future of their struggle for national liberation. The previous...
2. Medical Pacification and the Sections Administratives Spécialisées
On 31 October 1954, nine “historic leaders,” Mourad Didouche, Hocine Aït Ahmed, Mohamed Boudiaf, Mohamed Larbi Ben M’hidi, Ahmed Ben Bella, Mustapha Ben Boulaïd, Mohamed Khider, Rabah Bitat, Belkacem Krim, bound by their belief that independence was only possible through armed struggle and revolution, drafted the Proclamation of the National Liberation Front. This document, released in...
3. “See Our Arms, See Our Physicians”: The Algerian Health-Services Division
In March 1955, five months into the war, thirty- year- old doctor Michel Martini left Paris for Orléansville, a town 125 miles west of Algiers, to replace head surgeon Dr. Kamoun at the local hospital. This was not his first trip to Algeria. In 1946, he had accompanied his father, who went on business to oversee bank operations in Algiers, and it was during this initial visit that Martini “discovered” Algeria’s...
4. Internationalizing Humanitarianism: The Algerian Red Crescent
From the beginning of the anticolonial movement, the FLN attended to both local and international dimensions of its war effort, and this attention also applied to the medical division. The student strike, the Soummam Congress, and doctors of various backgrounds contributed to establishing a more sophisticated domestic health- services division, even while the brutal conditions of war made it difficult to adequately meet...
5. The International Committee of the Red Cross in Algeria
In January 1960, at the height of African decolonization, the French newspaper Le Monde printed excerpts of the confidential report that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) submitted to the French government after its seventh mission to Algeria. The details within the report corroborated many of the Algerian...
6. Global Diplomacy and the Fight for Self-Determination
The International Committee of the Red Cross was not the only international organization struggling to adapt to the particular challenges of decolonization. In the 1950s, the United Nations (UN) also encountered a changing world, and UN members, especially those from Western countries, confronted a set of international problems for which...
Conclusion
In June 1961, President de Gaulle’s administration and Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) leaders met on Lake Geneva to attempt negotiating a cease- fire to the war. Shortly thereafter, El Moudjahid published an article explaining why the talks broke down. The Algerian nationalists who had traveled to Evian, among them Belkacem Krim, Houari Boumediene, and the future first president...
Acknowledgments
This journey started many years ago and I have accrued many intellectual and personal debts along the way. My interest in African history dates back to my undergraduate studies at Brown University, where under the guidance of Nancy Jacobs, I discovered the possibility of becoming a professional historian. I am especially indebted to her, the...
E-ISBN-13: 9780812292008
E-ISBN-10: 0812292006
Print-ISBN-13: 9780812247718
Print-ISBN-10: 081224771X
Page Count: 328
Illustrations: 14 illus.
Publication Year: 2015
Series Title: Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights
Series Editor Byline: Bert B. Lockwood, Jr., Series Editor
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