IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB704023421

Civilizing through Cork: Conservationism and la Mission Civilisatrice in French Colonial Algeria (April 2018)

Duffy, Andrea (Author)

Environmental History
Volume: 23
Issue: 2
Pages: 270-292

DOI: 10.1093/envhis/emy002

URI: https://academic.oup.com/envhis/article/23/2/270/4903039

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Forests and forestry Colonialism Land use Environmental degradation Conservation of natural resources France, colonies Cork and cork industry 19th century 20th century Algeria

The French occupation of Algeria began in 1830 and lasted over 130 years. In the decades following the initial conquest, French imperial agents emphasized the colonial enterprise's social and environmental aims. Claiming that centuries of misuse and abuse had decimated Algeria's environment, they presented the colonial project as an opportunity to adapt indigenous inhabitants to more sustainable uses of land. This civilizing mission helped elevate Algerian cork production into one of the colony's most profitable industries. In the process, it had a detrimental impact on Algerian forests and mobile pastoralists. This article uses cork as a case study to explore the meaning of the French civilizing ethic and its role in France's occupation of Algeria. It makes three main claims. First, it argues that the nineteenth-century French civilizing mission combined social and environmental values, perceptions, and concerns. Second, it demonstrates that this ethic was a guiding factor in the French conquest of Algeria. Finally, it posits that the Algerian cork industry succeeded in part because it purported to embody the French colonial mission's social and environmental ideals.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB704023421/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Ford, Caroline; (2008)
Reforestation, Landscape Conservation, and the Anxieties of Empire in French Colonial Algeria (/isis/citation/CBB001030306/)

Article Ford, Caroline; (2008)
Reforestation, Landscape Conservation, and the Anxieties of Empire in French Colonial Algeria (/isis/citation/CBB000760663/)

Article Deprest, Florence; (2011)
Using the Concept of Genre de Vie: French Geographers and Colonial Algeria, c. 1880--1949 (/isis/citation/CBB001034142/)

Thesis Aso, Michitake; (2011)
Forests without Birds Science, Environment, and Health in French Colonial Vietnam (/isis/citation/CBB001560839/)

Article Lorcin, Patricia M. E.; (1999)
Imperialism, Colonial Identity, and Race in Algeria, 1830-1876: The Role of the French Medical Corps (/isis/citation/CBB000111788/)

Book Sessions, Jennifer E.; (2011)
By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (/isis/citation/CBB001201998/)

Book Arthur Asseraf; (2019)
Electric News in Colonial Algeria (/isis/citation/CBB134023687/)

Multimedia Object Roxanne Panchasi; Arthur Asseraf; (2020)
Arthur Asseraf, “Electric News in Colonial Algeria” (Oxford UP, 2019) (/isis/citation/CBB286614821/)

Article Osborne, Michael A.; (2000)
Acclimatizing the World: A History of the Paradigmatic Colonial Science (/isis/citation/CBB000671219/)

Article Gallois, William; (2007)
Local Responses to French Medical Imperialism in Late Nineteenth-Century Algeria (/isis/citation/CBB000772505/)

Article Blais, Hélène; (2011)
An Intra-Imperial Conflict: The Mapping of the Border between Algeria and Tunisia, 1881--1914 (/isis/citation/CBB001034144/)

Article Bonnemain, Bruno; (2009)
Histoire de la Pharmacie Française en Algérie (1830--1962) (/isis/citation/CBB000933422/)

Article Abrams, M. D.; Johnson, S. E.; (2014)
Impacts of Early Homestead Abandonment on Forests and Soils at Scotia Barrens, Central Pennsylvania: Implications for Altered and Arrested Vegetation Development (/isis/citation/CBB001421933/)

Article Mattie Wheeler; (2014)
The Avant-Garde in Petroleum: Franco-Algerian Oil Cooperation , 1962-1971 (/isis/citation/CBB080108668/)

Article Scales, Rebecca P.; (2010)
Subversive Sound: Transnational Radio, Arabic Recordings, and the Dangers of Listening in French Colonial Algeria, 1934--1939 (/isis/citation/CBB001030050/)

Article Charlotte Ann Chopin; (2016)
Embodying ‘the new white race’: Colonial Doctors and Settler Society in Algeria, 1878–1911 (/isis/citation/CBB843789103/)

Article Keller, Richard C.; (2005)
Pinel in the Maghreb: Liberation, Confinement, and Psychiatric Reform in French North Africa (/isis/citation/CBB000620000/)

Article Myllyntaus, Timo; Hares, Minna; Kunnas, Jan; (2002)
Sustainability in Danger? Slash-and-Burn Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century Finland and Twentieth-Century Southeast Asia (/isis/citation/CBB000200426/)

Book Lewis, Michael L.; (2007)
American Wilderness: A New History (/isis/citation/CBB000930098/)

Article Germán Vergara; (January 2018)
How Coal Kept My Valley Green: Forest Conservation, State Intervention, and the Transition to Fossil Fuels in Mexico (/isis/citation/CBB199475593/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}