Hélène Blais

The Mediterranean, a territory between France and Colonial Algeria: imperial constructions

The geographical concept of the Mediterranean, born during the nineteenth century, has often been the object of scholarly attention. Many works have highlighted the progressive adjustments in the learned representations of this maritime space. From the Classical concept of a dividing border, which prevailed until the end of the eighteenth century, arose the idea of a junction sea, in the late nineteenth century. Though these studies all set the rise of the concept of a Mediterranean territory within the imperial context of the nineteenth century, such as the scientific and military explorations of Morea and Algeria, they do not explore the hypothesis that the Mediterranean was invented because it had become a colonial sea. Was the emergence of the Western Mediterranean, as an area of practices and representations, directly linked to the context of Algerian colonisation, to the chronology of its appropriation and to the evolution of French settlement on the banks of the Maghreb? This paper explores how, within the Franco-Algerian colonial situation, the Mediterranean was initially fashioned as a bridge between Europe and Africa, as a suture between the Orient and the Occident. The Mediterranean became a structuring feature of the French Empire.