Raphaëlle Branche

The martyr's torch: memory and power in Algeria

The memory of the War of Independence is a primordial social and political resource in Algeria from 1962 onwards. The State has always been very eager to control it and to watch carefully any alternative narrative. Focusing on the war as a victorious armed struggle against the French colonial power, the official narrative always had a social efficiency. The civil war of the 1990s has revivified the need for a strong national narrative. As the State was facing a crisis of legitimacy, it had to delve into the past to reassure its power over a society torn apart by the war. The article explores the ways in which a commemorative policy has been elaborated as of 1962, stressing the main periods and focusing more particularly on the last two decades. It presents dates and places of memory selected by the main actors of this policy and eventually address the issue of consensus within the Algerian society towards this memory.

Writing the History of Rape in Wartime

This is how Livy narrated the origins of Rome. Without the desired marriages, Romulus therefore organised games in honour of Neptune the Horse-god. As Livy continued, All the Sabines came, with their women and children. Roman households were opened to them, and as they saw the city, with its pleasing position, its ramparts, and its many houses, they were amazed at its rapid growth. The day came for the games and as all eyes and minds were concentrated on them, the plan was carried out as prepared: at the agreed signal, the youth of Rome rose up on all sides to seize the young girls. Most of them fell victim to the first abductor. Some of the most beautiful, reserved for the principal senators, were carried off into their houses by citizens charged to undertake this task. One among the others, far superior to her companions in height and beauty was, it seems, taken by the senator Talassius’s group; as they were repeatedly asked where they were taking her, to protect her from all insults they cried out as they marched: “to Talassius” — hence the time-honoured phrase in the marriage ceremony. Terror threw the celebration into disarray, the parents of the young girls fled, stricken with grief; and as they cried out against this violation of the laws of hospitality, they invoked the god whose name had drawn them to the solemnisation of the games, as cover for treachery and sacrilege.

Sexual Violence in the Algerian War

English-language historians have argued that the category of gender is particularly useful and relevant for understanding the violence of war,1 with rape now clearly identified as a ‘gendered war crime’.2 Very few French historians of the modern period, however, have examined past conflicts from a gender-based perspective. Still, times are changing and analyses of rape and sexual violence, and, more generally, a gender-based approach to wars are becoming less and less unusual in French historical studies.3

The French State Faced with the Algerian Nationalists (1954–1962): A War against Terrorism?

During its last colonial war (Algeria, 1954–1962), France was a democracy that was very much torn between conflicting forces. The foundational values of its modern history (that originated in the French Revolution) and of its recent history (stemming from its victory over Nazism—at least as far as Resistance forces were concerned—and from its new regime, the Fourth Republic), were weakened by the challenges it was facing in its Algerian departements.1 Indeed, nationalism had become so influential there that it had become difficult to maintain the myth of a peaceful French Algeria. In fact, as early as the end of World War II, the colonial power had experimented with different administrative and legal adjustments; this met with strong opposition from the Francais d’Algerie (French settlers or colonists in Algeria)2 and increased the Algerians’ resentment.