Abstract
«One million Algerians learn to live in the 20th century» Resettlement camps and forced modernization in the Algerian War 1954–1962
One of the most astonishing characteristics of the Algerian War of Independence against France is the combination between military struggle against insurrection and civil reform projects. One special aspect of this war allows us to identify the fusion of these two elements: French resettlement policy. The French army violently forced up to three million people to leave their villages. Afterwards, they were reassembled in especially built camps, called «camps de regroupement». At the beginning, these measures were purely military. But they were quickly developed and became a massive rural development program. The promise of a fast global modernization of all areas of life should transform the inmates of the camp into loyal supporters of the project of a French Algeria. The «camps de regroupement» can be described as laboratories of modernization in which apparently contradictory elements were combined in a singular and unique way. Among these elements: development aid, an extremely rigid population control and different apparently totalitarian measures of social engineering.
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