{"id":431271,"date":"2011-05-27T10:12:44","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T10:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/05\/27\/algeria-towards-a-common-history\/"},"modified":"2011-05-27T10:12:44","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T10:12:44","slug":"algeria-towards-a-common-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/05\/27\/algeria-towards-a-common-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Algeria – Towards a Common History"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Fahamu<\/a><\/p>\n

Sma\u00efl Goumeziane<\/p>\n

26 May 2011<\/p>\n

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analysis<\/p>\n

ArmyWhile 50 years have passed since Algeria achieved independence from France, Algerians still lack a cohesive historical narrative of their past, writes Sma\u00efl Goumeziane. Though fraught with difficulty, working towards such a history would go some way towards challenging ‘wars of memory’ and ‘selective amnesia’, Goumeziane stresses.<\/em><\/p>\n

Half a century after independence, Algerians are still waiting for the history of that period which would enable them to understand where they come from, who they are and figure out where they are headed on the basis of objective facts and signposts. It is after all the history of Algeria that has made them who they are today. But to date, whether at school or elsewhere, they have only had access to stories or snippets of redacted stories forced upon them by the direct or indirect ‘representatives’ of the various conquerors, ruling powers and other enemies of Algeria.<\/p>\n

Interwoven into this is the notion, depending on the needs or the authors, of an official history, a history of the defeated and a history of the victors. The Algerians therefore are still desperately seeking a history that would be their common heritage, which they can identify with and understand their own identity. As the saying goes, a people without history are a people without humanity. This search alone symbolises the instability that continues to plague the country, as well as the prejudices, misunderstandings and animosity it still triggers, both within and outside the country, especially in France and the uncertain future for its people, both individually and collectively. Because in Algeria as elsewhere, contemporary historical processes most often have their origins in the near or distant past. The present is pregnant with the past. That is why an objective response to these questions is so urgent.<\/p>\n

Certainly there has been a lot of serious research with respect to this or that period, this or that event, leader or political party, conducted with utmost scientific rigour by several generations of historians. Salluste, Tacite or Tite-Live during the Roman period; there was the brilliant Ibn Khaldoun in the 14th century. The Ottoman period was chronicled by Diego de Haedo and Henri Delmas de Grammont. The French colonial conquest has been described by Hamdan Khodia, Amar Said Boulifa and Stephane Gsell. More recently, there have been important contributions from a plethora of writers one could call the ‘historians of decolonisation’. These include Charles-Andre Julien, Gilbert Meynier, Claude Liauzu, Fernand Braudel, Charles-Robert Ageron, Mahfoud Kaddache, Mohammed Harbi, Benjamin Stora, Merrouche Lemnouer, Malika Hachid and many others.<\/p>\n

Despite this, there still isn’t a global and consensual version of Algerian history that everybody subscribes to, neither in the way it is perceived nor in its content. This is probably normal given the passions and contradictory interests of those who recount this history. It is also true that to try and put together such a consensual vision is both a gigantic and perilous, almost hopeless task, and even an army of scientists wouldn’t be able to come up with something without quarrelling endlessly amongst each other. One has to be humble therefore and proceed calmly, by adding successive and complementary touches and using appropriate methodologies, including those normally outside the domain of historians, highlighting convergences without masking divergences. In any event, given the wars of memory waged on the basis of selective amnesia which mask so many ‘burning’ reminiscences, and the attempts to manipulate history which periodically excite the milieu of politicians and the media on both sides of the Mediterranean, it is clear that a serenely written objective history of Algeria is essential for the future of the country and its people.<\/p>\n

Even if it is true, as historian Gilbert Meynier suggests, that ‘there was no Algeria in antiquity, or before antiquity, because nations and modern states did not exist at that time’, it doesn’t change the fact that there was simultaneously a territory and its geographic reality, and a people and their political, economic and social reality. This in itself is not specific to Algeria or original. The same could be said of France (the first traces of statehood only appeared after the 15th century), the USA (the declaration of independence on 4 July 1776 was the act that inaugurated the American nation) and is even more relevant to Italy (the nation only came into being in 1870). In other words, in Algeria as elsewhere, there was an extremely ancient historic reality that goes beyond what is generally understood by the concept of the nation state. According to Malika Hachid, this goes back at least to ‘the Lower Palaeolithic, a period also known as the civilisation of the burin because this tool was typical of that era. This means there was a human presence in the Tassili region in very ancient times as these tools date back to two and half million years ago.’ Gilbert Meynier also estimates that this region was inhabited more than two million years ago, one of the cradles of humanity, adding that the ‘Neolithic revolution occurred 10,000 to 8,000 years BCE, probably before Europe.’<\/p>\n

So, instead of squabbling over the definition of this territory, it would be more profitable to study the evolution of this historic reality of what progressively began to be known as Thamourth Imazighen, Berberie, Numidie, Dzaier, El Djazaiir or Algeria, depending on the language used and the way the people who lived through that period wrote about it. It is important that the distinction be maintained between the historic reality – it is illusory and probably useless to identify a precise point of departure – and scientific knowledge of that reality as it is conceptualised by scholars with their points of departure, epochs, events and other geographic, demographic, economic, political and military chronologies.<\/p>\n

That is why – though I am not a historian – I have taken the risk of writing this article on the history of Algeria from a different angle – heritage. I am not certain that my expertise in economy, especially the history of economic thought, as well as my long experience with economic and political issues in Algeria, will suffice to give credibility to my contribution to scientific discourse. One could argue that this accumulated experience which makes me who I am, ‘a son of my times’ (Hegel) like each and every person and the baggage that I bring will inevitably impact on my analysis and perhaps prevent me from transcending my own political, even ideological convictions, thereby making me another participant in the intellectual squabbles that characterise historical reflection and theoretical debate. On the other hand, the fact that I am a relative outsider to the discipline could open up theoretical benefits for me and my readers – the advantage of not having any historical a priori for example, or the freedom of using less ‘traditional’ means and methods than those used by historians. Finally, it allows me to participate, alongside other historians, in the debunking of the ‘manipulators’ of history who proceed with negative subjectivity and propagate falsehoods in order to protect or serve hidden interests which as a rule subvert and run contrary to the legitimate aspirations of the Algerian people.<\/p>\n

I am convinced that in this field, like in several others, a multidisciplinary approach is indispensable if one wants to understand the complexity of historic processes. My demarche is to understand things through reason and not affect; it is also an invitation to dialogue and collective mobilisation. For these reasons – and historians will understand this – this work is not strictly speaking a historian’s book. It would be pure pretentiousness on my part to present it as such. This is an essay which hopes to be a contribution to the identification of the essential elements and the main dynamics which I think have shaped the history of Algeria. This is one element among so many others that make up the ‘history of Algeria as the heritage of Algerians’.<\/p>\n

From this perspective, my purpose is to look at historical heritage as content at a given moment in the movement of Algerian history. Throughout this essay, the historical narrative I present by juxtaposing a multitude of historical facts and taken from diverse sources is aimed at illustrating and identifying the sources and mechanisms which over the centuries allowed for the construction of a specific history, whose content represents the historical heritage – an interesting exercise given that even today, because it is discontinuous and manipulated inside and outside the country, this heritage has not yet been assumed and continues to divide Algerians and set one group against the other. Another of my convictions is that historical heritage possesses a key specificity – it is the only common heritage that can in fact unite Algerians. The history of Algeria is basically the history of individuals and the history of everybody. From this perspective, like Algeria itself, it is one and many, indivisible and non-negotiable. Therefore, there cannot be, as some have suggested, a ‘supermarket’ of history where each could choose, more or less for free, what items to put in the caddy, select their bit of history, and by the same token deprive others, make them feel guilty and humiliate, attack or subjugate them.<\/p>\n

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