Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA Desert Named Peace is a very impressive book. Clearly and, at times, very beautifully written, the volume brings together a staggering amount of archival and primary evidence and equally draws effectively on a mountain of secondary studies. On the subject of French involvement in Algeria, Benjamin Claude Brower comes across as exceptionally learned-a term not used too much any more, but which perhaps describes Brower best. This is sure to be a subject of interest to a wide variety of scholars. -- J. P. Daughton, Stanford University, and author of An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 In this rich and troubling story of the French conquest of Algeria, Benjamin Claude Brower takes up the question of violence, its sources, and its history. As the French pursued a project of 'pacification' in the name of civilization, they at once practiced and provoked horrific violence. Brower delves deeply into the many justifications developed for this violence. His remarkable book moves quite literally from the banalities of economic, political, and military reasoning to Romantic idealizations of the sublime (embodied especially by the Sahara desert). He offers no single causal explanation for the violence that occurred on both sides of the colonial relationship, but we leave the book with a deeper understanding of how and why it came about. -- Joan W. Scott, author of The Politics of the Veil The conquest of the Sahara offered French enterprise no potential for profit, but it fascinated the French military and a romantic band of explorers. The story of the conquest is one of violence and brutality masked by extravagant delusion. Benjamin Claude Brower tells this story well. Brower's discussion of French policy toward slavery and the slave trade is particularly valuable. It is a tale of laws proclaimed but rarely enforced, and of compromises that left few tracks, for Saharan administrators did not wish to compromise themselves. Brower uncovers those tracks with a detective's skill. -- Martin Klein, professor emeritus, University of Toronto A very engaging and rich study of the French conquest of the Algerian Sahara -- Amal Ghazal H-Levant This ambitious book makes a major contribution to the study of empire. -- Clifford Rosenberg H-France A well written revisionist look at the dark side of colonialism. -- A.A. Nofi StrategyPage ...a fascinating and well-researched book... -- Matthew Lauzon H-Empire
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration of Arabic Introduction: Understanding Violence in Colonial Algeria Part 1: The "Penetration Pacifique" of the Algerian Sahara, 1844-52 1: The Peaceful Expansion of Total Conquest 2: Theorizing the "Penetration Pacifique" 3: The "Penetration Pacifique" in Practice, 1847-52 Part 2: Exterminating the French at Djelfa, 1861 4: The Ouled Nail and Colonial Rule 5: The Leadership Crisis and Rural Marabouts 6: A Holiday Gone Wrong: The Attack on Djelfa Part 3: Slavery in the Algerian Sahara Following Abolition 7: Saaba's Journey to Algerian Slavery 8: The Saharan Slave Trade and Abolition 9: Colonial Accomodation Part 4: Imagining France's Saharan Empire 10: Romanticism and the Saharan Sublime 11: The "Blue Legend": Henri Duveyrier and the Tuareg Conclusion Notes Bibliography Research Aids and Archival Inventories Archival Sources Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index
