Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn this engaging and insightful study, Joseph Peterson explores the myriad ways in which Catholic missionary experiences animated debates about race, civilization, and imperial ideology in nineteenth-century French Algeria. What emerges is a rich and troubling story of how lasting perceptions of Muslims and 'the Arab' were wrought in the fires of religious and political competition. Sacred Rivals is an essential book for anyone interested in the intellectual, social, and cultural history of modern empire. * J.P. Daughton, Stanford University *
Sacred Rivals renews our understanding of the Catholic-Muslim encounters during the colonization of Algeria by France in the nineteenth century. Drawing from Catholic discourses on Islam and missionary practices on the ground, Joseph W. Peterson analyzes brilliantly the shift from the admiration, by conservative Catholics, for the devout piety of Algerian Muslims to a condemnation of Islam as fanatical and inconvertible by liberal Catholics. These new exclusionary discourses and practices fed religious orientalism, the formation of modern stereotypes of Muslims as the enemies of civilization, and, above all, the racialization of Islam. This wonderful book provides us with an important genealogy of modern Islamophobia while suggesting that Catholicism had also produced earlier resources for the toleration of Islam. * Emmanuelle Saada, Columbia University *
This deeply researched and carefully argued book offers new insight into how a specifically 'Catholic Orientalism,' alongside and in tension with a secular state 'civilizing mission,' shaped the ideology and practice of colonial government in nineteenth-century French Algeria. Peterson reveals the surprising ways in which internal contests between conservative and liberal Catholics shaped attitudes towards missionary work, shifting over the course of the nineteenth century from an ambivalent philo-Islamism to an increasingly hostile, racialized view of Muslim fanaticism and the perceived menace of 'pan-Islamism.' It will be of great interest to scholars of religion, race, and colonialism in the French Empire and beyond it. * Judith Surkis, Rutgers University *
Weaving its argument seamlessly from the stories of colonizers and colonized in Algeria, Sacred Rivals shows how religion served to articulate and extend French imperial domination, and how colonial occupation offered resurgent Catholicism a field of action it had lost in France. Peterson argues convincingly that conservative Catholics viewed Islam more 'positively' as a model of unified religiosity France had lost; yet failing to find more than a handful of converts, they rationalized their disappointment with increasingly bitter racial and cultural generalizations about Arabs and Muslims. This is a 'social history of ideas' that will be read eagerly by scholars of French empire and the church, and more broadly by readers interested in the roots of French Islamophobia. * Ian Coller, University of California, Irvine *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1: Sincerely Religious: Louis Veuillot and Catholic Representations of Islam and Empire Chapter 2: God and Caesar: Missionaries and Militaires in Colonial Algeria Chapter 3: White unto Harvest: Religion, Race, and the Jesuit Mission Arabe at Constantine Chapter 4: Crusade of Charity: Liberal Catholic Roots of the Civilizing Mission Chapter 5: Conspiracy to Massacre: Liberal Catholics and the Invention of Pan-Islam Chapter 6: Worthy of his Hire: Charles Lavigerie, Algerian Muslims, and Missionary Fundraising Chapter 7: Compel Them to Come: Algerian Students and Colonial Racism between France and Algeria Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
