Algeria in France: War and Defeat in Republican Culture The contention of this thesis is that the Algerian war of 1954-62 and Algeria's subsequent independence have had a significant and lasting impact on the nature of French republicanism, and to a much greater extent than the historiography currently recognises. The Algerian war essentially altered the notion of French citizenship in a way which undermined the republican ideals of universalism and assimilation. By reconsidering the war and its aftermath within the broad context of French history since 1789, I argue that the founding of the Fifth Republic was not simply the culmination of French political history; it did not mark the end of the Revolution. Instead, it was itself a revolution and presented a fundamental challenge to republicanism's original ideals of universalism and assimilation. This thesis is a cultural history in the sense that its source material is derived primarily from novels and films, but its conclusions are socio-political. I identify an idiom of republican culture and trace the trends of republican historic and artistic representations of war and defeat. The basis of this study is longitudinal in the sense that it considers themes that have been present through modern French history. The three grandest themes are covered by the three chapters: citizenship, republicanism and the guerre franco-française. By considering these themes in relation to republican cultural representations of the Algerian war, this thesis identifies how the revolution in republicanism has been concealed and the history of the Franco-Algerian relationship has been rejected. This rejection has subsequently allowed the extreme right to control the race and immigration agenda because to challenge it requires a recognition of the revolution which occurred between 1959-1962.

Cette thèse porte sur les pratiques de déplacement des populations rurales pendant la guerre d’indépendance algérienne. Au cours de ce conflit, la création de « zones interdites » par l’armée française se solde par le transfert de plus de deux millions d’Algériens vers ce que l’armée appelle alors des « centres de regroupement ». L’objectif de ce travail consiste à comprendre les dynamiques de diffusion de cette pratique et son intégration dans l’arsenal stratégique mobilisé par l’armée française dans la lutte contre le Front de Libération National. Il s’agit aussi de cerner la figure de l’une des institutions majeures de ce conflit, le camp de regroupement. Essentiellement créé à des fins de contrôle social, il génère dans la plupart des cas une crise économique pour les populations visées, déracinées et privées de l’accès à leurs terres, désormais dépendantes de l’État. Il s’agit enfin de comprendre comment l’État et l’armée réagissent à cette crise, en développant notamment une politique dite des « Mille villages » censée transformer les camps en autant de nouvelles entités semi-rurales – et les effets de cette politique. Dans cette perspective, ce travail vise à étudier la mise en œuvre de cette double politique sur le terrain militaire, politique et administratif, en analysant les relations entre les principaux acteurs de l’État dans la conduite de l’action publique. Il s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux activités sécuritaires, sociales et économiques des officiers des Sections Administratives Spécialisées (SAS), alors chargés de l’encadrement des populations déplacées. Elle cherche ainsi à contribuer à l’écriture d’une histoire de l’État colonial dans ce contexte où il connaît ses ultimes transformations. / This PhD concerns the displacement of rural population during the Algerian war for independence. During this conflict, the creation of “forbidden zones” by the French army ends in the transfer of nearly two million Algerians towards some camps that the militaries then called “regroupment centres”. The objective of this work consists to study the dynamics of this practice’s diffusion and its integration in the militaries strategy implemented against the National Liberation Front. Its aim is also to define the specificity of one of the major institution of this conflict: the “regroupment” camp. Essentially created for Social Control purposes, it generated in most of the cases an economic crisis for the rural population, uprooted and deprived of the access to its land, and most part of the time depending on State’s food distribution. This work try to understand how some actors, civilian or militaries, try to react to this crisis, by developing a particular policy: the “One thousand villages”, that was supposed to transform the camps into some “new villages”. This work aims to study the implementation of this double policy, on the local military, political and administrative ground, by analysing the relations between the main actors of the State. It is focused in particular on the security, social, economic activities of the officers of the Specialized Administrative Sections, which were in charge of the camp. In such a perspective, it tries to contribute to the writing of a history of Colonial State in its last algerian manifestation.