On August 20, 1955, in a small village in North Constantine, dozens of Europeans were massacred. One of the consequences will be the extension of the state of emergency to the entire territory. ; but war propaganda, rumors and the lack of sources do not help to shed light on the event. A historian led the investigation.
What happened on August 20, 1955 in North Constantine ? What do we really know about this event that most summaries agree to define as a turning point in the war that French troops waged against Algerian nationalists? ? What’s behind the big dates and the like? turning points of the war » listed in the manuals ? On this anniversary of the deposition, in Morocco, of Sultan Ben Youssef two years earlier, an uprising of the FLN caused 123 victims (military and civilian), the majority “ European “, and triggered a bloody repression which fell on the Algerian civilian population for several weeks. We ultimately know very little about this event, which we know motivated the extension of the state of emergency to the entire territory. The author seeks here to rediscover the event, to restore it but also to place it in its colonial context, and engages in real work of archeology of a warlike moment.
The work of Claire Mauss-Copeaux, who links the event to the study of the colonial relationship which she describes as “ de facto apartheid, latent, shameful » (p. 24), can recall in this regard the recent opuses of Raphaëlle Branche and Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, who both go back in time to colonization to explain a violent event in the Algerian decolonization process. She thus endeavors to describe the gestures of daily colonial life: the slap, the familiarity, are all elements which fuel the humiliation of the colonized. In times of war, from 1955 onwards, extreme violence itself became “ banal » (p. 62): before August 20, 1955, which is often explained as leading to the radicalization of the confrontation, “ the French authorities (…) covered with a veneer of legality the hell they imposed on the Algerian population » (p. 69).
The problem that the author raises, when taking stock of this operation of the FLN and its repression, is that of the sources. On several occasions in the work, she mentions the “ memorial lobbies “, “ memoirists » and others « memory activists “, all this literature of “ blackfoot websites » which, most often, gives versions of August 20, 1955 that are at least biased. Recovering the event also means inventing new sources, in particular the testimony collected on site, in Algeria. It is this field investigation, and the interviews in particular that it enabled, which gives his work its novelty and its striking side.
Along the way, Claire Mauss-Copeaux sheds light on the various fictions that have circulated about the nationalist insurrection, reporting terrible tortures to which the nationalists allegedly subjected the populations. Beyond the qualifications and the words which were imposed – in the French army then in the media – to describe the event, in particular that of “ widespread massacre » perpetrated by the Algerians in the North Constantine region, the author reviews the event in detail. Going back through the archives, testimonies, civil status registers, she establishes a fundamental conclusion: the “ massacre » of North Constantine, a term whose formulation implies massiveness and savagery, did not take place.
Two villages did shelter murders of Europeans: El Alia and Aïn Abid, where 42 civilians “ European » are dead. It is in the precise study of the events as they took place in these two localities, from which a story of massacre was illegitimately extrapolated to the entire region, that the author provides essential developments, beyond the elements now known about the Algerian war. Returning to the conditions of testimony, she pinpoints one of the reasons for the dissemination of exaggerations and other abusive generalizations: the mixture, among those who told the story, between “ fantasies » (p. 129) and real memories. The testimonies mention in particular the emasculation of the victims and the “ stereotype of the disemboweled woman » (p. 130), while the author proves that such acts were not perpetrated. It would have been interesting to look further, moreover, at the deep reasons and the psychological sources of these “ fantasies » centered on the question of motherhood and virility.
The fact remains that in the village of El Alia, 34 civilian victims were shot dead, while 7 were killed on the same August 20, 1955 in Aïn Abid. To disentangle the true from the false, Claire Mauss-Copeaux undertook the “ trip to Algeria » (p. 134) and found traces of French and Algerian witnesses, civilians and combatants. The micro-historical approach specific to the pages that the author devotes to the two unique sites of the massacre provides the most interesting insights into the book. Along the way, she allowed the author to learn that part of the population of El Alia was originally from Sétif, a town they had to leave after the repression of May 1945, and that “ the fight was (had) been an opportunity to settle scores » for some of the residents. Old resentments forged by daily colonial life and its ordinary violence, by the memory of the repression of the 1945 insurrection, combine to try to provide an explanation for the massacre of French civilians that this village sheltered. The murder of one of the fighters by a resident “ European » seems to have triggered the riot: in search of him, men enter houses with makeshift weapons and firearms, and not finding him, kill women and children. “ Probably not scheduled » (p. 160) by the fighters of the FLNthe massacre was part of the overflow of uncontrolled violence, carried out by nationalist activists but also by simple villagers. As for Aïn Abid, where 7 civilians were killed, the assassination of an entire family seems to have been premeditated, and intended as revenge against the head of the latter who had, a few months earlier, denounced an Algerian nationalist.
“ Violent message that insurgents sent to the French authorities » (p. 170), these two massacres find elements of explanation in the colonial order as it had hitherto been imposed. From this tragic but ultimately contained event, the propaganda of the general government and rumors led to a widespread massacre throughout North Constantine. The author then returns to the reprisals, of which we know how disproportionate they were – around 7,500 civilian victims according to unofficial French assessments –, extended to the entire region, and that they marked a stage in the entry into the “ dirty war “. Europeans were legally able to arm themselves and formed, as in Guelma ten years earlier, militias which carried out real manhunts with impunity.
We must salute the work of Claire Mauss-Copeaux who reconstructed the event in detail, from decision-making to repression, confronted the testimonies, found the thread of plausibility under the persistent veil of rumors. His demonstration, although sometimes presented in an unclear manner, in chapters whose large number – around thirty – hinders the fluidity of the reading, is entirely convincing. The refutation of the qualifier “ massacre » to account for all the events that occurred on August 20, 1955, gives the nationalist insurrection its political and strategic dimension, also contained in armed violence. This is where the book finds its raison d’être and its originality, when other developments seem more conventional, even little justified – like these recurring diatribes against the “ Blackfoot lobbies » of which it is difficult to see what they bring.