On May 8, 1945, a demonstration of Algerians sparked an outburst of violence in Guelma. The massacre, perpetrated by French people in Algeria organized in militias, provokes the death of several hundred Algerians. In a book that renews the writing of the history of colonial Algeria, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou dissects the logics of this event hidden by the reason of state.
The history of the events of the North-Constantinois at the end of the Second World War will no longer be written as she was so far: in Guelma, demonstrates Jean-Pierre Peyroulou in this book from his thesis, it is not, as in Sétif, a demonstration turning to the riot and aroused in return a disproportionate repression. The events of Guelma, in the spring of 1945, were, according to him, of a “ French subversion in colonial Algeria », To use the subtitle of the work. Hundreds of Algerians, at least, were killed by French people in Algeria organized in militia. The latter chose, arrested and executed men – and to a lesser extent of women – engaged in the nationalist fight, after having translated them before a summary court, without legal value. They camouflaged or then destroyed the bodies.
From the demonstration to the massacre
It is to a real investigation that Jean-Pierre Peyroulou has engaged, like rapporteurs of human rights protection missions working today, hot, on the theater of contemporary conflicts-and he does not hide that he was inspired. Jean-Pierre Peyroulou spotted the premises, identified the actors, retraced their actions. The result is impressive of meticulousness and precision, beyond the day of May 8: it is all spring 1945 in Algeria that must be considered. In Guelma itself, history begins on April 14, when Achiary, sub-prefect, decided to form a militia to ensure the maintenance of order in his constituency, unloading the army from this mission ; And it continues until the end of June, when the killings ended with the journey of the Minister of the Interior, Adrien Tixier.
This reinterpretation of events is at the heart of the book, the first of which is to inscribe them in a story that is not limited to that of Algeria. That would have given the confinement of analysis in problems specific to the history of this country in its colonial period ? An interpretation of those already in circulation among specialists, to decide between them, namely: these events result from a conspiracy fomented in high places, to the general government, or a nationalist insurrection according to a watchword launched by the Algerian People’s Party (PPA)) ? However, if Jean-Pierre Peyroulou examines and refutes these explanations, he does not stick to it. It uses the tools of the general history of violence, in particular the work of Jacques Sémelin. He thus tries to qualify the nature of the Guelma massacre and chooses to classify it in the category of “ politicide »(P. 226), while noting that the typology of massacres remains porous and questionable.
This opening up of the history of Algeria also gives rise to a history of demonstrating practice among colonized Algerians, completely new and essential to understand what happened. Admittedly, the demonstrations that take place throughout the country the 1er And May 8, 1945 were not the first: since the late 1930s, Algerians have paraded in a procession separated from French organizations. But the culture of the demonstration and its codes was still fragile. It was ignored, even, rural people and young people who made up the procession in Guelma on May 8. This would be one of the causes of tilting in violence: it takes a order service, legitimate representatives, you have to know how to negotiate a journey, a dispersion with the authorities so that a demonstration can escape violence. The police themselves, moreover, did not exercise in colonial environment as in mainland France, if only because of the weakness of its workforce.
If violence began with the repression of the demonstration, however, the massacre that was going to last did not respond to an insurrection. The militia, gathered the day after the demonstration on May 9, was working on itself. The very causes of the massacre, therefore, are not to be sought in the event of the demonstration and its repression.
The weight of community antagonisms
Jean-Pierre Peyroulou seeks to explain the massacre by the relationships which had been established between the populations in Guelma. The conjuncture of the end of the Second World War in Algeria, the effects of which were felt locally, in Guelma as elsewhere, plays a big role here. The reforming policy of the French National Liberation Committee (Cfln), first, fueled the fears of the French of Algeria: faced with the extension of the political rights granted to the colonized Algerians, they feared losing the predominance they had acquired in the municipal councils of the communes where they represented only a demographic minority. The awakening of Algerian nationalism, for its part, resulted in the success of the Mouvement des Amis du Manifesto and freedom (AML) which brought together the supporters of Ferhat Abbas, the ulemas led by the Sheikh Brahimi and the Algerian People’s Party (PPA) Directed by Messali Hadj.
In an even longer time and zooming on Guelma, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou returns to the conquest, the arrival and installation of the colonists, the land dispossession of the Algerians, so as to expose the economic, social and psychological upheavals. By solid data and a local history led from 1837 to 1945, it illustrates what is usually called, in an abstract way, the “ ditch “Or the” fear “Between” communities ». Jean-Pierre Peyroulou thus brings two essential elements to understanding the events of spring 1945.
On the one hand, this very long -term local history demonstrates that community membership transcended all the others: being French was more important than being communist, socialist or unionist, trader, counterman, entrepreneur or landowner. Thus explains the political and social mix of the Guelm militia which counted managers of leftist organizations (SfioFight or CGT) and notables, state agents, bosses, their employees, etc. All militiamen, however, specifies Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, were not killers. The latter recruited themselves in a nucleus of a few dozen men whose names returned in surveys, complaints and testimonies. “” Eighty-nine civilians were involved in the death of 636 Algerians: eighty-three Europeans, including Jews, and six Algerians (P. 207).
On the other hand, this very long-term perspective highlights the fact that the time of conquest and dispossession is not, in reality, very far from 1945: the actors of this spring were only the grandsons or the great grandsons of the Algerians spoiled or the settlers who came to settle. The accumulation and transmission of violence, out of two or three generations, become very concrete here.
Reason of state and silence on a massacre
Beyond 1945, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou dissected the way in which the reason for state stifled the case. Concretely, this suffocation was born from an addition of denials and renunciations in which state agents, at all levels and in various functions, played a role: investigators that are not aware or prevented, magistrates more inclined to condemn than to instruct the complaints of Algerian families, general government, prefects and sub-prefects, members of the local administrative system, etc. Added to this, gradually, the amnesty of 1946, the repurchase of complaints by fraudulent paths, the regularization of the civil status of the disappeared. And if no dissonant voice has expressed itself, the development of this reason of state was not without causing a human drama: the suicide of one of the officials of the military court of Constantine. This court, in fact, which judged and condemned to death of the insurgents of May 1945, left without follow -up the complaints filed against “ killers From Guelma.
This book, finally, arouses extensions to note to emphasize the whole range. It first manifests an evolution in the writing of the history of Algeria by French researchers, insofar as it is partly based on archives consulted in Algeria. Jean-Pierre Peyroulou is thus the representative of a new generation of researchers who enrich the documentation consulted without difficulty in France, by going prospecting on the other side of the Mediterranean.
Jean-Pierre Peyroulou also addresses, in various passages, an essential question but which is still lacking in the understanding of the history of French Algeria: that of the political culture of the French in Algeria, their relationship to the metropolis, their relationship to the state. Guelma’s European subversion is emblematic of their distrust of French public authorities, which led them to legitimately feel in the right to replace the authorities in periods when they feel particularly threatened. From the very first hints of autonomism, from the beginning of the arrival of the colonists, to the Algerian demonstrations of the war of independence, there would be a story here to reconstruct and write in the long term.