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- [00:01]
William Dalrymple
If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat, community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:20]
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- [00:51]
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- [01:57]
Anita Anand
Hello and welcome to Empire with me
- [02:00]
William Dalrymple
Anita Arnand and me William Durimpl. This is the most fascinating series and I have to say I knew very little about it until three weeks ago when I got a huge pile of Algerian books and I'd be sitting in my garden reading through them. There are so many different amazing stories contained in this series. The story of the Barbary Corsairs, all these white Europeans who make up a third of the population of Algiers as slaves. The French conquest, the settling of 1 million French people in Algeria is one of the most sort of extraordinary stories of colonization, then an equally extraordinary story of resistance. Many of you sure will have seen the Battle of Algiers, the great movie that won the golden lion at the Venice Film Festival. You then get this extraordinary period when Algiers becomes the sort of chic capital of all the revolutionaries of the 1960s, the Black Panthers turn up. Tim Leary, who's escaped from jail in California, having developed lsd, turns up. Nina Simone turns up. And then, and really important for today, there's the whole story of how the Pied Noires resettled in France, form their own party under one of the torturers who was involved in the vicious anti resistance French activities, extrajudicial activities. And that man is Jeanne Marie Le Pen, whose daughter Marine may well seize power in France by the end of this year.
- [03:25]
Anita Anand
Well, let me tell you what we're doing in today's episode. Cause we're going to look at how France colonized Algeria to begin with and also even before that, what Algeria was like before the French arrived.
- [03:35]
William Dalrymple
In the 1500s and 1600s, Algiers flourished as a virtually independent pirate republic within the Ottoman Empire.
- [03:43]
Anita Anand
Now, we've covered this on Empire before, so if you'd like to hear it, just head to episode 53 and we take you on a deep dive of the Barbary Corsairs. But just to remind you, in brief, the coast of North Africa was known as the Barbary Coast. And Corsairs, that's the French word given to pirates who stormed the seas of the Mediterranean and beyond and captured and ransomed over a million Europeans. So it was this industry of slavery and privateering that Algiers was built upon.
- [04:18]
William Dalrymple
When you go to Algiers today, it's very, very interesting because there are these incredibly beautiful courtyard houses. Absolutely sort of dreamy interior with arcades and fountains. But you know that they were built in a world where a third of the population was enslaved. Many of them, you know, villagers from Iceland or Cornwall or Cork, captured and, and enslaved in often very brutal circumstances.
- [04:50]
Anita Anand
In Algiers, they weren't all put into servitude. Sometimes corsairs would take people, they would then write to their families and say, you want them back, you pay up. So it is. It is a miserable trade, but it is also great wealth. Generator. What you get at this time, Willie, is a massive slave infrastructure. You know, you've got markets, you've got pens in the city not containing livestock, but humans. This foundation of slavery and oppression. We've talked about this before and I know that you, me and Barnaby Rogerson disagree horribly about this. I just think it's bad. But some people who are taken as slaves are, if they convert to Islam, as we discussed in the Ottoman series, you know, if they do convert, they can rise and, you know, a fair few do they rise to powerful naval and political positions.
- [05:39]
William Dalrymple
Yeah, I mean, the Ottoman system is not one we would choose to live in. But it's important to remember that the elite of the Ottoman Empire are all former slaves. The entire civil service, the entire upper military. And it's not the same as Caribbean plantation slavery. This is a slave elite run the state under the Ottoman emperor. The entire military and civil bureaucracy are people who had been enslaved, and therefore it's a place where Europeans go and there are these extraordinary encounters. I've just been reading Nandini Das's extraordinary new book, this Little World, and she talks about this guy from Great Yarmouth who became the DEI of Algiers. So you've got these sort of random guys who get picked up in boats in the Mediterranean who end up rising to the top of this. And many of them are English or indeed Irish. And so it's a weird pirate haven, full of barbarous cruelty, but also, you know, some people who make incredible advances in society and end up running this place.
- [06:51]
Anita Anand
Let's address a question. What brings the Corsair Republic down in Algeria and why is it that the French turn up?
- [06:59]
William Dalrymple
So you've got the Ottoman Empire fracturing in the 16th, 17th century. You get more and more of the extremities, like the Balkans and North Africa declaring independence, and you get the rise of Europe. This is the period of the beginning of European colonialism. The European economy is surging forwards. The British are making advances in India, and the French see their moment in the early 19th century. The French have bought vast quantities of grain for their army from the Algerians, then they don't want to repay the debt. And there's this extraordinary moment when Hussein dei, the last ruler of independent Algiers, gets into a furious argument with the French consul, who's a guy called Pierre de Val, over this unpaid French debt, and he swats the French consul with a fly whisk, which is actually, you know, from India, a chowery. It's not a sort of thing you swat flies with?
- [07:58]
Anita Anand
No, you still see it in the Gurdwara. It's like a. It's a. It's a whisk that is. Is waved over the. You know, the Holy book. Yeah, but in this case, you know, it is. It is something that sounds so trivial and frivolous, but, you know, it's just a rage leading to a swat with a fly swatter that then leads to something really very dangerous because it becomes the causa spelli, doesn't it? I mean, you know, and one, I sort of feel like France is just sort of itching for any excuse, so. So, you know, just. Just a Little bit of context. France is ruled by King Charles X. He is facing growing opposition at home. You know, he needs a win, he needs a war. I mean, we've heard this before, haven't we? Unpopular governments starting a war that they want to win. You know, this is a dyed in the wool technique at first. What France does in response to this fly swattage is they try a naval blockade, but the blockade doesn't work. And then you've got this escalation, really pretty fast of military movement. So in June 1830, a French expeditionary force of, wait for it, 37,000 Frenchmen land west of Algiers at a place called Sidi Farouch. Now, initially, you know, you come with that much shock and awe. There's only sort of limited opposition, and, you know, you've got a few scattered musketmen hidden in bushes taking shots. But the city of Algiers, just because of the sheer force of numbers, falls in three weeks. So simultaneously back in France, you've got, though, King Charles X, who should be basking in his gotcha moment being overthrown. So, I mean, little good does it do him in the July Revolution, and he gets replaced by his cousin Louis Philippe. You may have a change of a regime change, if you like, in France, you know, a new man at the top, but the French army stays in Algeria.
- [09:54]
William Dalrymple
And this attempt to gain popularity for Charles the 10th, which obviously failed because he gets removed almost the moment that the army arrives, leaves France with this conquest on the coast. Algiers is a prosperous city. It's a major acquisition, and the French obviously don't want to give it back. But on the other hand, they don't know quite what to do with it. And no one has really sort of planned for what happens once they've actually captured it. And there's no, you know, there's no master plan for a new colony or 300 years of French history being altered at this point. They have no idea what they've done, in a sense. Then the resistance begins and it's led by an extraordinary man called Abd El Kadir.
- [10:38]
Anita Anand
You know what, I often think about this as sort of the accidental colony that, you know, we've got it, we might as well keep it. But look, there are Algerians who have something to say about this. You know, it may be accidental to you, France, and you may want to keep it, but, you know, there were people here before. And Abdel Kadir, who is born in 1808 near a place called Mascara in
- [10:58]
William Dalrymple
western Algeria, he's also one of your handsome chaps. I think you.
- [11:04]
Anita Anand
I get the blame for this. You're always preemptive on the handsome. I mean, you know, he's fine. I am nowhere near others description of him. And let me read some of them to you. Their words, not mine. But look, he is striking, I'll give you that. The French romantic painter Horace Vernet, who is, you know, the official artist of conquest, because you didn't have photographers then, you had artists of conquest. He paints Adelcadier repeatedly. And in the picture, you know, you see somebody who is almost scholarly looking. He's got that sort of, you know, aquiline kind of nose and a very sort of distinguished bearing. Victor Hugo really had a crush. He eulogized him in verses. He called him le beau soldat, le beau praitre, the handsome soldier, the handsome priest. And he's got this intensity. And the intensity, as you say, you know, he doesn't just look like a scholar. He is a scholar because he memorizes the Quran as a child, very religious. He makes the pilgrimage to Mecca at the age of 18. He visits Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, along the way, soaking up everything he can from the scholars that he meets. And you know, when he comes home, it's said that his ancestor, a man called Sidi Abdel Elkada, himself a great Sufi master from Baghdad, who he's actually named after, appears in a dream to his father and says, you know what? Your son, my relative, is the chosen one. So you've got all of this sort of mythology and actual knowledge behind this man Abdelkader. And, you know, the followers just lap it up. You know, they. They believe in him entirely, that he is the chosen one, as said in a dream. And, you know, given what he does go on to do, it's not hard to understand why this has a snowball effect. You have a few followers and then as you know, his story unfolds, it turns into a movement. I mentioned the father with the dream. I should say who he is. He's the head of the Algerian branch of the Caldera. It's one of the great Sufi brotherhoods. So. So not, you know, not tribal chieftain, not military commander. This is a religious leader, his father, who. Who sees resistance to France as a religious battle, you know, at jihad, a holy war, if you like. But let you know, that word Sufi, let's think about that because, you know, we use it actually. I worry sometimes that we throw away these terms and we don't explain them, you know, being a part of the Sufi brotherhood. Willi, what does it actually mean?
- [13:38]
William Dalrymple
So this is hugely important. And in the 18th, 19th century is really the heart of Islamic life in many parts of the Islamic world, and this is particularly so in North Africa. So being the head of a Sufi order in North Africa is a big deal. After the people sent in by Constantinople to rule you, these are the next most important people on this coastline. Now, Sufi Islam, for those that don't know about it, is something which we, I think we should do a series on at some point as well. It's a really fascinating world. It's the world of Rumi in 13th century Persia, of Ibn Arabi in Andalusia, whirling dervishes, all that stuff. And it's, it's central to Islamic life. It's mystical Islam. It's about the heart rather than about the rules of the Quran. And these brotherhoods are incredibly important culturally, but they're also very important politically in North Africa. The Qadariya, Abdelkader's order is the kind of principle, what the equivalent in the Christian world is. I suppose it's sort of the monastic movement combined with a bit of sort of Shakespearean poetry.
- [14:54]
Anita Anand
But isn't it sort of, you know, sort of, you know, sonnet quoting Knights Templar is kind of what it feels like to me.
- [15:00]
William Dalrymple
Yes, that's, that's not a bad. I mean, yes, and it can be. And though, you know, there are often tendencies to, for very good reasons, to romanticize Sufism because it comes out with all this gorgeous poetry, it does have a Knights Templar sort of religious side to it. And there are great Sufi warrior brotherhoods who wage war as well as praying. And these two things are important to have side by side. Anyway, this means that our guy Abdelkader is well placed to lead the resistance. He's not just a handsome young man, well educated and patriotic. He is, because of his religious training, because of his memorization of the Quran, because of his family status as head of this brotherhood. He's the natural leader after the day has gone, after the Turks have been packed off. And there's this wonderful scene, incidentally, when we have these wonderful descriptions by the French of the day of Algiers leaving in this sort of wonderful succession of galleys from Algiers. And, and these are the, are the senior local people left to fight the French after the Turks have gone.
- [16:07]
Anita Anand
Right.
- [16:07]
William Dalrymple
They are very much sons of the soil. And they're not, and they're not happy, obviously, at the French, these infidels moving in.
- [16:14]
Anita Anand
Yeah. Rocking up and taking over also, you know, because of this, the, the way in which it's structured these different brotherhoods, you know, who are the. The mystical fighters. You know, they. They are militaristic and they're mystical, right? But what you actually, in effect have, if you were plotting this on, you have a really very powerful resistance network, you know, with different cells, if you like, already built different cells, you know, always sort of moving. You take one out, the others can act because there's not a central, if you like, brain that's telling them what to do. They know what the mission is and they do it. And these lodges, you know, they are just not just places of congregation where people complain and plot how to overthrow the French. They're quite sophisticated. They have schools, hospitals, granaries, justice, you know, little courts of arbitration. So, you know, it is the whole fabric, if you like, of North African, Muslim life. So, you know, when you've got Abdelkader, who rides into this. This region as the head, he just has to walk in and there is a network already around him, you know, and if they trust him, as the brotherhood do trust him, well, then you've got an army is what you've got. And so in 1832, at the age of 24, you have Abdelkader becoming the chosen one, the man at the middle of all of these brotherhoods who will lead the resistance. And in just three years, it's a combination of military skill, the fact he has such religious authority, people don't question him. He's also smart. You know, he's a good diplomat, and he is a good organizer. You know, he understands this network like an outsider could never understand. He starts and manages in just three years to build a parallel, if you like, and functioning Algerian state. Right. So there's nothing to do with the French. Has. Has no respect for the French. They have no say in what happens. He's running it. And, and as. And what he does, which is really brilliant technically, you know, it is brilliant. He says the capital, Zmala, is not going to be fixed in one place. So I'm not picking a city. I'm not picking any one of these towns. I'm not picking the place where I lived. It's going to be on, you know, pretty much not on wheels, but it's going to move. Okay, so it's a vast traveling city. Zamala, tents, workshops, smithies, armorers, you know, treasury hospital, like the schools. All of this loaded onto horseback, loaded onto camel. And whenever you feel you need to, you load up and you move out. And so they are always one step ahead of the French. Abdelkader has a mobile city, and just to give you a sense of the size of it, no fewer than 60,000 people. And whenever he wants, at a moment's notice, he can move fast and he can move it out. So what are the French going to do? They're like, what the hell? They've never seen anything like this, Willy. And they, you know, they've got an accidental colony. Now they have a completely implausible enemy as well. So it's a tricky situation for them.
- [19:26]
William Dalrymple
He's an extraordinary man, Abdelkada. He learns French and he starts reading French newspapers and diplomatic reports in order to master the French on their own grounds. And he understands instinctively, you know, not to fight the French in open battle in a set piece. It's guerrilla warfare. Hence the mobile capital and hence these raids, as the French begin to decide that they want to not only seize Algiers, but to take the rich countryside around it. And I think what perhaps people don't necessarily understand when they think of Algeria if they haven't been there, is that this is remarkably like a northern Mediterranean country. You've got a coastal plain which is very nice for grain. You then have this lovely hilly region which is perfectly suited for vines. And the French eye, all this. The first, a hundred miles from the coast, is some of the richest countryside in the Mediterranean, perfect for French farmers. And the French begin to encourage people to come here. And very quickly, large numbers of Frenchmen and a few Italians and a few Spanish rock up and begin to take over the land. And Abdelkader steps up his resistance and begins attacking these people. A few years into his resistance, he's got 8,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, 240 artillerymen with 20 cannons. It's a proper army. It's not, you know, Beau Geste with a bunch of sort of guys in turbans riding in on camels as a sort of tribal rabble. Although it is a guerrilla army, it's a properly trained one with modern weaponry. He understands how he can win this war. He says it directly to a French prisoner at one of his fortress towns. You will die of disease in our mountains. And those whom sickness shall not carry off my horsemen will send to death with their bullets. And he's right. He twice forces the French generals to negotiating tables on his terms. The Tafna Treaty in 1837 grants him sovereignty of two thirds of Algeria and for a period of. And it's a big surprise, really, France recognizes Abdelkader as the ruler of most of the country. He claims to have conquered. And as I say, what makes him formidable is his intelligence. He captures French papers, he reads them, and at one point the French discover that he's been reading verbatim accounts of the debates in the French Chamber of Deputies, following every argument about the, you know, the war in Paris. He knows how popular it is, he knows how much it's costing the French his resistance. And he's monitoring the pressure on the government to cut its losses, negotiate. And he's bringing this up in negotiations himself.
- [22:09]
Anita Anand
And negotiations are important because just to underline what's going on in France, the French are saying, we are knackered and tired and poor and we got rid of that Charles the 10th. Why are we having to put up with his old policy and pay for it? And so there's a great deal of discomfort. Abdelkader reading all of these dispatches and sort of becoming quite confident in the fact that if he can just sort of prick the, you know, the Big Bear, he might be able to get somewhere. He starts negotiating and he signs a treaty with the French who, you know, are at this point not consolidating what they want and how they're going to get what they want, even if they decide what they want. So this treaty, the Treaty of Demichel in February 1834, and actually, you know, the treaty grants him quite a lot. We're going to take a break now. Join us after the break where we tell you what he gets for his negotiating. And just a little something to maybe leave you with thinking about before the break. The French who come in at this time, they start becoming known as the Pied Noir, the Blackfeet. That is going to be really important because it's going to be a real important term in the 1850s, but we're talking about the 1830s and that's the first sort of reported use of it because these soldiers who came in from France wore black boots.
- [23:29]
William Dalrymple
I didn't know that.
- [23:30]
Anita Anand
And the local population wore sandals. There is another theory that actually, you know, those slaves who were brought over the Europeans, the white skinned slaves, were many of them forced to work in the vineyards to tread the grapes. And treading the grapes makes your feet change color. And so they were the Pied Noire for that. But I sort of, because of the way it will be used in 20 years from now, I sort of favour this idea of the black boots are coming, the Pied Noir are coming. Anyway, join us after the break.
- [24:06]
William Dalrymple
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- [26:34]
Anita Anand
So welcome back. Just before the break Willy we were talking about, you know he gets the French to sign this treaty. What does he get. I said, quite a lot, actually. Yes, he does, because the French are forced to recognize Abdelkader's authority over roughly two thirds of Algeria.
- [26:49]
William Dalrymple
It's a big country, too, Algeria.
- [26:51]
Anita Anand
But it doesn't, you know, not. Not just in a titular role. It gives him the right to import arms, basically. You know what? We acknowledge you as the sovereign of the Algerian interior, and we are going to let you do whatever you do. It's going to be a big mistake to think that in a minute, but, you know, that's what they do. And, you know, he uses the piece to consolidate his state. So he starts building fortifications and he starts training his army, and he starts extending the reach of this caldera network, you know, the Brotherhood network, if you like. So right under the noses of the French, he's building armed resistance, in a way.
- [27:29]
William Dalrymple
And his letters survive to Louis Philippe, which are extraordinary. He's writing in French to Louis Philippe, and he is. They're incredibly civilized and wonderful letters. And he writes one leader to another as equals, asking Louis Philippe to be a gentleman and honor the treaties that he's made. But it is France that violates the treaty.
- [27:58]
Anita Anand
You can write as many lovely letters as you like. Thanks for the treaty. Within a year, Willi, France violates the treaty. So, you know, after two years of fighting, there's a new treaty now, the Treaty of Taft in 1837 is even more favorable to Abdelkader. But you know, what happens to treaties? France violates it again. I mean, you know, pretty soon after, you know, two years in October 1839, and starts advancing into territory that it had said it was going to leave to Abdelkader and his followers. And, you know, I think by this second treaty violation, the Algerians knew that treaties aren't going to be honored and a war is coming. So when France violates the Tafna treaty and pushes into the territory that it had agreed to leave to Abdel Al Qadir, it doesn't just resume fighting. You know, he doesn't just resume fighting. He writes to the French governor general. First of all, you know, as a civilized man, it is a great document. November 1839. And he tells the Algerian story. Willy, do you want to read it? Have you got it to hand? Because it's a great piece, powerful piece of writing. Go for it.
- [29:09]
William Dalrymple
We were at peace. And the limits between your country and ours were clearly determined. You have published the claim that all the lands between Algiers and Constantine should no longer receive orders from me. This rupture comes from you, however, so that you do not accuse me of betrayal, I warn you that I will resume the war. Prepare yourselves. Warn your travelers all who live in isolated places. Take every precaution you see fit. I mean, that's chivalrous stuff, isn't it?
- [29:36]
Anita Anand
I'm going to hurt you, but let me give you notice. But it's got that sort of gentility about it. Yeah, that would have appealed to the French people.
- [29:44]
William Dalrymple
And dignity.
- [29:45]
Anita Anand
Yeah, but I mean, you know what it is? I mean, it is still a warning. I'm going to kill you all. But it is sort of done with this argument, you know, that would appeal to French sensibility that it is not I that has decided to do this. I didn't start this, but I'm gonna finish it. To use the Friday night nomenclature of a pub lock in.
- [30:05]
William Dalrymple
So, Anita, tell us about General Thomas Robert Bugeau.
- [30:09]
Anita Anand
Well, you know, ironically, and I don't even know if you know this, he is the same General Thomas Robert Bugeau who signs the Treaty of Tafna that then gets broken up. Yeah, his ink is on that page. So let me tell you about him. Okay. He served in the Napoleonic Wars. A very good tactician. He's appointed Governor General of Algeria in 1840. And he immediately sees what has been going wrong with the French campaigns that, you know, the French have been thinking with the mentality of a conventional European army that is at war with another European, an army in terrain that they know. None of that is true. None of that is true here. So what he decides is that he is going to use another strategy, and it's called Razio, the scorched earth policy. You know, something that we normally associate with Kitchener and the Boer War, but scorched earth is exactly what it says on the tin.
- [31:07]
William Dalrymple
He was Napoleonic general and he'd been on the Russian campaign. And of course, what happens with the Napoleonic invasion of Russia is that the Russians burn everything around the French. He then begins to just burn out the countryside of Abdelkadir's supporters. Fast moving troops traveling like, strike deep into Abd El Qidir's territory and mercilessly burn crops, destroy granaries, slaughter all the livestock, destroy the olive groves, demolish wells, and he reduces a significant part of this incredibly beautiful countryside to a wasteland. It is, you know, more or less what the Israelis are doing in southern Lebanon at the moment. It's that thing, we're just destroying towns, destroying farmland, making the land uninhabitable. And this is accompanied by a whole pattern of atrocities. Tell us what Happens in the caves, Anita.
- [32:04]
Anita Anand
So this is really deeply distressing and, you know, just a warning because it's awful. So in June 1845, French soldiers chase around a thousand people to some caves, a cave system in the Dara Mountains. And, you know, these people seek refuge. And when I say people, I'm not just talking about soldiers. I'm talking about women, children, their pets, their livestock, all on the run. And what happens is the French colonel, instead of just laying siege and trying to starve them out, he sends a message. He says, I want you to surrender. They don't. So he orders his men to light fires at the mouths of the caves and to keep them burning. Now, what that does is if you have an enclosed system with limited oxygen and you're lighting fires, they choke people out near the fires with smoke. They also burn up the oxygen inside. And for 24 hours, he knows what he's doing. For 24 hours, he keeps the fires burning. And when finally those last embers go out, the French go into the caves and they find the bodies of somewhere between 500 and 1500 people. So again, that's men, women, children, animals, all asphyxiated or burned to death if they happen to be near those fires that were set alight. When the news gets out, France is outraged. So you've got deputies condemning it in the assembly, you've got newspapers denouncing this
- [33:40]
William Dalrymple
as barbarism, but they're not that outraged in that they promote the guy who does it, don't they?
- [33:45]
Anita Anand
True. I mean, they do. You know, you have a massacre like that, as we've seen in India with, you know, Jallianwala Bagh, it becomes a lightning rod of resistance as well. And what you have as a result of the news of what happens. And by the way, this is not an isolated case. There are other French outrages, two very notable ones I can think of, that target men, women and children in such a way. Abdelkader is even more of a magnet for those who want to throw the French out. If the French can do this, just like we saw in Cenni Walterbarg, if the British can do this, we get to get them out under any circumstances. Circumstances. So he goes on for two more years. You know this despite the fact that you've got a man now opposing him who understands the terrain and knows how to fight dirty. Two more years, he fights on, but then eventually he gets cornered, he gets
- [34:31]
William Dalrymple
outgunned, and he gets betrayed.
- [34:33]
Anita Anand
Betrayed? Yeah, betrayed. I mean, without the betrayal, maybe he would not have lost. I mean, pick up the story, because this all happens in the mobile capital, Right?
- [34:42]
William Dalrymple
Exactly. The mobile capital. The Zmallah is the key to his success because it's not stationary. It's not somewhere that the French can go and attack and, and surround with, with cannon and blow up. It's always on the move and it's always ahead of them and they don't know where it is. But in May 1843, he is betrayed by, I think, his own people. Some of his own people are so exhausted at the. At this warfare, they think that if they betray him that it will end and there'll be peace. What happens instead? And Abdelkader is not with the Zamallah when it happens. He's gone out on a raid. And three days afterwards, he discovers, when it's too late to do anything except absorb the news, that the French have attacked all the women and children who've been left behind. They've killed at least a tenth of everyone inside the Zamala, mainly women and children and the elderly. The treasury is lost, the workshop is destroyed. His armories are gone. It was, as Abdelkader later tells his French captors, the beginning of the end. The tribes that are sheltered under his protection now begin to turn away. They think of him as a loser. They've lost faith in him, and they simply feel they can't afford to share his fate.
- [36:04]
Anita Anand
So, you know, you've got biographers of Abdelkader who pore over, you know, what happened here. One of them, the way he puts it, is interesting. The mind boggles when we think that it took seven years of combat and 100,000 men of the greatest army in the world to destroy what the Emir built in two years and five months. So even though they may have disapproved of things like caves, France does celebrate his surrender as a triumph.
- [36:31]
William Dalrymple
And they also recognize him. And this is the beginning of this sort of period of Orientalism, when the French and other Europeans are sort of beginning to romanticize the romantic Arab. Although Abdelkader, after his surrender, arrives in Toulon in chains, they actually put him in Mary Queen of Scots old chateau in Amboise. It's the most beautiful town. It's one of the most gorgeous towns in the Loire Valley. Linard d' Vintage lynch, he's buried there and he has a household of 80 people he's allowed to bring with him. But the French climate does for them, and one by one they begin to die. And he's corresponding with Napoleon iii. And Napoleon III is listens to this piteous tale of. Of the. These Algerians who can't cope in the damp French climate. And so he is allowed to retire to Damascus to spend the rest of his life as a private citizen, but one of the most admired figures in the Islamic world. And he becomes a great friend of Sir Richard Burton, the explorer, and his wife Isabel, who are the consul in Damascus at this period. And the life that he builds in Damascus is extraordinary. He moves into this beautiful courtyard house. You know, I like a good courtyard house. By the time he's been there a few years, and he's such a hero. He has 1200 armed Algerians on his payroll in Damascus, and he's sort of leading the life that he never quite managed because of warfare. He's preaching in the Umayyad mosque and this sort of thing. So something I'd love to mention at this point is what happens in Damascus in 1860, and Abdelkader is the great hero. Eugene Rogan's actually written her book on Damascus, 1860, which I strongly recommend. But what happens is sectarian violence breaks out in Damascus between the Druze community and the Christians, and several thousand Christians are killed, and Abdelkader takes them in and shelters them. The French, who are the people that have destroyed his life, have killed his people, but have allowed him to retire to Damascus, have many missionaries inside Damascus. And he opens his house to them and he personally shelters them, leads armed escorts to bring the Christians to safety, and he ends up saving the lives and sheltering 12,000 people. And when Ottoman forces restore order, the European governments honor him. Napoleon III sends him the Grand Cross of the legend. D' IND Lincoln from America sends him a pair of pistols. And the former prisoner of French Algeria ends up becoming the protector of the French in Damascus. So he's a very sort of honorable figure. He's remembered in the Arab world, particularly in Algeria, as a sort of Saladin figure, this hero of resistance who was also enormously chivalrous and guarded his enemies.
- [39:24]
Anita Anand
Right. So, I mean, you know, it's sort of almost a happily ever after for Abdelkader in, you know, the hero in Damascus. But what about Algeria? What about, you know, the French? What about what he's left behind? So, look, that's what we're going to concentrate on. Suffice to say that after this surrender and now France has really properly got a colony and crushed resistance in North Africa, you will see the arrival of a million European settlers, the Blackfeet, the Pied Noire. And what you will see very quickly is this stratification of Algerian society, it's going to leave Algerian Muslims as second class citizens. You're going to have two wars that will will make this majority. See actually the French aren't unbeatable and I'm talking about World War II and I'm talking about the Vietnamese uprising that takes place that shows them actually you know what, the Pied Noir can walk out the door. Anyway, you'll have to wait and see. But this is going to be a corking series until the next time we meet is Goodbye from me, Anita Anand.
- [40:29]
William Dalrymple
Goodbye from me William to Rimple. A quick word for our Empire listeners. For a limited time only, we are running a discount on the Empire Club.
- [40:45]
Anita Anand
We totally are. It's our summer sale. It's live now and from now until the end of August all you need to do is head to empirepod uk.com empirepod uk.com use the code summer26 summer26. You get an extra 20% off annual
- [41:02]
William Dalrymple
membership this sizzling summer. We would love you to join our Empire Club and we know you will love being a member of our community. You'll get bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series and much more.
- [41:14]
Anita Anand
And your summer trips provide you that perfect opportunity to dive into our archives and catch up on all the exclusive content you might have missed before joining. So you can listen to our interview with Jung Chang, our Willy's fabulous bonus on Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring and our exclusive four part member series covering the scandal that shaped partition.
- [41:37]
William Dalrymple
So make the most of the deal before it ends at the end of August 2026. The code is Summer26 to be used on our annual membership@empirepoduk.com we'd love you to become a member of our club and it's brilliant even if we say so ourselves.
- [41:56]
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William Dalrymple
Cool.
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