Incidental Archaeologists Incidental Archaeologists French Offi cers and the Rediscovery of Roman North Africa Bonnie Effros Cornell University Press Ithaca and London Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2018 by Cornell University The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. To use this book, or parts of this book, in any way not covered by the license, please contact Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu. First published 2018 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Effros, Bonnie, 1965– author. Title: Incidental archaeologists : French officers and the rediscovery of Roman North Africa / Bonnie Effros. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017048068 (print) | LCCN 2017051402 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501718533 (epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501718540 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501702105 | ISBN 9781501702105 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Archaeology—Political aspects—Algeria— History—19th century. | Archaeology—Political aspects— France—History—19th century. | Archaeology and state— France—History—19th century. | France—Armed Forces— Algeria—Operations other than war—History—19th century. | Algeria—Antiquities, Roman. | Algeria—History—1830–1962. Classification: LCC CC101.A4 (ebook) | LCC CC101.A4 E34 2018 (print) | DDC 965/.03—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017048068 http://cornellpress.cornell.edu https://lccn.loc.gov/2017048068 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To Max and Simon, in the fervent hope that you will know only peace in your lifetimes De patria meo uero, quod eam sitam Numidiae et Gaetuliae in ipso confi nio meis scriptis ostendistis, quibus memet professus sum, cum Lolliano Auito c. u. praesente publice dissererem, Seminumidam et Semigaetulum, non uideo quid mihi sit in ea re pudendum, haud minus quam Cyro maiori, quod genere mixto fuit Semimedus ac Semipersa. Non enim ubi prognatus, sed ut moratus quisque sit spectandum, nec qua regione, sed qua ratione uitam uiuere inierit, considerandum est. Apuleius, Apologia , ed. and trans. Paul Valette, 2nd ed. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002), 56–57 Car une ère nouvelle, une ère dévastrice va s’ouvrir pour cette contrée; peut- être serez-vous tenté de venir observer cette quatrième domination. N’en faites rien; épargnez-vous le déplaisir d’un cruel mécompte. Surtout si vous cherchez un aliment à l’admiration que vous professez pour la France, votre beau pays, restez, restez chez vous, et gardez-vous bien de la venir voir dans ses colonies. Ernest Carette, Précis historique et archéologique sur Hippone et ses environs (Paris: Imprimerie Lange Lévy et Compagnie, 1838), 16 Les Romains se sont perpétués en Afrique; la race créole française, née sur place et fi lle des premiers immigrants, commence elle-même à y faire souche. Gustave Boissière, Esquisse d’une histoire de la conquête et de l’administration romaines dans le nord de l’Afrique et particulièrement dans la province de Numidie (Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1878), 81 Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations and Note on Spellings xv Introduction: War and the Destruction of Antiquities in the Former Ottoman Empire 1 1. Knowing and Controlling: Early Archaeological Exploration in the Algerian Colony 34 2. Envisioning the Future: French Generals’ Use of Ancient Rome in the 1840s 78 3. The View from Ancient Lambaesis 125 4. Institutionalizing Algerian Archaeology 168 5. Cartography and Field Archaeology during the Second Empire 211 Epilogue: Classical Archaeology in Algeria after 1870 248 vii i Contents Notes 261 Bibliography 323 Index 355 Acknowledgments Thinking initially that I would explore the impact of French excavations in North Africa on the professionalization of archaeology in late nineteenth- century France, I launched this book project without fully anticipating the violence I would see recorded in the documents conserved in the French overseas and military archives. With the pioneering work of Nabila Oulebsir as a guide to where I should begin, I commenced my research at the same time I accepted a position as the Rothman Chair and director of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of Florida in August 2009. For his encouragement throughout this journey, I thank Peter Brown, who enthusiastically cheered along my initial and tentative exploration of the topic and provided helpful guidance as the research advanced. I am also grateful for the generosity of Éric Rebillard, who, even before I had actually begun this undertaking, gave enormously sound advice on how I might approach the topic of North African archaeology and where archival sources might be located. Nina Caputo’s razor-sharp input came at a crucial moment as I debated how to move forward x Acknowledgments with the evolving project and encouraged me to make the most of the disparities between French metropolitan and colonial archaeological practice. I owe to Suzanne Marchand, whose writing continues to serve as a model for the history of antiquarianism and archaeology, a great debt for her fi rm encouragement of this undertaking from its earliest stages. Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Michael Kulikowski were likewise stalwart backers of the project from its earliest phases, and Peter Potter, then at Cornell University Press, paved the way for its publication. This venture into a territory thoroughly unfamiliar to me before the start of my research would not have been possible had it not been for gen- erous funding from the Robert and Margaret Rothman Endowment at the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere at the University of Flor- ida, which I directed from 2009 to 2017. The Rothman Endowment made it possible for me to make repeated visits to archives and libraries in Paris and Aix-en-Provence between 2010 and 2016 and to acquire many of the photographs reproduced in this volume, and it provided a subvention that enabled me to illustrate the volume suffi ciently. In 2013, a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Stipend (FT-60454-13) allowed me to travel for two months to archives in Paris and the Getty Re- search Institute, where I gained access to relevant photographic evidence and rare nineteenth-century printed works. In 2013–2014, a George Ken- nan Membership at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, with additional funding provided by the Hetty Goldman Membership Fund, and support from the College of Lib- eral Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida, gave me eleven blissful months nearly free of teaching and administrative responsibilities. While there, I benefi ted from both the collections and the capable research staff of the History-Social Science Library and Princeton University’s Firestone and Marquand Libraries, as well as the famous Institute Woods, a peace- ful setting for mind and body. In this setting, I profi ted enormously from the expertise of Michael von Walt von Praag, Patrick Geary, and the mem- bers of their working groups on modern international relations and medi- eval history, respectively. In particular, I want to acknowledge the timely advice and assistance of Yüçel Yanikdağ, Hennig Trupper, and the late Patricia Crone, who came to the rescue when I had questions about modern armies, nineteenth-century antiquaries, and Arab historians, respectively. Acknowledgments xi At Princeton University, both Matthew McCarty and Brent Shaw offered friendly encouragement and advice on the project. In January 2015, a conference grant from the American Council of Learned Societies Comparative Perspectives on Chinese Culture and So- ciety Program, funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for Interna- tional Scholarly Exchange, gave my colleague Guolong Lai and me the unparalleled opportunity to invite thirteen international scholars to the University of Florida for a comparative workshop with their counterparts in Gainesville on colonial archaeology in a global context, an event that proved incredibly inspiring and instructive for my thoughts on how to shape this book. In 2015–2016, I spent a year of funded research leave from the University of Florida at the Centre d’études supérieures de civili- sation médiévale (CESCM) at the Université de Poitiers at the generous invitation of Cécile Treffort, then the director. My family and I were received with great warmth and hospitality by its new director, Martin Aurel, and members as I wrote the second half of this book in France. In addition, for the incredible impetus offered by their invitations to present or publish the ongoing work in progress, I am grateful to Leora Aus- lander and Tara Zahra (Chicago), Alexandra Chavarría (Padua), Michael Decker (Tampa), Margarita Díaz-Andreu (Barcelona), Sang-Hyun Kim (Seoul), the late Henrika Kucklick (Philadelphia), Richard McMahon (Portsmouth), Daniel Sherman (Chapel Hill), Alice Stephenson (London), Lillian Tseng (New York), and Philipp von Rummel (Berlin). As I have put the fi nishing touches on this volume, I want to express my great thanks to my new colleagues at the School of Histories, Languages, and Cultures at the University of Liverpool for the warm welcome they have given me and my family during our recent transatlantic move to the United Kingdom. My debts at this point are many, and I hope that I have not inadvertently omitted the name of anyone to whom thanks are due. I acknowledge with gratitude Sophia Acord and Sean Adams, who backed me by generously agreeing to take on the leadership of the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere during my two year-long absences from Gainesville, and Barbara Mennel for taking on this role as I departed. Tim Blanton and Al- lison Millett helped in myriad ways, most of all scanning articles, helping look after our boys when our hands were full, and tending to our home when we were overseas. Successive College of Arts and Sciences (CLAS) xii Acknowledgments deans at the University of Florida, Paul D’Anieri and David Richardson, supported me in my research endeavors at and away from the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere despite the administrative complica- tions they involved, and Head of School Lin Foxhall and Head of History Elaine Chalus at the University of Liverpool have been a great support during my transition to life and work in northern England. To Matthew Delvaux, I owe an extraordinary debt for his generosity in sharing his ex- pertise in military history and his patience in sifting through each chapter in progress with a fi ne-toothed comb for possible problems and lacunae while launching his own dissertation at Boston College. Nina Caputo, Al- exandra Chavarría, Alice Conklin, Sarah Davies Cordova, Wendy Doyon, Corisande Fenwick, William Gallois, Mitch Hart, Ashley Jones, Michael Kulikowski, Matthew McCarty, Nabila Oulebsir, Fiona Rose-Greenland, Jaime Wadowiec, Yüçel Yanikdağ, and the anonymous readers for Cornell University Press offered helpful critiques, advice, and suggestions on parts of or all of the manuscript in progress. At Cornell University Press, Ma- hinder Kingra, Karen M. Laun, Julie F. Nemer, and Carolyn Pouncy all worked to tame the infelicities of my unruly prose, increase the consis- tency of my citations, and smooth the narrative of this book. For their general encouragement on this project and life in general, I am grateful for the warmth of old and new friends, including Sophia Krzys Acord, Sharon Goss Bacharach, Stephanie Bohlmann, Courtney Booker, Ursula Brosseder, Nina Caputo, Wendy Brown Chapkis, Gary Condon, Sarah Davies Cordova, Marios Costambeys, Dianne Benveniste Golden, Guy Halsall, Susan Mason, Makeda Moore, Isabel Moreira, Hiral Parekh, Laura Sandy, and Cécile Treffort. My love and great thanks for their unwavering support through thick and thin go to my husband, David Laber; my parents, Richard and Gail Effros; my siblings Michelle Effros and Jim Effros; my brother-in-law John Murillo; and my extended family, especially Edward and Rita Effros, Steve and Suzanne Effros, Rachel Ef- fros, Jane and Steven Hochman, and Marcia Katel Cohen. To David, espe- cially, who has been a stalwart companion through extended travel, work, and recent illness, I would like to publicly express my gratitude for his cheerful willingness to look after the boys, make lunches, and cook untold meals so that I could meet the challenges that have unfolded while this project was underway. While it will be impossible to repay the enormous debt I have incurred during the past few years, I will try anyway. I am so Acknowledgments xi i i glad that he has not yet regretted any of our adventures. Last, but far from least, I dedicate this book to Max and Simon, two mischievous fellows who think that their mom gets too much “screen time” on her computer but humor her with visits to lots of “broken buildings,” despite their pref- erence for things more modern. Although their heart is in the “pouma planet during the honey age” (where they imagine their origins lie), they have willingly accompanied me to far off destinations on this earth and adjusted to the new places we have embraced as home whether for brief sojourns or longer stays. As they continue to grow, I hope that they will understand someday how much I treasure their laughter, hugs, questions and insights, drawings, fl owers, and stories, and how much lighter their presence has made the burden, while writing this book, of confronting the untold miseries that humans create for one another through greed, xeno- phobia, and historical amnesia. Abbreviations AD Archives départmentales AIBL Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres A.G.M.Afr. Archives de la Société des Missionaires d’Afrique AN Archives nationales ANOM Archives nationales d’Outre-Mer BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France MAN Musée d’archéologie nationale SHAT Service historique de l’Armée de Terre Note on Spellings In this volume, with a few exceptions such as Lambaesis and al-Jazā’er, I have privileged the French spelling of place names (with Arabic and Latin alternatives in parentheses on the fi rst use) and institutions, because these were the names by which French offi cers knew and wrote about these lo- cations. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own. Incidental Archaeologists Introduction War and the Destruction of Antiquities in the Former Ottoman Empire With reports of the obliteration of ancient archaeological sites in Syria and northern Iraq by Daesh regularly on the front page of the news, many in the West have reacted with disbelief and outrage to the fundamental- ist theater of destruction. 1 They have blamed the pillage, looting, and pur- poseful demolition of monuments for destabilizing the moral economy that underlies the conservation of World Heritage sites. 2 Yet many com- mentators have neglected to mention that for more than a century Euro- peans argued that these antiquities, and the monuments of which they were a part, had little or no value to the Arab inhabitants of the lands from which they were purchased, stolen, received as gifts, or taken by force. 3 European imperial powers alleged the indifference or hostility of Indigenous peoples toward ancient remains and therefore invoked archae- ological claims to assert their right not only to procure or “protect” ar- tifacts but also to impinge on the jurisdiction of foreign powers, in this case the Sublime Porte. 4 Indeed, Ottoman authorities sought to curb this wholesale European appropriation, and in some cases theft, of antiqui- ties from various parts of the empire as yet one more feature of European 2 Introduction intransigence with regard to its territorial sovereignty. 5 Legislation passed in the 1870s and 1880s not only attempted to ban the export of ancient remains but also established antiquities museums in Istanbul and Tunis. Both measures enjoyed only limited success. 6 After the fall of the Otto- man Empire, the Muslim and Christian populations in the Middle East and North Africa continued to pay a high price for Western claims to the ancient patrimony located on their lands. 7 The nearly two-hundred-year struggle over the rightful place of ancient monuments located in the former Ottoman Empire context is fundamen- tal to understanding Daesh’s recent destruction of classical remains. Al- though their rhetoric for the annihilation of these remains has included references to their pagan origins, most of the Roman monuments under attack did not share the anthropomorphic features central, for instance, to the Taliban’s iconoclastic justifi cation of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 2001. 8 Roman architectural remains instead constitute potent symbols of European imperial power in ancient just as in modern times. The annihilation of symbols identifi ed with Western civilization has become a powerful tool by which Daesh rejects Western hegemony and conveys its dismissal of de facto Western claims (via in- ternational bodies such as the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]) to the universal value of these sites for humankind. 9 In fact, the designation of World Heritage status may even have made some Syrian monuments more desirable targets of the wrath of Daesh. 10 Efforts to save ancient monuments from destruction through exportation or replace them digitally, undertakings benefi tting primarily Western audiences who have funded them, have contributed to the one- sidedness of the conservation narrative. 11 By rejecting Western narratives of the foundation of civilization and claims to the benefi ts of cultural in- ternationalism and “encyclopedic museums” made by institutions such as the British Museum, the Louvre, the Getty Museum, and the Pergamon Museum, fundamentalist actors in the Middle East have staked a claim to a new world order, one just as, if not more, destructive than the last. 12 Although the case of the active annihilation by Daesh of classical mon- uments, as at Palmyra and ancient monuments at Nineveh, is extreme, the negative perception of Roman and other pre-Islamic monuments that underlies its ideology is far from unique in the Middle East and North War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 3 Africa. The ambivalent legacy of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archaeology has shaped the selective reception of classical and biblical-era remains in modern Israel and Egypt, 13 just as it has affected conservation policy in the post-colonial Maghreb, where suspicion of French narratives of history has led to the near erasure of events that do not fi t with postco- lonial discourse. 14 In the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, the per- ception that Arabs and Berbers have little connection to the classical past (an argument fi rst made by colonial authorities in the time of the French conquest) has contributed no doubt to the present shortfall of resources available for the preservation of ancient Roman sites like Tombeau de la Chrétienne. 15 In Tunisia, despite the peaceful symbiosis between the living populations and ancient remains for more than a millennium before the arrival of the French, the convergence of European archaeological research with colonial domination has left bitter memories among the Arab and Ber- ber populations. 16 The legacy of Tunisians’ complex relationship to ancient monuments has continued to be negotiated since the revolution in 2011. 17 It undoubtedly also contributed to terrorists’ choice of the Bardo Museum in Tunis as the site of an attack in March 2015 that left twenty-two dead. 18 These recent examples underline the intimate connection between the modern destruction of classical antiquities and the persistent legacy of European colonial and postcolonial violence to both the people and ob- jects found in North Africa and the Middle East. Although in the past thirty years, the bloody history of the French conquest of Algeria (1830) has been studied with an increasingly critical eye and its connections to the archaeology of the Maghreb have been fi rmly established, the main focus of these publications, with few exceptions, has been on the period following 1871, when research in the Maghreb was fi rst institutionalized under the colonial administration of the Third Republic. 19 By contrast, signifi cantly less attention has been granted to the more poorly docu- mented and frequently idiosyncratic contributions of the largely self- appointed imperial offi cer-archaeologists who explored ancient remains during the period from 1830 to 1870. These men, in an emergent and still amateur fi eld, laid the groundwork for the more formal archaeological and anthropological investigations that began in the last third of the nine- teenth century, when the decontextualization and commodifi cation of ar- chaeological objects became a dominant trope and opened the door to 4 Introduction the more formal instrumentalization of archaeological ethics in the twen- tieth century. 20 In an effort to fi ll this important lacuna, in this book I address the mostly unmanaged explorations of military (and a few civilian) archaeo- logical enthusiasts in the context of the ongoing French onslaught on the former Ottoman principalities of al-Jazā’er and Constantine. Not only did their wartime explorations shape the mission and narrative of classical ar- chaeology in North Africa for decades to come with a near exclusive focus on military remains, but the ideological implications of offi cers’ claims to and appropriation or destruction of the unique historical heritage of an- cient monuments also had a more direct impact on military strategy than heretofore expressed in the context of the tradition of imperial collecting. In an exceedingly violent and destructive colonial war that included a retributive massacre against the civilian population of the city of Blida (southwest of Algiers) in November 1830, an attack on the El-Ouffi a tribe that nearly eliminated its entire membership in April 1832, and French military and economic policies that resulted in the loss of more than a third of the Indigenous population by the late 1860s, these military of- fi cers’ activities underlay the conquest and pacifi cation of what would become the French colony of Algeria. 21 As becomes clear in the chapters that follow, their involvement in archaeology, which may have been at times haphazard and often lacked the approval of their commanding offi - cers, nonetheless had immediate utility in military strategy and tactics. As military offi cers, their archaeological activities differed in signifi cant ways from traditional orientalist research and altered irrevocably the European antiquities rush from which many of their methods derived. 22 The European Antiquities Rush What were the origins of what Suzanne Marchand has characterized as the “antiquities rush”? Among European states, she points to the unreg- ulated and competitive amassing of ancient monuments and artifacts by Napoleonic armies that raided Egypt and Rome at the turn of the nine- teenth century. 23 The popularity of such enterprises at home helped nor- malize and legitimize this form of rapacious looting and collecting of antiquities. 24 During Napoleon I’s Egyptian campaign and those that War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 5 followed, prized monuments were wrenched from their original environs for transport to imperial museums in France, Great Britain, and elsewhere in Western Europe. 25 While alleging his intention to transform Egypt into a modern country, moreover, Napoleon directed French forces under his command not just to gather antiquities but also to document historical and geographical information for the metropole. 26 Indeed, his abbreviated campaign in Egypt coupled collecting with a new model of cartographic and scientifi c exploration directed at imperial military objectives. In the course of this “muscular” venture in North Africa, scholars such as Vi- vant Denon did not simply expropriate antiquities in the manner of war- time booty. 27 More important in the long term was how they used these “scientifi c” activities to promote the primacy of French culture and val- ues. 28 Edward Said has noted that Napoleon’s military-scientifi c mission brought about structural change, normalizing “foreign conquest within the cultural orbit of European existence.” 29 The medium by which Denon conveyed this information was lithogra- phy, a technology that he avidly promoted from 1809 due to the superior quality of the new process for multiplying art and text (despite its poten- tial dangers for the Napoleonic regime from those who wished to dis- seminate subversive ideas). 30 The remarkably successful series collectively known as the Description de l’Égypte (1809–1829) not only popularized an idealized vision of ancient Egypt but also helped substantiate and cir- culate claims of French military and scientifi c prowess. 31 Although the authors of the lavishly illustrated expedition volumes of the Napoleonic mission gave great attention to antiquities, however, they largely turned their back on the modern inhabitants of the region (except to castigate them for allegedly damaging these same monuments). In the French mis- sions that followed Napoleon I’s venture to Egypt, particularly those to the Peloponnese and Algeria in the 1820s and late 1830s, respectively, military-scientifi c expeditions were honed as an instrument of imperial domination. 32 The garb of European military offi cers had become the de facto costume and vernacular for European scholarly exploration and subsequent expropriation. Symptoms of this change may be seen in the French and British search for the mythical city of Timbuctoo in this pe- riod, when explorers wore military uniforms as opposed to dressing in the less obtrusive fashion that had been the custom of European travelers to Africa and the Middle East in the eighteenth century. 33 6 Introduction Despite the disastrous end of Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt, this landmark undertaking made the ancient past an integral feature of broadly defi ned scientifi c research, which in turn supported subsequent French efforts to identify, claim, order, and govern the pat- rimonial resources of the lands their forces dominated, conquered, or occupied. In the case of Egypt in the following decades, during and after the reign of Muhammad ‘Ali (Mehmed ‘Ali in Ottoman Turk- ish), scientifi c exploration was coupled with large-scale French proj- ects such as the construction of the Suez Canal and British interest in commercial agricultural crops such as cotton. Mid-nineteenth-century excavations in Egypt took advantage of broad changes in labor prac- tices that the European presence had helped usher in, namely the tran- sition from corvée to largely unskilled wage labor. 34 There the search for antiquities (and later archaeological research) was entangled in a complex matrix of developments linked to European intervention in the Egyptian economy. 35 As noted by Bruce Trigger, the practice of “imperial archaeology” allowed states to extract archaeological resources from other parts of the world and use them to exert political dominance. 36 To be certain, archaeological exploration in the early nineteenth century was an un- sophisticated affair: it consisted mostly of disengaging stone structures and inscriptions from surrounding debris with little attention to context or stratigraphy. This approach was the result of archaeological science remaining largely subservient to the narrative of classical texts and in- scriptions, which were the primary subjects of study. 37 French colonial activities in the decades that followed Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, and particularly in the context of the French occupation of the Maghreb, gave epigraphical and archaeological study, among other disciplines, signifi cant impetus because they provided the raw materials needed to benefi t cartographic studies and military planning. 38 The type of material collected focused on items that directly or indirectly supported the goal of imperial dominance and thus refl ected metropolitan values and needs rather than those of the regions’ Indigenous residents. 39 We should there- fore not be surprised that the antiquities and monuments “discovered” in the Mediterranean basin acquired symbolism specifi cally linked to West- ern knowledge and offered historical justifi cation for European control over subject populations. War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 7 French Military and Archaeological Intervention in al-Jazā’er In 1827, French military intervention in the Maghreb began with a naval blockade of Algiers. This act of aggression followed the French consul’s refusal to address Hussein Dey’s demand that France pay the 8 million francs still owed to two Jewish merchant families for wheat that had been supplied to French revolutionaries between 1793 and 1798. 40 The conse- quent embargo, which created an economic crisis in the south of France, only worsened the political challenges faced by the Bourbon regime. In July 1830, on the pretext of combatting piracy and Christian slavery on the Barbary Coast, Charles X authorized the naval bombardment and in- vasion of the Regency of al-Jazā’er. Although the successful French land- ing at Sidi Ferruch (Arabic [A.]: Sidi Fredj), 30 kilometers to the west of Algiers, was also intended to bolster the French king’s rapidly waning popularity, the French monarch was forced to abdicate within weeks of the landing and was replaced by his cousin Louis-Philippe. 41 Figure 1. The departure of the Ottoman Dey Hussein from Algiers in 1830. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des estampes et de la photographie. 8 Introduction In the initial assault, the landing of thirty-seven thousand armed sol- diers quickly led to the dissolution and exile of the Ottoman administra- tion, which had for centuries operated with signifi cant autonomy from Istanbul. 42 During the early years of the July Monarchy, Louis-Philippe was forced to deal with the consequences of the poorly thought-out North African incursion into a territory inhabited at that time by somewhere between three and fi ve million inhabitants. 43 Although Louis-Philippe’s reign was not otherwise shaped by ambi- tious military ventures, his eighteen-year tenure saw the rapid expansion of the armée d’Afrique (as the French army in North Africa was known) to nearly three times its initial size by the early 1840s. 44 Many of the military offi cers who led the costly campaign were graduates of the École polytech- nique, and as disciples of social reformers such as Prosper Enfantin, they thought of themselves as bringing about the enlightenment and material improvement of the colonial territory (and, thereby, metropolitan France) through scientifi c and technological innovation. 45 But their idealism ran contrary the realities of a brutal military campaign, and they seemed, at least initially, wholly impervious to the consequences of the damage they wrought against the Indigenous population. Despite assurances that the French would respect the religion and property rights of the region’s mainly Muslim inhabitants, the armée d’Afrique quickly resorted to using deadly measures against civilian residents. 46 As I discuss in chapter 1 , from the start of the invasion, French forces confi scated homes, land, and places of worship from Arab and Kabyle (as the French called the Berbers) inhabitants. 47 They indiscriminately massacred any who resisted French authority in the former Regency, a nominal Ottoman possession on the fringes of the empire. 48 In 1831 and 1832, the destruction of numerous buildings in the city center, including mosques, had already begun. Colonial authorities alleged that these measures were necessary to create an assembly place for the armée d’Afrique and convey in physical terms the imposition of a new order on the former Ottoman Regency of al-Jazā’er. 49 The French Government- General, which was quickly assembled for the purpose of ruling the con- quered territory, oversaw what the French christened “Algeria” by 1838. Although there was an exception made for enclaves of European-majority populations, which from the mid-1840s were governed by civilian authori- ties, the military regime administered the expanding territory under French authority until the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870. War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 9 From the early years of this four-decade period of violent military rule, a substantial number of French offi cers stationed in the colony elected to engage in archaeological research on ancient sites they encountered during their campaigns. Because Roman monumental remains were among the most visible, and certainly the most familiar to offi cers steeped in classical military history, French offi cer-archaeologists in Algeria tended to devote their attention almost exclusively to this period rather than more recent epochs (or more ancient ones, whether prehistoric or Punic). For the most part, moreover, these efforts were self-directed rather than initiated at the command of metropolitan or military authorities. Their undertakings mainly involved identifying and drawing monuments, transcribing in- scriptions, creating topographical maps with reference to ancient remains, and digging for the purpose of dislodging monuments hidden from full view so that they might be displayed. When they engaged with Roman monuments, offi cers personally identifi ed with the conquerors who had built them in the second, third, and fourth centuries. This connection al- lowed them to justify a particularly brutal modern campaign by fi nding parallels in the ancient past. 50 The kinship that offi cers felt with the an- cient Roman legions also allowed them to distance themselves from the Arab population of the region, whom they dismissed as comparative new- comers whose arrival dated to the seventh century. In contrast to Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, the Ministry of War did not initially organize a scholarly expedition to Algeria, despite calls for Figure 2. Some of the locations central to French archaeological exploration in mid-nineteenth-century Algeria. 10 Introduction them to do so by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. As I dis- cuss in chapter 1 , metropolitan offi cials did so only belatedly and hesi- tantly nearly ten years after the invasion, when a group of civilians and military offi cers vetted by the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres and the minister of war were permitted at last to launch a modest program for scientifi c exploration in the region. Begun in 1839, the project ended abruptly in 1842, when participants were ordered to depart from North Africa due to concerns for their safety. 51 Performed largely by or under the protection of the offi cers of the armée d’Afrique, their research, which included archaeological exploration, offered tacit if not enthusiastic ideo- logical and practical support for the French imperial military operations of which it formed a part. Like a spider web or a root system, as vividly characterized by Margarita Díaz-Andreu, colonial discourse became not just an intrinsic part of administrative practice but also of contemporary academic research. 52 The legacy of French colonialism in Algeria is still the subject of debate in contemporary French politics. 53 Nevertheless, imperial scientifi c explo- ration explicitly supported a regime that had few contemporary paral- lels in terms of its brutality. 54 In a discourse formed of European military chauvinism, a Saint-Simonian vision of modernization, and “irrefutable” scientifi c rationale, the disciplines of classical history, epigraphy, numis- matics, and archaeology helped cement claims for the historical connec- tions between the ancient Roman and modern French conquerors of the region. The French hailed themselves as a new Rome with authority over a defeated Africa, as commemorated in a nineteenth-century medallion celebrating French prowess. Together with ethnographic surveys and interviews of the Indigenous population conducted by the Bureaux arabes (Offi ce of Arab Affairs) from the 1860s onward, archaeological exploration also supported administra- tors’ claims of continuity between the ancient Maures, subject peoples to the ancient Romans, and the contemporary Kabyles of Algeria. 55 The re- sult, to which classical studies were an essential contributor, formed a nar- rative that helped the French legitimize their claim that their rule would bring the benefi ts of civilization to the Arab and Kabyle populations of the Maghreb. 56 Ignoring the admonition of the second-century Algerian native son Apuleius that comportment and the values by which one lived were more War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 11 important than one’s place of birth, the French imposed a rigid new order on the conquered territory and its largely illiterate population. 57 French authorities claimed that both the Arabs and Kabyles—especially the for- mer, whom they characterized as more fanatical—had not evolved over time but had instead remained mired in a primitive stage of development. As noted by Homi Bhabha, French colonialism depended on “the concept Figure 3. Medallion commemorating Charles V’s conquest of Algiers in July 1830. The imagery incorporates a pastiche of iconographic elements borrowed from ancient Roman coinage. Marianne wears Minerva’s helmet as Roma and sits atop a defeated lion, an emblem of North Africa from as early as Punic times. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département de monnaies, médailles et antiques. 12 Introduction of ‘fi xity’ in the ideological construction of otherness.” 58 It also had little room to accommodate “permanent outsiders.” 59 By contrast, the French viewed themselves as having passed through this stage centuries earlier when they were under Roman rule. They therefore promoted the idea that French intervention in the Maghreb would allow the Maures to return to their former glory. 60 Nevertheless, the outcome of colonization, as Aimé Césaire has argued, is not the alleged civilizing of the colonized but the dehumanization of the colonizers. 61 The colonial-historical perspective that reigned in French circles allowed many authorities to deny responsibility for their failed ex- periments in social engineering. To name one, in the late 1860s, when hundreds of thousands of Algerian Muslims died from largely human- induced famine, in addition to plague, typhus, and cholera epidemics, advocates of colonial expansion suggested that the poor outcome for the Indigenous residents was not the result of French policies. Rather than accept responsibility for the dire consequences of colonial practices imple- mented by fi rst French military and then civilian offi cials in Algeria, these advocates alleged that natural selection was eliminating populations that were biologically and culturally inferior. 62 Diplomatic Exploration of the Maghreb In actual fact, the exploration and expropriation of Algerian antiquities during the fi rst forty years of French military intervention in Algeria were exceptional; they marked a signifi cant rupture with how European anti- quaries had treated the Maghreb historically, because the region had not previously been understood to hold the material remains of the ancient European past. Indeed, compared to the long-standing French, German, and British activity in Ottoman Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, and regions further to the east, the Maghreb was a relative backwater for the harvest of antiquities in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 63 This ne- glect stemmed in part from a widespread preference, well into the late 1870s, for Hellenic models of civilization and culture over what many British characterized as the degeneracy of Roman imperialism. 64 The over- sight of North African antiquities also had much to do with a balance of power in which European travelers were still relatively vulnerable in the War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 13 lands they visited, which in this case had a reputation mainly linked in the West with piracy and Christian slavery. This contrasted signifi cantly with French confi dence in the same territory decades later, when the explora- tion of Roman remains was applied directly to the objectives of conquest, domination, and settlement. 65 Even so, the Roman ruins of the Maghreb were by no means completely unknown to those of an antiquarian bent. Travelers ventured to North Af- rica for a variety of reasons during the early modern period and took note of monuments and inscriptions and sometimes even succeeded in exporting them. 66 In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a handful of Euro- pean antiquaries received authorization to undertake voyages of explora- tion in the Ottoman regencies based in Tunis and Algiers. Most of the men who enjoyed such opportunities and survived to relate them had come to North Africa as a result of offi cial diplomatic or religious duties. Their re- sponsibility as consuls or their support staff—dragomen (guides or transla- tors), physicians, and clerics—included gathering a variety of information in the Ottoman provinces with the consent of their host dignitaries as well as seeing to the needs of the small communities of Europeans who lived in the Maghreb mainly for commercial purposes. These European enthusiasts and adventurous travelers typically benefi ted from either a background in the classics or a religious education that enabled them to appreciate the vestiges of the ancient civilizations they encountered. 67 While at the Ottoman court at Tunis between April 1667 and April 1668, the Italian physician Giovanni Pagni corresponded with colleagues in Europe and made observations to them about what he saw during his visit, including references to ancient monuments. Between 1688 and 1690, Claude Le Maire, while serving as the French consul in Tripoli, exported twenty-nine marble columns to metropolitan France from the Roman site of Leptis Magna. 68 Shipped from Tripoli to Toulon, the spolia he gathered were reused in architectural contexts at Saint-Germain-des- Prés, Versailles, and the cathedral of Rouen. 69 In the early eighteenth century, the Spanish priest Ximenes, administrator of a hospital of Christian slaves in Tunisia, also visited Roman monuments such as Sbeïtla and El Jem. 70 He was a contemporary of and knew the French physician and naturalist Jean-André Peyssonnel, who made more substantive contributions to the study of ancient monuments, along with his successors the British chaplain and antiquarian Thomas Shaw and 14 Introduction the Scottish antiquarian James Bruce. Shaw, in particular, was trained at the University of Oxford and traveled extensively through North Africa between 1720 and 1732 before returning to Queens College, where he was elected a fellow. By contrast, Bruce, a minor aristocrat of Scottish descent, was in Algiers following his appointment as British consul by Lord Halifax. 71 During his stay in the Regency of al-Jazā’er, he improved his Arabic and prepared for an expedition to the African interior, where he planned to look for the source of the Nile. 72 In the early nineteenth century, following Napoleon’s venture to Egypt, European visitors to North Africa also counted among their numbers the Milanese Barnabite monk Caroni and Sir Grenville Temple, a lieutenant- colonel in the British cavalry. 73 While in the Maghreb, they collected ev- erything from botanical specimens to climatological data, and they also drew maps and sketches of principal ancient sites and recorded some of the inscriptions they found in the region. 74 And, of course, travel to North Africa was not a prerequisite for writing about the Roman period. In 1816–1817, for instance, the Italian Jesuit epigrapher Stephano Antonio Morcelli compiled a history of early Christianity in the region working almost exclusively from ancient literary evidence and inscriptions that had already been published by earlier explorers. 75 A good portion of antiquaries’ attention was trained specifi cally on the ancient Punic capital of Carthage in the Regency of Tunis. The Dutch military engineer Jean-Émile Humbert (in 1817, 1822, and 1824), Count Camillo Borgia of Naples (1816), the Danish consul Christian Falbe and the British consul-general Thomas Reade (from 1824); and the Paris- based Society for the Exploration of Carthage, which sponsored Falbe and Temple in 1838, each received permission from the Bey of Tunis to conduct exploratory excavations. 76 Their objective was to export to their respective countries any obtainable objects of artistic and scientifi c value, regardless of the damage it caused to the location from which these items were harvested. 77 As a consequence of this activity, mostly classical arti- facts from the Maghreb made their way to the Museum of Leiden, the National Museum of Copenhagen, the Louvre, and the British Museum. Others, such as the author and historian François René de Chateaubriand, who visited Carthage in 1807, were content to write of the glory of the ancient landscape and the death of Louis IX from dysentery near this loca- tion in 1270 while engaged in the eighth crusade. 78 War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 15 In addition, there were contemporary travelers, explorers, dragomen, and military offi cers active in archaeological exploration in what would become modern Libya, including the Italian physician Della Cella, in ser- vice to the Bey of Tripoli (1819); the British Royal Navy offi cer William Beechey and his half-brother Henry William (1821–1822); and Jean- Raymond Pacho (1824–1827). 79 Slightly later, but more in the style of these earlier ventures, were the excavations and collecting activities of the dragoman-chancellor of the French Consulate General of Tripoli, Joseph Vattier de Bourville. His explorations were based at Benghazi in the an- cient Roman province of Cyrenaica. 80 With the conquest of Algiers in July 1830, the French applied many of the lessons they had learned from Egypt. They initially established their monopoly over archaeological studies in the occupied territory because they required information about ancient ruins to supplement older maps and accounts in support of their military conquest and subordination of the region. 81 As their work became increasingly trained on its service to French national (as opposed to international scholarly) objectives, the focus of their interest shifted from traditional efforts to trace the origins of Western civilization to an uncritical celebration of Roman imperial- ism. 82 As was generally true of military practice in this period, French offi cers devoted their attention above all to geographical and epigraphical studies, as well as addressing any other topics that might allow them to learn Roman techniques for governing the North African territory. The military and antiquarian expertise gained on the Algerian front might then be taken elsewhere. For instance, after serving under General Bertrand Clauzel, commander of the armée d’Afrique in 1833, Arnauld d’Abbadie traveled to Ethiopia with his older brother Antoine. Some of his observa- tions tended toward the mundane: he wrote of local apparel there as being not dissimilar from the Roman toga. 83 In such a context—as was also true, for instance, of the British in colonial India—the role of antiquarian, epigrapher, scientist, and offi cer were easily confl ated. 84 The French Offi cer Corps and Roman Archaeology The offi cer corps of the French army was the source of most of the men who conducted archaeological exploration in the years that followed the 16 Introduction French invasion of the Regency of al-Jazā’er. The corps had faced sig- nifi cant decline during the Bourbon Restoration (1816–1830) because, following the fi nal defeat of Napoleon I in 1815, many of his former commanders faced assassination or exile. In addition, these men were often replaced by returning aristocrats with little wartime experience. 85 Thus, between 1820 and 1848, the number of French military offi cers fl uctuated only slightly between fi fteen thousand and sixteen thousand, a fi gure that grew to twenty-two thousand by 1855 (excluding those who commanded troops specifi c to the war in Algeria, such as the Tirailleurs indigènes—light infantry recruited locally—and the Foreign Legion). 86 They commanded a reduced standing army of two hundred thousand men and a royal guard of eight regiments of infantry and cavalry. From 1824, the French army conscripted sixty thousand men annually to serve for a period of eight years, a requirement that was reduced to seven years in 1832. 87 During the July Monarchy (1830–1848) and the Second Empire (1852–1870), most French offi cers in active service came directly from the technical and military schools created or reorganized by Napoleon I, including the École polytechnique, the École spéciale militaire de Saint- Cyr, the École de Saumur, and the École d’application de l’artillerie et du génie de Metz. Despite a series of decrees by Louis-Philippe reforming the training and promotion of offi cers, the factor of privilege never disap- peared from these formerly aristocratic schools: the cutthroat entrance exams and cost of preparation for such institutions resulted in a distinct lack of democratization in the offi cer corps, and especially the cavalry, a situation that prevailed until the start of the Third Republic in 1871. By contrast, soldiers who became commissioned offi cers without the ben- efi t of the military academies did so, to a large extent, on the basis of rank, meaning that they had already served in the army for eight years, at least four of them as noncommissioned offi cers. Preference for direct promotion was given to candidates from military or bourgeois families as opposed to those from the popular classes, who faced greater scrutiny to ascertain that they possessed the proper demeanor in addition to the ability to read, write, and calculate. Although they had signifi cant fi eld ex- perience, the offi cers who bypassed the schools lacked the theoretical and administrative training received by their contemporaries and were liable to be slighted by their academy-trained colleagues. 88 War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 17 Founded in the late eighteenth century, the École polytechnique was considered the premier technical school in the West and sent its graduates into the army, navy, public works, mining, and industry. Although the institution was briefl y under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior from 1816 to 1831, it was thereafter restored to the portfolio of the Min- istry of War. The École polytechnique’s entrance exams were highly com- petitive, with about one-sixth admitted of those who sat for them from the mid-1830s. School offi cials tested candidates’ knowledge in arithmetic, plane and solid geometry, conic sections, algebra, trigonometry, statics (physics), drawing, Latin translation, and French composition. 89 Among the faculty of the institution, at least for a brief period of time, were some who had exhibited signifi cant interest in classical antiquities. These in- cluded the cartographer Edme-François Jomard, editor of the Description de l’Égypte , and Karl Benedikt (Charles-Benoît) Hase, a German philolo- gist who taught ancient history and numismatics. 90 The latter was known to have impressed on his students the importance of the ancient past in shaping the French vision of the future of North Africa. By comparison with the École polytechnique, entrance exams at the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr were somewhat less severe and con- sisted mainly of mathematics. Knowledge of Latin disappeared from the requirements, although it was reinstated in 1861. These prerequisites gave candidates from private institutions a distinct advantage over those from the popular classes who had received a lay public education, because they could not afford the approximately 2,000 francs it cost to attend a pre- paratory school. These conditions, in addition to the cost of attending a military school with few options available for stipends, reinforced the overwhelming number of students coming from well-to-do homes. 91 They also meant, however, that many men with ambitions of becoming offi cers arrived at these institutions with a knowledge of Latin and classical his- tory, a background that meant that ancient monuments and inscriptions were a “reassuring point of reference” wherever they encountered them. 92 Training at the École polytechnique and the École Saint-Cyr lasted typ- ically two but sometimes as long as three years. At the former, students’ time was dedicated to learning calculus, stereotomy (descriptive geometry of three-dimensional objects), general physics, chemistry, mechanics, as- tronomy, geodesy, topographical, landscape and fi gure drawing, military studies, French composition and literature, and German. 93 At Saint-Cyr, 18 Introduction students enrolled in courses on mathematics, chemistry, physics, cartogra- phy, drawing, military history, administration, fortifi cation, and offensive and defensive exercises (which were often practiced through elaborate fi eld exercises). 94 Not all polytechniciens entered the military, however; some went into positions in state munitions manufacturing, the corps of engineers responsible for bridges and highways, a variety of industrial occupations, and so on. Nonetheless, the cartographic and drafting skills they acquired, as well as their knowledge of ancient battles and fortifi ca- tions, meant that academy-trained offi cers who developed an interest in antiquities were better prepared to engage practically in archaeological study than their civilian contemporaries. Many graduates, especially of the École polytechnique, moved from this program to further their training in more specialized applied schools. These included, among others, the École d’artillerie et du génie de Metz, the École d’état-major at Paris, the École des ponts et chaussées, the École des mines, and the École du génie maritime. 95 At Metz, in addition to learning the practical skills of operating and transporting artillery, offen- sive and defensive tactics, skills on horseback, and mapmaking, students were expected to continue their study of mathematics, physics, drawing, architecture, and military construction during their two-year stay. 96 From 1845, they benefi ted from access to spaces in which to conduct military exercises, a library, and laboratories in which to study geodesic calcula- tions, chemistry, physics, and natural history. They learned topography from a collection of relief models, could use equipment for lithography, and of course trained with horses kept at the stables at Metz. 97 Although this educational background and such important skills were not acquired with the intention of engaging in the study of the ancient past, such pur- suits became a logical preoccupation of many offi cers trained at Metz once they were stationed in distant regions in which Roman monuments were plentiful. With the invasion of the Regency of al-Jazā’er in the summer of 1830, those who deplored the state of the military during the Bourbon Restora- tion saw a golden opportunity for the regeneration of the French army. Al- though the conquest force consisted of thirty-seven thousand troops, the size of the armée d’Afrique ballooned to one hundred and eighteen thou- sand men by the mid-1840s under Governor-General Bugeaud; the armée d’Afrique constituted of roughly one-third of a signifi cantly expanded Figure 4. Indigenous infantryman of the Zouaves, who often served alongside French soldiers under the command of French military offi cers in Algeria. Ferdinand-Désiré Quesnoy, L’armée d’Afrique depuis la conquête d’Alger (Paris: Librairie Furne Jouvet et Cie, 1888). 20 Introduction French standing army. 98 From an early date in the conquest, forces in North Africa included Indigenous troops who proved to be of great utility to French forces. In October 1830, General Clauzel sanctioned the cre- ation of French-led battalions of Zouaves, composed in part of Indigenous soldiers recruited for their reputation for being exceedingly fi erce in battle. These men were integrated with Parisian volunteers who had fought in the July Revolution but had subsequently found their unit, Volontaires de la Charte, dissolved. The armée d’Afrique often cobbled such unruly units together in columns with the fragmented contingents of the recently created Foreign Legion, which was transferred in 1831 from Toulon on France’s southern coast to Algiers. 99 Similar approaches were taken in recruiting cavalry. In November 1831, the French established two regi- ments of light cavalry known as the Chasseurs d’Afrique. Their squadrons included a mix of French volunteers, settlers, and Indigenous cavalrymen who were supplemented by less well-compensated Indigenous cavalry- men known as the Spahis (or Sipahis in Ottoman Turkish). Despite the lack of success in instilling discipline among such troops, French admin- istrators favored their enlistment for service in the territory of Algiers be- cause it enabled metropolitan authorities to rid French urban centers of potentially disruptive elements and allowed French military offi cials in North Africa to deprive Indigenous leaders of potential recruits. 100 The rapid expansion of the armée d’Afrique to prosecute the war in the former Ottoman territory had an enormous impact on the entire French army, and the violence that resulted shocked even the most seasoned se- nior offi cers. 101 Despite the dangers, many military men were attracted to service in North Africa owing to the possibility of earning promotions twice as quickly as they could if they remained in continental Europe. 102 Due to the numbers of conscripted soldiers who served in Algeria, the poorly organized war in the Maghreb now became a practical training ground for French troops, a role it had never been intended to play. 103 The mix of metropolitan troops with Indigenous forces, the rush to put newly minted offi cers into the fi eld, and the rapid deployment of fresh conscripts in battle had negative effects on both relations with the Muslim inhabitants and the army itself. Indeed, even those who supported the war complained that the offi cers and soldiers who trained under such condi- tions suffered from poor discipline, insuffi cient instruction, and their en- counters with a human and geographical terrain that had little connection War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 21 with their European training. 104 In Algeria, newly minted offi cers learned harsh tactics to deal with civilian populations as a result of their inexpe- rience, their troops’ ramshackle origins, and the diffi cult situations they were called to face. They thus responded with a level of force that had heretofore been considered unacceptable in a noncolonial setting. 105 The result, perhaps not much different from the ancient Roman experience, Figure 5. Indigenous light cavalry known in the nineteenth century as the Spahis or Sipahis. HIP/Art Resource, NY. 22 Introduction was a rapidly growing army with little effective oversight, ambitious offi - cers eager for confl icts that would further their quest for rapid promotion, and poorly disciplined and underprovisioned troops prone to violence. These obvious problems with the military infrastructure were reformed only after the Prussian defeat of France in 1870. 106 French military offi cers serving in Algeria, most the product of the highest-level French schools, thus encountered, and in many cases pro- voked, the appalling violence that characterized the North African cam- paign. It was in this degraded environment of fi eld operations that some of these same offi cers opted, in certain circumstances, to express sensitiv- ity to or interest in ancient monuments as they prosecuted the war in the French colony. By contrast, French soldiers, unless given explicit orders to participate in these activities, were not typically involved in archaeo- logical exploration due to their limited familiarity with classical history, inability to read Latin (and often French), and apparent lack of interest in such undertakings. They were more typically blamed for looting. 107 These contradictory, and often rapidly changing, conditions were the matrix of and shaped the practice of Roman archaeology in French Algeria between 1830 and 1870. Colonial Archaeology in Algeria, the Formative Decades: 1830–1870 In French Algeria, the extent to which the ancient Roman legacy was ex- ploited depended on who was involved in the enterprise and to what ends they applied it. 108 By the early twentieth century, for instance, French au- thors such as Pierre Hubac denied the relevance of Rome as a model for France. 109 Yet, although approaches to the ancient past were far from monolithic in their expression and application, and some scholars ex- pressed a degree of empathy for the informants they encountered, archae- ological research conducted in the fi rst four decades of the French colony was almost without exception supportive of French national and impe- rial objectives. 110 It benefi ted from what Gary Wilder has characterized as the inherent structural contradictions of colonial modernity, including the “tension between coexisting policies to abstract and modernize or to dif- ferentiate and primitivize subject populations.” 111 Nearly all studies were War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 23 undertaken as a part of or inspired by French military operations fi nanced by the Ministry of War, and nearly all engendered the marginalization or destruction of the populations researchers encountered in the course of their activities. And as this interpretation—or robbery—of the North African Roman past, accrued from historical sources, inscriptions, and monuments, and percolated deeply into the wider social consciousness, it accumulated scholarly weight. 112 Its public acceptance allowed adminis- trators, offi cers, and scholars of the Third Republic to construct a unifi ed and seemingly uncomplicated vision of the Mediterranean as “Latin.” 113 Because of the inconsistent and contradictory nature of early archaeo- logical exploration in Algeria, many of the scholars who have explored the implications of scientifi c endeavors in the Maghreb have concentrated on the period in which institutionalization began, at the start of the Third Republic in 1870. 114 In particular, studies of archaeology have focused on the period following 1880, when the Service des monuments histo- riques en Algérie was established. 115 The last decades of the century were particularly important for the professionalization of the discipline, since it was then that greater efforts were made to regularize excavation proce- dures; institutionalize collecting, research activities, and publications; and formalize the existence of colonial archaeological museums and Roman tourist sites such as Thamugadis (French [F.]: Timgad) in Algeria and Tu- nisia. 116 This period also saw the emergence of physical anthropology and ethnography. 117 Myriam Bacha and Clémentine Gutron have painstak- ingly reconstructed the activities of military and civilian archaeological enthusiasts in the French Protectorate of Tunisia following its creation in May 1881. 118 The religiously motivated archaeological contributions of clerics such as Alfred-Louis Delattre of the White Fathers (Pères blancs) in the Maghreb during this period have likewise solicited important schol- arly attention. 119 By the end of the nineteenth century, there is no doubt that archaeo- logical endeavors had become deeply engrained in the activities of the colonial state. Nevertheless, French colonial scholars’ relationship to the antiquities of the Maghreb revealed the uneven valuation of the ancient monuments and the human beings who lived, worked, and died in their vicinity; in many ways, these matters were viewed no more critically in the early twentieth century than before. In the 1890s at Dougga (Latin [L.]: Thugga) in Tunisia, for example, when Louis Carton, a medical offi cer in 24 Introduction the French army who became an active defender of ancient monuments and a promoter of tourism in Carthage and elsewhere in his adopted land, wished to proceed with excavations, French authorities forcibly removed the Indigenous residents from their homes built on the ancient site and subsequently destroyed them. 120 Although archaeological activities were cast in the language of science and the need to purify ruins of later accre- tions, Muslim inhabitants quickly learned from such incidents that ancient remains simply offered metropolitan authorities an additional excuse to disrupt their lives and confi scate their property. In contrast to important studies by Gutron, Bacha, Jan Jansen, Alice Conklin, and others that focus on the period after 1870, in this book I concentrate on the fi rst four decades of the French conquest and pacifi ca- tion of Algeria under the authority of the French military Government- General. Although it did not reach full fl ower until the late nineteenth century, the seeds for the discourse of the French “mission civilisatrice” were planted in the fi rst four decades of the French conquest and sustained through the collection, consumption, and display of Roman antiquities. 121 During this poorly planned but rapidly evolving phase of the invasion and colonization of the former Ottoman regency, the initiative and persistence of individual military offi cers and occasional French civilians, rather than a directive from the Ministry of War or the governor-general, prepared the ground for French claims to be the rightful custodians of the Roman past. This ideological framework allowed French authorities, offi cers, and colonists to argue confi dently in later decades that they were the legitimate and heroic heirs of the Romans. 122 Although it was not the motivation for the colonization of the region, French offi cers’ belief that they possessed the right to control much of North Africa not only infl uenced military tactics in the region but also—which is more important—provided histori- cal justifi cation that helped sustain French offi cers through brutal military campaigns against both Indigenous armies and civilian populations. During this initial phase of the conquest, self-styled archaeologists and epigraphers took independent and often idiosyncratic paths in their re- search that benefi ted from the entwined nature of republicanism and colo- nialism. 123 This less well-studied period, once called the “âge héroïque” of archaeology (as opposed to the “la période des réalisations” of the 1880s and 1890s), matched the most destructive phases of the conquest and col- onization of the former Ottoman Regency of al-Jazā’er. 124 My focus on the War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 25 period prior to 1870 also makes it imperative to restore to the history of archaeology the human tragedy that underlay what were once thought of as “heroic” archaeological interventions. Although this exploratory phase of archaeological endeavors in Algeria owed much to Napoleon’s venture in Egypt, in which the Arab and nonwhite pasts were written over in favor of the classical past, it nonetheless represented a groundbreaking and for- mative enterprise. 125 The North African conquest offered self-appointed offi cer-archaeologists, and a small number of civilians, considerable intel- lectual latitude in shaping their own undertakings and interpreting their results. It is true that military offi cers could not control certain critical facets of their lives such as the location where they were stationed and the amount of time they had available for drawing ancient monuments and maps, copying ancient inscriptions, and collecting antiquities (issues that were typically controlled by the minister of war or their superior offi cers in response to contemporary military exigencies). Nevertheless, they shared, on the basis of their training in institutions such as the École polytechnique, a number of preconceived notions about France’s place in history and on the world stage. Thus, despite the lack of directives from higher authorities and the relative freedom of offi cer-archaeologists to set the objectives and priorities of their explorations, their activities were fairly homogeneous. Their work, and its underlying assumptions, laid the foundation for more regular archaeological undertakings in subsequent decades, by which time many of the sites in the region studied by these ini- tial colonial explorers had been destroyed or altered beyond recognition. Despite the uneven archival terrain for this period, a substantial num- ber of important studies of the military, political, and ideological implica- tions of the initial French conquest and settlement of the former Ottoman territory have appeared in rapid succession. 126 Similarly, historians of ar- chaeology and architecture inside and outside Algeria have given attention to this formative epoch. They have begun by fi lling in the critical outline of the developments proposed by Marcel Bénabou and Jacques Frémeaux 127 and laid out in greater detail by Paul-Albert Février in the 1980s. 128 Most notably, Monique Dondin-Payre, Nabila Oulebsir, Nadia Bayle, and Ève Gran-Aymerich have assessed the impact of central fi gures on Algerian monuments: Adrien Berbrugger, founder of the Bibliothèque et Musée d’Alger (1835); Captain Adolphe-Hedwige-Alphonse Delamare and Am- able Ravoisié of the Commission d’exploration scientifi que d’Algérie 26 Introduction (1839–1842); Colonel Jean-Luc Carbuccia at Lambaesis (1848–1850); Léon Renier and his epigraphical research in the vicinity of the Aurès Mountains (1850–1852); and the archaeological publications of more ephemeral participants during this period. 129 The task remains, in large part, to link these tenacious archaeologists and their lesser-known contemporaries to more than the broader archaeo- logical and epigraphical developments of which they were a part, includ- ing the widespread destruction that often served as the catalyst of their activities. 130 Indeed, offi cer-archaeologists made more than a practical contribution to the quotidian features and milestones of the military op- eration in which they were frequently intimately involved. 131 Taking inspi- ration from, among others, Gutron’s critique of the aims and implications of archaeology in Tunisia under the French Protectorate, I underline the irresponsibility of creating pristine or romanticized narratives of classical archaeology in Algeria. 132 It is necessary to reassert the violence that was an integral part of archaeological exploration yet rarely fi gured in the offi cial reports of excavation, the documentation of monuments, or the scholarly publications that celebrated the fruits of archaeological activities in Algeria. 133 Yet the story that we can tell of this early phase of archaeological re- search is, like any other historical account, shaped to a signifi cant degree by the original organizational principles of the imperial and colonial ar- chives. 134 According to Oulebsir, what is preserved in the archives of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria related to this project is negligible for the middle third of the nineteenth century. 135 And the Archives natio- nales d’Outre-Mer (ANOM) in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), as they are now known, are a relatively recent creation containing papers re- lated to Algeria among a core of documents “repatriated” to metropolitan France in the 1960s. These holdings were consolidated at ANOM with items originally held at the Centre de recherches des archives nationales (CARAN) in Paris, which were moved to Aix, despite protest, following a 1979 fi re that threatened the storage area of the overseas documents. 136 Most recently, as my own project was underway, some items of relevance to the study of archaeology of Algeria, such as correspondence between French ministries that remained at CARAN until the early 2010s, have been moved to the branch of the Archives nationales (AN) located at Pierrefi tte-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis). War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 27 Whereas references to archaeological institutions and regulations dur- ing the Third Republic are fairly well documented in the organizational apparatus at ANOM, CARAN, and AN Pierrefi tte-sur-Seine, documenting extant administrative correspondence and circulars of the Third Republic and afterward, the number of archival fi les related to the fi rst forty-year phase of archaeological activity in Algeria is not substantial. The rarity of these documents is, in part, a refl ection of the limited role of metropoli- tan authorities in shaping the objectives and implementation of research into Algeria’s Roman past. It is nonetheless also clear from what survives that signifi cant gaps existed between the wishes of the metropolitan-based minister of war and the activities of the Algerian-based governor-general with respect to the protection of antiquities. Likewise, regular disagree- ment between the minister of the interior and the minister of war over the earmarking of funding and resources for archaeological activities and the transport of antiquities to metropolitan France impeded both of these projects. These basic differences in outlook, visible in the repetitiousness of correspondence related to particular monuments and the apparent in- ability of authorities to resolve concerns over jurisdiction and fi nances, leave little doubt as to the contested relevance of antiquity to the French state at the highest echelons of power. Moreover, what is striking about documents of the early period of French colonial rule preserved in the French national and colonial ar- chives, just like those of Britain for India, is their contribution to a record of events and decisions in which the Indigenous inhabitants of the colony are largely absent from the narrative. 137 In the case of Algeria, as was also true of French missions to the Middle East, the administrators who authored reports on conquered territory shared basic assumptions of colo- nial discourse that affected their ability or desire to see the Muslim subject populations as at all relevant to their considerations. 138 Moreover, reposi- tories of correspondence on archaeology as well as archaeological reports at institutions such as the Musée du Louvre (housed since 2015 at AN Pierrefi tte-sur-Seine), the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (AIBL; housed at the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France), archives of the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF; housed since 2015 at the BNF Mitterrand), and the Commission des monuments his- toriques (housed at the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine at Charenton-le-Pont) offer, fi rst and foremost, documents pertaining to the 28 Introduction augmentation of metropolitan collections and the production of scholarly publications. By contrast, they reveal few details about the political and military context in which these antiquities and observations were gath- ered. The relatively sparse documentation dating from before 1870 con- trasts starkly with the expanding paper trail on antiquities assembled after the classifi cation of numerous Roman monuments in Algeria in 1876. 139 Given the military thrust of the many accounts of Algeria composed during the fi rst four decades of French rule, the archives of the Service historique de l’armée de terre (SHAT) in Vincennes (Val-de-Marne) have played an important role in my research. Nevertheless, they, too, have been frustratingly opaque when it comes to the issue of archaeological activity. Namely, the dossiers of the careers of individual offi cers typically contain little information beyond a summary of their comportment in battle, pro- motions, and requests for sick leave or retirement. Because their archaeo- logical activities were in most cases irrelevant to their career trajectories, few documents make any reference to antiquarian activities, even for of- fi cers who are known to have been engaged in archaeological research from their contemporary publications in learned society journals in Con- stantine and Algiers. 140 Additional series of documents in the archives of the armée d’Afrique related to military campaigns periodically mention sightings of Roman ruins but are nonetheless only marginally helpful re- garding activities extraneous to military exercises, a category into which most archaeological endeavors in the French colony before 1870 fi t. Rather, beyond the relatively formulaic archaeological articles pub- lished by a great number of offi cers in the two main journals established for this purpose in Constantine and Algiers and the surprising number of monographs self-published by higher-ranking offi cers with an interest in archaeology, an important source of archaeological information from the military archives includes the regular topographical, historical, and ethno- graphic reports that lower-ranking offi cers were asked to produce when the army entered new territories. 141 As noted by Ann Laura Stoler, when one is looking for a particular kind of information that goes against the grain of what was intended by those who recorded events and nonevents, it becomes evident that private passions did have consequences. 142 In this instance, the enthusiastic attention given to copying inscriptions and sketching monuments suggests that French offi cers devoted far more time and energy to these tasks than their superiors demanded. This dedication War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 29 was owed not just—as has been proposed—to the lack of suffi cient leisure- time activities but, at least in part, to their belief in the relevance of the Roman past to the future of the French colony (and thus their own careers). 143 In particularly diffi cult periods of the French conquest, es- pecially the expansionist regime of Governor-General Thomas-Robert Bugeaud in the 1840s, archaeological work offered offi cers a way to claim diachronic community with ancient Roman colonizers and thereby justify the historical signifi cance of the brutal “fourth domination” of Algeria by foreign conquerors. 144 Based on archival and published sources, this book challenges the tri- umphal narratives of the history of French offi cers’ engagement with ar- chaeology in Algeria, a genre that dates back to the earliest decades of the conquest but achieved new heights during the centennial celebrations of the same. By the early 1930s, recollections of the French archaeological intervention celebrated European discoveries in lands rich in antiquities at the same time that they claimed that the Indigenous population not only failed to appreciate these monuments but also had caused their degrada- tion or destruction. 145 These one-sided narratives, which focused almost entirely on European developments, understood archaeological research within the framework of “professionalization” and “discovery” during the colonial period. 146 Without exception, they took the European perspective of these events while popularizing the premise that Arab and Kabyle resi- dents had little interest in or engagement with Roman and other ancient remains before the French conquest because these monuments originated in the pre-Islamic epoch. Although this book does not go so far as to re- cover Arab and Kabyle responses to French archaeological interest, which appear to be scarce before ethnographic studies of the 1920s (and are, in any event, too late to chronicle the fi rsthand preconquest perspectives of Muslim residents), it does reassert their presence as entangled in French archaeological pursuits and subjugated by them. In the Regency of Tunis, which likewise lay on the fringes of Otto- man possessions, an example typical of such one-sided narratives was composed by the French scholar Charles-Ernest Beulé, who excavated at Carthage in 1859. He argued that the Arabs could not identify with the pre-Islamic past of their country because they lacked blood ties to the ancient inhabitants. According to Beulé, this condition thus predisposed the local population to destroying ancient remains. 147 Likewise, Salomon 30 Introduction Reinach, whose experience with Tunisian archaeology dated from the mid-1880s, shortly after the establishment of the French Protectorate, ar- gued that these alleged circumstances meant, in no uncertain terms, that Europeans were in a better position than local authorities to understand the antiquities, to which they had historical connections lacked by Indig- enous peoples. 148 By pointing to close interactions with Indigenous wit- nesses by several offi cer-archaeologists in the 1830s, which allowed them to document ancient monuments in North Africa to which they had little or no access, in this monograph I expose the inaccuracies of later archae- ologists’ claims that Arabs and Kabyles were unfamiliar with or lacked valuable information about Roman sites. By suggesting such indifference toward or rejection of antiquities among North African populations in the Maghreb, the French set them- selves up as the saviors of these monuments’ conservation and appre- ciation. Such claims were possible mainly because of their ignorance or neglect of Arabic sources such as the writings of Al-Bekri (d. 1094), the eleventh-century geographer who provided a detailed and admiring de- scription of the ancient Roman theater of Carthage as a former center for entertainment and seemingly endless source of building materials in the region. 149 The twelfth-century geographer Al-Idrissi (d. 1165) wrote with praise of the same structure and noted that the Roman aqueduct, which had once brought water into the city and was now empty, had supported a population much larger than in his own day. 150 The medieval travelers Al- Abdari of Valencia in the late thirteenth century and Al-Tijāni in the early fourteenth century signaled their awareness of the presence of ancient monuments in Carthage and farther south, such as the remains of the am- phitheater of El Jem. 151 In Morocco, sites such as the fourteenth-century Marinid necropolis of Chellah in Rabat, built atop (and in part with) the ruins of the Roman Sala Colonia, signal the attraction that Roman monu- ments in the region exercised on Muslim imaginations. 152 This level of appreciation is not to suggest that all residents shared such understanding of the ancient ruins they found in their midst. Al-Tijāni, during a journey eastward from Tunis to Tripoli, remarked on mutilated marble columns he viewed at Zouar’a, which a local ruler had allegedly broken to fi nd treasure. 153 Similarly, the fourteenth-century geographer and proto-sociologist Ibn Khaldûn was thoroughly familiar with the en- gineering feats of the Romans, such as the aqueducts bringing water to War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 31 Carthage and the monuments of Cherchel, suggesting that these ancient works were representative of the engineering skills and effective coordi- nation of labor achieved by the ancient nation. He took time in the same passage, however, to dismiss what he described as the error of storytellers who claimed that such achievements were made by giants. Ibn Khaldûn instead argued more generally that monumental achievements of this na- ture were a measure of the social organization and cooperation of then- ruling dynasties. 154 European approaches to the Maghreb in this sense were not excep- tional. Motivated by their self-interest in controlling the interpretation of ancient Roman sites and the collecting of antiquities, Europeans resisted and even sought to undermine early legislative efforts in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere to regulate archaeological practices and establish protections for ancient artifacts and monuments. 155 Because the coloniza- tion of Algeria began decades before the establishment of laws protecting antiquities, even in metropolitan France, the poor treatment of monu- ments was more extreme, since proponents were restricted by neither con- vention nor the kinds of policies that hindered their activities in Tunisia a half-century later. Indeed, offi cer-archaeologists in Algeria had the ability in many cases to determine which monuments should be saved and which might be destroyed. From the 1860s, ideological disinheritance of the Indigenous popu- lation from any meaningful connection to ancient monuments received support from ethnographic research, in which European interpreters sug- gested that Arabs and Kabyles possessed only a primitive understanding of the signifi cance of ancient sites of all genres. 156 Jocelyne Dakhlia, one of the few anthropologists in recent years to explore the collective Mus- lim understanding of the past in Tunisia, has relied too heavily on highly biased reports by early twentieth-century ethnographers working in the Maghreb. 157 Indeed, sources such as Edmond Doutté’s reports of the su- perstitious beliefs of Moroccan natives, whom he claimed attributed pre- historic ruins to a race of giants, were tainted by the innate prejudices engrained in his study. Doutté’s blunt admission that he viewed North Africa as having been plunged into barbarism by Islam and his professed distaste for Arab architectural styles, for instance, reveals the French eth- nologist’s predisposition to seeing his informants as backward or primi- tive. 158 Doutté’s fl awed approach throws into doubt the reliability of his 32 Introduction contention that Indigenous peoples had little or no relevant knowledge of prehistoric and ancient Roman archaeological sites in the Maghreb. In postcolonial histories of modern Tunisia, scholars have not suffi - ciently nuanced their understanding of Arab and Kabyle interactions with the ancient past. Ahmed Abdesselem, for instance, has asserted that from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the pre-Islamic past of the Maghreb was of little or no interest to Tunisian historians; he argues that they viewed this as an obscure and unimportant period in the history of North Africa. In his view, the arrival of the French, and the effectiveness of their exclusive claims to Roman remains, negatively affected perceptions of this period and its abundant antiquities still further. 159 The circum- stances of the nineteenth-century French conquest and colonization of Al- geria and the ideological use of ancient remains to support French claims to govern the region shaped its institutions. 160 They erased what were probably far more regular interactions with and reuse of ancient monu- ments. 161 In the present, the colonial period has been relegated to a long “parenthesis” in the social memory of Algerian history. 162 Consequently, a central thrust of the postcolonial historiography of the ancient period written in Algeria has been at pains to emphasize the Berber resistance to Roman colonial domination and exploitation. 163 In this context, it is easy to understand why interest in classical antiquities has waned among the Algerian authorities and public, and why this is unlikely to change any time soon. 164 A more nuanced understanding of the early decades of French archaeology in Algeria is thus critical to any effort to move for- ward productively with classical research and heritage concerns in North Africa. In the fi ve chapters and brief epilogue that follow this introduction, I examine French offi cers’ exploration of Roman Algeria between 1830 and 1870. The chapters are organized roughly chronologically, according to the successive phases of the French conquest. Each opens with a brief narrative of the central events and structural developments in the estab- lishment of the colony of Algiers and then turns to the place of the Roman past, seen from a historical or archaeological perspective, in the think- ing and activities of French military offi cers and civilians. The themes of the chapters refl ect prevailing sensibilities during overlapping periods of roughly ten years each. My discussion in chapter 1 opens with the military conquest of Algiers and Constantine, and the scientifi c assessment of the War and the Destruction of Antiquit ies 33 region’s resources, including ancient monuments (1830–1842), that fol- lowed. Focusing on the second decade of the French colony, in chapter 2 I examine how competing visions of the colonial settlement of Algeria were impacted by the French understanding of the ancient Roman past (1837–1847). In chapter 3, I address French military offi cers’ and civilian scholars’ engagement with the exceptional archaeological site of Lambae- sis, the former camps of the Third Augustan Legion located in the Aurès Mountains (1844–1854). Assessing the foundation of the fi rst successful colonial archaeological societies and museums in Algeria (1852–1860), in chapter 4 I trace their struggles to maintain funding and the integrity of their collections. Finally, in chapter 5 I suggest the synchronicity of metropolitan and colonial archaeological, cartographic, and epigraphical projects (1860–1870) under Napoleon III. In the brief epilogue, I offer a survey of the archaeological developments that transpired during the fi rst decade and a half of the Third Republic, which, although outside the chronological scope of this book, were built on the foundations of archaeological explorations laid before 1870. They pointed the way for- ward for archaeological excavations, research, and collections for the fi rst two-thirds of the twentieth century. Chapter 1 Knowing and Controlling Early Archaeological Exploration in the Algerian Colony When French warships landed with thirty-seven thousand men at Sidi Ferruch, a port 30 kilometers west of Algiers in July 1830, they found the forces of the reigning Ottoman Dey Hussein ill prepared for their arrival. 1 By this time, Algiers had grown from a modest town of roughly twenty thousand to a capital city of approximately a hundred thousand residents. In addition to a lucrative port, the city boasted a population that included as many as ten thousand janissaries. 2 Following the debilitating three-year naval blockade of the city, local notables in the Regency of al-Jazā’er were dismayed by the inaction of local Ottoman leaders, who were divided by intrigue and too poorly equipped to wage an effective defense of the territory against the French landing. During the crisis, which followed fi erce fi ghting, they counseled Dey Hus- sein to pursue a peaceful surrender of the city to French forces under the command of General Louis-Auguste-Victor Bourmont. Local elites such as Hamdan Khodja—a Kouloughli landowner (an ethnic group of mixed Turkish-Arabic heritage), law professor, and counselor to the Ottoman Knowing and Control l ing 35 governor—argued that the city’s residents would fare better under such circumstances than if they waged armed resistance to the French forces. 3 Hamdan, who read and spoke French and English in addition to Ara- bic and Ottoman Turkish, had high expectations of the French and their professed Enlightenment principles. As he recalled in Le Miroir (1833), although he and his contemporaries had no particular complaint against their Ottoman overlords, the severity of naval bombardment of Algiers made conditions desperate enough for them to submit to the French over- lords without a fi ght. In accepting the terms of the surrender of the ter- ritory, Bourmont granted the Ottoman dey assurances that inhabitants’ freedom of religion and property rights would be respected. According to Hamdan, the residents of Algiers had little reason to doubt that the French would honor the terms of the peace treaty. 4 Despite Bourmont’s pledge to protect the civilian population and re- spect basic property rights, the armée d’Afrique began almost immediately to violate the provisions of the treaty. French soldiers sacked the Kasbah Figure 6. The bombardment and seizure of Algiers in July 1830. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des estampes et de la photographie. 36 Chapter 1 (citadel), confi scated land, destroyed homes, and plundered the civilian residences now occupied by offi cers and troops. 5 The destruction of the city center in 1831 and 1832 was directed at creating an open space that could accommodate the armée d’Afrique and convey the imposition of French control. 6 France believed that it had title to all of the former dey’s wealth, including public buildings and forts, palaces, the regency treasury, and the million or so hectares of agricultural land that comprised the Ot- toman territory under his authority. French military offi cials also seized habous lands (A. waqf ; Ottoman Turkish [T.]: vakif ) in Algiers, namely the enormous wealth accumulated in the form of inalienable tax-exempt property that supported religious, charitable, and pedagogical founda- tions in the region as well as the poor in Mecca and Medina. 7 Unabated land grabs by the French throughout the early decades of the occupation exacted a devastating toll on local residents. 8 With the fall of the Bourbon king Charles X from power just three weeks after the invasion, there was initial hope in some quarters of Al- giers that Louis-Philippe’s policies would be more moderate than those of his predecessor. But despite the use of the semaphore telegraph to speed communications between Toulon and the invading force, the new king had diffi culty establishing direct control of military operations in Algiers. Bourmont was dismissed for refusing to recognize Louis-Philippe. In the general absence of guidance from offi cials in metropolitan France, many of whom were opposed to military intervention in North Africa, senior commanders of the armée d’Afrique began implementing policies of their own formulation. 9 Some allowed serious matters to devolve to even their most junior subordinate offi cers. In the fi rst years of the conquest, most French military offi cers had little sense of the strategic goals of the cam- paign beyond the poorly defi ned objective of liberating the Ottoman terri- tory from alleged Oriental despotism. 10 Once in the territory of al-Jazā’er, military commanders pressed strategies that would allow them to expand the territory under their control. Although Algiers and its surrounding territories were not as unknown to the French as some writers later proclaimed, French offi cers faced many obstacles to establishing mastery over France’s newest possession. 11 Because the French army evicted and exiled the Ottoman administration before learning anything about the existing systems of taxation, landholding, or justice, the arrival of French forces brought Knowing and Control l ing 37 about the almost immediate cessation of all governmental institutions and activities. Unable to communicate in Arabic, not to mention in Berber, most French offi cers had great diffi culty conducting even basic interactions with the Indigenous inhabitants. The consequences of this approach were especially severe given the elimination of the Hanafi te Islamic tribunal (established by the Ottomans to hear sharia cases) on October 22, 1830, at the command of Bourmont’s successor, General Bertrand Clauzel. 12 This defi ciency caused frequent misunderstandings of local custom and religion. Offi cers in the cabinet of the duc de Rovigo, commander in chief of French troops in the former Regency of al-Jazā’er from 1831, had neither the resources for nor any apparent interest in a nuanced reading of the situation on the ground in Arab and Kabyle communities. In 1832, the duc de Rovigo was responsible for the seizure and conversion of Algiers’s primary house of worship, the Ketchaoua Mosque, which by 1845 had been transformed into the Figure 7. The traverse of the Atlas pass of Téniah (F. Col de Téniah) by the armée d’Afrique, commanded by General Bertrand Clauzel in November 1830, following its defeat of the Bey of Tittery’s force of eight thousand troops. Claude-Antoine Rozet, Voyage dans la Régence d’Alger ou Description du pays occupé par l’armée française en Afrique (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, Libraire-Éditeur, 1833), Atlas. 38 Chapter 1 Cathedral of Saint-Philippe. 13 In this institutional vacuum, the few Arabic translators available gained signifi cant latitude in decision making on the ground. Symptomatic of Europeans’ fuzzy understanding of the Barbary Coast was the confl ation of the history of the corsairs with the entire population of the region, despite the fact that the successful capture of booty had declined in the region for as much as a century. 14 As ob- served by Perceval Barton Lord, a surgeon in the East India Company: “Tyranny and oppression are the features of a piratical government; it encourages those who follow a wild and reckless course, hazarding their lives in the cause of murder and rapine on the ocean; but for the arts of peace, the simple pursuits of the shepherd or the husbandman, it has no sympathy.” 15 Figure 8. English