COLONIAL MEMORY
AND
POSTCOLONIAL EUROPE
New Anthropologies of Europe
Daphne Berdahl, Matti Bunzl, and Michael Herzfeld, editors
Colonial Memory
and
Postcolonial
Europe
Maltese Settlers in Algeria and France
ANDREA L. SMITH
Indiana University Press
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
Orders by e-mail
[email protected]
© 2006 by Andrea L. Smith
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American
University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only
exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Andrea L.
Colonial memory and postcolonial Europe : Maltese settlers in Algeria
and France / Andrea L. Smith.
p. cm. — (New anthropologies of Europe)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-34762-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21856-X
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. French—Algeria. 2. France—Ethnic relations. 3.
Maltese—France—Ethnic identity. I. Title. II. Series.
DT283.6.F7S65 2006
944’.90049279065—dc22
2005036037
1 2 3 4 5 11 10 09 08 07 06
Dedicated to my father
CONTENTS
⁄ ix
1. A Song in Malta 1
2. Maltese Settler Clubs in France 33
3. A Hierarchy of Settlers and the Liminal Maltese 63
4. The Algerian Melting Pot 98
5. The Ambivalence of Assimilation 119
6. The French-Algerian War and Its Aftermath 141
7. Diaspora, Rejection, and Nostalgérie 160
8. Settler Ethnicity and Identity Politics in Postcolonial France 189
9. Place, Replaced: Malta as Algeria in the Pied-noir Imagination 210
⁄ 233
⁄ 245
⁄ 259
MAPS
1. Malta, Algeria, and southern France xiv
2. Malta in the Mediterranean 43
3. Stages in the French conquest of Algeria 67
4. Divisions and principal towns of French Algeria 69
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The people in this book occupy an ambiguous position between moder-
nity and postmodernity, between colonial Africa and postcolonial Europe.
They have migrated from Malta to North Africa to France, and so much of
our time together over the past ten years has been spent returning mentally
to these former homes and former times. This is a book about how places
endure while people scatter, and the dynamic politics of the past: how here
conjures up there, and how now reminds us of then.
I gathered many debts as I traveled the globe in search of traces of the
pasts we discussed together, in nearly a mirror image of their migratory
journey, seeking out consultants and archives across France, Tunisia, Malta,
and the U.K. Fieldwork was conducted in France, Malta, Tunisia, and the
U.K. from January 1995 through June 1996 and in January 1998, June
2001, and April–May 2004, and funded by grants from the Social Science
Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Re-
search, the American Institute for Maghreb Studies, and the Academic Re-
search Committee of Lafayette College. Writing was supported by the
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the University of Arizona, and the
National Endowment for the Humanities. I am grateful to these organiza-
tions for their support of this research.
My research in France was greatly enhanced by my many meetings, dis-
cussions, and seminars with Michel Wieviorka, Lucette Valensi, and Fran-
çois Pouillon of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. I thank Robert
Ilbert, Jean-Marie Gouillon, staff, and students at TELEMME (Temps, es-
paces, langages, Europe méridionale, méditerranéenne), Maison méditerrané-
enne des sciences de l’homme, of the Université de Provence, for inviting me
into their stimulating academic community during my stay in Aix-en-
Provence. This project never would have gotten underway had it not been
for the immediate accueil of Marc Donato. Jean-Jacques Jordi was ever
ready to offer advice, guidance, and motivation. Claude Delaye and his col-
leagues at Génealogie Algérie Maroc Tunisie assisted me as I worked for days
in their archives, as did the librarians of the Centre de documentation his-
torique sur l’Algérie.
In Malta, the staff at the National Archives, Rabat, were remarkably
persistent in locating documents for me. I thank Stephen Degiorgio and
Tomas Freller for providing the spirited fellowship which made my research
there so engaging. Father Laurence Attard of the Emigrants Commission in
Valletta offered important advice. In Tunis, I especially thank Mickey and
his comrades, Habib ...
