(Page 19 of 33) - Making Differences Matter: Liberal Reform Movements and Nationalist Mobilization in Colonial Morocco and Algeria authored by Lawrence, Adria.

position created hostility between his group and the Front Populaire, and he was arrested and
imprisoned in August 1937 for 2 years. Following his release, the party was banned and a
number of other leaders arrested. This repression may explain why the party was unable to grow
substantially before World War II.

The second political movement was the Algerian Communist Party (P.C.A.), founded in
association with the P.C.F. in 1935, and led by two French militants, Barthel and Deloche. In
1937, the Algerian Communist Party had over 5,000 members.

The party initially had mostly

European members, although native recruitment began in the early 1930s, causing some
Europeans to leave the party. When the P.C.F. joined the Front Populaire, Europeans began to
return to the party. The P.C.A. condemned the nationalist aims of Messali’s organizations
(Ruedy 1992, p. 139). The P.C.A. was ordered dissolved in1939.

During World War II, the platform of the évolués began to shift toward independence, although
some continued to advocate reform, if not assimilation, rather than separation. In 1943, Ferhat
Abbas issued his “Manifesto of the Algerian People,” demanding immediate participation of
Muslims in government. In a supplement, he called for a separate Algerian state. After French
authorities placed him under house arrest, he recanted and reaffirmed his loyalty to France
(Horne 1977, p. 43). In 1944, Abbas organized the group “Friends of the Manifesto of Freedom
(Amis du Manifest de la Liberté or A.M.L.), which aimed to create an Algerian republic
federated with France (Abun-Nasr 1975, p. 323). This was a clear shift away from inclusion,
even though he did not speak of full independence. Writing in 1946, Ali Maalem (1946),
another Algerian francophone, argued that it was not too late for France to change its policy and
find a solution within the existing system. Speaking of the new turn to nationalism, he wrote,
“Nationalism is not virulent, nor exclusive, and even if it opposes the colonial idea, it could be
perfectly compatible with a new [colonial] attitude” (p. 320). Like Abbas, he advocated a move
toward federation, rather than complete separation. But after the war, nationalist mobilization in
favor of independence became an important part of the ideology of Algerian activists, and during
the Algerian war of independence, nationalist separatism was indisputably the dominant ideology
of Algerian politics.

Understandings of the Algerian Reform Movement
The argument that the reform movement was quite different from the independence movement is
less controversial for Algeria than it is for Morocco. Historians represent the two movements as
ideologically distinct, and note conflict between the organizations involved. Assimilation and
separation appear ideologically opposed to one another, and it seems less clear that one would be
a first step toward the other. Still, some of the same arguments put forth to demonstrate that the
Moroccan liberal reform movement was a manifestation of nationalism are also present in
historical work on Algeria. There is the same tendency, in some accounts of Algerian history, to
look back through the lens of the later nationalist success, and assume that all other alternatives
were either nationalism in disguise, or doomed to failure. As one recent historian put it, the

Notice sur les Mouvements Politiques Indigènes en Afrique du Nord, Mars, 1940. Théâtre d’opérations de

l’Afrique du Nord, Etat-major, Bureau Politique. SHAT 3H1417.

ibid.

Colonel Olié, “Le mouvements nationalistes en Algérie.” Report of the General Residence of France in Morocco,

July 1949. SHAT 3H1417. For more on leftist political currents in Algeria, see Nouschi (1979) and Tlili (1984).