Electric News in Colonial Algeria

by Arthur Asseraf

How do the things which connect us also serve to divide us? Electric News in Colonial Algeria traces how news circulated in a particularly divided society: Algeria under French rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It tells a different history of globalization, one which puts the experience of everyday people at the centre. The years between 1881 and 1940 were those of maximum colonial power in North Africa; a period of intense technological revolution, global high imperialism, and the expansion of settler colonialism. Algerians became connected to international networks of news, and local people followed distant events with great interest. But once news reached Algeria, accounts of recent events often provoked conflict as they moved between different social groups. In a society split between its native majority and a substantial settler minority, distant wars led to riots. Circulation and polarisation were two sides of the same coin.

Examining a range of sources in multiple languages across colonial society, Electric News in Colonial Algeria offers a new understanding of the spread of news. News was a whole ecosystem in which new technologies such as the printing press, telegraph, cinema, and radio interacted with older media like songs, rumours, letters, and manuscripts. The French government watched anxiously over these developments, monitoring Algerians' reactions to news through an extensive network of surveillance that often ended up spreading news rather than controlling its flow. By tracking what different people thought of as news, this history helps us reconsider the relationship between time, media, and historical change.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 2019

Reviews

[Mattie Culver · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book offers so much to the understanding of colonial media and its evolution. While it is easy to draw a direct link between the press and revolutionary fervor, Asseraf nuances this assumption by exposing the inadvertent consequences of the telegraph, the radio, cinema, etc in Algeria. As he explains, the perception of unfolding events in foreign Arab states - regardless of their accuracy - both gave non-citizens in Algeria a link to a wider world through Islam and a space to project opinions regarding their own country in a highly censored state. While familiar with the distinct divide between citizens and non-citizens in Algeria, I never considered how this divide was compounded by foreign phenomena through new forms of media which were ironically introduced to strengthen the tie between France and her most valued colony. In particular, I enjoyed learning about how Algerian understanding of the Ottoman Empire, Italy's colonization of Libya, the Spanish-Civil War, and uncertainty regarding Palestine led to a growing resentment towards colonialism in any form. By debunking the oversimplified narrative of alignment between media, the state, and its people, Asseraf places media in its complicated but necessary historical context and in so doing challenges a teleological approach to colonial history.

[Rowena Abdul Razak · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book about the role of the news in colonial Algeria. Forces us to think about the news as a way to experience the history of different people living at the same time (to quote the author’s own words). Beautifully blends political, social and media history and provides a holistic picture of colonial Algeria. Its inhabitants are not just objects but real players. Arthur writes elegantly and has the rare gift of presenting history as something tangible and familiar. What a delight!