Book Review

Middle East and Northern Africa

"Chère Algérie" ("Dear Algeria") has the same double meaning in French that it has in English: Algeria was both an object of affection and represented a high expense. Daniel Lefeuvre, the leading student of Jacques Marseille, follows his teacher's views that empire was overall an unprofitable venture. In this study, based on his dissertation, Lefeuvre looks at the economic relations between France and Algeria from the 1930s to independence, concentrating on government-business relations in regards to the North African possession. He documents the truth that President Charles de Gaulle shared with his countrymen in April 1961 when he pronounced that "Algeria costs us—that's the least one can say—more than it provides."	1
A recurrent theme throughout the period of Lefeuvre's study is that the successive governments that shaped economic policies for Algeria were less interested in profit than in social and political stability in Algeria. If the government tried to direct investments to Algeria, it was to prevent what it recognized to be a coming implosion as a result of the colony's dramatic population increase. Because employment opportunities were unable to keep up with population growth, Muslims were becoming increasingly restive, open to nationalist propaganda. As late as 1958, when de Gaulle instituted the Constantine plan for the industrialization of Algeria, economic growth and stability were seen as effective antidotes to nationalism.	2
The study is based on hitherto unavailable government documents and an unprecedented access of a number of important business archives. They reveal that French business on the whole was reluctant to invest in Algeria, seeing it as unprofitable because its inefficient labor force and poor communications made production costly, while the market was too restricted. At its height, the European population numbered one million with an average income that was twenty percent less than that of metropolitan French citizens, while the Muslim population prior to the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954 numbered eight million, with an average income that was but a tenth that of the European inhabitants of the colony. This was not a tempting market for French businesses desiring to expand or diversify.	3
Lefeuvre starts his account in the 1930s, during the Depression. He finds that while France's trade increased with Algeria in this period, the terms of trade benefitted the latter. For instance, wanting to protect Algeria's wine market, French authorities raised tariffs on Italian and Spanish wine, considerably cheaper than that from the North African colony. The French consumer was subsidizing the Algerian wine maker. From then until the end of colonization, Algeria imported from France more than it exported to it, creating a deficit that was covered by the metropole. "The province was on artificial respiration," remarks Lefeuvre (p. 48). Since France provided protection for Algerian goods, they found a ready market, unavailable elsewhere. Other Mediterranean countries successfully competed with Algerian agriculture, depriving Algeria of any markets but those of France.	. . .