Divided Rule. Mary Dewhurst Lewis

recent triumphs in the AOF and arguing instead that French authority was “much less effective” in its Soudanese colony than in the Tunisian protectorate.³⁹ It would be perverse, they thought, to offer AOF migrants protection that they were unwilling to give Tunisians. Seeking a legal rationale for this argument, they maintained that there was no law pertaining to the Soudanese that was “analogous” to the Algerian Senatus Consulte. With no legal basis for claiming nationality, the procureur de la république (attorney general) argued, the Soudanese could not be considered French nationals in Tunisia.⁴⁰ Nor, exactly, were they foreigners. Instead, jurists for the protectorate claimed that Muslim subjects, regardless of geographic origin, owed allegiance to the bey—a Muslim sovereign.⁴¹ Here, as in many parts of the French Empire, the leaders of secular France “accommodated” religion where it served their interests to do so.⁴²

      The expansion of France’s empire also raised new questions regarding the juridical status of Jews, a matter complicated by their legal standing in Algeria, where the Decree of 24 October 1870 (Crémieux Decree) granted French citizenship to Jews in the annexed portions of Algeria collectively, whereas Tunisian Jews remained native subjects. France’s occupation of the M‘zab, a Saharan oasis zone located south of the annexed departments and home to distinctive Berber Muslim and Jewish cultures, occurred shortly after the Tunisian conquest and almost immediately precipitated a controversy over the legal status of M‘zabite Jews.⁴³ General Félix-Gustave Saussier, the commander of the French army in Algeria, and Charles-Joseph-Marie Loysel, his immediate predecessor, squared off on the question—the latter argued that M‘zabite Jews were citizens, while the former contended that to consider them as such could “compromise the moral success of our occupation” by exempting them from taxes that Muslims of the region paid.⁴⁴ Both the governor general of Algeria, Louis Tirman, and the justice minister, Paul Deves, agreed with Saussier. As Devès put it, the Crémieux Decree had no bearing on M‘zabites, since it explicitly applied to “native Israelites in the departments of Algeria.” The M‘zab was not part of these departments, and the “the legislature’s intention in 1870 was not to make a law for countries that were not yet French.”⁴⁵ Devès drew far-reaching implications from his own argument, for he likened the M‘zabites to all other Jews who found themselves outside the territories of Algeria’s three departments at the time of the Crémieux Decree’s promulgation; these Jews and their descendants, he argued, fell outside the decree’s intended application and thus had no claim on French citizenship.

      In focusing on the applicability of the Crémieux Decree to M‘zabite Jews, Devès failed to consider whether M‘zabite Jews could be considered French subjects, and thereby enjoy a number of civil rights as Frenchmen, even if they were not full citizens with electoral rights in Algeria. Only full citizenship would exempt them from paying local Algerian taxes, but subjecthood alone was enough to earn them protection abroad. The fact that Tunisia’s resident general reiterated this point in a 1908 directive suggests that there remained considerable confusion or disagreement about their status for many years after the conquest of the M‘zab.⁴⁶ Indeed, the issue had legal significance beyond the immediate question of Jews’ treatment in Tunisia. The French jurist Émile Larcher, who otherwise supported a broad interpretation of the nationality rights of Algerians living abroad, contended that M‘zabites could not be considered French subjects because the annexation of the M‘zab was unconstitutional. No law or decree tied France to the M‘zab, according to Larcher—only a forceful presence. Considering the M‘zab’s main settlement of Ghardaïa part of the Algiers department was, Larcher concluded, “a geographical fantasy.”⁴⁷ At best, he thought, M‘zabites could be considered protégés.

      MAP 3. Map of Algeria showing the “Territories of the South,” including the M‘zab. Map by C. Scott Walker.

      Other parts of the Sahara posed similar problems. Protectorate officials sometimes had difficulty determining the status of persons who, as the resident general Stéphen Pichon diplomatically put it, “originated from places whose political situation is not clearly established.”⁴⁸ Having in mind people from regions such as the Touat oasis zone (see Map 3), Pichon asked the foreign minister whether it might be an “opportune moment to determine by a common agreement what one means by ‘Algeria’ and ‘territories annexed to Algeria.’” This was a question not only of geography but also of chronology, for it was “equally indispensable to determine from what date the inhabitants are French subjects.”⁴⁹

      Pichon’s dilemma illustrated the extent to which the smooth functioning of protectorate rule in Tunisia could be thwarted by the indeterminacy of French rule in other parts of North Africa. Though he called for a “common accord,” his interests actually differed quite dramatically from those of the Algerian governor general, Paul Révoil. Whereas Pichon wanted to know where Algeria stopped and the annexed territories started, the governor general wrote that “there can be no question of a distinction, in my view, between ‘Algeria’ and ‘territories annexed to Algeria.’” As far as “natives of these countries” are concerned, he continued, there was no difference in their nationality. This statement was remarkable because, by Révoil’s own admission, there had been no “annexation properly speaking,” only a “police action in regions that we had always regarded as having belonged to French territory.”⁵⁰ Thus, even though he conceded that it was currently impossible for him to “delimit” the physical boundaries of the southern territories, he nonetheless deemed it important to consider as a French subject any person coming from a place that was under nominal French authority.⁵¹ Never mind that Pichon’s predecessor had just made virtually the opposite argument with regard to migrants from the French Soudan.