Colonial order was achieved by destroying villages and rebuilding them to match plans

Evidence

Enormous numbers of Algerians had their villages destroyed and were moved to the new settlements, in order to depopulate areas where it was proving difficult to establish colonial control, and to bring the population under closer surveillance. With the drawing of such plans, the achievement of order could be thought of in a particular way: as the relationship between the village and the plans. It could be achieved accordingly, with the conformity of village to plan reproduced in village after village, resulting in an ordered countryside of containers and contained. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 163

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels French urbanism in Algeria with Haussmann’s Paris and, later, military resettlement schemes; connects to Mitchell’s argument about the plan as a mode of power. — connects to: The manner of demolition, not just the demolition, destroyed a community’s will to resist — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 3728; Even a community’s own rebuilding plan was hijacked to destroy its best housing — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 3725