French planners designed staged child colonies to grow future Algerian settlers

Evidence

In its French variant one minutely conceived plan, outlined in 1854, envisioned “preparatory colonies” of young orphan children who would then be transferred to “colonies of transition” for those aged 12–14, where an adolescent would be “bronzed by the sun in Provence, Roussillon or Langeudoc” and finally transported to the “colonies of application” in Algeria where those aged 14–21 would learn proper cultivation of the soil and of the self. Out of this progression of children’s agricultural colonies would be the future colonists of North Africa’s French homesteads. Some of these plans were indeed carried out, though never with the order and detail of their paper visions. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 766

Categorization

• SHARE: The staged progression from orphan preparatory colonies through sun-bronzing transitional colonies to Algerian “colonies of application” is a specific historical detail for anyone studying French colonial social engineering.