French rule thinned administrators per Muslim while refusing to create indigenous officials

Evidence

The institution of the commune mixte contained many of the elements of what, by the mid-twentieth century, was most unsatisfactory about French rule in Algeria. It was, in fact, an adaptation in modern dress of Père Bugeaud’s Bureaux Arabes, which had worked well enough in the early days, but it was simply not equipped to cope with either the advanced technical problems of the twentieth century or its vastly expanded Muslim populations. It is revealing that, whereas in 1922 there were 300 European administrators for the communes mixtes for three million Muslims governed by them, by 1954 the ratio had shifted to 257 for four and a half million. At Arris, for instance, the epicentre of the 1954 revolt in the Aurès, one administrator and two assistants were in charge of 60,000 dispersed over a wide and inaccessible area. The fault lay, to a large extent, with French policy which — possibly out of fear of releasing a genie from the bottle — had consistently shied away from creating an indigenous administrative corps. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 93

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: French rule in Algeria steadily degraded its administrators relative to the governed population; Lack of reliable chieftains drove the French to direct canton-based administration; Loyal Muslim caids were alienated by France’s abolition of their system — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 477 (+2 more)

Related

• French rule in Algeria steadily degraded its administrators relative to the governed population (similarity 0.93)
• Lack of reliable chieftains drove the French to direct canton-based administration (similarity 0.93)
• French colonial administration was concentrated in Algiers while vast regions were under-administered (similarity 0.83)
• Loyal Muslim caids were alienated by France’s abolition of their system (similarity 0.81)
• Algeria lacked the established governing structures that Tunisia and Morocco enjoyed (similarity 0.79)
• Young nationalists contemptuously dismissed French-appointed Muslim intermediaries as rubber stamps (similarity 0.79)
• France’s counterinsurgency killed Algeria’s potential post-war leadership (similarity 0.79)
• French assimilation destroyed Algerian leadership cadres that could have been negotiating partners (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• French assimilation destroyed Algerian leadership cadres that could have been negotiating partners #expands (0.60) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 317
• Young nationalists contemptuously dismissed French-appointed Muslim intermediaries as rubber stamps #complicates (0.50) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 95