Internment of men left Algerian women to sustain families alone

Evidence

The tactic adopted by French colonialism since the beginning of the Revolution has had the result of separating the people from each other, of fragmenting them, with the sole objective of making any cohesion impossible. This effort was at first concentrated on the men, who were interned by tens of thousands. It is well known that in 1955–56, the number of internment centers multiplied rapidly over the national territory. Lodi, Paul Cazelles, Berrouaghia have held fathers and husbands captive for years. The Algerian woman, suddenly deprived of a husband, is obliged to find a means of feeding her children. She finds herself having to go from place to place, to run her errands, to live without the man’s protection. Sometimes she will go and visit her husband interned a hundred or two hundred kilometers from his home. When the men are not interned, they are to be found in the maquis, and the mothers who receive the family allowances distributed by the Liberation Front are left all alone to raise the children. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 390

Categorization

• QUESTION: Fanon names internment centers and population figures loosely here; comparing with French military archives on reserve camps would sharpen the factual basis.
• XREF: connects to: Armed revolutionary participation permanently transformed Algerian women’s self-identity and social role; Pacification devastated rural Algerian demographics, leaving eight women per two men; Colonial war fragmented the Algerian family and individualized its members

Related

• Pacification devastated rural Algerian demographics, leaving eight women per two men (similarity 0.92)
• Colonial war fragmented the Algerian family and individualized its members (similarity 0.85)
• The revolution affected Algerian women’s lives more profoundly than any other domain (similarity 0.81)
• Algerian women regrouped in camps turned displacement into revolutionary political organization (similarity 0.81)
• Colonial violence itself, not just revolutionary solidarity, reshaped Algerian feminine society (similarity 0.80)
• Militant women replaced marriageable women as aspirational models in Algeria (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial violence forced Algerian leaders to adopt women as combatants (similarity 0.80)
• Colonial violence against families forged Algerian national unity through shared suffering (similarity 0.80)
• Algerian women’s traditional seclusion made them the hardest nucleus of anti-colonial resistance (similarity 0.79)
• Algerian women’s confinement to the home was a conscious technique of struggle (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial confinement degraded Algerian women’s bodily mobility and assurance (similarity 0.79)
• Martyred women militants replaced marriage as the model for Algerian female identity (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial ethnographers claimed a hidden matriarchy lay beneath visible Algerian patriarchy (similarity 0.79)
• National liberation opened up new roles for Algerian women (similarity 0.78)
• Agrarian production roles determine gender hierarchy within Algerian families (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Colonial war fragmented the Algerian family and individualized its members #corroborates (0.70)