Thousands of French urban poor were deported to colonize Algeria between 1848 and 1851

Evidence

The discrepant and confused accounts of the numbers of colon who left for Algeria between 1848 and 1851—and the conditions under which they did so—is itself instructive. By some counts, 14,000 “Parisian workers” were sent by decree in September 1848, followed by 3,000 “republicans” after the 1851 coup d’état of Louis Napoleon. “Disorder” in Paris led to 450 political deportations to the Algerian penal colony of Lambese, and deportations to at least six former colonies agricoles (agricultural colonies) newly converted into colonies penitentiaires (penal colonies). Thousands were recruited as well under an intensive colonization program to make colon out of a toxic mix of unprepared urban poor, alternately referred to as the unemployed (les sans-travail), the insurgent (les révoltés), and the rootless and dispossessed (les déracinés). — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 767

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• QUESTION: The discrepancy between reported counts (14,000 vs 3,000) is itself noted as instructive — interesting interpretive puzzle about colonial record-keeping.

Related

• French political deportees and urban poor were exported to Algeria as penal colonists (similarity 0.91)

Broader Connections

• Forcibly transported Africans became citizens by their coerced relocation #corroborates (0.50)
• French Muslim presence traces to Algeria’s 1830-1962 colonial conquest #expands (0.40) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 723