Three colon families controlled the greater part of Algeria’s economy by 1954

Evidence

Who in fact were the grands colons, the men of power, in Algeria by 1954? Three names, Borgeaud, Schiaffino, Blachette, were the big entrepreneurs of Algeria, between them controlling the greater part of the economy, and, pari passu, wielding immense political power. Top of the list was Henri Borgeaud, a Swiss by origin (two generations back), a big man in his mid-fifties who looked like a jolly farmer from the Auvergne and who was proud to proclaim himself a pioneer of the soil. Centre of the Borgeaud empire was the magnificent mansion of La Trappe at Staouéli, close to Algiers, which had passed to the Borgeaud family after its founders, the Trappist monks who gave it its name, were dispossessed during France’s secular “war” in 1905. La Trappe embraced 1,000 hectares of the best land in Algeria, producing regularly four million litres of wine per annum. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 168

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did Borgeaud’s land pass from anti-clerical dispossession to the single largest colon estate?