sardonically; “to permit a remark about their manner of overtaking an automobile and running over pedestrians is an insult to their virility.…” Again, it was an attitude that some Britons may at times have encountered in countries of the old Commonwealth, and its inversion was an isolationist, separatist sense of superiority that could vest the pied noir with a vastly over-inflated notion of his own weight in world councils. With a feeling of just pride the pieds noirs recalled that, in 1914, it was Bône and Philippeville that had drawn the first German naval salvoes; and, once more, Camus seems to strike a chord of utmost fidelity when, at the conclusion of The Outsider , he reveals that the last wish of his anti-hero was to occupy the centre of the stage: “for me to feel less lonely, all that remained was to hope that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration”.
At the time of the projected Blum—Viollette reforms, a pied noir financier remarked to Viollette: “Monsieur le Gouverneur-Général, you reason in the French of France, but we reason in the French of Algeria.” It was not at all the same language, as was to become tragically plain later, and in order to understand events from 1954 onwards it is necessary to accept the existence of three totally distinct peoples — the French of France, the French of Algeria, and the Muslims of Algeria.
In the outer world, the most obvious kinsmen to the pied noir are the whites of South Africa, Rhodesia and the “Deep South” of the United States. In terms of the numbers of generations that had come to regard Algeria as “home”, and had absolutely nowhere else in the world to go, he stood somewhere between the Afrikaaner and the Rhodesian. At the opposite ends of the social scale, comparisons in their way of life and attitudes could be made between the grands colons and the plantation owners of the “Old South”, while the least privileged elements of Bab-el-Oued or Belcourt bore a marked affinity to the “poor whites” of Faulkner, coexisting uneasily alongside the blacks in the torrid, over-crowded American cities of the same epoch. In Algeria, however, there was no form of segregation so overt as apartheid, or “Jim Crow” laws on buses; on the other hand, there was nothing resembling the miscegenation of Brazil, or even Mozambique.
An Arab, but dressed like a person .…
If the pied noir attitude to the indigenous Algerian could be summed up in a word, it was, simply, indifference. He was regarded, says Pierre Nora, “as an anonymous figure of whom it sufficed to know that one provided his welfare, so that one had no need to be concerned about him”. In so far as he supplied the labour essential for exploiting the country, he was simply “a part of the patrimoine immobilier [real estate inheritance]”. At best he would be treated with paternalism, fairness and a kind of formal acceptance of his different religion and culture. But too often he was regarded with disdain, and from a vantage of superiority; which manifested itself in many different ways, and more insidiously among the poorer levels of whites where the frictional contact was closest. Bicot, melon, figuier, sale raton [ 2 ] — there was a plethora of derogatory slang for an inferior race that sprang all to readily to the lips. Equally a host of preconceived inherited notions about the Algerian were accepted uncritically, without examining either their veracity or causation: he was incorrigibly idle and incompetent; he only understood force; he was an innate criminal, and an instinctive rapist. Sexually based prejudices and fears ran deep, akin to those elsewhere of white city-dwellers surrounded by preponderant and ever-growing Negro populations: “They can see our women, we can’t see theirs”; the Arab had a plurality of wives, and therefore was possibly more virile (an intolerable thought to the
At the time of the projected Blum—Viollette reforms, a pied noir financier remarked to Viollette: “Monsieur le Gouverneur-Général, you reason in the French of France, but we reason in the French of Algeria.” It was not at all the same language, as was to become tragically plain later, and in order to understand events from 1954 onwards it is necessary to accept the existence of three totally distinct peoples — the French of France, the French of Algeria, and the Muslims of Algeria.
In the outer world, the most obvious kinsmen to the pied noir are the whites of South Africa, Rhodesia and the “Deep South” of the United States. In terms of the numbers of generations that had come to regard Algeria as “home”, and had absolutely nowhere else in the world to go, he stood somewhere between the Afrikaaner and the Rhodesian. At the opposite ends of the social scale, comparisons in their way of life and attitudes could be made between the grands colons and the plantation owners of the “Old South”, while the least privileged elements of Bab-el-Oued or Belcourt bore a marked affinity to the “poor whites” of Faulkner, coexisting uneasily alongside the blacks in the torrid, over-crowded American cities of the same epoch. In Algeria, however, there was no form of segregation so overt as apartheid, or “Jim Crow” laws on buses; on the other hand, there was nothing resembling the miscegenation of Brazil, or even Mozambique.
An Arab, but dressed like a person .…
If the pied noir attitude to the indigenous Algerian could be summed up in a word, it was, simply, indifference. He was regarded, says Pierre Nora, “as an anonymous figure of whom it sufficed to know that one provided his welfare, so that one had no need to be concerned about him”. In so far as he supplied the labour essential for exploiting the country, he was simply “a part of the patrimoine immobilier [real estate inheritance]”. At best he would be treated with paternalism, fairness and a kind of formal acceptance of his different religion and culture. But too often he was regarded with disdain, and from a vantage of superiority; which manifested itself in many different ways, and more insidiously among the poorer levels of whites where the frictional contact was closest. Bicot, melon, figuier, sale raton [ 2 ] — there was a plethora of derogatory slang for an inferior race that sprang all to readily to the lips. Equally a host of preconceived inherited notions about the Algerian were accepted uncritically, without examining either their veracity or causation: he was incorrigibly idle and incompetent; he only understood force; he was an innate criminal, and an instinctive rapist. Sexually based prejudices and fears ran deep, akin to those elsewhere of white city-dwellers surrounded by preponderant and ever-growing Negro populations: “They can see our women, we can’t see theirs”; the Arab had a plurality of wives, and therefore was possibly more virile (an intolerable thought to the
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