Research Catalog

Title

Ecologies of imperialism in Algeria / Brock Cutler.

Author

Cutler, Brock

Publication

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2023]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 224 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm.

Summary

• "Centered around a massive ecological disaster in which 800,000 Algerians died between 1865 and 1872, Ecologies of Imperialism in Algeria explores how repeated performance of divisions across an expansive ecosystem produced modern imperialism in nineteenth-century Algeria"--
• "Between 1865 and 1872 widespread death and disease unfolded amid the most severe ecological disaster in modern North African history: a plague of locusts destroyed crops during a disastrous drought that left many Algerians landless and starving. The famine induced migration that concentrated vulnerable people in unsanitary camps where typhus and cholera ran rampant. Before the rains returned and harvests normalized, some eight hundred thousand Algerians had died. In Ecologies of Imperialism in Algeria Brock Cutler explores how repeated eco-social divisions across an expansive ecosystem produced modern imperialism in nineteenth-century Algeria. Massive ecological crises-cultural as well as natural-cleaved communities from their homes, individuals from those communities, and society from its typical ecological relations. At the same time, the relentless, albeit slow-moving crisis of ongoing settler colonialism and extractive imperial capitalism cleaved Algeria to France in a new way. Eco-social divisions became apparent in performances of imperial power: officials along the Algerian-Tunisian border compulsively repeated narratives of "transgression" that over decades made the division real; a case of poisoned bread tied settlers in Algiers to Paris; Morocco-Algeria border violence exposed the exceptional nature of imperial sovereignty; a case of vagabondage in Oran evoked colonial gender binaries. In each case, factors in the broader ecosystem were implicated in performances of social division, separating political entities from each other, human from nature, rational from irrational, and women from men. Although these performances take place in the nineteenth-century Maghrib, the process they describe goes beyond those spatial and temporal limits-across the field of modern imperialism to the present day"--

Series Statement

France overseas : studies in empire and decolonization

Uniform Title

France overseas.

Subject

• 1800-1962
• Environmental disasters > Social aspects > History > Algeria > 19th century
• Droughts > Algeria > History > 19th century
• Colonies > Administration
• Droughts
• Ecology
• French colonies
• Algeria > Environmental conditions > 19th century
• Algeria > History > 1830-1962
• France > Colonies > Administration > History > Africa > 19th century
• Africa
• Algeria

Genre/Form

• History
• Informational works.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Rubble of Empire -- Lay of the land -- Performing the border -- Crisis ecologies -- Over the borderline -- Work, crime, and being human -- Toxic modernity -- It's about time.

Call Number

JFE 24-35

ISBN

• 9781496232533
• 1496232534
• 9781496236944 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781496236951 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2023012225

OCLC

1348924049

Author

Cutler, Brock, author.

Title

Ecologies of imperialism in Algeria / Brock Cutler.

Publisher

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2023]

Type of Content

text

still image

cartographic image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

France overseas : studies in empire and decolonization

France overseas.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1800-1962

Research Call Number

JFE 24-35