Customer Reviews

Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (Society and Culture in the Modern Middle East)

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In working on my graduate thesis, this book proved to be the single most helpful book of the hundreds I looked at about Algeria. Lorcin carefully examines the way race and ethnicity were created by the French. Although she tends to overstate the pre-existing divisions between the Berber and Arab population prior to French occupation, her analysis clearly shows the colonial French tendency to group the world into good ethnic groups and bad ethnic groups. In this case the Berbers fit the first mold and the Arabs fit the latter in the French mindset.

Imperial Identities is a great book. It provides a wealth of information on Algeria's history under the French colonial rule. Those who read the book can learn a great deal about Algeria's history. It also shows, quite convincingly, how the French invented the Kabyle Myth to try to further their colonial aims in the country. (Elsewhere, Prof. Lorcin demonstrates how French imperialists imagined a link between French colonialism and the Roman influence in North Africa).

Prof. Lorcin has good intentions and she is knowledgeable about the topic at hand. In fact, she is more knowledgeable than Algerian scholars who could not see the continuation of the Kabyle Myth to this date.

This book contains some useful historical information but if an in-depth study of the history of Colonial Algeria is required, one can find better works.

Lorcin's simplistic thesis on the "Kabyle Myth" (Berber Good/Arab bad) really adds nothing to the reader's knowledge of the actual differences between the ethnic groups in Algeria. The fact that the European powers divided colonial societies along racial, ethic, and religious lines is widely understood.

To gain a true understanding of the differences (something I sought but unfortunately did not find in this book) between the Berbers and Arabs in Algeria would require a study into the Algerian people and nation itself rather than just the colonial archives of French, British, and Belgium libraries.