The New White Race: Settler Colonialism and the Press in French Algeria, 1860-1914

The New White Race traces the development of the press in Algeria between 1860 and 1914, examining the particular role of journalists in shaping the power dynamics of settler colonialism. Constrained in different ways by the limitations imposed on free expression in a colonial context, diverse groups of European settlers, Algerian Muslims, and Algerian Jews nevertheless turned to the press to articulate their hopes and fears for the future of the land they inhabited and to imagine forms of community which would continue to influence political debates until the Algerian War. The frontiers of these imagined communities did not necessarily correlate with those of the nation--either French or Algerian--but framed processes of identification that were at once local, national, and transnational.

The New White Race explores these processes of cultural and political identification, highlighting the production practices, professional networks, and strategic-linguistic choices mobilized by journalists as they sought to influence the sentiments of their readers and the decisions of the French state. Announcing the creation of a "new white race" among the mixed European population of Algeria, settler journalists hoped to increase the autonomy of the settler colony without forgoing the protections afforded by their French rulers. Their ambivalent expressions of "French" belonging, however, reflected tensions among the colonizers; these tensions were ably exploited by those who sought to transform or contest French imperial rule.

Author: Charlotte Ann Legg
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 06/01/2021
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.36lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9781496208507


Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2022

About the Author
Charlotte Ann Legg is a lecturer in French studies at the University of London Institute in Paris.