The history of French colonization in Algeria had experienced a phenomenon which continues to give rise to debates more than 62 years after the independence of our country, but also questions about the future of the monuments erected from 1845 to celebrate the glories of the conquest and the memory of French generals and soldiers.
Should we preserve these monuments as historical testimony for younger generations or should we get rid of this heritage recalling one of the most painful phases in Algeria’s history?
It is in this context that the world-renowned American anthropologist, Susan Slyomovics, professor emeritus at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), in the United States of America, better known for her admirable serenity, her ease in argumentation and his French with a Californian accent, recently hosted a meeting at the French Institute of Constantine to present the content of his new and very interesting work, published in 2024, entitled Decolonized Monuments – The French colonial heritage of Algeria, in the presence of the painter and sculptor, Ahmed Benyahia, the one who marked his era through his tireless fight for the preservation of historical heritage in Constantine.
The latter did not miss this opportunity to remind the audience that Susan Slyomovics, having devoted numerous articles and studies to various aspects of the cultural and historical heritage of Algeria, knowing it perfectly, traveled nearly 10,500 km from the United States to Algeria to present a work which is of great importance, because it deals with a subject which should be of equal interest to Algerians, citizens and university researchers. During this meeting, the author of the book returned to the phenomenon called “Statutomania” which had appeared in Algeria a few years after the capture of Algiers, to glorify the victories of the French army and its officers who led the expedition and various other battles.
This gave rise to numerous war memorials erected in memory of soldiers killed during the Great War (1914-1918) and the Second World War (1939-1945), as well as several steles, commemorative plaques, busts and statues of French generals installed in public spaces in several Algerian cities.
Asked by El Watan about the reasons which pushed her to write this book, Susan Slyomovics revealed that the idea was born several years ago, when she was invited to an international conference in Tlemcen at the end of which the organizers had asked him to still stay in Algeria.
The stay lasted three months during which she met her future husband and discovered many things about Algeria. “It was from there that I began to be interested in the history of Algeria,” she replied. An interest which will develop into a passion over the years to lead to other visits and stays in Algerian cities where she will decide to do more in-depth studies on the historical monuments of the colonial era.
A historical heritage to be preserved
Met two years ago in Constantine, while she was preparing her book, the American anthropologist insisted on “the importance for the Algerians of preserving this heritage which belongs to them and not to the French, because it remains a precious testimony on the effects of colonialism and as material proof of this pivotal period in the history of Algeria, because if they one day decide to eradicate these monuments what will they say to the future generations in erasing an entire section of their memory.
She puts forward as a perfect example the history of the Constantine War Memorial, built in memory of the child soldiers of the city of three religions (Muslims, Christians and Jews) who died at the front during the First World War, the construction of which had begun just after the end of this war to last 12 years, and which remains the only one of its kind and the most beautiful in Algeria. It recalls the attempt by an association of pieds noirs from Marseille to repatriate it to France, and they were ready to dismantle it stone by stone, and even pay money to the municipal authorities of Constantine, if not the intervention by the artist Ahmed Benyahia to preserve it and keep it in Algeria, thanks to the former mayor of the city at the time, the late Hacene Boudjenana.
A story that was told during the lively meeting at the French Institute of Constantine by Ahmed Benyahia himself. “A few months after independence, the mayor of Constantine at the time, Hacene Boudjenana, may God rest his soul, contacted me to ask my opinion about the visit of a group of French people who came to see him at the municipality to ask for authorization to dismantle the War Memorial piece by piece in order to repatriate it to France and they even offered money.
All the members of the municipality agreed, considering that it was a colonial monument that had to be gotten rid of,” noted Benyahia, who remembers the smallest details of this episode. “I asked Si Boudjenana to refuse this offer, because it was a question of the memory of the city which belongs to its inhabitants and not to the pieds-noirs and this is how the War Memorial was saved; because if we had accepted his repatriation, what would be left for the history of Constantine,” he said.
More than 50 years later, history will prove him right, when this same monument hosted on November 11, 2015, for the first time in independent Algeria, a ceremony celebrating the 97th anniversary of the Armistice of November 11, 1918, in the presence of the French ambassador to Algeria, Bernard Emié, the German ambassador, Götz Lingenthal and the wali of Constantine at the time, Hocine Ouadah. This monument remains the material testimony of the sacrifices made by Algerians on the long road to freedom.
The fruit of long field work
The work on decolonized monuments produced by Susan Slyomovics is the result of long field work that took years during which she had to travel to Algeria and France and conduct interviews with Algerian artists and specialists. and French heritage. It is the culmination of an in-depth study of colonial nostalgia, the reaction of both parties to this heritage and the period of decolonization.
In this 330-page book, the author traces the history of Algeria’s colonial monuments, located in Algiers, Oran, Constantine, Sétif and Sidi Bel Abbes, their future after independence, their role as witnesses of a contested colonial past, the reasons and circumstances of their repatriation and the fate reserved for them. “France had taken the decision to repatriate the monuments erected in Algeria to departments with a Pied Noir majority for reasons linked to memory. Some of these monuments have become places of pilgrimage for these veterans of French Algeria,” she indicated during her speech.
However, this decision was not easy to implement, as negotiations had to be conducted with the Algerian authorities. Susan Slyomovics revealed to the public present at the presentation of her book, a list preserved in the archives of the Defense historical service at the Château de Vincennes in Paris, containing around thirty monuments, steles, busts and other plaques intended to be repatriated to France . Many of these monuments have been repatriated legally, or clandestinely, totally or in part, while others still remain preserved thanks to the interventions of men of culture and associations, after attempts at sale and demolition which were foiled. .
As examples, the speaker cited the case of the Oran war memorial dedicated to the victims of the First World War, the work of the sculptor Albert Pommier, inaugurated in Oran in 1927. It was transferred without its original base to Lyon in 1967 to be placed on a new base in the Duchère district, which is home to a large community of pieds noirs.
It will become a place of meditation and memory for them. The case of the statue of Marshal Bugeaud is evocative. The latter which has stood since 1852 on the former rue d’Isly, today Larbi Ben M’hidi, will be repatriated to Dordogne in 1967 to be replaced by the equestrian statue of Emir Abdelkader. A choice which illustrates a form of reappearance of space and memory, but a historical revenge, because we do not forget that this same Bugeaud was responsible for the massacres of thousands of Algerians, notably during the famous fumades and the scorched earth method of the 1840s.
Other cases have also been revealed such as that of the statue of Lamoricière in Constantine unbolted after independence and shipped to Marseille, the Monument to the dead of the Legion of Honor in Sidi Bel Abbes, initially built in 1931, then rebuilt in 1963 in Aubagne, the Monument to the Dead of Algiers, spared after independence then covered with a concrete formwork on which a memorial sculpted by the painter was created M’hammed Issiakhem.
For Susan Slyomovics, the debate on whether or not to dismantle commemorative statues from a given era is not specific to Algeria. Twenty years ago in the United States, calls were made to eradicate statues from the era of slavery, sparking widespread controversy around an important period in the history of this country.
Something that was also evident in Algeria for the statue of Aïn Fouara in the city of Sétif, having suffered acts of vandalism, because it was considered a colonial heritage, which pushed many citizens to ask that it be preserved in a museum to be well protected.
