Research Project at the Centre
Mediterranean Entanglements: France and Algeria between Colonization and Decolonization
This project examines Mediterranean entanglements between France and Algeria during the colonial and the postcolonial period. Its principal goal is to explore the Mediterranean dimension of the French colonization and decolonization of Algeria and to contribute to a better understanding of the specific role Southern France played within these processes. By analyzing interactions between port cities, rural areas of the Midi, and the island of Corsica on the one hand and Algeria on the other, the project brings together strands of scholarship that are compartmentalized into subfields overcoming dichotomies between metropolitan and colonial history as it has been demanded by postcolonial scholars during the last decades. A core hypothesis is that Southern Europe and North Africa were so closely linked in the imperial age that they cannot be analyzed separately. In this way, the project argues for a partial integration of Mediterranean history into the field of European history.