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France is required to return sooner or later the Algerian archives that it took with it when it left the country that it colonized, plundered and tried to eliminate the identity of the people in all its dimensions, declared Professor Abdelaziz Filali, one of the five Algerian members of the Algerian-French joint commission, during a meeting on memory and archives held Saturday at the headquarters of the Abdelhamid Ben Badis Foundation, the day after the festivities celebrating the anniversary of independence.
Lecturer at the University of Constantine, Abdelaziz Filali, currently president of the Abdelhamid Ben Badis Foundation and a fine specialist in the late sheikh, thinker and founding member of the Association of Algerian Muslim Ulemas, dwelt at length on the practices of the former colonizer. He will recall on this occasion that colonial France tried everything from 1830 to eliminate the identity of the individual and the Algerian nation. “It attacked the tangible and intangible heritage of Algerian society including the language, religion and traditions.” As examples, the speaker will cite the transformation of mosques into churches or stables and the destruction of schools existing at that time.
“Among the most serious crimes of colonial France was the seizure of manuscripts by order of the French army, which, as soon as it set foot in places of worship, sought out the treasures they contained, such as books and manuscripts,” he continued. These practices also affected public libraries and those belonging to individuals, certain families of notables from Constantine, like the library of Ben Lafgoun.
- Filali also suggested that during a trip to the national library in the French capital, the Algerian members of the commission found that some priceless Algerian manuscripts and books dated back to a pre-colonial period and had likely been looted in the early hours of colonization in 1830.
He will specify, in this regard, that the Algerian side is resolutely committed to the recovery of all the archives, especially since international conventions on archives support the Algerian thesis. He will cite as an example the archives that have no connection with the French side and that were taken away by the colonizer, such as correspondence between the Algerian State and other States such as Turkey or Spain.
The professor estimates that only 12% of the documents and archives have been returned to date. An operation which, he specified, was started in 1967 at the insistence of the late President Houari Boumediène when 47 boxes were handed over to the Algerian authorities. A total of 152 others followed in 1975 during the visit of President Giscard d’Estaing. About fifteen were recovered in the 1980s and barely four in 2000. More than 88% are still waiting to be returned. The speaker also does not fail to point out that the two presidents, Algerian, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and French, Emmanuel Macron, are driven by a real political dynamic to try to resolve the problem of memory.
Asked about the rise of the extreme right in France, which has a strong chance of winning the majority, Mr. Filali preferred to refrain from commenting on the second round of elections. For him, Algeria will try by all means to recover its archives regardless of the tendencies of the French government.
Note that Abdelaziz Filali is one of the ten historians making up the joint Algerian-French commission. Alongside the five Algerian historians, Mohamed El Korso, Idir Hachi, Mohamed Lahcen Zighidi (co-chair of the commission), and Djamel Yahiaoui. The French side is represented by Benjamin Stora (co-chair), Jacques Frémeaux, Jean-Jacques Jordi, Tramor Quemeneur and Florence Hudowicz. The commission has held three meetings to date, one of which was organized in November 2023 in Constantine.