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Tag: Algeria

A View of Algeria in 1830

Posted in Research

In the decades leading up to the French invasion of Algiers, the Ottoman Regency experienced great social, economic, and political upheaval. Dating back to the sixteenth century, the Ottoman governance of Algeria organized political, as well as social, structures and hierarchies. Apart from the imposition of Ottoman governors – provincial beys and the dey who oversaw them from Algiers – and Janissaries to maintain order, Ottoman imperial governance placed few burdens on the Algerian people. The taxes were not onerous, and unlike Egypt, Algerians were never conscripted through the corvée system of forced labor.[58] However, as European nations were more easily able to exert power in the Mediterranean, Algerians endured greater economic hardship and political instability through the erosion of their revenue streams. At the same time that European navies successfully undermined Barbary privateering operations that stabilized Algerian politics, the Napoleonic Wars disrupted international trade. Moreover, the Bubonic Plague swept across North Africa every few years, decimating the population, even as it faced poor harvests and famine. By the time the French invaded in 1827, Algeria had lost much of its citizenry to disease and starvation.

Indigenous Persistence under American and French Settler Colonialism (AHA 2020)

Posted in Percolating Ideas, and Research

Presentation for the American Historical Association Conference (3-6 January 2020, Philadelphia, PA) Abstract: In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American and French settler colonial metropoles installed new governments, laws, and people in the hereditary lands of Native Americans and autochthonous Algerians, but they never successfully replaced all Indigenous…

Dependent Power: Ottoman Governors and Algerian Elites in Constantine, 1567-1837 (MESA 2019)

Posted in Percolating Ideas, and Research

Presentation at the Middle East Studies Association Conference (15-17 November 2019, New Orleans, LA) Abstract In 1713 Ottoman General Kelian-Hussein found himself in Constantine, Algeria to reestablish peace and preserve Ottoman sovereignty in the defiant region, but military acumen alone was not enough. Multiple governors had come and gone so…

HASTAC 2019: Silent No More – Using Text Mining and Social Networks to Decolonize the History of Algerian Women

Posted in Digital Humanities, and Research

This project seeks to decolonize knowledge about Algeria, as well as the archive by repurposing digital tools to surface the most marginalized voices and experiences. In combination, text mining, close reading, and network analysis enable us to uncover the untold stories of both exceptional and ordinary women who lived between 1567 and 1837, the period in which this region was an Ottoman territory.

By the Numbers: Constantine Governors in Ottoman Algeria, 1567-1837

Posted in Research

How did the Ottomans hold their empire together? 1800 miles separate Algiers and Istanbul (Constantinople on the map above). How did power flow from the center to the peripheries and back? Who exercised power and influence? How? The Ottoman Empire has long held a fascination for scholars, but only recently…

Visualizing Algerian history through time & space

Posted in Digital Humanities, and Percolating Ideas

The above timeline and map is my first experiment with MyHistro. While I love the way the map zooms and moves to different locations as the events of the timeline play through, I was disappointed that the photo embedding feature didn’t work. This would have made it an excellent tool…