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FROM MEDITERRANEAN MERCHANT TO FRENCH CIVILIZER: JACOB LASRY AND THE ECONOMY OF CONQUEST IN EARLY COLONIAL ALGERIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2012

Joshua Schreier
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Abstract

The story of the Oran-based Jewish merchant Jacob Lasry (1793–1869) illustrates how preexisting North African business practices survived and adapted to the radical dislocations of the French conquest of Algeria. In the 1830s, French political turmoil and indecision helped foster a chaotic situation where French generals with nebulous goals “outsourced” financing and even military campaigns to local experts in Algeria. Lasry's business success in the economy of the early conquest invested him with a degree of power vis-à-vis the French administration, whose other proxies sometimes ended up in severe debt to him. With the rise of a “civilizing mission” discourse in the 1840s and 1850s, aspects of this mission, too, were outsourced to local experts. Despite his Moroccan birth, Gibraltarian family, and British subjecthood, Lasry used his stature to secure the official position of president of the province's consistoire israélite, charged with advancing French civilization among Oran's indigenous Jews.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 4: Maghribi Histories in the Modern Era , November 2012 , pp. 631 - 649
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

NOTES

Author's note: The author sincerely thanks Sarah Stein, who organized the “Jews and Empire” conference at UCLA in December 2009, at which a draft of this article was workshopped. Professor Stein and the other participants offered many helpful comments and suggestions for this article. Rebecca Scales and Lane Kisonak deserve many thanks for their invaluable research and organizational assistance. Special thanks are also due to Jacques Maroni, who generously shared leads. This article was immeasurably improved by the extensive feedback provided by this journal's anonymous reviewers and editors.

1 The cemetery was reduced in size with the expansion of the adjacent street in the early 1970s, and today stacks of displaced tombstones lay among the weeds on its periphery.

2 Lasry's service is richly documented at the Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer (formerly Centre des Archives d'Outre Mer), in Aix-en-Provence (hereafter ANOM), fol. 3U/1. Although not referenced in this article, documents on Lasry are also stored in the archives of the Consistoire Central des Israélites de France, Paris.

3 For more on Algerian Jewish responses to the civilizing mission in the middle decades of the 19th century, see Schreier, Joshua, Arabs of the Jewish Faith: The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

4 Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem (hereafter CAHJP), fol. P 95, Private Collection Rabbi Samuel Lasry; CAHJP, P 95, Police Office, Gibraltar, certifications of Baruj Lasry as British subject with permission to travel to Spain, 28 April 1875, 18 May 1883, and 18 January 1897.

5 ANOM, via IREL (Instruments de récherche en ligne) état civil records, Oran, 1869, http://anom.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/caomec2/pix2web.php?territoire=ALGERIE&acte=652765 (accessed 1 March 2011). National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew (hereafter TNA), F.O. 335/57/13.

6 CAHJP, fol. P 95, Invoice of K.K. Shaar Ashamaim to Jacob Lasry, 2 June 1859. Samuel's relationship to Jacob remains unclear.

7 On Jewish commercial networks, see Stein, Sarah Abrevaya, “Mediterranean Jewries and Global Commerce in the Modern Period: On the Trail of the Jewish Feather Trade,” in Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 13 (2007): 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Early modern Mediterranean Jewish mercantile networks are discussed in Jonathan Irvine Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World of Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002); and Trivellato, Francesca, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008Google Scholar). On the survival and extra-Mediterranean expansion of Jewish trade networks, see Stein, Sarah Abrevaya, Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A good example of the decline of Jewish Mediterranean commerce is Salonika's textile industry. See Minna Rozen, “Contest and Rivalry in Mediterranean Maritime Commerce in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century: The Jews of Salonika and the European Presence,” Revue des Études Juives (1988): 304–52; Braude, Benjamin, “The Rise and Fall of Salonika Woolens, 1500–1650: Technology Transfer and Western Competition,” Mediterranean Historical Review 6 (1991): 216–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Azriel Shohat, “The King's Cloth in Salonika,” Sefunot (1971–72): 169–88. For examples of recent scholarship that portrays imperialism as benefiting Mediterranean Jews, see Green, Abigail, “The British Empire and the Jews: An Imperialism of Human Rights?,” Past and Present 199 (2008): 175–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Shurkin, Michael, “French Liberal Governance and the Emancipation of Algeria's Jews,” French Historical Studies 33 (2010): 259–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Shurkin argues that “France consistently treated Algeria's Jews differently from its Muslims and showed the former a remarkable solicitude that was neither necessary nor—in many instances—practical.” On Jews benefiting specifically from educational opportunities offered by colonialism or colonialist institutions, see Rodrigue, Aron, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860–1925 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Benbassa, Esther, “Education for Jewish Girls in the East: A Portrait of the Galata School in Istanbul,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 9 (1993): 163–73Google Scholar; Tsur, Yaron, “Haskalah in a Sectional Society, Mahdia (Tunisia), 1884,” in Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries: History and Culture in the Modern Era, ed. Goldberg, Harvey E. (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1996), 146–67Google Scholar; Stillman, Norman, Sephardic Religious Responses to Modernity (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995)Google Scholar; and Laskier, Michael, The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco: 1862–1962 (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1983)Google Scholar. Laskier is careful to note how certain Moroccan communities rejected Alliance schools (p. 89).

8 For a detailed narrative of the early conquest, see Julien, Charles-André, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine: Conquète et colonisation (1827–1871) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), 64–163Google Scholar. For recent work exploring violence, including its cultural dimensions, see McDougall, James, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; idem, “Savage Wars? Codes of Violence in Algeria, 1830–1990s,” Third World Quarterly 26 (2005): 117–31; and Brower, Benjamin Claude, A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010)Google Scholar. Other work, inspired by postcolonial criticism, has taken a particular interest in French ideologies and “knowledges” of colonialism. See Hannoum, Abdelmajid, Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2010)Google Scholar. Recent work on ideologies of civilization in the first years of the conquest include Mershed, Osama W. Abi, Apostles of Modernity: Saint-Simonians and the Civilizing Mission in Algeria (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith.

9 This has by no means been completely ignored in the historiography. See Clancy-Smith, Julia, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

10 On the “Kabyle myth,” see Ageron, Charles-Robert, Les Algériens musulmans et la France, 1871–1919 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de la France, 1968), 267–92Google Scholar; Lorcin, Patricia, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial Algeria (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 118–66Google Scholar; and Lazreg, Marnia, “The Reproduction of Colonial Ideology: The Case of the Kablyle Berbers,” Arab Studies Quarterly 5 (1983): 380–95Google Scholar. For an interesting discussion of mythologies surrounding the Tuareg, see Brower, A Desert Named Peace, 222–38. For a study of another Jewish merchant community navigating the complex imperial landscape of legal statuses nearly a century after the events recounted here, see Stein, Sarah Abrevaya, “Protected Persons? The Baghdadi Jewish Diaspora, the British State, and the Persistence of Empire,” American Historical Review 116 (2011): 80–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Brower, A Desert Named Peace.

12 Braudel, Fernand, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (Paris: Librarie Armand Colin, 1949)Google Scholar; Lydon, Ghislaine, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quote on 4.

13 On Saharan networks resisting and adapting to French colonialism, see Clancy-Smith, Julia, Rebel and Saint. On the north-to-south flow of labor over the Mediterranean during the 19th century, see idem, Mediteranneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800–1900 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

14 James A. O. C. Brown has recently challenged traditional notions of Morocco's “isolationism” during this period; see “Anglo–Moroccan Relations in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, with Particular Reference to the Role of Gibraltar” (PhD diss., St. John's College, University of Cambridge, 2009). On efforts among Algerian merchants to foster commerce with Britain, see Redouane, Joëlle, “British Trade with Algeria in the Nineteenth Century: An Ally Against France?,” Maghreb Review 13 (1988): 175–82Google Scholar.

15 Rosenstock, Morton, “Economic and Social Conditions of the Jews of Algeria: 1790–1848,” Historia Judaica 18 (1956): 3–26Google Scholar. The ostrich-feather trade witnessed a particularly high involvement of Mediterranean Jewish merchants, suggesting that Jewish merchants in Algiers and other North African cities were sufficiently aware of global consumption patterns to profit from the trade. The most significant ports for the export of this commodity were Essaouira (Mogador), Algiers, Tripoli, Benghazi (in modern Libya), Alexandria, and Cairo. Sarah Abrevaya Stein, “Mediterranean Jewries and Global Commerce in the Modern Period,” 5–6; and idem, Plumes.

16 Kortepeter, Max, “Jew and Turk in Algiers in 1800,” in The Jews of the Ottoman Empire, ed. Avigdor Levy (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1994), 327–53Google Scholar.

17 Ayoun, Richard, “Les juifs d'Oran avant la conquête française,” Revue Historique 267 (1982): 375–90Google Scholar.

18 TNA, F.O. 3/31, Diary of British vice consulate in Oran, 19 October 1828.

19 For early lists of Oran's Jewish “notables,” see ANOM, 3U/1.

20 Ahmad Bey became bey of Tunis in 1837. In the same negotiations, Clauzel also secured a Tunisan bey to govern Constantine.

21 Julien, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 70.

22 Ibid.

23 TNA, F.O. 335/57/2, British Consul in Algiers to Lord Viscount Goderich, 5 October 1831.

24 Ibid.

25 TNA, F.O. 335/57/2, French Army of Africa, General Behaghel by invitation of General Landois, copy of section of minutes, 22 August 1831. On the nature of the impediments, see TNA, F.O. 3/33, Jacob Lasry to British Consul in Algiers, R. W. St. John, 8 March 1831, and R. W. St. John to Foreign Office, 25 July 1831.

26 TNA, F.O. 335/57/2, British Vice Consul Welsford, certified copy of note by Civil Intendant Banachin of Oran, 27 October 1831.

27 Ibid.

28 TNA, F.O. 335/57/13, James Welsford to Sir Thomas Reade, 18 January 1832.

29 Ibid.

30 This event also suggests how colonialism could disadvantage North African Jewish merchants—a tendency that scholars have only recently begun to explore. See Schroeter, Daniel J., The Sultan's Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Sarah Stein, “Feather Trade”; and idem, “Modern Jewries and the Imperial Imagination,” AJS Perspectives (2005): 14–16.

31 TNA, F.O. 335/57/2, Pierre Boyer to British Vice Consul, 11 October 1831.

32 Ibid. Boyer added that another agreement made by Clauzel, with Mustafa Bey of Titteri, to export 15,000 fanegas of wheat to Europe was similarly annulled. A fanega is a Spanish unit of measure that was apparently in common use in the region and is similar in quantity to an English bushel.

33 TNA, F.O. 335/58/12, Consul for the King of Two Sicilies in Tunis to Hussein Basha Bey, 24 August 1832.

34 See, notably, Service Historique de l'Armée de la Terre, Vincennes (herafter SHAT), fol. 1H 55.

35 For more on the violence of France's conquest, see Brower, A Desert Named Peace, esp. 75–90.

36 For more on Yusuf, see Jules, EdmondJouhaud, Rene, Yousouf: Esclave, mamelouk et general de l'armee d'Afrique (Paris: R. Lafont, 1980)Google Scholar.

37 Clauzel, Bertrand, Explications du Maréchal Clauzel (Paris: A. Dupont, 1837)Google Scholar.

38 Julien, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 128.

39 French workers in 1837 earned about 2.3 francs a day, while artisans earned closer to 3.75 francs a day. See http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/data.php#europe (accessed 20 June 2012).

40 Clauzel, Explications, 70.

41 de Reynaud, Eugène Pélissier, Annales algériennes, vol. II (Paris: J. Dumain, 1852), 57Google Scholar.

42 Ibid. See also Julien, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 128.

43 Pélissier de Reynaud, Annales Algériennes, 2:58. Clauzel admitted that the job involved some coercion; the Colougli divisions allied with the French were essentially permitted to pillage the town even before the contribution.

44 Clauzel, Explications, 71.

45 Ibid., 69–70.

46 Ibid., 71.

47 SHAT, 1 H 55, Jacob Lasry to Lieutenant General Baron Rapatel, Commander of the Province of Oran, 9 March 1838; and SHAT, 1 H 55, copy of minutes of meeting between Melchior Poinchevalle, M. Falcon, and Jacob Lasry, Oran, 12 January 1837.

48 SHAT, 1 H 55, copy of agreement signed by General Clauzel and (presumably) intended for Jacob Lasry, 2 April 1836.

49 SHAT, 1 H 55, Jacob Lasry to Lieutenant General Baron Rapatel, Commander of the Province of Oran, 9 March 1838

50 SHAT, 1H 74, dos. 4, undated copy of several loan documents made for the Ministry of War. The quoted section reproduces documents originally produced 20 March 1836.

51 For a discussion of Ahmad Bey's rule in the province of the Constantine during this period, see Temimi, Abdeljelil, Le Beylik de Constantine et hadj ‘Ahmed Bey (1830–1837) (Tunis: Publications d'Histoire Maghrébine, 1978)Google Scholar.

52 The boudjou was an Ottoman currency used well into the colonial period.

53 SHAT, 1H 74, dos. 4, undated copy of several loan documents made for the Ministry of War. The quoted section reproduces documents originally produced 20 March 1836.

54 Ibid. It is unclear what formula produced the 550 additional francs.

55 SHAT 1H 74, dos. 4, Chancellery of the consulate of France in Tunis, extract from the registers, 5 May 1836.

56 SHAT 1H 74, dos. 4, State of expenses incurred in the province of Bône, prepared by Yusuf, April 1837.

57 Ibid.

58 SHAT, 1H 74, dos. 4, undated copy of several loan documents made for the Ministry of War. The quoted section reproduces documents originally made 24 April 1837.

59 SHAT, 1H 74, dos. 4, “Projet de liquidation de la créance de l'Israélite Lasry contre Lieutenant Colonel Joussouf,” undated (1841).

60 A huissier is an officer attached to a ministry charged with announcing procedural actions and executing judicial decisions, which may include seizing property.

61 SHAT 1H 74 dos. 4, Yusuf to Minister of War, 13 July 1837.

62 Ibid.

63 SHAT 1H 74, fol. 4, General Trezel to Governor General Damrémont, 26 August 1837.

64 SHAT 1H 74, fol. 4, Governor General Damrémont to Minister of War, 4 September 1837.

65 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Armandy to Lt. General Trezel, 8 September 1837.

66 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Conseiller d’État to General Trezel, 11 October 1837.

67 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Procurer General to Minister of War, 19 March 1838.

68 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Conseiller d’État to General Lamoricière, 10 February 1841.

69 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Ministry of War, “Projet de liquidation de la créance de l'Israélite Lasry contre Lieutenant Colonel Joussouf,” undated.

70 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Conseiller d’État to General Lamoricière, 10 February 1841.

71 Ibid.

72 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Ministry of War, “Projet de liquidation de la créance de l'Israélite Lasry contre Lieutenant Colonel Joussouf,” undated.

73 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Duc de Dalmatie to General Lamoricière, 6 March 1841.

74 SHAT, 1H 74, fol. 4, Duc de Dalmatie to General Lamoricière, 16 April 1841.

75 ANOM, especially fol. 3U/1.

76 Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith.