Date of Award
2021
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Social Sciences
First Advisor
Harvey, David
Area of Concentration
History
Abstract
At its core, this thesis is an environmental history on Algeria and Indochina as French colonies. The period of study starts with pre-colonial, Old Regime Enlightenment texts on Algeria that were published in 1838, after colonization began, and follows a progression of colonization until the beginning of the twentieth century until just before the Great War. The main goal of the thesis is to analyze how and why certain environmental and land use policies were implemented in the colonies, and how these laws eventually supported the expropriation of land from the native populations to colonists. In the thesis, the pre-colonial Enlightenment works are used as a case study to detail how the declensionist narrative came to be and serve as a reference for how it progressed throughout the process of Algeria’s colonization. I then move on to analysis of how a variety of colonial conservation was used to preserve parts of land in order for it to be expropriated to colonists. The final chapter is concerned with what happened to the land once it was expropriated. The last chapter analyzes the interconnectedness of the mise en valeur of the colonies and colonial development projects before mise en valeur became codified colonial policy.
Recommended Citation
Daniels, Joseph, "La conservation coloniale au service de l’exploitation : Changing Conceptions of Land and Environmental Policy in French Algeria and Indochina" (2021). Theses & ETDs. 6047.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/6047