Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial Algeria

by Patricia M.E. Lorcin

Book Overview

Imperial Identities is a groundbreaking book that addresses identity formation in colonial Algeria of two predominant ethnicities and analyzes French attitudes in the context of nineteenth-century ideologies. Patricia M. E. Lorcin explores the process through which ethnic categories and cultural distinctions were developed and used as instruments of social control in colonial society. She examines the circumstances that gave rise to and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803249713
• ISBN13: 9780803249714
• Release Date: September 2014
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 394 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Great Scholarship

Imperial Identities is a great book. It provides a wealth of information on Algeria's history under the French colonial rule. Those who read the book can learn a great deal about Algeria's history. It also shows, quite convincingly, how the French invented the Kabyle Myth to try to further their colonial aims in the country. (Elsewhere, Prof. Lorcin demonstrates how French imperialists imagined a link between French colonialism and the Roman influence in North Africa). Prof. Lorcin has good intentions and she is knowledgeable about the topic at hand. In fact, she is more knowledgeable than Algerian scholars who could not see the continuation of the Kabyle Myth to this date.

A Great Study of Algeria

In working on my graduate thesis, this book proved to be the single most helpful book of the hundreds I looked at about Algeria. Lorcin carefully examines the way race and ethnicity were created by the French. Although she tends to overstate the pre-existing divisions between the Berber and Arab population prior to French occupation, her analysis clearly shows the colonial French tendency to group the world into good ethnic groups and bad ethnic groups. In this case the Berbers fit the first mold and the Arabs fit the latter in the French mindset.