1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«This thesis examines Muslim personal status law reform and family litigation in colonial Algeria from the advent of the French Third Republic until the centenary of the colonial presence (1870-1930).» (p. 1)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«This dissertation is based on an assortment of archival and published primary sources, which were accessed at various research cites in Algiers, Oran, Paris, Aix-en-Provence, and Rome. The most quantitatively important archives for this project were the colonial records of the Fonds Ministériels (Ministère de l’Intérieur and Ministère des affaires algériennes) and the records of the Algerian Governor General’s office in Aix-en-Provence, France. However, the archives which, though not copious, were the most pivotal in shaping this project were the records of court procedures and appeals that I accessed in Algiers, Algeria. This study also relies heavily on two legal journals: the Journal de la jurisprudence de la Cour impériale d’Alger and the Revue algérienne et tunisienne de législation et de jurisprudence (RA).» (p. 52)

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu
Réflexion critique

3. Résumé

The «invention of the “Muslim family” and the increased interventionism of the colonial state were mutually-sustaining processes. At the same time, Muslim segregation and disenfranchisement was only reinforced as a result. This is because codification elsewhere in the Sunni Muslim world provided a blueprint by which to rationalize and standardize Muslim family law, thus upholding republican universalist ideals, without also disrupting the essentialized and insurmountable difference – most saliently expressed as sexual difference – of Muslims that undergirded the entire colonial project. One of the central elements of this blueprint was the Orientalist fixation on the shared Roman heritage that united Islamic and Western legal cultures and the “analogies” that could thus bridge them. The second half of this thesis has thus sought to uncover the impacts of this reform program on the Algerian women whom colonial reformers claimed to rescue from the patriarchal indigenous household and sexually degenerate Muslim men. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both the codification of substantive law and the rationalization of the judicial process had negative consequences for women – especially poor and rural women – seeking to file suits against their husbands and male relatives.» (p. 274-275)