Daho djerbal director of the Algerian review “naqd”. “The” battle of paris “, a turning point in the struggle for Algerian independence”
The 60th anniversary of October 17, 1961 has a special resonance. How does it resonate in Algeria? What place does this October day, also known as the “Battle of Paris”, occupy in the historiography of the war of liberation? The Algerian review of social criticism “Naqd” devotes a special issue to it (1). Meeting with its director, historian Daho Djerbal.
In Algeria, October 17 was proclaimed in 1968 as Emigration Day. The commemoration of this event does not seem to have as much echo as in France. Why ?
How to pour all the other historical events that marked the Algerian war, which here (in Algeria) we call the revolution, there is a progressive erosion of memory. The people who were marked by this period are disappearing. In addition, the memorial discourse which is transmitted from generation to generation takes precedence over teaching, over research work around the events of October 1961. Discourse on the past prevails over the production of knowledge. This discourse is particularly evident in the aspect of war crime, state crime, to the detriment of the historical dimension constituted by the exit of the immigrant population from its peripheral margins: its occupation of the nerve center of the colonial power and therefore its eruption on the media scene. The emphasis on the term “war” refers to the idea of the primacy of man at arms in the direction of events. An alleged primacy of the military over the civilian and over the political activist, which we will find in post-independence Algeria, as well as in France, in the 1950s.
How is this day of October 17 in France, as you write, part of the national liberation struggle?
It’s a extraordinary historical event. The Battle of Algiers and the Battle of Paris were eminently political. They constitute the political Dien Bien Phu of the war of liberation (2). They take place on a scale of all Algeria and of this piece of Algeria which finds in France, through emigration. There is a multifaceted struggle everywhere, not just an armed struggle. The effects of the demonstrations of October 17, 1961 had the same impact on the outcome of the war as those of December 11, 1960 in Algiers. These peaceful demonstrations, repressed with extreme violence, have entered the history of the struggle for the liberation of the Algerian people.
Did the “battle of Paris” really constitute a tipping point accelerating the accession to independence of Algeria?
October 17 in Paris, then on October 20 throughout France, tipped the repressive issue, military and police, towards the issue of independence. For the Battle of Algiers, Generals Bigeard and Massu proclaimed their victory through the disintegration of the FLN structures in Algiers. But, everywhere else on Algerian territory, the liberation struggle to continue, even if from 1957-1958 the operations of the Challe plan raked the whole country and devastated it. Result: on December 11, 1960, the Algerian people went out to the big cities. Likewise, the entire arsenal of massive repression of the French state to destroy the FLN in France resulted in the exit of thousands of Algerians from their slums to invest Paris. Yes, the Battle of Paris was a major political turning point in the balance of power. On the scale of the struggles of colonial peoples for their liberation, the Paris demonstration was a case in point. For the first time since the beginnings of its installation in France, the immigrant population thus appeared, in an obvious way, on the stage of the history of the XXth century as a thinking and acting political subject.