We are No Longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria

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This book recovers the lost history of colonial Algeria's communist movement. Meticulously researched - and the only English-language book on the Parti Communiste Algerien - it explores communism's complex relationship with Algerian nationalism. During international crises, such as the Popular Front and Second World War years, the PCA remained close to its French counterpart, but as the national liberation struggle intensified, the PCA's concern with political and social justice attracted growing numbers of Muslims. When the Front de Liberation Nationale launched armed struggle in November 1954, the PCA maintained its organisational autonomy - despite FLN pressure. They participated fully in the national liberation war, facing the French state's wrath. Independence saw two conflicting socialist visions, with the PCA's incorporated political pluralism and class struggle on the one hand, and the FLN demand for a one-party socialist state on the other. The PCA's pluralist vision was shattered when it was banned by the one-party state in November 1962. This book is of particular interest to students and scholars of Algerian history, French colonial history and communist history. -- .

Reviews

Neville Alexander and Henri Alleg would be pleased and proud to read this superbly researched, carefully documented, absolutely fair-minded and accurate account. It is well structured, with a useful list of abbreviations, tables and maps. If there is an archive Professor Drew has not consulted, a surviving participant whom she did not interview, a relevant book or article and memoir she did not consult, I am unaware of it.
David L. Schalk, Science and society Vol. 80, No. 3, July 2016

Drew has told the story of communist political action in Algeria in great detail, with attention to numerous individuals. At times, the number of names in play becomes overwhelming and the description of congress after congress seems excessive. But the tale is worth telling, and this kind of careful narrative is an essential building block for any analysis of the range of possibilities that opened and shut during the years of struggle over what kind of polity in what kind of wider political configuration whether communist or imperial, national or federal Algeria could be. In the end, Drew doesnt explicitly answer the question of what the relationship of communism and nationalism actually was. But that question has no single answer, and she has given us a rich narrative of a struggle whose complexity is well worth pondering.
Frederick Cooper, Department of History, New York University, Canadian Journal Of African Studies/La Revue Canadienne Des tudes Africaines, July 2016

We Are No Longer in France is a concisely written, empirically dense, and thought-provoking case study which illuminates the profound impact of the conflict between nationalism and internationalism on global anti-colonial communism in the twentieth century. [] Its language is precise, its citations are meticulous, and its bibliography is extensive, ensuring its place as a key reference work that will be useful to a wide range of scholars, as well as to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of colonial, imperial, and European political history.
Michelle Rose Mann, Washington State University, H-France, Vol. 18 (2018)

'In sum, Allison Drew [...] present important studies on a whole constellation of subjects: the impossibility of colonial reform, the rhythms of politics, the blindness or clear-sightedness of social actors, the experiences of activists and colonial subjects, the construction of political spaces and the only partially successful encounter between leftists and Algerian society.
Notes de lecture - Le Mouvement social

Author Bio

Honorary Professor, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town and Professor Emerita, University of York