Alexis de Tocqueville’s Second Letter on Algeria

This is a translation of a letter Alexis de Tocqueville wrote concerning the then ongoing French colonization of Algeria. It is part of a collection of Tocqueville’s writings published in 2022 under the title “Travels in Algeria”.


Suppose that the Emperor of China, landing in France at the head of an armed power, should make himself master of our largest cities and of our capital. That after having burned all the public registers before suffering to read them, and having destroyed or dispersed all of the civil service without inquiring into their various attributions, he should finally seize every functionary⸺from the head of the government to the campesino guards, the peers, the deputies, and in general the whole ruling class⸺and deport them all at once to some distant country. Do you not think that this great prince, in spite of his powerful army, his fortresses and his treasures, will soon find himself extremely unprepared in administering the conquered country; that his new subjects, deprived of all those who conducted or could conduct affairs of state, will be unable to govern themselves, while he, coming from the antipodes, knows neither the religion, nor the language, nor the laws, nor the habits, nor the administrative customs of the country, and who has taken care to remove all those who could have instructed him in them, will be in no state rule them. You will therefore have no difficulty in foreseeing that if the parts of France which are materially occupied by the victor obey him, the rest of the country will soon be given over to an immense anarchy.

You will soon see that we have done in Algeria precisely what I have imagined the Emperor of China to have done in France.

Although the coast of Africa is separated from Provence by only about 160 leagues of sea, and although every year in Europe there are published thousands of reports from voyages to every part of the world, and while we study assiduously the dead languages of Antiquity and many living languages besides which we can never find an opportunity to use, we are unable to imagine the profound ignorance in which we were, not more than seven years ago, on all that could concern Algeria: We had no clear idea of the different races that inhabit it nor of their customs, we did not know a word of the languages that these peoples speak; the country itself, its resources, its rivers, its cities, its climate were ignored; it seemed as if the whole thickness of the globe lay between it and us. We knew even less in regards to military intelligence, which was nevertheless the main topic of interest at that time, so that while our generals thought they would be attacked by cavalry similar to that of the Mamluks of Egypt, our main adversaries, the Turks of Algiers, had never fought but on foot.

It was in this ignorance of all things that we set sail, and that did not prevent us from winning, for on the battlefield victory goes to the bravest and strongest, not to the most knowledgeable. But, after the war, it did not take long for us to learn that strength and bravery is not enough to govern a nation

You remember, Monsieur, what I told you before that the whole civil and military government of the Regency was in the hands of the Turks. As soon as we were masters of Algiers, we hastened to gather every last Turk, from the Dey to the last soldier of his militia, and we transported this crowd to the coast of Asia. In order to better remove the vestiges of the enemy’s domination, we proceeded to tear up or burn all written documents and administrative registers, authentic or not, which could have perpetuated a trace of what had come before us. The conquest was a new era, and for fear of irrationally mixing the past with the present, we even destroyed a large number of the streets of Algiers, in order to rebuild them according to our methods, and we gave French names to all those whom we allowed to remain. I think, in truth, that the Chinese I spoke about before could not have done better.

What was the result of all this? You can easily guess.

The Turkish government possessed in Algiers a great number of houses and in the plain a multitude of estates; but their titles of ownership have disappeared in the universal wreck of the old order of things. It so happened that the French administration, knowing neither what belonged to it nor what had remained in the rightful possession of the vanquished, lacked everything or believed itself reduced to seizing at random that which it needed, in defiance of law and rights.

The Turkish government was peacefully receiving the proceeds of certain taxes which, through ignorance, we were unable to raise in their stead, and we had to draw the money we needed from France or extort it from our unfortunate subjects in ways far more Turkish than any Turk has ever used.

If our ignorance has thus made the French government irregular and oppressive in Algiers, it has made all government beyond there impossible.

The French had sent the caïds of the outans back to Asia. We were completely unaware of the name, the composition and the use of this Arab militia which was auxiliary to the police and levied the tax under the Turks, and which was called, as I have said, Marzem Horsemen. We had no idea of the division of tribes, and of the division of ranks within tribes. We did not know what the military aristocracy of the spahis was, and, as for the marabouts, we were often at a loss to know, when in conversation, whether we addressed a tomb1 or a man.

The French knew none of these things and, to tell the truth, they didn’t show the least interest in learning them.

In place of an administration that they had torn out by the roots, they devised to implement, in the districts that we occupied militarily, a French administration.

Try, I beg you, to imagine these agile and indomitable children of the desert entangled in the midst of the thousand formalities of our bureaucracy and forced to submit to the slowness, the regularity, the fine-print and minutiae of our centralization. Only the use of the yatagan and the stick as a means of policing was retained from the old government of the country. All the rest became French.

This applied to the cities and the tribes touched by military occupation. As for the rest of the inhabitants of the Regency, we did not even attempt to administer them. After destroying their government, no other government was given to them.

I would digress if I undertook to give a history of what has happened over the past seven years in Africa. I only want to put the reader in a position to understand it.

In the three hundred years since the Arabs who inhabit Algeria were subjected by the Turks, they had entirely lost the habit of governing themselves. The most prominent among them had been pushed out of the public affairs by the jealousy of their subjugators; and the marabout descended from his knightly steed to ride an ass. The Turkish government was a detestable government, but at least it maintained a certain order and, although it tacitly authorized inter-tribal warfare, it repressed theft and ensured the roads. It was also the only link connecting the various peoples, the center where so many divergent rays came to an end.

The Turkish government destroyed, without anything replacing it, the country which could not yet direct itself fell into a frightful anarchy. All the tribes rushed one on the other in an immense confusion, the brigandage was organized on all sides. The shadow of justice disappeared force was resorted to by all sides.

This applies to Arabs.

As for the Kabyles, who were almost entirely independent of the Turks, the fall of the Turkish administration had little effect on them. They remained towards the new masters in a habit more or less similar to that which they had taken towards the old ones. Only they became even more unapproachable, the natural hatred they had of foreigners coming to be combined with the religious horror they felt for Christians whose language, laws and customs were unknown.

Men sometimes submit to shame, to tyranny, to conquest, but they never long suffer anarchy. There is no people so barbarous that they escape this general law of humanity

When the Arabs, whom we often sought to conquer and subdue, but never to govern, had given themselves up for some time to the wild excitement which individual independence gives rise to, they instinctively began to remake what the French had destroyed. Successive enterprising and ambitious men appeared among them. Great talents were revealed in some of their leaders, and the multitude began to attach themselves to certain names as symbols of order.

The Turks had removed from the religious aristocracy of the Arabs the use of arms and the direction of public affairs. The Turks defeated, they almost immediately became warriors and rulers again. The quickest and most certain effect of our conquest was to restore to the marabouts the political existence they had lost. They took up the scimitar of Mohammed to fight the infidels and they soon used it to govern their fellow citizens: this is a great fact which must be noted by all those who deal with Algeria.

We have allowed the national aristocracy of the Arabs to be reborn, all that is left to do is use it

To the west of the province of Algiers, near the borders of the Moroccan empire, there has long been established a very famous family of marabouts. They descend from Mohammed himself, and their name is venerated throughout the Regency. At the time the French took possession of the country, the head of this family was an old man called Mahiddin. To the illustration of birth, Mahiddin added the advantage of having been to Mecca and of having long and energetically opposed the exactions of the Turks. His sanctity was in great honour and his skill well known. When the surrounding tribes began to feel the unbearable discomfort caused to men by the absence of power, they came to Mahiddin and proposed that he take over their affairs. The old man gathered them all together on a large plain; there he told them that at his age they should be concerned with heaven and not with earth, that he refused their offer, but that he begged them to defer their vote to one of his younger sons, whom he showed them. He enumerated at length the titles of this one to govern his countrymen: his early piety, his pilgrimage to the Holy Places, his descent from the Prophet; he made known several striking clues which heaven had used to designate him in the midst of his brothers, and he proved that all the ancient prophecies which announced a liberator to the Arabs evidently applied to him. The tribes proclaimed by common agreement the son of Mahiddin emir-el-mouminin, that is to say, leader of the believers.

This young man, who was then only twenty-five years old and of poor appearance, was named Abd-el-Kader.

Such is the origin of this singular leader: anarchy gave birth to his power, anarchy has developed it unceasingly and, by the grace of God and Us, after having delivered to him the province of Oran and that of Tittery, Constantine will fall into his hands and will make him much more powerful than the Turkish government ever was.

While these things were happening in the West of the Regency, the East offered another spectacle.

At the time when the French took Algiers, the province of Constantine was governed by a bey named Achmet. This bey, contrary to all custom, was coulougli, that is to say the son of a Turk and an Arab. It was a singularly fortunate coincidence that, after the capture of Algiers, he was able to support himself first in Constantine with the support of his father’s compatriots and later to establish his power over the surrounding tribes with the help of his mother’s relatives and friends.

While all the rest of the Regency, abandoned by the Turks and not occupied by the French, fell into the greatest disorder, a certain form of government was thus maintained in the province of Constantine, and Achmet, by his courage, his cruelty and his energy, founded there the fairly solid empire which we are seeking to restrict or destroy today.

Thus, as we speak, there are three powers present on Algerian soil:

In Algiers and on various points of the coast are the French; to the west and south an Arab population which after three hundred years is awakening and marching under a national leader; to the east, a remnant of the Turkish government, represented by Achmet, a stream which still flows after the source has dried up and which will not be long in drying up itself or becoming lost in the great river of Arab nationality. Between these three powers, and as if enveloped on all sides by them, there is a multitude of small Kabyle peoples, who escape equally from all influences and work with all governments.

It would be superfluous to research at length what the French should have done at the time of the conquest.

It can only be said in a few words that it was necessary first of all to put ourselves simply, and as far as our own background allows, in the place of the vanquished; that, far from wishing at first to substitute our administrative customs for theirs, it was necessary for a time to bend our own to them, to preserve the political demarcations, to take into our pay the agents of the fallen government, to admit its traditions and to keep its customs. Instead of transporting the Turks to the coast of Asia, it is obvious that we should have carefully preserved the greatest number of them; deprived of their chiefs, incapable of governing by themselves and fearing the resentment of their former subjects, they would not have been long in becoming our most useful intermediaries and our most zealous friends, as were the Coulouglis who, despite being much more closely related to the Arabs than to the Turks, almost always preferred to throw themselves into our arms than into theirs. Once we had become acquainted with the language, prejudices and customs of the Arabs, after having inherited the respect that men always have for an established government, it would have been possible for us to return little by little to our customs and to france-ize the country around us.

But now that the faults have been irrevocably committed, what remains to be done? And what reasonable expectations should be entertained?

Let us first carefully distinguish between the two great races mentioned above, the Kabyles and the Arabs.

As for the Kabyles, it is clear that there can be no question of conquering or colonizing their country: their mountains are, for the time being, impenetrable to our armies and the inhospitable mood of the inhabitants leaves no security for the isolated European who would like to go there peacefully to create an asylum.

The land of the Kabyles is closed to us, but the soul of the Kabyles is open to us and it is not impossible for us to enter it.

I said earlier that the Kabyle was more positive, less religious, and infinitely less enthusiastic than the Arab. Among the Kabyles the individual is almost everything, society almost nothing, and they are as far from bending uniformly to the laws of a single government in their midst as they are from adopting ours.

The great passion of the Kabyle is the love of material enjoyment, and it is by this that he can and must be grasped.

Although the Kabyles allow us to enter their country much less than the Arabs, they are much less inclined to wage war against us. And even when some of them take up arms against us, the others do not fail to frequent our markets and to come and hire out their services to us. The reason for this is that they have already discovered the material profit they can make from us as neighbours. They find it very advantageous to come and sell their goods to us and to buy those of ours which are suitable for the kind of civilisation they possess. And, although they are not yet in a position to obtain our well-being, it is already clear to see that they admire it and would find it very sweet to enjoy it.

It is clearly by our arts and not by our weapons that we must tame such men.

If frequent and peaceful relations continue to be established between the Kabyles and ourselves; if the former have no reason to fear our ambition, and find among us a simple, clear, and safe legislation which protects them, it is certain that they will soon fear war more than we do, and that the almost invincible attraction which attracts savages to civilised man from the moment when they do not fear for their liberty will be felt. We shall then see the morals and ideas of the Kabyles change without their noticing it, and the barriers which close their country to us will fall of their own accord.

The role we have to play vis-à-vis the Arabs is more complicated and difficult:

The Arabs are not firmly fixed to the soil and their souls are even more mobile than their homes. Although they are passionately attached to their freedom, they value a strong government and would like to form a great nation. And despite a strong sensuality, immaterial pleasures have a great price in their eyes, and every moment the imagination carries them away towards whatever ideal good they might discover.

With the Kabyles one has to deal mainly with questions of civil and commercial equity, with the Arabs with political and religious questions.

There are a number of Arab tribes which can and should now be governed directly by us and a large number over which we should, for the time being, seek only indirect influence.

After three hundred years, the power of the Turks had been established only very incompletely over the tribes far from the cities. The Turks, however, were muslims like the Arabs, they had habits similar to their own, and they had succeeded in keeping the religious aristocracy out of business. It is easy to see that, having none of these advantages and facing much greater difficulties, we cannot hope to obtain over these tribes the power which the Turks had acquired, or even to approach it. On this point our immense military superiority is almost useless. It enables us to win, but not to keep under our laws nomadic populations from passing, when necessary, into deserts where we cannot follow them. We have led ourselves into the middle of a desert where we cannot survive.

The whole object of our present care must be to live in peace with those Arabs whom we have no present hope of being able to govern, and to organize them in the manner least dangerous to our future progress.

The anarchy among the Arabs, which is so doleful to them, is very harmful to us, for having neither the will nor the power to subdue them at once by our arms, we can only hope to act on them in the long run by the contact of our ideas and our arts; which can only take place as long as peace and a certain order reign among them. The anarchy, moreover, which pushes the tribes against each other, constantly throws them against us and deprives our borders of all security.

We therefore have a great interest in recreating a government among these peoples, and it may not be impossible for this government to depend in part on us.

Now that the sceptre has slipped from the hands which held it for three centuries, no one has an unquestionable right to rule, nor any probable chance of founding an uncontested power in the near future. All the powers that are to be established in Africa will therefore be shaky, and if our support is given firmly, justly and for a long time, the new sovereigns will be constantly inclined to have recourse to it. They will therefore depend in part on us.

Our main aim must be that these independent Arabs should become accustomed to seeing us meddle in their internal affairs and become familiar with us. For it must be imagined that a powerful and civilised people such as ours exerts an almost invincible influence over small, almost barbaric peoples, by the mere fact of its superiority of enlightenment; and that, in order to force them to become incorporated into it, it is sufficient for it to be able to establish lasting relations with them.

But if we have an interest in creating a government among the Arabs of the Regency, we have a much more visible interest in not allowing the establishment of any single governor. For then the danger would far outweigh the advantage. It is undoubtedly very important for us not to leave the Arabs to anarchy, but it is even more important for us not to expose ourselves to the risk of seeing them all aligned against us at the same time.

It is from this point of view that the last treaty with Abd-el-Kader and the planned expedition to Constantine are likely to arouse some fears.

Nothing could be more desirable than to establish and regularize the power of the new emir in the province of Oran where his power was already founded. But the treaty also grants him the government of the beylik of Tittery, and I cannot help believing that the expedition which is being prepared will have the final result of delivering to him the greater part of the province of Constantine.

One can be sure that in the degree of power to which Abd-el-Kader has attained, all the Arab populations which will find themselves without a leader will come to him of their own accord. It is therefore imprudent to destroy or even undermine the independent Arab powers of Abd-el-Kader; it would be better to think of creating some which do not yet exist. Now, if our Constantine expedition succeeds, as there is every reason to believe it will, it can hardly have the result of destroying Achmet without putting anything in his place. We shall overthrow the coulougli and we shall not be able to succeed him or give him an Arab successor. Our victory will therefore deliver the tribes which are subject to Achmet to an independence which they will not suffer long to exchange for the emir next door. We will make anarchy and anarchy will make Abd-el-Kader.

This is at least what can be glimpsed from a distance and in our ignorance of the details.

What can be said with certainty now is that we cannot allow all the Arab tribes of the Regency to ever recognize the same leader. There are already far less than two. Our present security, and the care of our future, would require that there be three or four at least.

Apart from the tribes over which it is in our interest to seek to exercise, at present, only an indirect influence, there is a fairly considerable part of the country which our security as well as our honour oblige us to keep under our immediate power and to govern without intermediary.

There is a French population and an Arab population to live peacefully in the same place. The difficulty is great. I am far from believing it to be insurmountable.

I do not pretend to enter here, Monsieur, with you into the details of the means that could be used to achieve this goal. It is enough for me to indicate in broad terms what seems to me to be the main condition for success.

It is obvious to me that we will never succeed if we undertake to subject our new subjects in Algeria to the forms of French administration.

One does not introduce new political customs with impunity. We are more enlightened and stronger than the Arabs, so it is up to us to bend to a certain extent to their habits and prejudices. In Algeria, as elsewhere, the great business of a new government is not to create what does not exist, but to use what does. The Arabs lived in tribes two thousand years ago in Yemen; they crossed the whole of Africa and invaded Spain in tribes; they still live in the same way today. The tribal organization, which is the most tenacious of all human institutions, cannot therefore be taken away from them for a long time to come without upsetting all their feelings and all their ideas. The Arabs appoint their own chiefs, and this privilege must be preserved for them. They have a military and religious aristocracy, and we must not seek to destroy it, but to seize it and take part of it in our pay, as the Turks did. Not only is it useful to take advantage of the political customs of the Arabs, but it is necessary to modify the rules of their civil law only little by little. For you will know, Monsieur, that most of these rules are laid down in the Quran in such a way that, among the Muslims, civil law and religious law are constantly merging.

We must beware, above all, of indulging in this taste for uniformity in Algeria, which torments us and realize that among dissimilar peoples it would be as dangerous as it would be absurd to apply the same legislation. During the fall of the Western Empire, we saw reign at the same time barbarian laws to which the Barbarian was subject and Roman laws which the Roman followed.

This is a good example to follow, because only in this way can we hope to pass through the transitional period without perishing before two different civilizations can be forged into a single whole.

When Frenchmen and Arabs live in the same district, it is necessary to resolve to apply to each of them the legislation which they can understand and which they can come to respect. Let the political leader be common to both races, but let everything else differ for a long time, fusion will come by itself later on.

It would also be necessary for the legislation governing the French in Africa not to remain exactly the same as that in force in France. A nascent people cannot bear the same administrative hindrances as an old people, and the same slow and multiplied formalities which sometimes guarantee the security of the latter prevent the former from developing and almost from being born.

There is no country where it is more necessary to establish individual freedom, respect for property, and the guarantee of all rights than in a colony. But on the other hand, a colony needs an administration that is simpler, more expeditious and more independent of the central power than those that govern the continental provinces of the empire.

We must therefore carefully retain in Algeria the substance of our political state, but not hold too superstitiously to its form; and show more respect for the spirit than for the letter. Those who have visited Algeria claim that the opposite is noticeable there: they say that the least administrative methods of the mother country are observed with scrupulous care and that the great principles which serve as the basis of our laws are often forgotten. By doing so, we can hope to multiply the number of public officials, but not the number of colonists.

I imagine, Monsieur, that now that I have approached the end of this long letter, you have the desire to ask me, after all what are, after all, my hopes for the future of our new colony?

This future seems to me to be in our hands, and I will tell you sincerely that with time, perseverance, skill and justice, I have no doubt that we will be able to erect on the coast of Africa a great monument to the glory of our fatherland.

I told you previously, that the Arabs were both pastoralists and farmers, and that, although they possessed all parts of the soil, they never cultivated more than a very small part. The Arab population is therefore very sparse, occupying much more land than it can sow every year. The consequence of this is that the Arabs sell land easily and cheaply and that a foreign population can easily settle next to them without suffering.

You can therefore understand, how easy it is for the French, who are richer and more industrious than the Arabs, to occupy without violence a large part of the land and to introduce themselves peacefully and in large numbers into the tribes which surround them. It is easy to foresee a time soon when the two races will be intermingled in this way in many parts of the Regency.

But it is not enough for the French to place themselves alongside the Arabs if they do not succeed in establishing a lasting link with them and finally forming a single people from the two races.

Everything I have learned about Algeria leads me to believe that this event is not as fanciful as many people suppose.

The bulk of the Arabs still retain a very strong faith in the religion of Mohammed; however, it is easy to see that in this part of the Islamic world, as in all the others, religious beliefs are constantly losing their vigour and are becoming more and more powerless to combat the interests of this world. Although religion has played a great part in the wars waged against us in Africa up to now, and has served as a pretext for the marabouts to take up arms again, it may be said that it has only been the secondary cause to which these wars must be attributed. We are attacked much more as foreigners and conquerors than as Christians, and the ambition of the chiefs more than the faith of the people puts arms in their hands against us. Whenever patriotism or ambition does not draw the Arabs against us, experience has shown that religion does not prevent them from becoming our most zealous auxiliaries, and, under our flag, they wage a war against their coreligionists as harshly as the latter wage it against us.

It is therefore reasonable to believe that if we prove more and more that Islamism is not in danger under our domination or by our proximity, religious passions will be extinguished and we shall have only political enemies in Africa.

It would also be wrong to think that the civil habits of the Arabs make them incapable of living together with us.

In Spain, the Arabs were sedentary and agricultural; in the vicinity of the cities of Algeria, there are large numbers of them who build houses and engage seriously in agriculture. The Arabs are therefore not naturally and necessarily pastoralists. It is true that as one moves towards the desert, one sees the houses disappear and the tent rise. But it is that as one moves away from the coasts the security of property and persons diminishes, and that, for a people who fear for their existence and their freedom, there is nothing more suitable than a nomadic life. I can see that the Arabs prefer to wander in the open air than to remain exposed to the tyranny of a master, but everything indicates to me that if they could be free, respected and sedentary, they would not be long in settling down. I have no doubt that they would soon take to our way of life if we gave them a lasting interest in doing so.

Finally, nothing in the known facts indicates to me that there is any incompatibility of mood between the Arabs and us. On the contrary, I see that in times of peace the two races intermingle without difficulty and that as they get to know each other better, they will grow closer together.

Every day the French are developing clearer and more accurate notions about the inhabitants of Algeria. They learn their languages, become familiar with their customs, and one even sees some who show a kind of unthinking enthusiasm for them. On the other hand, the whole of the young Arab generation in Algiers speaks our language and has already taken on some of our customs.

When there was recently a question in the suburbs of Algiers of defending themselves against the brigandage of some enemy tribes, a national guard was formed, composed of Arabs and Frenchmen who came to the same guard corps and shared together the same fatigue and the same dangers.

There is therefore no reason to believe that time cannot succeed in amalgamating the two races. God does not prevent it; only the faults of men could impede it.

Let us not therefore despair of the future, Monsieur; let us not allow ourselves to be held back by temporary sacrifices when an immense object is discovered and persevering efforts can reach it.


1. The marabouts give hospitality near the tomb of their principal ancestor, and this place bears the name of the one who is buried there. This is where the mistake came from.


This is an excerpt from the book Travels in Algeria, United Empire Loyalists which features previously untranslated writing by Alexis de Tocqueville on the French Colonial effort in Algeria. You can order a copy here.

First Letter on Algeria

Second Letter on Algeria

Notes on Islam


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