In the midst of their bitterly fought wars against anti-colonial guerrilla movements in Kenya and Algeria, British and French colonial authorities launched huge rural development programs. These plans were grounded on the effects of an extremely violent military practice: forced relocation of huge parts of the rural populations into strategic villages. Up to 2.5 million Algerians and 1.2 million Kenyans were affected by strategic resettlement, resulting in humanitarian crisis in both cases. The plans for socioeconomic development and the military strategy of forced resettlement cannot be analysed separately. The implementation of socio-economic reforms in such a short time-span and to such an extent required the instruments of power of military force and the disciplinary spatial structure of the strategic villages. Mass relocations of civilians and its effects on the other hand were repeatedly justified with reference to the overall plans for socio-economic development and modernization.The whole reserve is becoming and should become even more so, a great reformatory, methods being based on discipline, rigid control and hard work. 1
«One million Algerians learn to live in the 20th century» Resettlement camps and forced modernization in the Algerian War 1954–1962 One of the most astonishing characteristics of the Algerian War of Independence against France is the combination between military struggle against insurrection and civil reform projects. One special aspect of this war allows us to identify the fusion of these two elements: French resettlement policy. The French army violently forced up to three million people to leave their villages. Afterwards, they were reassembled in especially built camps, called «camps de regroupement». At the beginning, these measures were purely military. But they were quickly developed and became a massive rural development program. The promise of a fast global modernization of all areas of life should transform the inmates of the camp into loyal supporters of the project of a French Algeria. The «camps de regroupement» can be described as laboratories of modernization in which apparently contradictory elements were combined in a singular and unique way. Among these elements: development aid, an extremely rigid population control and different apparently totalitarian measures of social engineering.
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