Historical and Socio-Anthroponymic Analysis of Naming in Algerian Resistance Movements against French Domination (19th Century)

This project aims to examine the denominations attributed to Algerian movements of armed struggle against French conquest and domination, as well as to the social structures and categories that sustained them, in the light of socio-anthroponymy and historical anthropology. Particular attention to the naming of war sequences occurring in the colonial context will contribute to the construction of a history of mentalities and will make it possible to clarify the salience of the imaginaries most characteristic of the Algerian episteme.

Given the numerous armed confrontations that took place throughout the nineteenth century, the struggles led by Emir Abd el-Kader (1832–1847), followed by those of Bachagha El Mokrani and Sheikh El Haddad (1871–1872), will delimit the framework of this project. The study will address the semantic fields from which the recorded denominations were drawn, as well as the continuities and transformations affecting the space of war-related naming, both in French sources (generally military in nature between 1830 and 1871) and in Algerian sources (songs, poetry, correspondence, wills, epistles, narratives, etc.).It will also examine the semantic gap between Algerian and French denominations, and the representations these denominations held among Algerians at the time, according to perspectives such as social identity, local affiliation, intellectual capital, and others. Finally, the extent to which identifying lexemes referring to social categories (such as djouad / the nobility of the sword, for example) or to socio-professional profiles (khamès or khemmas / peasant or sharecropper) lend themselves to an attempt at social categorisation will be assessed.