For the first time since its creation in August 2022, the Algerian-French joint commission, charged by Algiers and Paris with memory work on French colonization, will meet in Constantine.
Fifteen months after the announcement of its creation, in August 2022 during Emmanuel Macron’s three-day visit to Algeria, the joint commission of Algerian-French will officially begin its work on November 21. Its members are meeting in Constantine, in eastern Algeria, from Tuesday to Friday, November 24, we learned Jeune Afrique from a source close to the matter. This is the first time that the ten historians have met in the same place to discuss the themes of colonization and the Algerian War.
The members of this joint body had already met on April 19, as part of a videoconference held between Paris and Algiers in order to get to know each other and clear the air land before the start of their work. These first exchanges, which lasted an hour and a half, saw the participation of five French historians, Benjamin Stora, Florence Hudowicz, Jacques Frémeaux, Jean-Jacques Jordi and Tramor Quemeneur, and of their Algerian counterparts, Mohamed El Korso, Idir Hachi, Abdelaziz Filali, Mohamed Lahcen Zighidi and Djamel Yahiaoui.
“Frank and warm exchanges”
“This first contact went well,” said at the time Benjamin Stora, who chairs the committee Algeria .of. The exchanges were frank and warm. We emphasized the fact that this commission must preserve its independent character with regard to political powers.” Author of the report on French colonization and the Algerian war submitted to Emmanuel Macron in January 2021, Benjamin Stora proposes the period as the first area of work. which extends from the beginning of colonization, in 1830, until 1880, which coincides with the end of the first great conquests on the French side
The creation of this joint commission responsible for studying the Algerian and French archives relating to the colonial period, from 1830 to 1962, was announced in August 2022. The initiative to set up this mixed group of historians and of experts was born from the meeting, a month earlier, between the Algerian president and Benjamin Stora.
The other members of the French delegation are also specialists of the period. Tramor Quemeneur, the doctor in history, a teacher at the University of Paris-VIII and at Paris-Cergy-Université, member of the Mémoires et Vérité Commission and of the Orientation Council of the National Museum of the History of Immigration (MNHI), will be the secretary general of the French side. He co-authored with Benjamin Stora two works on the Algerian war.
