The Elysée has received the list of five French historians, three men, and two women, who will be part of the joint commission on colonization and the war in Algeria. No agenda has been set for the start of the work or for the formalization of this list.
The French presidency received ten days ago the list of five historians who will have to be part of the joint committee responsible for studying the archives that the two countries have on colonization and the war in Algeria. According to our information, Élysée is still slow to validate this list prepared by the historian Benjamin Stora who could be the honorary president and the sixth member. The Élysée has already transmitted this list of experts to the Algerian authorities, who communicated on October 30 the names of the five Algerian historians who received this list of French experts.
It is not known whether the latter will be received by Emmanuel Macron for the official announcement, as was the case for their Algerian colleagues, received at the Palace of El Mouradia by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
A specialist in French colonization, author of several reference works, and editor of a report on memory at the request of Emmanuel Macron, Benjamin Stora has drawn up this list of experts in complete independence without interference, criticism, rejection, or observations from the Elysée.
The future members of this commission – which includes three men and two women, including one Franco-Algerian – have all worked or collaborated with Benjamin Stora on books, studies, or documentaries related to the French presence in Algeria. All are recognized for their expertise on the general history of colonization, on the Harkis and the pied-noirs, the demonstrations of refusal of war, but also on the cultural aspect of this memory, on the imaginaries linked to this history. or even on Algerian immigration to France.
Benjamin Stora at the maneuver
The creation of this mixed commission responsible for studying the Algerian and French archives relating to the colonial period was announced during Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Algeria in August 2022. The idea of setting up this mixed group of historians and d experts was born from the meeting held a month earlier between the Algerian president and Benjamin Stora.
The Algerian presidency has appointed historians Mohamed El Korso, Idir Hachi, Abdelaziz Fillali, Mohamed Lahcen Zighidi and Djamel Yahiaoui to be part of this commission. However, no agenda has been unveiled by the two parties for the start of the work and no deadline has been set for the submission of the conclusions of the ten researchers. “We do not know for the moment how this commission will work and what means it will have,” confides a source close to this file.
