Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Desert ‘wastes’ of the Maghreb: desertification narratives in French colonial environmental history of North Africa

Desert ‘wastes’ of the Maghreb: desertification narratives in French colonial environmental... The origins of the word ‘desertification’, most commonlyattributed to Aubréville’s 1949 work on tropical Africanforests, may be traced back much earlier, to nineteenth-century French colonialNorth Africa. The concept of desertification was central to French colonial thinkingabout the North African environment. This paper argues that an environmental historyof the Maghreb was constructed during the French colonial period which blamed localNorth Africans, especially pastoralists, for the deforestation and desertificationof what was erroneously believed to have been a fertile, forested landscape inantiquity. This environmental narrative of destruction and decline was firstfabricated during the early years of the French occupation of Algeria, and wasinvoked in Tunisia and Morocco as they were occupied. Founded on historicalinaccuracies and environmental misunderstandings, this narrative helped to justifyland expropriation, changes in land tenure, forest appropriation and thecriminalization of traditional land use, all of which facilitated the colonialventure in the three Maghreb countries. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Cultural Geographies SAGE

Desert ‘wastes’ of the Maghreb: desertification narratives in French colonial environmental history of North Africa

Davis, Diana K.
Cultural Geographies , Volume 11 (4): 29 – Oct 1, 2004
Download PDF
29 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/sage/desert-wastes-of-the-maghreb-desertification-narratives-in-french-Ixf2uwYWIO

References (81)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
Copyright © by SAGE Publications
ISSN
1474-4740
eISSN
1477-0881
DOI
10.1191/1474474004eu313oa
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The origins of the word ‘desertification’, most commonlyattributed to Aubréville’s 1949 work on tropical Africanforests, may be traced back much earlier, to nineteenth-century French colonialNorth Africa. The concept of desertification was central to French colonial thinkingabout the North African environment. This paper argues that an environmental historyof the Maghreb was constructed during the French colonial period which blamed localNorth Africans, especially pastoralists, for the deforestation and desertificationof what was erroneously believed to have been a fertile, forested landscape inantiquity. This environmental narrative of destruction and decline was firstfabricated during the early years of the French occupation of Algeria, and wasinvoked in Tunisia and Morocco as they were occupied. Founded on historicalinaccuracies and environmental misunderstandings, this narrative helped to justifyland expropriation, changes in land tenure, forest appropriation and thecriminalization of traditional land use, all of which facilitated the colonialventure in the three Maghreb countries.

Journal

Cultural Geographies – SAGE

Published: Oct 1, 2004

There are no references for this article.