Bonapartism in Algeria: empire and sovereignty before the Third Republic

Between 1852 and 1870, Napoleon III and his Bonapartist entourage successfully established a Second Napoleonic Empire that encouraged a ‘cult of the emperor’, emphasizing the strong and even mystical bond between the sovereign and the people. While the ‘spectacular politics’ of the Bonapartist regime have been examined in detail, far less attention has been given to how Bonapartist patriotism was applied within a colonial context and, more specifically, in relation to Algeria. This article examines iterations of Bonapartist dynastic patriotism and nationalist politics in North Africa. It argues that an evaluation of French imperial sovereignty and practices in the years prior to the Third Republic can help to diversify our understanding of the French colonial experience and propose models that diverged from the narrative of republican colonialism in crucial ways during the post-revolutionary period