The Mediterranean, a territory between France and Colonial Algeria: Imperial Constructions

Workshop "A Colonial Sea : The Mediterranean, 1798-1956"The geographical concept of the Mediterranean, born during the 19th century, has often been the object of scholarly attention. Many works have highlighted the progressive adjustments in the learned representations of this maritime space : from the classical concept of a dividing border arose the idea of a junction sea. Though these studies all set the rise of the concept of a Mediterranean territory within the imperial context of the 19th century, they do not explore the hypothesis that the Mediterranean was invented because it had become a colonial sea. Was the emergence of the Western Mediterranean, as an area of practices and representations, directly linked to the context of Algerian colonisation, to the chronology of its appropriation and to the evolution of French settlement on the banks of the Maghreb? Furthermore, at the beginning of the 19th century, did this Western Mediterranean space become, by synecdoche, a global construction of the entire Mediterranean in French thought ?<br />By examining descriptive sources (geographical surveys, travel logs, settlers' handbooks and tourist guides) and maps offering relevant geographical knowledge, we reflect here upon the construction of the Mediterranean as a distinct entity and its role in the creation of a supposed tie between metropolitan France and its colony. This paper explores how in the French-Algerian colonial context the Mediterranean was first staged as a short interlude, then as a bridge between Europe and Africa, the East and the West, before becoming a colonial sea within an integrated Empire