2023-11-21 02:00:50
This will be their first meeting. A commission of French and Algerian historians created to work on French colonization and the war is due to meet on Wednesday in Algeria for the first time since its creation in August 2022, according to a source close to the matter. The meeting will be held Wednesday and Thursday in Constantine (east), said the source who requested anonymity.
The creation of this ten-member body was announced in August 2022 in Algiers by French Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. For the two countries, it is a question of “looking at this historical period together” from the start of French colonization (1830) until the end of the War of Independence (1962). The idea is to approach the subject “without taboo, with a desire (…) for complete access to our archives”, the head of state then underlined.
It met in April by videoconference. The five French historians who are part of it are Benjamin Stora (also co-president of the commission), Florence Hudowitz (curator at MUCEM), university professor Jacques Frémeaux as well as historians and university teachers Jean-Jacques Jordi and Tramor Quemeneur, indicated the Elysée.
It is co-chaired on the Algerian side by the historian Mohamed Lahcen Zighidi. In November 2022, the Algerian presidency designated Mr. Zighidi and the historians Mohamed El Korso, Idir Hachi, Abdelaziz Fillali and Djamel Yahiaoui to be part of this commission. Its implementation is part of the policy of appeasement decided by Emmanuel Macron during his first five-year term, after the recommendations of Benjamin Stora’s report on the memorial conflict between Algeria and France over the colonial past. But the relationship between the two countries remains difficult and marked by misunderstandings and unsaid things.
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