Arab Telephone

Abstract

The telegraph was introduced to connect Algeria to France. Yet the effects of the telegraph cables were double: they brought European Algerians closer to France at the same time as they brought Algerian Muslims closer to other Muslims around the world. Through the example of an incident in the town of Rébeval in Kabylia during the Greek–Ottoman War in 1897, we see how telegraphic news inserted itself into existing networks and allowed people in Algeria to connect their local problems with the rest of the Muslim world. As colonized Algerians were increasingly defined by French law as ‘Muslims’, they used this category to situate themselves within global events, leading to a ‘pan-Islamism’ from below. While French authorities remained convinced that this pan-Islamism was coming from outside, intermediaries employed by the French state were at the centre of this shift in the meaning of ‘Muslim’.