"Almost as it is Formulated in the So-Called 'Homestead Act'": Images of the American West in French Settlement of French Algeria

Abstract

Abstract:Nineteenth-century American expansion has been shown as a type of Anglo-American "settler revolution," but the United States was also connected with France in France's ideas for the imperial development of Algeria. The two countries alike were ambitious empires, their leaders committed to expansion as a means of political and economic regeneration. More than this, the French empire "borrowed" images from its republican cousin to help incorporate Algeria. Writers during the July Monarchy saw American Indians' decline as a forerunner to white settlement's consequences in North Africa, although they rationalized how Algerians might be treated more benevolently. Napoléon III vowed to prevent an American analogue by setting aside Arab tribal land. Liberal reformers during the early Third Republic, however, called for assimilation of Algerians through land privatization, hailing the U.S. Homestead Act for how it could facilitate egalitarian, private land ownership, and thus help establish what Michel Chevalier had earlier imagined as the French "West."