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Nine months after the announcement of the creation of a joint commission of French and Argentine historians during a three-day visit by Emmanuel Macron to Algeria, from 25 to 27 August 2022, its members celebrated their first meeting on Wednesday 19 August April. Algiers.
The idea of this contact between Argentine and French experts had been maintained during the month of January, so it has no connection with the postponement of the state visit that President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was going to contact France. 2 and May 3.
These first exchanges, which lasted an hour and a half, included the participation of five French historians, Benjamin Stora, Florence Hudowitz, Jacques Frémeaux, Jean-Jacques Jordi and Tramor Quemeneur, and their Algerian counterparts, Mohamed El Korso, Idir Hachi, Abdelaziz Filali, Mohamed Lahcen Zighidi and Djamel Yahiaoui.
In a preliminary statement read in Arabic, Lahcen Zighidi notably underlined the need to write this colonial history and provide the means to do so. Then the Algerian experts showed up to discuss their courses and their work, before their French colleagues did the same.
“That first contact wrote well, says Benjamin Stora. The exchanges were frank and intuitive. We emphasize the fact that this commission must preserve its independence in relation to political powers. »
File return or free access?
The Algerians, he further explains, have reiterated their request for the return of colonial archives, while the French expert considers that the priority lies rather in free access to these archives, part of which still needs to be declassified. Hence the first assignment of this joint commission which consists of making a complete inventory of all these archives, whether they are in France or Algeria.
A specialist in colonial history and the Algerian war and author of several books, Benjamin Stora also insists on the imperative of opening Algerian archives to both local experts and French historians.
At the end of this first meeting, the members of the Algerian panel invited their French counterparts to a new meeting, which will take place this time in Algiers and whose details and deadlines have not yet been defined.
The creation of this mixed commission responsible for the study of Algerian and French archives relating to the colonial period from 1830 to 1962 was announced during Emmanuel Macron's visit to Algeria in August 2022. The initiative to set up this mixed group of historians and specialists was born from the meeting held a month earlier between the Algerian president and Benjamin Stora. Since the announcement of its constitution and appointment of its members, the commission had not yet concretely begun its missions. And now thing done.
