Synopsis
Algeria As It Is by George Gaskell. This travelogue surveys Algeria under French rule, contrasting Algiers, Oran, Constantine, and the Sahara with the neighboring Tunisian and Moroccan lands. Published in 1875, it interleaves vivid descriptions of modern infrastructure—railways, hotels, harbours, and roads—with extensive ethnographic portraits of Arabs, Kabyles, Moors, Jews, and Black Africans. The author writes with a traveler’s gaze and a yet sometimes paternalistic moralizing tone, offering observations on architecture, markets, climate, native populations, religion, language, and education, along with excursions from Algiers to Medeah, Cherchell, Tipaza, Mascara, and beyond. It includes detailed historical notices tracing Algeria from Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine periods, through Arab conquest and Ottoman rule, to French colonization and late 19th-century politics, including the Palestro and Alma insurrections of 1871. The narrative alternates between travelogue and ethnography, sometimes condescending, yet informative about landscapes, flora, fauna (notably lions and panthers of the Sahara), and the social fabric of cities like Algiers, Blidah, Oran, and Constantine. It closes with speculative visions for Algeria’s future transport networks and economic development.
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