Beeting Colonialism: The Anticolonialist Voices of the French Beet Sugar Industry Speak against the Colonialist Program in Algeria

In 1808 the Napoleonic government, which had assumed a key role in directing economic growth, awarded ten grants of 100,000 francs each to pharmacists who would establish beet sugar enterprises. Scientists had developed the process of extracting sugar from beets in the proceeding century. Within a decade, the nascent beet industry had surpassed even the most optimistic French hopes, rivaling British cane sugar production. As Jeff Horn argues in The Path Not Taken, the 1820s Restoration period saw the dramatic launch of a French industrial revolution, and agriculturalists played a significant role in it. By the mid-1830s, the Normandy region witnessed a dramatic increase in output, particularly in the manufacturing of textiles and beet sugar. At this crucial juncture in the nation’s industrial development, the new July Monarchy, established after the revolution of 1830, dramatically escalated the French state’s military conquest of Algeria. As the government diverted funds away from long sought-after infrastructure projects, the agriculturalists became the leading anti-colonialist voices. As my research into contemporary parliamentary records and agronomic publications will show, agriculturalists were well-positioned to challenge the colonial dreams of planting cotton and cane sugar on Algerian soil. They countered that Algeria would never rival Caribbean sugar plantations or American cotton plantations in output. With three decades of careful planning already invested in the beet sugar industry, and with the rise of nationalism in the Americas, they insisted it would be irrational to return to 18th century notions of colonialism.