Of Mayors and Mergers: 1950s Poor Relief Reform and Efforts to Stop It in Oran and Algiers

The period after 1945 in Algeria was one of belated reform across the political and socio-economic spectrum in one of France’s oldest and largest settler colonies. One such reform project concerned the integration of poverty relief for Europeans and Muslims. State-sponsored welfare bureaus were divided along colonial categories, one for Muslims and one for European settlers. A 1945 governmental decree ordered the merger of these two bureaus across Algeria into a single, “mixed” welfare bureau. This paper focuses on the administrative machinations the Mayors of Oran and Algiers deployed to make integrated charity a reality. I demonstrate that despite benevolent appeals to equality between all poor people, the mayors’ in fact sought to nullify Algerian electoral gains in the municipal councils that controlled the welfare bureaus. From the mayors’ perspective, extinguishing Algerian nationalism was more pressing than establishing truly redistributive poor relief for both communities.

To conceal their anti-nationalist intentions, the Mayors of Oran and Algiers insisted that the merger of the welfare bureaus promoted equality between Algerians and Europeans while working to undermine the Muslim bureau behind the scenes. The Mayor of Oran sought to discredit the Muslim welfare bureau by promoting a troublesome figure to the presidency. This triggered a flurry of complaints about the new president's corruption and incompetence. In Algiers, representatives of the Muslim welfare bureau were blindsided and alarmed to learn that the Mayor of Algiers arranged the bureaus’ merger without their knowledge, in consultation only with the European bureau. This paper’s analysis of local council meeting minutes and investigative reports from 1950s reveals the political stakes for this welfare merger, not only for the Muslim poor in Algiers and Oran but also for the employees and representatives of the Muslim welfare bureaus elected to the municipal councils.