French Aid After French Algeria: Gender and Religion During the Slow End of Empire, 1962-1973

The end of French empire in Algerian in 1962 did not, by any measure, signal the end of the geopolitical, social, and cultural relationship between the two nations. Though historians have explored the continued diplomatic relationship between the two nations through the program known as “cooperation,” the social and cultural ties that bound France and Algeria have gone overlooked. This paper examines the role of private Christian social aid organizations at work in Algeria after the formal end of empire through the lens of gender and women’s work. The social aid associations that appeared in Algeria before and during the Algerian war did not change form after its end. Private Christian associations like Secours Catholique and Cimade may have changed their names after independence, but their outreach with the population through education, training, and medical work remained the same. Through interfaith aid, Christian associations sought to strengthen their ties to independent Algeria and to push a modernizing agenda, which was not radically dissimilar from the one they embraced during the colonial era. Nonetheless, the motivation behind this work shifted, as associations positioned themselves as allies to the Algerian state and Algerian women. I examine the trajectory of this relationship between 1962 and 1973 through associations’ work with Algerian Muslim women in Algiers as associations began to weigh their relationship to the state more heavily than their relationship with women they sought to help. This relationship strained to the breaking point by the early 1970s, even before the 1973 oil crisis.