Celebrating the “Nation” in a Colonial Context: “Bastille Day” and the Contested Public Space in Algeria, 1880–1939

Compared to the triumphalist celebrations at the beginning of the Popular Front government in 1936, the Bastille Day ceremonies that were held in France three years later appear to have been rather perfunctory exercises that took place in the context of a paralyzed political system. From an Algerian perspective, however, the celebrations of 1939 were far from unspectacular. In the runup to the commemoration, traffic had already intensified between Algeria and the metropole. Two competing Algerian delegations arrived in Paris to attend the official celebrations. One of them, a group of Algerian notables specifically assembled by the colonial administration, was treated with particular honor as the representative of “Muslim Algeria.” The other one, led by Ferhat Abbas and Dr. Mohamed-Salah Bendjelloul—two leading reform-minded critics of the colonial regime—was received quite differently. Having traveled to Paris on their own initiative, the men were largely ignored by French officialdom and not even