A Drinking Problem: French Psychiatric Fears about the Increase in Muslim Alcoholics in Colonial Algeria

doi:10.4000/remmm.17818

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L’alcool dans les mondes musulmans

PREMIERE PARTIE : DOSSIER THEMATIQUE

II L'alcool face à l'Etat disciplinaire (XIXe siècle - années 1970)

A Drinking Problem: French Psychiatric Fears about the Increase in Muslim Alcoholics in Colonial Algeria

Des boissons problématiques : la psychiatrie française face aux alcooliques musulmans dans l'Algérie coloniale

مشروبات إشكالية : نظريات الطبّ النفسي الفرنسي عن إدمان الكحول والجندر والاندماج في جزائر العهد الاستعماري

Nina Salouâ Studer

p. 105-122

https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.17818

Résumés

English Français العربية

Jusqu’à la création d’institutions psychiatriques en Algérie coloniale dans les années 1930, le consensus des psychiatres coloniaux français était que l’alcoolisme était auparavant inconnu des musulmans mais qu’il devenait rapidement un problème alarmant. Les médecins craignaient une explosion du nombre de patients en raison de l’augmentation de l’alcoolisme parmi les personnes colonisées et un accroissement correspondant des crimes commis par des hommes musulmans ivres. Ces psychiatres décrivaient aussi l’alcoolisme comme un problème sérieux parmi les colons français, hommes comme femmes, tout en suggérant que la plupart des musulmanes ne consommaient jamais d’alcool. Dans le même temps, ils commentaient la consommation excessive d’alcool de certaines femmes algériennes marginalisées. Ces récits coloniaux pathologisaient et criminalisaient fortement les consommateurs et consommatrices musulmanes d’alcool, les présentant comme étant à deux doigts de se retrouver dans une prison ou un hôpital psychiatrique.

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Entrées d’index

Plan

Fears of Alcoholism via Contact with France

French Fears over Patient Numbers

Alcohol and Crime

Conclusion

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Texte intégral

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1 All translations into English are by the author; the French originals can be found in the footnotes (...)
2 “Ainsi, au fanatisme […] vient s’ajouter la proscription absolue de l’alcool; quelle barrière plus (...)

1The general consensus of French colonial psychiatry in the 19th and 20th c. was that there had been no alcohol consumption before the French conquest of the Maghreb, due to the strict prohibition of alcohol in the Qur’an, and that only the arrival of the French on North African soil had introduced the colonised Muslims to alcohol and, subsequently, to alcoholism. In the 19c., many French colonial psychiatrists believed that this Muslim abstention from alcohol protected them not only from alcoholism, which French psychiatrists in the 19c. usually classified as its own category of mental disorder with “serious neurological and psychiatric symptoms” (Quétel/Simon, 1988: 510),1 but also from many kinds of psychiatric problems that alcoholism was understood to exacerbate. The noted French psychiatrist Abel-Joseph Meilhon, for example, wrote an article about the different diagnoses that could be found among Algerian patients and concluded that “the absolute prohibition of alcohol” was one of the main factors that prevented insanity among them: “which more effective barrier could be opposed to madness?” (Meilhon, 1896: 26).2

3 As part of my wider research into the history of colonial psychiatry in Algeria, I have analysed th (...)
4 I.e. the reports of the yearly meetings of the Congrès des Médecins Aliénistes et Neurologistes de (...)
5 For an overview of over 100 mini-biographies of these doctors and psychiatrists, see Studer, 2015: (...)
6 The small Neuropsychiatric Hospital of Berrechid, in Morocco, was opened in 1920. Initially, it onl (...)

2This article is based on an analysis of articles,3 conference papers,4 and over 75 dissertations by French psychiatrists and neurologists, who had first-hand experience with Muslim psychiatric patients during the colonisation of Algeria.5 Publications by medical experts, who were involved in the assessment of Muslim psychiatric patients affected by alcoholism in the 19th c. have also been included. The personal experiences of French psychiatric experts in the Maghreb varied widely. In the 19th c. some French psychiatrists, like Auguste Voisin, gained their information from having travelled in the colonial Maghreb on official inspections of the psychiatric system (Voisin, 1896: 89f.), while others, like Adolphe Kocher, based their analysis on their experiences with psychiatric patients in situ in North African hospitals (Kocher, 1883). From 1845 until the establishment of psychiatric institutions in Algeria in the 1930s, European, Muslim and Jewish psychiatric patients from Algeria were transported to French asylums, where psychiatrists like Meilhon treated them. In 1908, for example, the department of Algiers shipped patients to the asylums of Montperrin and Pierrefeu, while patients from Oran were received in Limoux and Saint-Alban. Patients from Constantine were transferred to the Saint-Pons asylum (Studer, 2015: 108f.). The establishment of psychiatric institutions in the Maghreb in the 1920s and 1930s6 changed this tradition of French experts detached from the situation in the colonies writing authoritatively on all aspects of the psychopathology of North Africans, as now psychiatrists working and living in the colonies diagnosed, treated and described Muslim patients. The first psychiatric institution in Algeria, the Psychiatric Hospital of Blida-Joinville, was officially opened in 1938 (Desruelles/Bersot, 1939: 578). In addition, first-line psychiatric clinics in Algiers, Oran and Constantine were established, from where severe cases could be transferred to Blida-Joinville (Keller, 2005: 493).

7 While alcoholism was mainly diagnosed in Muslim men, case studies and statistical evidence about al (...)
8 The psychiatric definition of alcoholism remained vague in the sources discussing the situation in (...)
9 Practical questions surrounding the admission to and treatment of alcoholic patients in these insti (...)

3This article will look at assessments by French colonial psychiatrists testifying that they observed a clear trajectory amongst the (male) Algerian Muslim population,7 leading the colonised from total abstinence to widespread alcoholism.8 These psychiatrists believed that they were observing ever-rising numbers of Muslim alcoholics in the colonial institutions and feared that this increase in patients threatened these same institutions. However, they also voiced concern that these rising numbers of inebriated Muslims posed a threat to the safety of both settlers and the colonised in Algeria. To contextualise this notion of alcoholism steadily increasing amongst Muslims, three major theories in the psychiatric history of alcohol consumption in colonial Algeria will be traced in this article.9 This article will first look at the widespread theory that there had been no alcoholism in Algeria before the French conquest of the region, and that France gradually “infected” its colonies with the psychiatric disorder of alcoholism. This theory can be found in texts spanning the whole colonial period. The second part will compare the numbers of French settlers and Algerian Muslims suffering from alcoholism in the 19th century, who were either shipped from Algeria to France or treated by French doctors in Algerian general hospitals. Finally, the third part will look at both concerns about overcrowding in the newly built institutions in Algeria and at the motivation behind these concerns, i.e. at warnings that crimes by Muslim alcoholics might seriously harm the colony itself.

Fears of Alcoholism via Contact with France

10 “La France compte beaucoup d’ivrognes; on n’y rencontre heureusement pas d’alcooliques.” The Englis (...)

4Before the start of the colonisation of Algeria in 1830, the overconsumption of alcohol had rarely been portrayed as causing serious medical or psychiatric problems in France. Indeed, it was argued that moderate drinking was healthy for both French men and French women (Prestwich, 2003: 324). This belief in the essential harmlessness of alcohol was perhaps best expressed in an often repeated bonmot attributed to a report given at the Académie Française in Paris in 1852 on the works of the Swedish doctor Magnus Huss. Huss, who coined the word “alcoholism” in 1849 (Saxton, 2015: 20), had, allegedly, claimed that “France has many drunkards, but happily no alcoholics”.10

11 “Avec ce chiffre, la France arrive de beaucoup en tête des nations alcoolisées […].”
12 For a definition of the term “original sobriety” and for an analysis of this construct that women h (...)
13 Absinthe-drinking French women, for example, were interpreted as a sign of a decline of civilisatio (...)

5The idea of partial, or even full, abstention became more popular in France after 1870 (Lalouette, 1980: 294f.; Nourrisson, 1988: 494); by the turn of the century, fear of alcoholism was shared by many in France (Dargelos, 2008). The influential French philosopher and pacifist Théodore Ruyssen, for example, described France in a 1913 article on “Temperance” as occupying “the first rank of the alcoholised nations”, yet he assured his readers that women drank little (Ruyssen, 1913: 137).11 Ruyssen’s exclusion of women from the growing alcohol overconsumption exemplified the gendering of the new diagnosis of alcoholism in France, in line with the construct of an alleged “original sobriety” among women that was now slowly lost.12 Many French authors believed it to be outrageous and medically dangerous when women “started” to drink.13

14 “L’ivrognerie tue en détail et dans tous les temps et l’abus des boissons est un des grands maux de (...)
15 “C’est surtout grâce à l’apéritif, et en particulier à l’usage de l’absinthe, que le quart des habi (...)
16 For a study of alcoholism amongst French legionaries in different colonial contexts, see: Comor, 20 (...)

6Similarly, the French doctor Alphonse Marcailhou D’Aymeric complained that drunkenness was not only a problem among European men in Algeria, “but, unpleasant thing to say, among [European] women, who are not free from all accusation of intemperance” (Marcailhou D’Aymeric, 1873: 17).14 Both male and female French settlers in Algeria were regularly portrayed in France as excessive drinkers who did not fulfil the duties of the mission civilisatrice: They set a poor example to Algerian Muslims and they did not work to strengthen France’s presence in the region. Doctor Jules Arnould, for example, claimed in the 1902 edition of his 1881 book “New Elements of Hygiene” that “a quarter of the population of European origin in Algeria are alcoholics” (Arnould, 1902: 638).15 The phenomenon of rising numbers of alcoholics among the Muslim colonised was principally attributed to the bad example set by the high consumption of alcohol among European soldiers,16 settlers and tourists and the easy access to alcohol that came with the French. This notion of the precolonial period as a time of total abstinence was inaccurate, however, as some Muslims had always found ways to combine their religious convictions with the consumption of alcohol, as shown, for example, in descriptions of alcohol, produced and consumed locally, that spanned the whole period of the colonisation of Algeria (Largeau, 1881: 79; Foley, 1938: 301f.).

17 On alcohol drinking and sex work in the colonial Maghreb, see, for example: Taraud, 2012:61f., Sihe (...)

7It was the direct contact with France, many argued, that had caused this loss of abstinence in Muslim men. Like many colonial psychiatrists of the time Louis Livet, for example, was a proponent of the notion that alcoholism was somehow contagious, as he argued in his 1911 dissertation on “The Algerian Mad and Their Hospitalisation”. He suggested that, among Muslim men, it was those who had been in contact with France who became alcoholics – soldiers and those living in coastal cities. According to Livet, the argument slightly changed when it came to Algerian women: Here it was not contact with France that caused alcoholism, but a certain detachment from their own culture, so to speak, as he argued that alcoholism was mainly diagnosed among sex workers (Livet, 1911: 66f., 70).17

8Despite this narrative of Algeria being infected with French alcoholism, psychiatrists throughout the whole colonial period also reported that large groups of Muslims continued to respect the prohibition of alcohol in the Qur’an, the most commonly described group being women, who were consequently also imagined to be safer from psychiatric issues than Muslim men. Indeed, while the rates of alcohol-drinking Algerian men rose with easier access to alcohol, the consumption of alcohol remained highly stigmatised among Algerian women throughout the colonial period. Algerian women described as breaking the religious rules about the prohibition of alcohol were often identified in French publications as marginalised, as sex workers, as seen in Livet’s case, or as domestic servants, singers, dancers or musicians.

18 General paralysis of the insane, i.e. a disorder that occurs in the third stage of syphilis, which (...)
19 “ […] une domestique élevée à la française dans un orphelinat à la suite de la famine et du typhus (...)

9In his 1902 dissertation, for example, the French doctor Pierre Battarel reported on two Muslim women suffering from paralysie générale18 who had been transferred from Algiers to the mental asylum of Montperrin. He described them as “a servant brought up the French way in an orphanage […]; one divorced woman, probably an alcoholic prostitute” (Battarel, 1902: 27).19 Battarel’s first case study concerned a Muslim woman named Hadda bent Mohamed, “called Clémence”, who had worked as a domestic servant before being admitted to a general hospital in Algiers in 1895 and who had been brought up in one of the orphanage-villages founded by Charles Lavigerie (Battarel, 1902: 63f.), archbishop of Carthage and Algiers and founder of the White Fathers. Orphaned Muslim girls and boys were placed in different orphanages by Lavigerie, with boys working on farms attached to theirs, which sometimes included vineyards (Bertin, 1938: 51). Like Hadda bent Mohamed, many of the girls raised in Lavigerie’s orphanage-villages were intended to go into domestic service. In the hospital, Hadda bent Mohamed was delirious and showed what Battarel described as “ideas of grandeur” (Battarel, 1902: 64). In his report on her condition, Battarel did not mention symptoms of alcoholism. He concluded his case study, however, by warning:

20 “Nous ferons remarquer, à propos de cette observation, que presque toutes les femmes indigènes recu (...)

We would note, about this observation, that almost all native women gathered by Cardinal Lavigerie suffer from either syphilis or tuberculosis, [and are] often alcoholics (Battarel, 1902: 64).20

10Around the turn of the century, syphilis, tuberculosis and alcoholism were often thought to be hereditary as well as signs of degeneration (Schneider, 1982: 275). Battarel’s disparaging comment on the high rates of syphilis amongst Algerians brought up in Lavigerie’s orphanage-villages was clearly a moral, possibly anti-clerical, comment, yet it should also be seen in the context of contemporary fears of a “venereal peril”, as the historian Hannah-Louise Clark put it (Clark, 2013: 92). These fears of widespread venereal disease reached their pinnacle in the first decades of the 20th century in Europe. Additionally, confusing syphilis with yaws, many Europeans believed that most North Africans were infected with syphilis. The British psychiatrist John Davidson, for example, stated in 1883 that “scarcely a family” was “free from the syphilitic taint” in precolonial Morocco (Davidson, 1883: 495).

21 “Elle aurait ressenti un vif chagrin de son divorce. […] Son délire est continu, elle est en proie (...)

11Battarel’s second case study concerned Djadoun Mimi bent Mostefa, a 46-year-old Muslim woman living in Cherchell (Battarel, 1902: 65), whom he callously described as “probably an alcoholic prostitute” in the aforementioned passage separate from the case study (Battarel, 1902: 27). In the case study itself, Battarel described her as having been admitted to a hospital in Algiers for her general paralysis and because she had “felt a deep sorrow after her divorce”. She was delirious and “in the grip of a violent agitation”, speaking incoherently and, like Hadda bent Mohamed, she showed “ideas of grandeur”. In September 1897 she was transferred to the asylum of Montperrin (Battarel, 1902: 65).21 As with the first case study, Batterel’s allusions to Djadoun Mimi bent Mostefa being a sex worker and an alcoholic could be found outside of her case study where she was instead described as a destitute and desperate widow. While it is possible that she was both a sex worker and an alcoholic, it is nonetheless suggestive that Battarel chose not to mention these clearly relevant issues in her case study.

12Outside her case study, Battarel noted:

As for the divorced woman, she led, since her separation, a hectic life, indulging in alcohol and experiencing the cerebral as well as the physical excitations of her distressing profession as a prostitute in a public house.

With regards to women, it should also be noted that almost all [female] general paralytics entering the asylums in France are ‘irregular’ and not ‘legitimate’, women who have been more exposed than other women of the same financial condition, to the main factors of general paralysis, invoked today: intellectual overwork, alcohol, etc.

22 “Quant à la divorcée, depuis sa séparation, elle mène une vie agitée, s’adonnant à l’alcool et subi (...)

It seems to be the same for our [female] Algerian natives (Battarel, 1902: 28).22

13Both of Battarel’s case studies depicted the lives of Muslim women who lived differently from the majority of women in Algeria, as both had fallen on exceptionally hard times. Hardship by itself was, however, not what caused their potential alcoholism. According to Battarel, it was the detachment from their own contexts. This detachment can be seen in Hadda bent Mohamed being brought up in a European orphanage, and in Djadoun Mimi bent Mostefa being burdened by “a hectic life” and “cerebral [… and] physical excitations”. Hadda bent Mohamed was suspected of being an alcoholic merely because of how she grew up and, to a lesser degree, because of her profession. Djadoun Mimi bent Mostefa was described as a woman ripped out of her accustomed context by both her grief and her destitution.

23 One example of this framing of alcohol drinking as a sign of Muslims wrongly assimilating can be fo (...)

14In descriptions of many male Muslim alcoholics, France’s influence was reported as being the factor that caused a similar detachment. French colonial psychiatrists suggested that it was through contact with France – and the bad example set by French settlers, soldiers and tourists – that some Muslim men and some marginalised Muslim women digressed from the prohibition of alcohol in the Qur’an, losing their own “original sobriety”. Consequently, the adoption of alcohol was regularly framed in the source material as “assimilation gone wrong”.23

French Fears over Patient Numbers

24 “[…] ils constituent une charge pour la société en encombrant les hôpitaux, les asiles, les prisons (...)
25 These doctors and psychiatrists not only feared an increase in cases of alcoholism amongst Algerian (...)
26 “L’anisette, ‘pourvoyeuse des bagnes, des prisons, des asiles, des hôpitaux et des cimetières […]’. (...)

15Between the conquest of Algeria in 1830 and the establishment of psychiatric institutions in the 1930s, some European, Jewish and Muslim alcoholic patients were shipped to France for treatment in the different French asylums mentioned above. These French public asylums already housed high percentages of alcoholic patients during this period (Prestwich, 2003: 324), most of whom were men (Quétel/Simon, 1988: 513), which fuelled a discussion about alcoholics unnecessarily occupying valuable beds or, in doctor Jules Arnould’s words, constituting “a burden to society by clogging up the hospitals, asylums, [and] prisons” (Arnould, 1902: 639).24 Some of the doctors and psychiatrists treating patients from Algeria feared that the increased alcohol consumption of the colonised Muslims posed an existential threat to the existence of French institutions, as a potential wave of newly alcoholic Muslims might overwhelm the system.25 The French doctor Pierre Pinaud, for example, described in his 1933 dissertation on “Alcoholism amongst the Arabs in Algeria” that anisettes had become the drink of choice amongst Muslim Algerian men, before reminding his readers that anisettes were the “provider of prisons, jails, asylums, hospitals and cemeteries” (Pinaud, 1933: 26).26

16Despite such dire warnings, few Muslim alcoholics seem to have been transported to France during this period. The psychiatrist Abel-Joseph Meilhon reported on the numbers of alcoholics among the Muslim patient population of the Montperrin asylum in Aix-en-Provence. He described the time between 1860 and 1877 as the period “which we would gladly call the golden age of our Arabs [Arab patients]”, as there were only four admissions for alcoholism among 245 patients (Meilhon, 1891: 387). He highlighted a steep increase for the period between 1877 and 1889, as there were 34 admissions for alcoholism among 253 Muslim patients in total (Meilhon, 1896: 19). In the context of this increase in alcoholism amongst Muslim patients after 1877, one should take note of what French doctor Jacques Bertillon wrote in 1904 about this very same time period at Montperrin:

27 “À l’asile d’Aix en Provence on trouvait chaque année, depuis dix-sept ans, une proportion de un ou (...)

At the asylum of Aix-en-Provence, for the last 17 years, a proportion of one or two alcoholics out of 100 admissions had been found every year; this lasted until 1877; suddenly, from 1878, one finds 12 or 14 or 15. The conditions of alcoholism in the region, however, could not have changed overnight. It was the doctor who had changed and with him the appreciation of the word ‘alcoholic’ (Bertillon, 1904: 64; see also: Quétel/Simon, 1988: 526).27

17The increase in alcoholic patients that had interrupted Meilhon’s “golden age of our Arabs”, could, therefore, be due to a new psychiatric supervisor’s personal interpretation of the diagnosis and not to an actual rise in alcoholism.

28 While unnamed in Rouby’s article, Meilhon was the director of Montperrin during that time period ac (...)
29 “Il nous a été répondu qu’il était entré dans les sept premiers mois de cette année trois arabes et (...)

18Additionally, despite Meilhon’s claim of a marked increase in Muslim alcoholics in Montperrin, the numbers seem to have been noticeably lower than those for European settlers. A French psychiatrist who ran a private asylum for European patients in the surroundings of Algiers, Dr Pierre Rouby, contacted the director of Montperrin28 in 1894 and inquired how many Muslim and settler patients from Algeria were diagnosed with alcoholism in Montperrin during this same year. Rouby was informed that “three alcoholic Arabs and 14 alcoholic settlers” had been admitted in the first seven months of 1894 (Rouby, 1895: 243).29 In Rouby’s eyes, the difference in the rates of alcoholism among colonised and colonisers showed that this was a potential obstacle to the continuation of the colonial project in the region, which he saw threatened by the high rates of alcoholism among the settlers and the degeneration of future generations caused by alcoholic parents (Rouby, 1895: 241f.).

30 This problem of only the most desperate cases of Algerian Muslims suffering from psychiatric issues (...)

19The numbers of patients shipped to France, however, are not representative of actual levels of alcoholism in Algeria. Not all Muslim patients suffering from alcoholism made it into the colonial system. Due to the high costs of transporting patients from Algeria to France, only chronic cases as well as the potentially violent amongst the Algerian Muslims were shipped to France (Keller, 2007: 41-43, 86).30 Some Muslims suffering from alcoholism were treated by colonial doctors in the French hospitals in Algeria, either exclusively or before their transfer to asylums in France. The psychiatrist Adolphe Kocher provided in his 1883 dissertation information on 1,138 people suffering from psychiatric issues between 1867 and 1882 in the department of Algiers. In comparison with the total admissions for psychiatric reasons, 28.57% of European men, 7.69% of European women, 8.65% of Muslim men and 6.17% of Muslim women were classified as alcoholics in Kocher’s statistics (Kocher, 1883: 70).

20In Kocher’s statistics, the issue of alcoholism was clearly one that primarily concerned European men in Algeria, despite the misgivings expressed over the increasing numbers of Muslim alcoholics. The relatively high percentage of alcoholics among Muslim women in Kocher’s statistics can be explained through the distortion occurring due to the overall low admission numbers for Muslim women. In reality there were only five cases of alcoholism among 81 female Muslim patients during this time period. Overall, it can be said that while psychiatrists often hinted at the increase in Muslim alcoholism potentially overwhelming the metropolitan asylums that accepted patients from Algeria, the strict selection process of patients – based mainly on considerations of finance and safety – clearly favoured the treatment of European patients. The patchy statistics plainly show that Muslim alcoholics were outnumbered by alcoholic French settlers amongst the patients, which, in turn, was seen to be a danger for the future of the colony by people like Pierre Rouby, who doubted that inebriated settlers were good at colonising.

Alcohol and Crime

31 It should be added here that some French colonial psychiatrists warned that the experiences of Worl (...)

21The aforementioned Psychiatric Hospital of Blida-Joinville was built and working from the early 1930s (Porot, 1943: 361), years before its official inauguration in 1938 (Desruelles/Bersot, 1939: 578). Additionally, first-line clinics in Algiers, Oran and Constantine treated patients suffering from non-chronic alcoholism (Keller, 2007: 61). While the 1920s saw, according to an 1988 article by the historian Claude Quétel and the psychiatrist Jean-Yves Simon, the decline of alcoholism as a psychiatric diagnosis in France (Quétel/Simon, 1988: 511f.), rising alcoholism rates among the colonised in Algeria were still perceived as a serious threat in the eyes of French colonial officials in general and French colonial psychiatrists in particular.31

32 The history of Antoine Porot and the École d’Alger has been studied by a variety of historians of p (...)

22In the years between the establishment of Blida-Joinville and Algerian independence, French colonial psychiatry was led by the theories of the École d’Alger, founded by the psychiatrist Antoine Porot, who was the first professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of Algiers.32 Porot was also the technical health advisor for psychiatry for the Algerian government, which lent additional authority to both his own publications and those that he supported (Studer: 2015, 259).

33 The same notion of an innate immoderation can also be found in French descriptions of Algerian immi (...)
34 Blida-Joinville was, almost immediately upon completion, faced with the problem of overcrowding. Ke (...)
35 They could, however, not give statistical evidence for this impression.
36 “Il existe donc un rapport étroit entre la consommation de l’alcool et les troubles mentaux chez le (...)

23One of the main claims of the École d’Alger was that the colonised Algerians knew no moderation in anything they did. Settlers and even colonial doctors and psychiatrists had been saying this for generations, yet the proponents of the École d’Alger gave this idea new authority. This immoderation made all Muslim alcohol consumption inherently dangerous, within the logic of the theories of the École d’Alger (Porot/Arrii, 1932: 599f.; Porot/Gentile, 1941: 129; Porot, 1943: 375).33 Whereas the first two subchapters of this article treated a perceived increase that could not be traced in the numbers provided by colonial psychiatrists, the establishment of psychiatric institutions in Algeria saw both an increase in overall patients34 and in Muslim patients that admitted that they had consumed alcohol at some point in their lives. The psychiatric theory of an inherent immoderation in all Muslims meant, in the eyes of many medical and psychiatric experts, that all Muslims who started to drink alcohol would necessarily become alcoholics. Muslim patients with an occasional, moderate alcohol consumption were consequently viewed suspiciously by French colonial psychiatrists. This was shown in a 1941 article on “Alcoholism in Mental Issues in the Muslim Algerian Native” by two psychiatrists working in Blida-Joinville, Maurice Porot – son of Antoine Porot – and Jean Gentile. In their article they analysed 541 male Muslim patients treated in Blida-Joinville on the 1 March 1941 (Porot/Gentile, 1941: 126). 54% of these patients admitted to having consumed alcohol at some point in their lives, which was, according to Porot and Gentile, a far higher percentage than among the general Muslim population in Algeria.35 This led them to the conclusion that “There is therefore a close relationship between the consumption of alcohol and mental disorders among Muslims” (Porot/Gentile, 1941: 129).36

24Yet, colonial psychiatrists from that time period not only warned that an increase in Muslims drinking alcohol would lead to overcrowded institutions but also believed that, due to the presence of more non-abstaining Muslims, they were witnessing something that they had long warned about: a marked increase in crimes. The principal interest of Porot and Gentile’s research, for example, seems to have been the threat that these newly alcoholic Algerian Muslims posed to society. Porot and Gentile looked specifically at patients who had been interned after having committed crimes, of whom, according to them, 60% had consumed alcohol at some point in their lives (Porot/Gentile, 1941: 130). This coincided with long-established theories by doctors and psychiatrists about the correlation between alcohol, “madness” and crime in France (Arnould, 1902: 639). Descriptions of alcohol-fuelled violence and criminality among Muslim men can be found in both theories and individual case studies of French colonial psychiatrists. Antoine Porot and his student Jean Sutter, for example, wrote an article on the “’Primitivism’ of North African Natives”, in which they described intoxicated North Africans as displaying an “extreme violence”. They further stated:

37 “Quant à l’alcool, il a à son actif bien des scènes tragiques. Aucun réactif n’est plus propre à ré (...)

As for alcohol, it has many tragic scenes to its name. No reagent is more likely to reveal [their] criminal impulsivity, which we have already reported as one of the dominant traits of the native soul (Porot/Sutter, 1939: 237).37

25Pierre Pinaud similarly believed that he was witnessing this alcohol-activated “criminal impulsivity” both in his everyday practice dealing with alcoholic patients and, due to the danger that alcohol potentially posed to all Muslim men, out there, in the world. He warned in his 1933 dissertation that the reaction of alcohol on Muslim men had devastating consequences:

38 “Sous l’effet de l’anisette, ils deviennent violents et querelleurs. Les cas de délire dus à l’abso (...)

Under the influence of anisette, they become violent and quarrelsome. Cases of delirium due to the absorption of this drink often end tragically, and it is enough to consult any newspaper in order to observe the considerable number of criminal acts, attacks and murders committed by natives in a state of drunkenness (Pinaud, 1933: 27).38

26In summary, it can be said that the belief of rising alcoholism in Muslim men was indirectly used to explain the overall increase in Muslim patients in psychiatric institutions, as shown by Porot and Gentile, who highlighted the unusually high levels of alcohol consumers amongst their patients (Porot/Gentile, 1941: 129). The conviction that, due to their allegedly innate immoderation, all Muslim alcohol consumers might become alcoholics, opened up apprehensions regarding overcrowding of specific institutions to something that concerned the whole colony.

Conclusion

27French colonial psychiatrists in the 19th and 20th c. believed that alcohol had been unknown in Algeria before the French conquest. In their writings they continually proposed that, since then, the rates of alcohol drinking and alcoholism were steadily rising among the colonised Muslims. Closeness to French civilisation – and not necessarily the increased availability of alcohol in the coastal cities – was identified in the psychiatric source material analysed for this article as the main factor in determining whether an Algerian man started to drink alcohol or not.

28This theory also implied that the longer the French presence in Algeria lasted, the more Muslim men would imitate the behaviour of the French in Algeria and start to drink. As alcohol drinking Muslims – both men and women – were believed to drink under the influence of France, their consumption was often seen as proof of “assimilation gone wrong”. Up to the establishment of psychiatric institutions in Algeria, however, the numbers provided by French colonial psychiatrists did not support this proposition of France infecting Algerian men with alcoholism. Yet at the same time, this theory of alcoholism rising under French influence was reinforced by the belief that all colonised Muslims in the region shared a propensity towards immoderation. Believing that they were witnessing the beginning of an epidemic of alcoholism, French colonial psychiatrists were fascinated with both the normal and the excessive alcohol consumption of Muslim patients and non-patients alike.

29The motivation behind the interest in these rising numbers was concern about the dangers posed by the Algerian colonised. The acceptance that alcohol activated a “criminal impulsivity” (Porot/Sutter, 1939: 237) in Muslim men created widespread fears over “criminal acts, attacks and murders committed by natives in a state of drunkenness” (Pinaud, 1933: 27). Medical and psychiatric experts all through the colonisation of Algeria voiced fears of an increase in crimes committed by drunken Muslim men. Every Muslim who consumed alcohol consequently had to be assessed as a potential threat, a duty that many French colonial psychiatrists took seriously in the compilation of their case studies. This perceived threat was reinforced by sensationalist newspaper reports about atrocities committed by inebriated Muslim men, as alluded to by Pinaud (Pinaud, 1933: 27). Despite being presented as accounts of the pathological excesses of individuals, psychiatric case studies were also understood as being indicative of all male Muslim alcohol drinkers, due to the widely accepted idea of a shared, excessive nature. The case studies of alcoholic Muslim women, on the other hand, were always framed as exceptions, as individualistic, as irregularities in the behaviour of marginalised women, who were presented as detached from their own civilisation.

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Notes

1 All translations into English are by the author; the French originals can be found in the footnotes. “[…] des troubles nerveux et psychiques graves […].”

2 “Ainsi, au fanatisme […] vient s’ajouter la proscription absolue de l’alcool; quelle barrière plus efficace pouvait être opposée à la folie?”

3 As part of my wider research into the history of colonial psychiatry in Algeria, I have analysed the medical and psychiatric journals Annales Médico-Psychiatriques, Hygiène Mentale, Algérie Médicale, and the Gazette Médicale de l’Algérie.

4 I.e. the reports of the yearly meetings of the Congrès des Médecins Aliénistes et Neurologistes de France et des Pays de Langue Française.

5 For an overview of over 100 mini-biographies of these doctors and psychiatrists, see Studer, 2015: 248-263.

6 The small Neuropsychiatric Hospital of Berrechid, in Morocco, was opened in 1920. Initially, it only diagnosed and treated European patients. The expansion to include colonised patients began in 1926. See, for example: Woytt-Gisclard, 1936: 164f.; Ifrah: 1980, 11, FN 1. The Manouba Psychiatric Hospital in Tunis was opened as a psychiatric hospital for Europeans in 1914 and expanded to include the colonised in 1931 or 1932. See, for example: Porot, 1936: 794f.; Porot, 1943: 367; Bennani, 1996: 73.

7 While alcoholism was mainly diagnosed in Muslim men, case studies and statistical evidence about alcoholic Muslim women will be included in this analysis. This focus on clearly exceptional case studies of female Muslim alcoholics has been chosen on purpose, as alcoholism amongst this group has been mostly neglected by studies of the history of alcoholism so far.

8 The psychiatric definition of alcoholism remained vague in the sources discussing the situation in colonial Algeria. As discussed in Part Three of this article, alcoholism amongst Muslim men specifically was often imagined as a clean trajectory, where loss of abstinence necessarily meant succumbing to alcoholism.

9 Practical questions surrounding the admission to and treatment of alcoholic patients in these institutions will not be covered in this article, but form part of my wider research into the pathologisation of drinking habits in the colonial Maghreb.

10 “La France compte beaucoup d’ivrognes; on n’y rencontre heureusement pas d’alcooliques.” The English translation was taken from: Prestwich, 1988: 37. While this phrase was enthusiastically repeated in many French publications, it should be pointed out that the earliest mention of this phrase found during the research for this article was from an 1899 article by the engineer and temperance advocate Louis Jacquet. Jacquet, 1899: 268.

11 “Avec ce chiffre, la France arrive de beaucoup en tête des nations alcoolisées […].”

12 For a definition of the term “original sobriety” and for an analysis of this construct that women had always consumed less alcohol than men in the past, see: Eriksen, 1999: 46.

13 Absinthe-drinking French women, for example, were interpreted as a sign of a decline of civilisation. Arnould, 1902: 638.

14 “L’ivrognerie tue en détail et dans tous les temps et l’abus des boissons est un des grands maux de l’Algérie, non seulement chez les hommes, mais, chose fâcheuse à dire, chez les femmes, qui ne sont pas blanches de toute accusation d’intempérance.”

15 “C’est surtout grâce à l’apéritif, et en particulier à l’usage de l’absinthe, que le quart des habitants d’origine européenne de l’Algérie sont des alcooliques.”

16 For a study of alcoholism amongst French legionaries in different colonial contexts, see: Comor, 2006: 36-39.

17 On alcohol drinking and sex work in the colonial Maghreb, see, for example: Taraud, 2012:61f., Sihem/Wassila, 2018: 94.

18 General paralysis of the insane, i.e. a disorder that occurs in the third stage of syphilis, which often included delusions.

19 “ […] une domestique élevée à la française dans un orphelinat à la suite de la famine et du typhus de 1868 ; une divorcée, probablement fille publique alcoolique […].”

20 “Nous ferons remarquer, à propos de cette observation, que presque toutes les femmes indigènes recueillies par le cardinal Lavigerie sont syphilitiques ou tuberculeuses, souvent alcooliques. Une visite à l’hôpital de Saint-Cyprien des Attafs confirmerait cette opinion.”

21 “Elle aurait ressenti un vif chagrin de son divorce. […] Son délire est continu, elle est en proie à une agitation violente, elle tient des propos incohérents […].”

22 “Quant à la divorcée, depuis sa séparation, elle mène une vie agitée, s’adonnant à l’alcool et subissant les excitations aussi bien cérébrales que physiques de sa pénible profession de prostituée de maison publique.

À propos des femmes, il faut d’ailleurs remarquer que presque toutes les paralytiques générales qui entrent dans les asiles, en France, sont des ‘irrégulières’ et non des ‘légitimes’, des femmes qui ont été plus exposées que les autres femmes de même condition de fortune, aux facteurs principaux, invoqués aujourd’hui, de la paralysie générale: surmenage, alcool, etc.

Il paraît en être de même pour nos indigènes algériennes.”

23 One example of this framing of alcohol drinking as a sign of Muslims wrongly assimilating can be found in Adolphe Kocher’s 1883 psychiatric thesis, in which he stated that Algerians drinking alcohol only showed that “they have come to, from our civilisation, assimilate the vices.” Kocher, 1883: 72. “[…] ils ont su, de notre civilisation, s’assimiler les vices.”

24 “[…] ils constituent une charge pour la société en encombrant les hôpitaux, les asiles, les prisons […]”

25 These doctors and psychiatrists not only feared an increase in cases of alcoholism amongst Algerian Muslims, but also believed that alcoholism increased the risk of developing other mental disorders. See, for example: Abadie, 1912: 379.

26 “L’anisette, ‘pourvoyeuse des bagnes, des prisons, des asiles, des hôpitaux et des cimetières […]’.”

27 “À l’asile d’Aix en Provence on trouvait chaque année, depuis dix-sept ans, une proportion de un ou deux alcooliques sur cent entrées ; cela a duré jusqu'en 1877 ; brusquement, à partir de 1878 on en trouve 12 ou 14 ou 15 ; cependant les conditions d’alcoolisme de la région n’ont pas pu changer ainsi du jour au lendemain. C’est le médecin qui avait changé et avec lui l’appréciation du mot ‘alcoolique’.”

28 While unnamed in Rouby’s article, Meilhon was the director of Montperrin during that time period according to Richard Keller. Keller, 2007: 126.

29 “Il nous a été répondu qu’il était entré dans les sept premiers mois de cette année trois arabes et quatorze colons alcooliques.”

30 This problem of only the most desperate cases of Algerian Muslims suffering from psychiatric issues being transferred to France was already discussed at length during the colonial period. See, for example: Dupouy, 1912: 528f.

31 It should be added here that some French colonial psychiatrists warned that the experiences of World War I had led many Algerian soldiers to drink. See, for example: Porot, 1918: 383f.

32 The history of Antoine Porot and the École d’Alger has been studied by a variety of historians of psychiatry. See, for example: Bennani, 1996: 74f.; Bullard, 2005: 226f., 231; Keller, 2007: 3, 44, 124; Gouriou, 2008: 55, 62.

33 The same notion of an innate immoderation can also be found in French descriptions of Algerian immigrants during the colonial period. See, for example: Blanchard, 2008.

34 Blida-Joinville was, almost immediately upon completion, faced with the problem of overcrowding. Keller, 2007: 196f.

35 They could, however, not give statistical evidence for this impression.

36 “Il existe donc un rapport étroit entre la consommation de l’alcool et les troubles mentaux chez le musulman.”

37 “Quant à l’alcool, il a à son actif bien des scènes tragiques. Aucun réactif n’est plus propre à révéler l’impulsivité criminelle que nous avons déjà signalée comme un des traits dominants de l’âme indigène.” Emphasis in the original.

38 “Sous l’effet de l’anisette, ils deviennent violents et querelleurs. Les cas de délire dus à l’absorption de cette boisson se terminent souvent de façon tragique, et il suffit de consulter n’importe quel journal d’informations pour constater le nombre considérable de faits délictueux, d’attentats et de meurtres commis par les indigènes en état d’ébriété.”

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Nina Salouâ Studer, « A Drinking Problem: French Psychiatric Fears about the Increase in Muslim Alcoholics in Colonial Algeria », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée [En ligne], 151 | 2022, mis en ligne le 20 septembre 2022, consulté le 04 octobre 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/17818 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.17818

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