Catholic Missionaries in Colonial Algeria.

This article examines the changing role played by Catholic missionaries in the French colonial government's attempt between 1848 and 1883 to mold a cohesive community out of a heterogeneous group of European settlers in Algeria. It argues that this effort constituted an alternative civilizing mission in which the aim was not to assimilate indigenous subjects but to create meaningful difference between North Africans and Europeans where this difference was not yet sufficiently clear. Between 1848 and 1870 military leaders used female missionaries in particular to cater to the religious needs of migrant Spanish, Italian, and Maltese settlers. After 1870, however, newly empowered civilian officials increasingly abandoned the use of Catholic missionaries and worked to assimilate foreign settlers to their own secular ideal of a universal, republican France. Throughout this period military and civilian officials alike framed governing the settlers as crucial to the larger goal of governing colonized Algerians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]