More Roman than the Romans: neoclassical genocide in French Numidia.
In numerous letters to his brother and wife, the Maréchal Armand Jacques Leroy de Saint-Arnaud (1798–1854) describes his military campaigns in Algeria as reincarnations of the Roman wars in Numidia. Saint-Arnaud's Roman/Numidian dichotomy raises additional questions. What role did such ethnological...
| Published in: | Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Vol. 68; no. 2; pp. 235 - 254 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Sep2025
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=193166802&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 193166802 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00760730 6EYU jtl: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies issn: 00760730 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Sep2025 vid: 68 iid: 2 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 193166802 10.1093/bics/qbaf026 ppf: 235 ppct: 19 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 799KB tig: atl: More Roman than the Romans: neoclassical genocide in French Numidia. aug: au: Khellaf, Kyle affil: University of California, Riverside, USA su: Genocide Settler colonialism History of colonies French Algeria Ideology Maghreb (North Africa) Algeria sug: subj: Maghreb (North Africa) Algeria Genocide Settler colonialism History of colonies French Algeria Ideology ab: In numerous letters to his brother and wife, the Maréchal Armand Jacques Leroy de Saint-Arnaud (1798–1854) describes his military campaigns in Algeria as reincarnations of the Roman wars in Numidia. Saint-Arnaud's Roman/Numidian dichotomy raises additional questions. What role did such ethnological fictions play in the actual military conquest of French Algeria? To what extent can we trace the numerous instances of genocide that Saint-Arnaud recounts in his letters to these classical receptions? Furthermore, can we deem the French invasions, with all of their settler-colonial practices and associated violence, a historical phenomenon whose ideological underpinnings were neoclassical in essence? In seeking to answer these questions in the affirmative, I situate the letters of Saint-Arnaud in their larger cultural historical milieu. I bring them into dialogue with the accounts of other French military writers. In so doing, I illustrate how the French conquest of the Maghreb, framed as a rediscovery of the Roman campaigns of old against an unchanged Numidian foe, enabled genocidal acts to be justified through classical ideals and a civilizing model exemplified in Greco-Roman literature. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: © 2020 Institute of Classical Studies. item: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies holder: Oxford University Press / USA dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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