Les nationalités d’Amîna Hanım. Une pétition d’hérédité à la France (1896-1830)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the claims to French nationality raised by Amîna Hanım, daughter of Husayn Day, last Ottoman governor of Algiers. By analyzing these claims, the author seeks to examine how legal identity was shaped when the French empire succeeded Ottoman rule in Algeria. It considers Amîna’s petition as a “narrative transaction” that uncovers the ways through which law and literature are used for the legal framing of nationality. Amîna had to make a claim, to narrate her own story, to defend personal interests for a decade in front of diplomatic and legal imperial institutions, be they in Cairo or Alexandria. All of her various acts demonstrate that the issue of nationality, from its implementation to its negotiation, was a complex process than can not only be summarized as a simple borrowing of a legal modernity from colonial powers.

Keywords

• Algeria
• Egypt
• Colonization
• Conquest of Algiers
• French nationality
• Law and self narrative