of the South,” including the M‘zab. Map by C. Scott Walker.
Other parts of the Sahara posed similar problems. Protectorate officials sometimes had difficulty determining the status of persons who, as the resident general Stéphen Pichon diplomatically put it, “originated from places whose political situation is not clearly established.”48 Having in mind people from regions such as the Touat oasis zone (see Map 3), Pichon asked the foreign minister whether it might be an “opportune moment to determine by a common agreement what one means by ‘Algeria’ and ‘territories annexed to Algeria.’” This was a question not only of geography but also of chronology, for it was “equally indispensable to determine from what date the inhabitants are French subjects.”49
Pichon’s dilemma illustrated the extent to which the smooth functioning of protectorate rule in Tunisia could be thwarted by the indeterminacy of French rule in other parts of North Africa. Though he called for a “common accord,” his interests actually differed quite dramatically from those of the Algerian governor general, Paul Révoil. Whereas Pichon wanted to know where Algeria stopped and the annexed territories started, the governor general wrote that “there can be no question of a distinction, in my view, between ‘Algeria’ and ‘territories annexed to Algeria.’” As far as “natives of these countries” are concerned, he continued, there was no difference in their nationality. This statement was remarkable because, by Révoil’s own admission, there had been no “annexation properly speaking,” only a “police action in regions that we had always regarded as having belonged to French territory.”50 Thus, even though he conceded that it was currently impossible for him to “delimit” the physical boundaries of the southern territories, he nonetheless deemed it important to consider as a French subject any person coming from a place that was under nominal French authority.51 Never mind that Pichon’s predecessor had just made virtually the opposite argument with regard to migrants from the French Soudan.
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