From Commercialised Species to Smuggled Object: Red Coral in Algeria - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2023

From Commercialised Species to Smuggled Object: Red Coral in Algeria

Résumé

The beginnings of coral exploitation date to Classical Antiquity, where it was incorporated into Mediterranean commercial circuits in Asia for export to India and China. Initially, coral was intensively exploited in the northern parts of the Western Mediterranean. However, over time, these areas lost their precedence over southern regions of the Mediterranean and became secondary centres of production. Over the course of centuries, El Kala (the eastern most coastal region of present day Algeria) acquired the reputation for being the most fertile Mediterranean region for coral and became subject to an intensive coral rush from several different kingdoms and empires 1. These, locked into different conflicts with each other, had also been engaged in changing relationships with the Ottoman Empire and its vassals in Barbary 2. Starting from the fifteenth century onwards, eastern Algeria was at the centre of disputes among different European powers (French, Spanish, Italian and British) over coral exploitation (Masson 1908: 30-40 and 70-80). Early in the history of El Kala, the market for coral became internationalised. During the sixteenth century, these kingdoms, which distributed the opportunities for trade to their internal political supporters to increase their external political influence, played a central role in encouraging these initiatives and this led to their prosperity (Masson 1908: 30-80). Trade monopolies started to develop through commercial concessions on the Mediterranean coasts. In the sixteenth century, France formed an alliance with Barbarossa (Barberousse), a pirate from Algiers representing the Ottoman Empire, to counter Spanish and Italian forces in the Mediterranean (Heers 2001: 90 and following). At that time, close ties existed between private and public networks in these maritime spaces. Since private companies were also the armed representatives of the Kingdom of France, they were able to appropriate resources in faraway places and bring them back to French ports, the terrestrial spaces of French sovereignty. Therefore, the modes of access to coral were transformed from competitive concessions to spatial monopolies over maritime spaces and vice versa. The negotiations on agreements passed between the representatives of the Ottoman Empire (their vassals in Barbary) and the European commercial companies were shaped by international alliances, as the European powers sought to cultivate privileged trade relationships with the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman Empire's central government) to undermine their competitors. From the sixteenth century, maritime trade and coral mining was at the heart of these unstable relationships. These international commercial relationships, defined by force, gave way to coral fishing concessions, where the boundaries between the public and the private were dependent on the interactions between private and public capital as well as on the political rationalities of the state(s). The commodification of coral stemmed from state concessions for a long time and was mainly due to the internationalisation of its exploitation. Even today, the concessions for coral fishing in El Kala intertwine public and private interests in Algeria and across borders. This chapter traces the history of these patterns of coral exploitation through different periods, precolonial, colonial and contemporary, to show the continuity in the different forms of concessions and the links between this Algerian coral fishing zone and distant regions. This analysis will also help to understand how the privatisation of this resource, tied to state logics, came about, and the inherent difficulties impeding its conservation in globalised markets. Long distance relationships have always been at the root of coral commodification and the different
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
From Commercialised Species to Smuggled Object.pdf (289.46 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)

Dates et versions

hal-04213010 , version 1 (20-09-2023)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04213010 , version 1

Citer

Tarik Dahou. From Commercialised Species to Smuggled Object: Red Coral in Algeria. alix levain; helene artaud; emilie mariat roy. Elusive Partners : Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives on Marine Species, Museum national d'histoire naturel, 2023, natures en sociétés, 9782383270065. ⟨hal-04213010⟩
50 Consultations
6 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More