ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on alcohol in the French empire in North Africa, and on the production, trade and consumption of wine from the early nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. It examines administrative, judicial and hospital sources are assessed and newspapers and novels from three different countries. The chapter points out that the sources tend to tell us more about urban alcohol consumption and in particular about wine. Despite the very different colonial settings, the official French rhetoric on and literary representations of indigenous people’s alcohol consumption were quite similar in regard to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Segregation between Europeans and the indigenous population was characteristic of Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan colonial society. This was reflected in both nationalists’ and French endeavours to selectively restrict indigenous alcohol consumption. Considerable differences in wine production, export volume and consumption levels can be identified in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.
