86

Elisée Reclus, libertarian geographer, has an ambiguous position on the colonial fact. Militant anarchist, he fiercely defends the self-determination of individuals. He condemns without any ambiguity colonies which he calls of “exploitation”, in which the minority of colonists appropriate themselves the means of productions and exploit the work of the natives. But Reclus, like many anarchists of his time, distinguished two types of colonization: exploitation colonies and populating colonies, where colonists settle in regions barely populated and still to be cultivated. In this case, it is not about hoarding thousands of hectares but to allow each colonist to cultivate an exploitation and therefore to contribute to the development of a country. That is why his position on the colonization in Algeria is so ambiguous: anarchist, he understands the resistance of the natives to the French conquest, but the number of colonists cultivating the soil with their own hands is lessening in his eyes the scandal of the conquest.