A drinkable history of colonialism in North Africa. GRAPES OF WRATH!
In the first half of the 20th century, the world’s 4th largest producer of wine was… Algeria (after France, Spain and Italy).
Before the discovery of oil, wine was by far Algeria’s largest export. In fact, shipping companies developed the WINE TANKER before they used oil tankers from North Africa (link).
Wine was a classic colonial commodity: it was produced in massive quantities, very little of it was consumed locally and it was exported almost entirely to France (98%). Algerian wine was made to taste crap and be cheap, and it would then be mixed with other crap French wines in France.
The wine industry was a product of settler colonialism: the French state expropriated lands through conquest after 1830, then created legal conditions to facilitate the sale of more land to settlers. Some of this was used for cereals or citrus, but mostly for wine.
Muslim Algerians saw the lands of their ancestors taken to produce a drink that they considered sinful and had no use for (although some did drink, this was frowned upon). However! It got even spicier AFTER independence in 1962. Wine was such an important source of revenue that the independent Algerian state continued to export wine to France.
Like oil, wine was nationalized. The two precious liquids shared a complex relationship: in 1971 President Houari Boumédiène nationalized oil and gas. In retaliation France threatened to stop buying Algerian wine. Outraged, Boumédiène got petty as fuck and ordered vines to be ripped out of the soil. The result was an ecological disaster because the vines prevent erosion on the steep slopes on which they’re planted.
tl;dr the french wine industry was built on crap Algerian wine but then oil became the sexier fluid