France / Algeria

Philosopher founder of Algerian resistance network dies

Article published on the 2009-08-03 Latest update 2009-08-03 16:18 TU

Francis Jeanson in 2002
(Photo: AFP)

French philosopher Francis Jeanson has died aged 87. His family said he died on Saturday in his native Bordeaux. Jeanson was known for his collaboration with Jean-Paul Sartre on the journal Les Temps Modernes and also for setting up a support network for Algeria's National Liberation Front (FLN) during the Algerian war of Independance.

Jeanson was born in 1922 in Bordeaux and after studies in literature and philosophy, he worked as a reporter on the Communist paper Alger républicain in 1945.

After meeting Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre he began to work on Les Temps Modernes. He published L'Algerie hors la loi (Algeria Outlawed) in 1955 in which he declared the legitimacy of Algeria's independence movement, the FLN.

In 1957, he founded an underground network, known as the "suitcase carriers" (Les Porteurs de valise), which lasted for three years and which supplied France-based FLN activists with money and false papers.

Benjamin Stora, Professor of History at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales says, "The suitcase carriers were a network of leftist activists who decided to act. They decided to transport documents - brochures, newspapers – to the French territory, or to Belgium, Switzerland and Germany. A few of them transported arms. But the majority transported documents, or even money which was raised in France by FLN activists."

"The Jeanson networks were set up around 1957. At first they were small", Stora commented, "with only a few dozen people. But by about 1959 or 1960, they had attracted hundreds of people in France - just fewer than thousand".

Jeanson answered criticism of his actions in his 1960 book Notre guerre (Our war) which was banned by French authorities when it first appeared. He was sentenced, in absentia, to ten years imprisonment but was received a pardon six years later.

Stora says the French authorities started to realize that there were French people helping the FLN, and it was considered a terrorist organization at the time.

"So gradually, the Jeanson network was investigated, and the main members were arrested, including Jeanson himself," he says.

There were not many people who helped the FLN. French society did not support their actions, because many of their children were soldiers who had gone to fight against the independence movement in Algeria. The so-called suitcase carriers were on the fringe, and were not well-perceived, even by the leftist parties, including the Communist party.

Stora says that the idea that many French people supported the resistance is a myth, "that there were many French people opposed to the war. But really it was only about a hundred people who were running counter to the mainstream at the time".

Jeanson wrote almost two dozen books, several of which were on Sartre but he also wrote about historical thinker-writers such as Montaigne.