Louis Henri de Gueydon

Louis Henri de Gueydon was a French soldier, born with Granville on November 22nd, 1809 and deceased on December 1st, 1886. He was the first governor of the Algérie under the III {{E}} République.

Resulting from a noble family of Italian origin, the count de Gueydon entered to the naval college of Angouleme in 1823 with number 3, left with number 1, and obtained there the rank of sign of vessel on December 31st, 1830, aboard brig the Falcon , on the coast of the Brésil .

Governor of the Martinique in 1853, maritime police chief of Lorient in 1858 and Brest in 1859, it is named in 1861 vice-admiral and takes the command as a chief of the squadron of evolutions to replace the vice-admiral Bouet-Willaumez.

In 1863, he is vice-president of the advisory committee of the colonies, then member and president of the council of admiralty. After the revolution of September 4th, Mr. Fourichon, become Minister for the navy, divided the fleet of the North Sea in two squadrons, and Mr. de Gueydon, named commander-in-chief of the one of them.

He was named on March 29th, 1871 civil Gouverneur of Algeria, where for a few months a serious insurrection had burst. He put in state of siege most of the communes of the colony, worked vigorously with the repression of the revolt. Assimilating the Kabyles and the insurrectionists of the Commune it gave like consigns: “To act as in Paris; one judges and one disarms”. A decree of September 14th removed the “Arab Bureaux partly”, reconstituted the administration of the Large-Kabylie , and created cantonal districts which gave rise to the mixed communes.

He worked on the future constitution of Algeria, and regained his station at the time of the meeting of the general advices (October 15th, 1871). He created a score of centers of population, to answer the law of June 21st, 1871 (Revised by decrees of the July 15th, 1874 and September 30th, 1878) allotting 100.000 hectares of grounds in Algeria to the immigrants of Alsace-Lorraine.

On the proposal of the admiral de Gueydon, the president of the republic issued on October 16th, 1871 a novel mode of attribution of the grounds. Title II lays out that one becomes owner in Algeria by undertaking to reside during nine years on the conceded ground.

In January 1872 it summarizes the situation: “It should not be dissimulated: what the politicians want, and with them the large majority of the colonists, it is the sovereignty of the elected officials of the population françaiseet crushing, I dare to say serfdom, of the indigenous population”.

Sources

the Gold book of Algeria , Narcisse Falcon, Challamel and Co Editors Algerian and Colonial Bookstore, 1889.
colonial French history , Agora, Armand Colin.

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