Cash Crops, Settlement Patterns, and Indigenous Population Growth: The Role of Wine in Colonial Algeria (1900-1950)

This paper examines how export-oriented settler agriculture shaped the spatial distribution of indigenous populations in colonial Algeria. By the early twentieth century, Algeria had become one of the world's largest wine producers and the principal supplier of wine to metropolitan France. We construct a commune-level panel dataset combining census measures of theindigenous population with indicators of viticultural intensity derived from agricultural reports. Exploiting variation in early exposure to viticulture across communes, we show that indigenous population growth became increasingly concentrated in high-viticulture areas from the late 1920s onward, with divergence intensifying during the Great Depression. This pattern is consistent with in-migration driven by the relatively continuous labor demand of viticulture -unlike more seasonal crops- followed by reduced outward mobility as alternative employment opportunities contracted. These findings indicate persistent spatial differences in population growth across communes. This study provides systematic quantitative evidence linking the labor demands of settler monoculture to the spatial concentration of indigenous populations in colonial Algeria.