The Genevan Trading Company of the Swiss Colonies of Sétif
The Genevan Trading Company of the Swiss colonies of Sétif was a private share company which operated in Geneva from 1853 to 1956. Founded thanks to an imperial concession from France granting 20,000 hectares of land in Algeria for the establishment of an agricultural settlers’ colony, it’s first agents included several prominent Genevan figures such as François Auguste Sautter de Beauregard (1826-1885) and Paul-Élisée Lullin (1800-1872). The company’s affaires implied millions of francs in the currency of the time. Henry Dunant (1828-1910), future initiator and co-founder of the Red Cross humanitarian movement, was also an employee of the Geneva Trading Company. Dunant subsequently settled in Algeria, launching his own colonial businesses such as the Société financière et industrielle des moulins de Mons-Djémila whose shares were bought by such illustrious Genevans as General Guillaume Henri Dufour (1787-1875) and the naturalist Henri de Saussure (1829-1905).
Fabio Rossinelli
From Jacques Pous to Henry Dunant (in French only) by Lisa N'Pango Zanetti et Fabio Rossinelli [PDF 1.0 Mo]
This article presents the extraordinary biography of Jacques Pous, a former French missionary in Sri Lanka, deserter from the French colonial army and clandestine refugee in Geneva, as well as his work on Henry Dunant, co-founder of the Red Cross and a kind of hero of Christian philanthropy in the collective memory of Geneva, Switzerland and Europe.
His long-forgotten past as a colonial businessman in Algeria has resurfaced thanks in no small part to the work of Jacques Pous. In his first book, Henry Dunant l'Algérien ou le mirage colonial (1979, Geneva, Éd. Grounauer), he traces Dunant's career in Algeria, first as an employee of the Compagnie genevoise des colonies suisses de Sétif, then as an independent entrepreneur.
Carrying out an archival investigation worthy of the most experienced detective, Jacques delivers a wider history of himself and his protagonist - it's a breach, an opening, a challenge to the mythical image of a pacifist Switzerland far removed from colonialism, and all its great legendary figures.
It takes place at a time when the links between Switzerland and colonialism are not even being debated.