ABSTRACT Colonial railways eased settlement and altered the economic activity of the surrounding areas. Thus, they provide a good testing ground for the impact of settlement expansion. By taking advantage of unique territorial population data and digitized historical colonization maps in the Constantine region, this paper assesses the effect of railways on the indigenous population in Algeria during the colonial years. The indigenous population growth and density are first analysed in a cross-section multivariate regression framework that permits controlling for various forms of settlement. As a robustness check to the results, the paper implements differences-in-differences combined with a propensity score matching methodology that allow analysing the impact in relatively isolated areas where the infrastructure arrived later. The main conclusion of the paper is that, if settlement did have a positive effect on the indigenous population growth – as many historians tend to argue – it was channelled through railways only after 1900, when cereal cultivation improved, and the trade policy changed. The lack of significance before the 1900s is most likely explained by geographic-specific factors that limited the potential effects of railways.

中文翻译：

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“殖民化河”的影响：世纪之交的法国阿尔及利亚殖民地铁路和土著居民

摘要殖民地铁路简化了定居点并改变了周边地区的经济活动。因此，它们为定居点扩展的影响提供了良好的测试基础。通过利用君士坦丁地区独特的领土人口数据和数字化历史殖民地图，本文评估了殖民时期铁路对阿尔及利亚土著人口的影响。首先在横截面多元回归框架中分析土著人口的增长和密度，该框架允许控制各种形式的定居。作为对结果的鲁棒性检验，本文实现了差异中的差异以及倾向得分匹配方法，该方法可以分析基础设施较晚到达的相对偏远地区的影响。该论文的主要结论是，如果定居确实对土著人口的增长产生了积极影响（正如许多历史学家倾向于指出的那样），则仅在1900年谷物改良种植和贸易政策改变后，才通过铁路运输。1900年前缺乏意义的原因很可能是由于地理因素限制了铁路的潜在影响。