French Algeria
Encyclopedia
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica
and Réunion
are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest of French North Africa, was never considered part of France. One of France's longest-held overseas territories, Algeria
became a destination for hundreds of thousands of European
immigrants, known as colons and later, as pieds-noir
s. However, indigenous Muslim
s remained a majority of the territory's population throughout its history. Gradually, dissatisfaction among the Muslim population with its lack of political and economic status fueled calls for greater political autonomy, and eventually independence, from France. Tensions between the two population groups came to a head in 1954, when the first violent events of what was later called the Algerian War began. The war concluded in 1962, when Algeria gained complete independence following the March 1962 Evian agreements.
Since the capture of Algiers by the Ottomans Oruch and Barbarossa in 1516, Algeria had been a base for conflict and piracy in the Mediterranean.
In 1681, Louis XIV asked Admiral Abraham Duquesne
to fight the Barbary pirates, and he bombarded Algiers
between 1682 and 1683 to help Christian captives. Again, d'Estrées
bombarded Tripoli
and Algiers
from 1685 to 1688. An ambassador from Algiers visited the Court in Versailles, and a Treaty was signed in 1690 that provided peace throughout the 18th century.
During the Directory
regime of the First French Republic (1795–1799), the Bacri and the Busnach, Jewish negotiants of Algiers
, provided important quantities of grain for Napoleon's soldiers who participated in the Italian campaign
of 1796. However, Bonaparte refused to pay the bill back, claiming it was excessive. In 1820, Louis XVIII paid back half of the Directory's debts. The Dey
, who had loaned to the Bacri 250,000 franc
s, requested from France the rest of the money.
The Dey of Algiers himself was weak politically, economically, and militarily. Algeria was then part of the Barbary States, along with today's Tunisia - which depended on the Ottoman Empire
then led by Mahmud II
- but enjoyed relative independence. The Barbary Coast
was then the stronghold of the Barbary pirates, which carried out raids against European and American ships.
Conflicts between the Barbary States and the newly independent United States of America culminated in the First
and Second Barbary War
(1801–1805 and 1815). The same year, an Anglo-Dutch force, led by Admiral Lord Exmouth
, carried out a punitive expedition
, the August 1816 bombardment of Algiers. The Dey was forced to sign the Barbary treaties
, while the technological advance
of U.S., British and French armies overwhelmed the pirates' expertise at naval warfare
. The name of "Algeria" itself came from the French: following the conquest under the July monarchy
, the Algerian territories, disputed with the Ottoman Empire, were first named "French possessions in North Africa" before being called "Algeria" by Maréchal Général
le Duc de Dalmatie in 1839.
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The conquest of Algeria was initiated in the last days of the Bourbon Restoration
by Charles X
as an attempt to increase his popularity amongst the French people, particularly in Paris, where many veterans of the Napoleonic Wars
lived. He would bolster patriotic sentiment, and turn eyes away from his domestic policies by "skirmishing against the dey
".
, the French consul, to rectify this situation, and he suspected Deval of collaborating with the merchants against him, especially when the French government made no provisions for repaying the merchants in 1820. Deval's nephew Alexandre, the consul in Bône
, further angered the dey by fortifying French storehouses in Bône and La Calle against the terms of prior agreements.
After a contentious meeting in which Deval refused to provide satisfactory answers on 29 April 1827, the dey struck Deval with his fly whisk. Charles X used this slight against his diplomatic representative to first demand an apology from the dey, and then to initiate a blockade against the port of Algiers. When the dey responded to a demand to send an ambassador to France to resolve the incident with cannonfire directed toward one of the blockading ships, the French determined that more forceful action was required.
Deval and other French residents of Algiers left for France while the Minister of War, Clermont-Tonnerre, proposed a military expedition. The ultra-royalist
Count of Villèle, President of the Council, and the monarch's heir opposed military action. The Restoration finally decided to blockade Algiers for three years. But the important tonnage of French ships forced them to keep away from the coasts, while the Barbary pirates
could easily exploit the geography of the coast. Before the failure of the blockade, the Restoration decided on 31 January 1830 to engage a military expedition against Algiers.
Admiral Duperré took the command in Toulon
of an armada of 600 ships and then headed for Algiers. Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan for the invasion of Algeria, General de Bourmont then landed 27 kilometres (16.8 mi) west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch
on 14 June 1830, with 34,000 soldiers. To face the French, the dey sent 7,000 janissaries
, 19,000 troops from the beys of Constantine
and Oran
, and about 17,000 Kabyles. The French established a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization. The French troops took the advantage on 19 June during the battle of Staouéli
, and entered Algiers on 5 July after a three-week campaign. The Dey
agreed to capitulation in exchange for his freedom and the offer to retain possession of his personal wealth. Five days later, he exiled himself with his family, departing on a French ship for the Italian peninsula
, then under the control of the Austrian Empire
. 2,500 janissaries also quit the Algerian territories, heading for Asia, on 11 July. The Dey's departure ended 313 years of Ottoman rule of the territory.
The French army then recruited the first zouaves regiments in October, followed by the spahis regiments, while France expropriated
all the land properties belonging to the Turkish
settlers, known as Beliks. In the western region of Oran
, Sultan Abderrahmane of Morocco
, the Commander of the Believers, could not remain indifferent to the massacres committed by the French Christian troops and to belligerent calls to enter jihad
from the marabout
s. Despite the diplomatic rupture between Morocco and the Two Sicilies in 1830, and the naval warfare engaged against the Austrian Empire
as well as with Spain
, then headed by Ferdinand VII, Sultan Abderrahmane lent his support to the Algerian insurgency triggered by Abd El-Kader. The latter would fight for years against the French. Directing an army of 12,000 men, Abd El-Kader first organized the blockade of Oran.
Algerian refugees were welcomed by the Moroccan population, while the Sultan's instructions recommended to the authorities of Tetuan of assisting them, by providing them jobs in the administration or the military forces. The inhabitants of Tlemcen
, close to the Moroccan border, demanding the Sultan to be placed under his authority in order to escape to the invaders. Abderrahmane thus named nephew, prince Moulay Ali, as Caliph
of Tlemcen, charged of the protection of the city. France executed in retaliations two Moroccans, Mohamed Beliano and Benkirane, under the pseudo-motives of espionage, while all their goods were seized by the military governor of Oran, General Boyer.
Hardly had the news of the capture of Algiers reached Paris than Charles X was deposed during the Three Glorious Days of July 1830, and his cousin Louis-Philippe
, the "citizen king", was named to preside over a constitutional monarchy
. The new government, composed of liberal opponents of the Algiers expedition, was reluctant to pursue the conquest begun by the old regime, but withdrawing from Algeria proved more difficult than conquering it.
named the Duc de Rovigo
as head of military staff in Algeria. De Rogivo took control of Bône
and initiated colonisation of the land, expropriations, etc. He was recalled in 1833 due to the overtly violent nature of the repression. Wishing to avoid a conflict with Morocco, Louis-Philippe sent an extraordinary mission to the Sultan, mixed with displays of military might, sending war ships to the bay of Tangiers. An ambassador was sent to the Sultan Moulay Abderrahmane in February 1832, headed by count de Mornay and including the painter Eugène Delacroix
. The Sultan, however, refused French demands to evacuate Tlemcen.
In 1834, France annexed the occupied areas of Algeria, which had an estimated Muslim population of about two million, as a colony
. Colonial administration
in the occupied areas — the so-called régime du sabre (government of the sword) — was placed under a governor general
, a high-ranking army officer invested with civil and military jurisdiction, who was responsible to the minister of war. Marshall Bugeaud, who became the first governor-general, headed the conquest, making a systemic use of torture
and following a "scorched earth
" policy.
Soon after the conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician Bertrand Clauzel
and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to subsidize its settlement by European farmers, triggering a land rush
. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the Mitidja Plain and envisioned the production there of cotton
on a large scale. As governor general (1835–36), he used his office to make private investments in land and encouraged army officers and bureaucrats in his administration to do the same. This development created a vested interest among government officials in greater French involvement in Algeria. Commercial interests with influence in the government also began to recognize the prospects for profitable land speculation in expanding the French zone of occupation. They created large agricultural tracts, built factories and businesses, and exploited cheap local labor.
Among others testimonies, Lieutenant-Colonel de Montagnac wrote on 15 March 1843, in a letter to a friend:
In the same way, Alexis de Tocqueville
, deputy and famous representative of the liberal tradition in political philosophy, declared in 1841:
Whatever initial misgivings Louis Philippe's government may have had about occupying Algeria, the geopolitical realities of the situation created by the 1830 intervention argued strongly for reinforcing the French presence there. France had reason for concern that Britain
, which was pledged to maintain the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, would move to fill the vacuum left by a French pullout. The French devised elaborate plans for settling the hinterland left by Ottoman
provincial authorities in 1830, but their efforts at state building were unsuccessful on account of lengthy armed resistance.
The most successful local opposition immediately after the fall of Algiers was led by Ahmad ibn Muhammad, bey of Constantine
. He initiated a radical overhaul of the Ottoman administration in his beylik by replacing Turkish
officials with local leaders, making Arabic
the official language, and attempting to reform finances according to the precepts of Islam
. After the French failed in several attempts to gain some of the bey's territories through negotiation, an ill-fated invasion force led by Bertrand Clauzel
had to retreat from Constantine
in 1836 in humiliation and defeat. However, the French captured Constantine under Sylvain Charles Valée
the following year, on 13 October 1837.
The controversial historian Daniel Lefeuvre has contested the common estimates concerning the death toll. He has recently alleged that if the Algerian population
has decreased by 875,000 people between 1830 and 1872, the French military were not responsible for all of them, as a fraction of these deaths could be explained by the grasshopper invasions of 1866 and 1868, as well as by a rigorous winter in 1867-68, which caused a famine
followed by an epidemic of cholera
.
The French began their occupation of Algiers in 1830, starting with a landing in Algiers
. As occupation turned into colonization, Kabylia remained the only region independent of the French government. Pressure on the region increased, and the will of her people to resist and defend Kabylie increased as well.
A turning point in Lalla Fadma's life was the arrival in Kabylie, in about 1849, of a mysterious man who presented himself as Mohamed ben Abdallah (the name of the Prophet
), but who is more commonly known as Bou Baghla. He was probably an ex-lieutenant in the army of Emir Abdelkader, defeated for the last time by the French in 1847. Bou Baghla refused to surrender at that battle, and retreated to Kabylie. From there he began a war against the French armies and their allies, often employing guerrilla tactics . Bou Baghla was a relentless fighter, and very eloquent in Arabic. He was very religious, and some legends tell about his thaumaturgic skills.
Bou Baghla went often to Summer to talk with the high-ranking members of the religious community, and Lalla Fadhma was soon attracted by his strong personality. At the same time, the relentless combatant was attracted by a woman so resolutely willing to contribute, by any means possible, to the war against the French. With her inspiring speeches, she convinced many men to fight as imseblen (volunteers ready to die as martyrs) and she herself, together with other women, participated in combat by providing cooking, medicines, and comfort to the fighting forces.
Traditional sources tell that a strong bond was formed between Lalla Fadhma and Bou Baghla. She saw this as a wedding of peers, rather than the traditional submission as a slave to a husband. In fact, at that time Bou Baghla left his first wife (Fatima Bent Sidi Aissa) and sent back to her owner a slave he had as a concubine (Halima Bent Messaoud). But on her side, Lalla Fadhma wasn't free: even if she was recognized as tamnafeqt ("woman who left her husband to get back to his family", a Kabylie institution), the matrimonial tie with her husband was still in place, and only her husband's will could free her. However he did not agree to, even when offered large bribes. The love between Fadhma and Bou remained platonic, but there were public expressions of this feeling between the two.
Fadhma was personally present at many fights in which Bou Baghla was involved, particularly the battle of Tachekkirt won by Bou Baghla forces (18–19 July 1854), where the French General Randon was caught but managed to escape later.
On 26 December 1854, Bou Baghla was killed; some sources claim it was due to the treason of some of his allies. The resistance remained without a charismatic leader and a commander able to guide it efficiently. For this reason, during the first months of 1855, on a sanctuary built on top of the Azru Nethor peak, not far from the village where Fadhma was born, there was a great council among combatants and important figures of the tribes in Kabylie. They decided to grant Lalla Fadhma, assisted by her brothers, the command of combat.
The French faced other opposition as well in the area. The superior of a religious brotherhood, Muhyi ad Din, who had spent time in Ottoman jails for opposing the bey's rule, launched attacks against the French and their makhzen allies at Oran
in 1832. In the same year, tribal elders chose Muhyi ad Din's son, twenty-five-year-old Abd al Qadir, to take his place leading the jihad
. Abd al Qadir, who was recognized as Amir al-Muminin
(commander of the faithful), quickly gained the support of tribes throughout Algeria. A devout and austere marabout, he was also a cunning political leader and a resourceful warrior. From his capital in Tlemcen
, Abd al Qadir set about building a territorial Muslim state based on the communities of the interior but drawing its strength from the tribes and religious brotherhoods. By 1839, he controlled more than two-thirds of Algeria. His government maintained an army and a bureaucracy, collected taxes, supported education, undertook public works, and established agricultural and manufacturing cooperatives to stimulate economic activity.
The French in Algiers viewed with concern the success of a Muslim government and the rapid growth of a viable territorial state that barred the extension of European settlement. Abd al Qadir fought running battles across Algeria with French forces, which included units of the Foreign Legion, organized in 1831 for Algerian service. Although his forces were defeated by the French under General Thomas Bugeaud in 1836, Abd al Qadir negotiated a favorable peace treaty the next year. The treaty of Tafna
gained conditional recognition for Abd al Qadir's regime by defining the territory under its control and salvaged his prestige among the tribes just as the shaykhs were about to desert him. To provoke new hostilities, the French deliberately broke the treaty in 1839 by occupying Constantine
. Abd al Qadir took up the holy war again, destroyed the French settlements on the Mitidja Plain, and at one point advanced to the outskirts of Algiers itself. He struck where the French were weakest and retreated when they advanced against him in greater strength. The government moved from camp to camp with the amir and his army. Gradually, however, superior French resources and manpower and the defection of tribal chieftains took their toll. Reinforcements poured into Algeria after 1840 until Bugeaud had at his disposal 108,000 men, one-third of the French army
.
One by one, the amir's strongholds fell to the French, and many of his ablest commanders were killed or captured so that by 1843 the Muslim state had collapsed.
Abd al Qadir took refuge in 1841 with his ally, the sultan of Morocco
, Abd ar Rahman II
, and launched raids into Algeria. This alliance led the French Navy
to bombard and briefly occupy Essaouira
(Mogador) under the Prince de Joinville on August 16, 1844. A French force was destroyed at the Battle of Sidi-Brahim
in 1845. However, Abd al Qadir was obliged to surrender to the commander of Oran
Province, General Louis de Lamoricière, at the end of 1847.
Abd al Qadir was promised safe conduct to Egypt
or Palestine if his followers laid down their arms and kept the peace. He accepted these conditions, but the minister of war — who years earlier as general in Algeria had been badly defeated by Abd al Qadir — had him consigned in France in the Château d'Amboise
.
By 1848 nearly all of northern Algeria was under French control. Important tools of the colonial administration, from this time until their elimination in the 1870s, were the bureaux arabes (Arab offices), staffed by Arabists whose function was to collect information on the indigenous people and to carry out administrative functions, nominally in cooperation with the army. The bureaux arabes on occasion acted with sympathy to the local population and formed a buffer between Muslims and colons.
Under the régime du sabre, the colons had been permitted limited self-government in areas where European settlement was most intense, but there was constant friction between them and the army. The colons charged that the bureaux arabes hindered the progress of colonization. They agitated against military rule
, complaining that their legal rights were denied under the arbitrary controls imposed on the colony and insisting on a civil administration for Algeria fully integrated with metropolitan France. The army warned that the introduction of civilian government would invite Muslim retaliation and threaten the security of Algeria. The French government vacillated in its policy, yielding small concessions to the colon demands on the one hand while maintaining the régime du sabre to control the Muslim majority on the other.
ended Algeria's status as a colony and declared in the 1848 Constitution the occupied lands an integral part of France. Three civil territories — Algiers
, Oran, and Constantine
— were organized as French départements (local administrative units) under a civilian government. For the first time, French citizens in the civil territories elected their own councils and mayors; Muslims had to be appointed, could not hold more than one-third of council seats, and could not serve as mayors or assistant mayor
s. The administration of territories outside the zones settled by colons remained under the French Army. Local Muslim administration was allowed to continue under the supervision of French Army commanders, charged with maintaining order in newly pacified regions, and the bureaux arabes. Theoretically, these areas were closed to European colonization.
Called either colons (settlers), Algerians, or later, especially following the 1962 independence of Algeria, pieds noirs
(literally, black feet), the European settlers were largely of peasant farmer or working-class origin from the poor southern areas of Italy, Spain, and France. Others were criminal and political deportees from France, transported under sentence in large numbers to Algeria. In the 1840s and 1850s, to encourage settlement in rural areas, official policy was to offer grants of land for a fee and a promise that improvements would be made. A distinction soon developed between the grands colons (great settlers) at one end of the scale, often self-made men who had accumulated large estates or built successful businesses, and smallholders and workers at the other end, whose lot was often not much better than that of their Muslim counterparts. According to historian John Ruedy, although by 1848 only 15,000 of the 109,000 European settlers were in rural areas, "by systematically expropriating both pastors and farmers, rural colonization was the most important single factor in the destructing of traditional society."
European migration, encouraged during the Second Republic, stimulated the civilian administration to open new land for settlement against the advice of the army. With the advent of the Second Empire in 1852, Napoleon III returned Algeria to military control. In 1858 a separate Ministry of Algerian Affairs was created to supervise administration of the country through a military governor general assisted by a civil minister.
Napoleon III visited Algeria twice in the early 1860s. He was profoundly impressed with the nobility and virtue of the tribal chieftains, who appealed to the emperor's romantic nature, and was shocked by the self-serving attitude of the colon leaders. He decided to halt the expansion of European settlement beyond the coastal zone and to restrict contact between Muslims and the colons, whom he considered to have a corrupting influence on the indigenous population. He envisioned a grand design for preserving most of Algeria for the Muslims by founding a royaume arabe (Arab kingdom) with himself as the roi des Arabes (king of the Arabs). He instituted the so-called politics of the grands chefs to deal with the Muslims directly through their traditional leaders.
To further his plans for the royaume arabe, Napoleon III issued two decrees affecting tribal structure, land tenure, and the legal status of Muslims in French Algeria. The first, promulgated in 1863, was intended to renounce the state's claims to tribal lands and eventually provide private plots to individuals in the tribes, thus dismantling "feudal" structures and protecting the lands from the colons. Tribal areas were to be identified, delimited into douars (administrative units), and given over to councils. Arable land was to be divided among members of the douar over a period of one to three generations, after which it could be bought and sold by the individual owners. Unfortunately for the tribes, however, the plans of Napoleon III quickly unraveled. French officials sympathetic to the colons took much of the tribal land they surveyed into the public domain. In addition, some tribal leaders immediately sold communal lands for quick gains. The process of converting arable land to individual ownership was accelerated to only a few years when laws were enacted in the 1870s stipulating that no sale of land by an individual Muslim could be invalidated by the claim that it was collectively owned. The cudah and other tribal officials, appointed by the French on the basis of their loyalty to France rather than the allegiance owed them by the tribe, lost their credibility as they were drawn into the European orbit, becoming known derisively as béni-oui-oui ("yes men").
Napoleon III visualized three distinct Algerias: a French colony, an Arab country, and a military camp, each with a distinct form of local government. The second decree, issued in 1865, was designed to recognize the differences in cultural background of the French and the Muslims. As French nationals, Muslims could serve on equal terms in the French armed forces and civil service and could migrate to metropolitan France. They were also granted the protection of French law while retaining the right to adhere to Islamic law in litigation concerning their personal status. But if Muslims wished to become full citizens, they had to accept the full jurisdiction of the French legal code, including laws affecting marriage and inheritance, and reject the competence of the religious courts. In effect, this meant that a Muslim had to renounce some of the mores of his religion in order to become a French citizen. This condition was bitterly resented by Muslims, for whom the only road to political equality was perceived to be apostasy
. Over the next century, fewer than 3,000 Muslims chose to cross the barrier and become French citizens. A similar status applied to the Jewish natives.
When the Prussia
ns captured Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan
(1870), ending the Second Empire, the colons in Algiers toppled the military government and installed a civilian administration. Meanwhile, in France the government of the Third Republic
directed one of its ministers, Adolphe Crémieux
, "to destroy the military regime … [and] to completely assimilate Algeria into France." In October 1870, Crémieux, whose concern with Algerian affairs dated from the time of the Second Republic, issued a series of decrees providing for representation of the Algerian départements in the National Assembly of France and confirming colon control over local administration. A civilian governor general was made responsible to the Ministry of Interior. The Crémieux Decrees also granted blanket French citizenship to Algerian Jews, who then numbered about 40,000. This act set them apart from Muslims, in whose eyes they were identified thereafter with the colons. The measure had to be enforced, however, over the objections of the colons, who made little distinction between Muslims and Jews. (Automatic citizenship was subsequently extended in 1889 to children of non-French Europeans born in Algeria unless they specifically rejected it.)
The loss of Alsace-Lorraine
to Prussia in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War
, led to pressure on the French government to make new land available in Algeria for about 5,000 Alsatian
and Lorrainer
refugees who were resettled there. During the 1870s, both the amount of European-owned land and the number of settlers were doubled, and tens of thousands of unskilled Muslims, who had been uprooted from their land, wandered into the cities or to colon farming areas in search of work.
The most serious native insurrection since the time of Abd al Qadir broke out in 1871 in the Kabylie and spread through much of Algeria. The revolt was triggered by Crémieux's extension of civil (that is, colon) authority to previously self-governing tribal reserves and the abrogation of commitments made by the military government, but it clearly had its basis in more long-standing grievances. Since the Crimean War
(1854–56), the demand for grain had pushed up the price of Algerian wheat to European levels. Storage silo
s were emptied when the world market's impact was felt in Algeria, and Muslim farmers sold their grain reserves — including seed grain — to speculators. But the community-owned silos were the fundamental adaptation of a subsistence economy to an unpredictable climate
, and a good year's surplus was stored away against a bad year's dearth. When serious drought struck Algeria and grain crops failed in 1866 and for several years following, Muslim areas faced starvation, and with famine came pestilence. It was estimated that 20% of the Muslim population of Constantine died over a three-year period. In 1871 the civil authorities repudiated guarantees made to tribal chieftains by the previous military government for loans to replenish their seed supply. This act alienated even pro-French Muslim leaders, while it undercut their ability to control their people. It was against this background of misery and hopelessness that the stricken Kabyles rose in revolt.
In the aftermath of the 1871 uprising, French authorities imposed stern measures to punish and control the whole Muslim population. France confiscated more than 5,000 km² of tribal land and placed the Kabylie under a régime d'exception (extraordinary rule), which denied the due process
guaranteed French nationals. A special indigénat
(native code) listed as offenses acts such as insolence and unauthorized assembly not punishable by French law, and the normal jurisdiction of the cudah was sharply restricted. The governor general was empowered to jail suspects for up to five years without trial. The argument was made in defense of these exceptional measures that the French penal code as applied to Frenchmen was too permissive to control Muslims.
. After the Fall of France, the Third French Republic aborted and was replaced by the Philippe Pétain
's French State
.
In 1956, about 512,000 French soldiers were in Algeria. No resolution was imaginable in the short term. A overwhelming majority of French politicians were opposed to the idea of independence while independence was gaining ground in Muslim Algerians' minds. France was deadlocked and the Fourth Republic collapsed over this dispute.
was supposed to keep Algeria's status quo as departments of France as hinted by his famous, yet ambiguous, speeches delivered in Oran and Mostaganem on June 6, 1958. De Gaulle's republican constitution project was approved through the September 1958 referendum
and the Fifth Republic was established the following month with De Gaulle as its President.
The latter consented independence in 1962 after a referendum on Algerian self-determination
in January 1961 and despite a subsequent aborted military coup in Algiers led by four French generals in April 1961.
1851 - 2,554,100
1900 - 4,675,000
1910 - 5,500,000
1940 - 7,600,000
1960 - 10,853,000
in 1892 and headed by former Premier Jules Ferry
, an advocate of colonial expansion, recommended that the government abandon a policy that assumed French law, without major modifications, could fit the needs of an area inhabited by close to two million Europeans and four million Muslims. Muslims had no representation in Algeria's National Assembly and were grossly underrepresented on local councils. Because of the many restrictions imposed by the authorities, by 1915 only 50,000 Muslims were eligible to vote in elections in the civil communes. Attempts to implement even the most modest reforms were blocked or delayed by the local administration in Algeria, dominated by colons, and by the 27 colon representatives in the National Assembly (six deputies and three senators from each department) .
Once elected to the National Assembly, colons became permanent fixtures. Because of their seniority
, they exercised disproportionate influence, and their support was important to any government's survival . The leader of the colon delegation, Auguste Warnier (1810–1875), succeeded during the 1870s in modifying or introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to settlers and continue the Algerian state's appropriation of land from the local population and distribution to settlers. Consistent proponents of reform, like Georges Clemenceau
and socialist Jean Jaurès
, were rare in the National Assembly.
The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing
, mining
, agriculture
, and trade
was controlled by the grands colons . The modern European-owned and -managed sector of the economy centered around small industry and a highly developed export trade, designed to provide food and raw materials to France in return for capital and consumer goods. Europeans held about 30% of the total arable land, including the bulk of the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation . By 1900, Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in agriculture and practically all agricultural exports. The modern, or European, sector was run on a commercial basis and meshed with the French market system that it supplied with wine, citrus, olives, and vegetable
s. Nearly half of the value of European-owned real property was in vineyards by 1914. By contrast, subsistence cereal
production — supplemented by olive, fig, and date growing and stock raising — formed the basis of the traditional sector, but the land available for cropping was submarginal even for cereals under prevailing traditional cultivation practices.
The colonial regime imposed more and higher taxes on Muslims than on Europeans . The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating from before the French conquest, also paid new taxes, from which the colons were normally exempted. In 1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost 90% of the population but produced 20% of Algeria's income, paid 70% of direct taxes and 45% of the total taxes collected. And colons controlled how these revenues would be spent . As a result, colon towns had handsome municipal buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, while Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little if at all from tax revenues .
The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for Algerian Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to learn reading, writing, and engage in religious studies. Not only did the state appropriate the habus lands (the religious foundations that constituted the main source of income for religious institutions, including schools) in 1843, but colon officials refused to allocate enough money to maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for enough teachers and religious leaders for the growing population . In 1892, more than five times as much was spent for the education of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many children of school age. Because few Muslim teachers were trained, Muslim schools were largely staffed by French teachers. Even a state-operated madrasah
(school) often had French faculty members. Attempts to institute bilingual, bicultural schools, intended to bring Muslim and European children together in the classroom, were a conspicuous failure, rejected by both communities and phased out after 1870. According to one estimate, fewer than 5% of Algerian children attended any kind of school in 1870 .
Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of Muslims along with European students in the French school system as part of France's "civilizing mission
" in Algeria. The curriculum was entirely French and allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded even in Muslim schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated, gallicized Muslims — the évolués (literally, the evolved ones) — had been created. Almost all of the handful of Muslims who accepted French citizenship were évolués; ironically, this privileged group of Muslims, strongly influenced by French culture and political attitudes, developed a new Algerian self-consciousness .
Reporting to the French Senate in 1894, Governor General Jules Cambon
wrote that Algeria had "only a dust of people left her." He referred to the destruction of the traditional ruling class that had left Muslims without leaders and had deprived France of interlocuteurs valables (literally, valid go-betweens), through whom to reach the masses of the people. He lamented that no genuine communication was possible between the two communities.
The colons who ran Algeria maintained a dialog only with the beni-oui-ouis
. Later they thwarted contact between the évolués and Muslim traditionalists on the one hand and between évolués and official circles in France on the other. They feared and mistrusted the Francophone évolués, who were classified either as assimilationist, insisting on being accepted as Frenchmen but on their own terms, or as integrationists, eager to work as members of a distinct Muslim elite on equal terms with the French.
controlled Algeria
in 1830, for well over a century France maintained colonial rule
in the territory which has been described as "quasi-apartheid". The colonial law of 1865 allowed Arab and Berber Algerians to apply for French citizenship only if they abandoned their Muslim identity; Azzedine Haddour argues that this established "the formal structures of a political apartheid". Camille Bonora-Waisman writes that, "[i]n contrast with the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates", this "colonial apartheid society" was unique to Algeria.
This "internal system of apartheid" met with considerable resistance from the Muslims affected by it, and is cited as one of the causes of the 1954 insurrection.
peace treaty provided land in the Sahara for the French Army, which it had used under de Gaulle
to carry out its first nuclear tests (Gerboise bleue
). Many European settlers (pieds-noirs) living in Algeria and Sephardic Jews
, who both had been granted French citizenship by the Crémieux decrees at the end of the 19th century, were expelled to France where they formed a new community. On the other hand, the issue of the harki
s, the Muslims who had fought on the French side during the war, still remained unresolved. Large numbers of harkis were killed in 1962, during the immediate aftermath of the Algerian War, while those who escaped with their families to France have tended to remain an unassimilated refugee community. The present Algerian government continues to refuse to allow harkis and their descendants to return to Algeria.
On February 23, 2005 the French law on colonialism
was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement
(UMP) conservative
majority, which imposed on high-school (lycée) teachers to teach the "positive values" of colonialism
to their students, in particular in North Africa (article 4). The law created a public uproar and opposition from the whole of the left-wing, and was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac
(UMP) at the beginning of 2006, after accusations of historical revisionism
from various teachers and historians. It also jeopardized the Franco-Algerian Peace Treaty, which Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
refused to sign following the vote of this law.
Algerians feared that the French law on colonialism would hinder the task the French confronting the dark side of their colonial rule in Algeria because article four of the law decreed among other things that "School programmes are to recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa, ..." Benjamin Stora
, a leading specialist on French Algerian history of colonialism, said "France has never taken on its colonial history. It is a big difference with the Anglo-Saxon countries, where post-colonial studies are now in all the universities. We are phenomenally behind the times." In his opinion, although the historical facts were known to academics, they were not well known by the French public and this led to a lack of honesty in France over French colonial treatment of the Algerian people.
ruled by France
. Literally “French Algeria
,” it means that the three départements of Algeria were to be considered integral parts of France. By integral parts, it is meant that they have their deputies (representatives) in the French National Assembly
, and so on. Further, the people of Algeria who were to be permitted to vote for the deputies would be those who universally accepted French law, rather than sharia
(which was used in personal cases among Algerian Muslims under laws dating back to Napoleon III), and such people were predominantly of French origin or Jewish emigre origin. Many who used this slogan were returnees.
In Paris
, during the perennial traffic jams, adherence to the slogan was indicated by sounding one's automobile horn in the form of four telegraphic
dot
s followed by a dash
, as "al-gér-ie-fran-çaise." Whole choruses of such horn soundings were heard. This was intended to be reminiscent of the Second World War slogan, "V for Victory," which had been three dots followed by a dash. The intention was that the opponents of Algérie française were to be considered as traitorous as the collaborators with Germany during the Occupation of France.
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
and Réunion
Réunion
Réunion is a French island with a population of about 800,000 located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France...
are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest of French North Africa, was never considered part of France. One of France's longest-held overseas territories, Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
became a destination for hundreds of thousands of European
European ethnic groups
The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
immigrants, known as colons and later, as pieds-noir
Pied-noir
Pied-Noir , plural Pieds-Noirs, pronounced , is a term referring to French citizens of various origins who lived in French Algeria before independence....
s. However, indigenous Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s remained a majority of the territory's population throughout its history. Gradually, dissatisfaction among the Muslim population with its lack of political and economic status fueled calls for greater political autonomy, and eventually independence, from France. Tensions between the two population groups came to a head in 1954, when the first violent events of what was later called the Algerian War began. The war concluded in 1962, when Algeria gained complete independence following the March 1962 Evian agreements.
Initial conflicts
In 1681, Louis XIV asked Admiral Abraham Duquesne
Abraham Duquesne
Other topics that could fall under Duquesne can be found at Marquis Duquesne Abraham Duquesne, marquis du Bouchet was a French naval officer, who also saw service as an admiral in the Royal Swedish Navy. He was born in Dieppe, a seaport, in 1610, and was a Huguenot...
to fight the Barbary pirates, and he bombarded Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
between 1682 and 1683 to help Christian captives. Again, d'Estrées
Jean II d'Estrées
Jean II d'Estrées, , was a Marshal of France, and an important naval commander of Louis XIV.Jean d'Estrées was born in a noble family from Picardie...
bombarded Tripoli
Tripoli
Tripoli is the capital and largest city in Libya. It is also known as Western Tripoli , to distinguish it from Tripoli, Lebanon. It is affectionately called The Mermaid of the Mediterranean , describing its turquoise waters and its whitewashed buildings. Tripoli is a Greek name that means "Three...
and Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
from 1685 to 1688. An ambassador from Algiers visited the Court in Versailles, and a Treaty was signed in 1690 that provided peace throughout the 18th century.
During the Directory
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
regime of the First French Republic (1795–1799), the Bacri and the Busnach, Jewish negotiants of Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
, provided important quantities of grain for Napoleon's soldiers who participated in the Italian campaign
French Revolutionary Wars: Campaigns of 1796
The French Revolutionary Wars continued from 1795, with the French in an increasingly strong position as members of the First Coalition made separate peaces. Austria and Great Britain were the main remaining members of the coalition...
of 1796. However, Bonaparte refused to pay the bill back, claiming it was excessive. In 1820, Louis XVIII paid back half of the Directory's debts. The Dey
Dey
Dey was the title given to the rulers of the Regency of Algiers and Tripoli under the Ottoman Empire from 1671 onwards...
, who had loaned to the Bacri 250,000 franc
French franc
The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
s, requested from France the rest of the money.
The Dey of Algiers himself was weak politically, economically, and militarily. Algeria was then part of the Barbary States, along with today's Tunisia - which depended on the Ottoman Empire
Stagnation of the Ottoman Empire
The Stagnation of the Ottoman Empire is the period following the Growth of the Ottoman Empire . During this period the empire continued to have military might. The next period would be shaped by the decline of their military power which followed the loss of huge territories...
then led by Mahmud II
Mahmud II
Mahmud II was the 30th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 until his death in 1839. He was born in the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, the son of Sultan Abdulhamid I...
- but enjoyed relative independence. The Barbary Coast
Barbary Coast
The Barbary Coast, or Barbary, was the term used by Europeans from the 16th until the 19th century to refer to much of the collective land of the Berber people. Today, the terms Maghreb and "Tamazgha" correspond roughly to "Barbary"...
was then the stronghold of the Barbary pirates, which carried out raids against European and American ships.
First Barbary War
The First Barbary War , also known as the Barbary Coast War or the Tripolitan War, was the first of two wars fought between the United States and the North African Berber Muslim states known collectively as the Barbary States...
and Second Barbary War
Second Barbary War
The Second Barbary War , also known as the Algerine or Algerian War, was the second of two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Empire's North African regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algeria known collectively as the Barbary states. The war between the Barbary States and the U.S...
(1801–1805 and 1815). The same year, an Anglo-Dutch force, led by Admiral Lord Exmouth
Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth
Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, GCB was a British naval officer. He fought during the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary, and the Napoleonic Wars...
, carried out a punitive expedition
Punitive expedition
A punitive expedition is a military journey undertaken to punish a state or any group of persons outside the borders of the punishing state. It is usually undertaken in response to perceived disobedient or morally wrong behavior, but may be also be a covered revenge...
, the August 1816 bombardment of Algiers. The Dey was forced to sign the Barbary treaties
Barbary treaties
The Barbary Treaties refer to several treaties between the United States of America and the semi-autonomous North African city-states of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, known collectively as the Barbary States....
, while the technological advance
Gunpowder warfare
Early modern warfare is associated with the start of the widespread use of gunpowder and the development of suitable weapons to use the explosive, including artillery and handguns such as the arquebus and later the musket, and for this reason the era is also summarized as the age of gunpowder...
of U.S., British and French armies overwhelmed the pirates' expertise at naval warfare
Naval warfare
Naval warfare is combat in and on seas, oceans, or any other major bodies of water such as large lakes and wide rivers.-History:Mankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years. Land warfare would seem, initially, to be irrelevant and entirely removed from warfare on the open ocean,...
. The name of "Algeria" itself came from the French: following the conquest under the July monarchy
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
, the Algerian territories, disputed with the Ottoman Empire, were first named "French possessions in North Africa" before being called "Algeria" by Maréchal Général
Marshal General of France
The title Marshal General of France or more exactly "Marshal General of the King's camps and armies" was given to signify that the recipient had authority over all the French armies in the days when a Marshal governed only one army usually...
le Duc de Dalmatie in 1839.
The French conquest of Algeria
Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...
by Charles X
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
as an attempt to increase his popularity amongst the French people, particularly in Paris, where many veterans of the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
lived. He would bolster patriotic sentiment, and turn eyes away from his domestic policies by "skirmishing against the dey
Dey
Dey was the title given to the rulers of the Regency of Algiers and Tripoli under the Ottoman Empire from 1671 onwards...
".
The Fly Whisk Incident
In the 1790s, France had contracted to purchase wheat for the French army from two Jewish merchants in Algiers, Messrs. Bacri and Boushnak, and was in arrears paying them. These merchants, Bacri and Boushnak who had debts to the dey, claimed inability to pay those debts until France paid its debts to them. The dey had unsuccessfully negotiated with Pierre DevalPierre Deval (diplomat)
Pierre Deval was French Consul-General in Algeria from 1814 to 1827. He is known for his diplomatic mission to the Regency of Algiers, and the diplomatic slights he received while there, which gave a pretext to the French invasion of Algiers in 1830....
, the French consul, to rectify this situation, and he suspected Deval of collaborating with the merchants against him, especially when the French government made no provisions for repaying the merchants in 1820. Deval's nephew Alexandre, the consul in Bône
Bone
Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...
, further angered the dey by fortifying French storehouses in Bône and La Calle against the terms of prior agreements.
After a contentious meeting in which Deval refused to provide satisfactory answers on 29 April 1827, the dey struck Deval with his fly whisk. Charles X used this slight against his diplomatic representative to first demand an apology from the dey, and then to initiate a blockade against the port of Algiers. When the dey responded to a demand to send an ambassador to France to resolve the incident with cannonfire directed toward one of the blockading ships, the French determined that more forceful action was required.
Invasion of Algiers (June 1830)
Ultra-royalist
Ultra-Royalists or simply Ultras were a reactionary faction which sat in the French parliament from 1815 to 1830 under the Bourbon Restoration...
Count of Villèle, President of the Council, and the monarch's heir opposed military action. The Restoration finally decided to blockade Algiers for three years. But the important tonnage of French ships forced them to keep away from the coasts, while the Barbary pirates
Barbary Coast
The Barbary Coast, or Barbary, was the term used by Europeans from the 16th until the 19th century to refer to much of the collective land of the Berber people. Today, the terms Maghreb and "Tamazgha" correspond roughly to "Barbary"...
could easily exploit the geography of the coast. Before the failure of the blockade, the Restoration decided on 31 January 1830 to engage a military expedition against Algiers.
Admiral Duperré took the command in Toulon
Toulon
Toulon is a town in southern France and a large military harbor on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region, Toulon is the capital of the Var department in the former province of Provence....
of an armada of 600 ships and then headed for Algiers. Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan for the invasion of Algeria, General de Bourmont then landed 27 kilometres (16.8 mi) west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch
Sidi Ferruch
Sidi Fredj is a coastal town in Algiers Province, Algeria. It is located within the territory of the municipality of Staouéli, on a presque-isle on the Mediterranean Sea....
on 14 June 1830, with 34,000 soldiers. To face the French, the dey sent 7,000 janissaries
Janissary
The Janissaries were infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguards...
, 19,000 troops from the beys of Constantine
Constantine, Algeria
Constantine is the capital of Constantine Province in north-eastern Algeria. It was the capital of the same-named French département until 1962. Slightly inland, it is about 80 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast, on the banks of Rhumel river...
and Oran
Oran
Oran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest...
, and about 17,000 Kabyles. The French established a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization. The French troops took the advantage on 19 June during the battle of Staouéli
Staouéli
Staouéli is a municipality in Algiers province, Algeria. It is located in Zéralda district, on a Presque-isle on the Mediterranean Sea, hosting the resort town of Sidi Fredj. There was a Grand Prix circuit located in Staouéli. Grands Prix were held there from 1928–1930, but the circuit is no longer...
, and entered Algiers on 5 July after a three-week campaign. The Dey
Dey
Dey was the title given to the rulers of the Regency of Algiers and Tripoli under the Ottoman Empire from 1671 onwards...
agreed to capitulation in exchange for his freedom and the offer to retain possession of his personal wealth. Five days later, he exiled himself with his family, departing on a French ship for the Italian peninsula
Italian Peninsula
The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three large peninsulas of Southern Europe , spanning from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula's shape gives it the nickname Lo Stivale...
, then under the control of the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...
. 2,500 janissaries also quit the Algerian territories, heading for Asia, on 11 July. The Dey's departure ended 313 years of Ottoman rule of the territory.
The French army then recruited the first zouaves regiments in October, followed by the spahis regiments, while France expropriated
Nationalization
Nationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
all the land properties belonging to the Turkish
Turkish people
Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
settlers, known as Beliks. In the western region of Oran
Oran
Oran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest...
, Sultan Abderrahmane of Morocco
Abderrahmane of Morocco
Moulay Sharif Abderrahmane was sultan of Morocco from 1822 to 1859. He was a member of the Alaouite dynasty.-Biography:He was born in 1778. His reign began at the start of the French occupation of Algeria...
, the Commander of the Believers, could not remain indifferent to the massacres committed by the French Christian troops and to belligerent calls to enter jihad
Jihad
Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...
from the marabout
Marabout
A marabout is a Muslim religious leader and teacher in West Africa, and in the Maghreb. The marabout is often a scholar of the Qur'an, or religious teacher. Others may be wandering holy men who survive on alms, Sufi Murshids , or leaders of religious communities...
s. Despite the diplomatic rupture between Morocco and the Two Sicilies in 1830, and the naval warfare engaged against the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...
as well as with Spain
Mid-nineteenth century Spain
Spain in the 19th century was a country in turmoil. Occupied by Napoleon from 1808 to 1814, a massively destructive "war of independence" ensued, driven by an emergent Spanish nationalism. An era of reaction against the liberal ideas associated with revolutionary France followed the war,...
, then headed by Ferdinand VII, Sultan Abderrahmane lent his support to the Algerian insurgency triggered by Abd El-Kader. The latter would fight for years against the French. Directing an army of 12,000 men, Abd El-Kader first organized the blockade of Oran.
Algerian refugees were welcomed by the Moroccan population, while the Sultan's instructions recommended to the authorities of Tetuan of assisting them, by providing them jobs in the administration or the military forces. The inhabitants of Tlemcen
Tlemcen
Tlemcen is a town in Northwestern Algeria, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is located inland in the center of a region known for its olive plantations and vineyards...
, close to the Moroccan border, demanding the Sultan to be placed under his authority in order to escape to the invaders. Abderrahmane thus named nephew, prince Moulay Ali, as Caliph
Caliph
The Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the ruler of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah. It is a transcribed version of the Arabic word which means "successor" or "representative"...
of Tlemcen, charged of the protection of the city. France executed in retaliations two Moroccans, Mohamed Beliano and Benkirane, under the pseudo-motives of espionage, while all their goods were seized by the military governor of Oran, General Boyer.
Hardly had the news of the capture of Algiers reached Paris than Charles X was deposed during the Three Glorious Days of July 1830, and his cousin Louis-Philippe
Louis-Philippe of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...
, the "citizen king", was named to preside over a constitutional monarchy
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
. The new government, composed of liberal opponents of the Algiers expedition, was reluctant to pursue the conquest begun by the old regime, but withdrawing from Algeria proved more difficult than conquering it.
The Conquest of the Algerian territories under the July Monarchy (1830-1848)
On December 1, 1830, King Louis-PhilippeLouis-Philippe of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...
named the Duc de Rovigo
Anne Jean Marie René Savary
Anne Jean Marie René Savary, 1st Duc de Rovigo , French general and diplomat, was born at Marcq in the Ardennes.-Biography:...
as head of military staff in Algeria. De Rogivo took control of Bône
Bone
Bones are rigid organs that constitute part of the endoskeleton of vertebrates. They support, and protect the various organs of the body, produce red and white blood cells and store minerals. Bone tissue is a type of dense connective tissue...
and initiated colonisation of the land, expropriations, etc. He was recalled in 1833 due to the overtly violent nature of the repression. Wishing to avoid a conflict with Morocco, Louis-Philippe sent an extraordinary mission to the Sultan, mixed with displays of military might, sending war ships to the bay of Tangiers. An ambassador was sent to the Sultan Moulay Abderrahmane in February 1832, headed by count de Mornay and including the painter Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
. The Sultan, however, refused French demands to evacuate Tlemcen.
In 1834, France annexed the occupied areas of Algeria, which had an estimated Muslim population of about two million, as a colony
Colony
In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....
. Colonial administration
History of colonialism
The historical phenomenon of colonisation is one that stretches around the globe and across time, including such disparate peoples as the Hittites, the Incas and the British. European colonialism, or imperialism, began in the 15th century with the "Age of Discovery", led by Portuguese and Spanish...
in the occupied areas — the so-called régime du sabre (government of the sword) — was placed under a governor general
Colonial heads of Algeria
Beylerbey: Bey of beysKalifah: Governor acting in the absence of the BeylerbeyAga : Military CommanderFor continuation after independence, see: Presidents of Algeria-Sources:* http://www.rulers.org/rula1.html#algeria...
, a high-ranking army officer invested with civil and military jurisdiction, who was responsible to the minister of war. Marshall Bugeaud, who became the first governor-general, headed the conquest, making a systemic use of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and following a "scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
" policy.
Soon after the conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician Bertrand Clauzel
Bertrand Clauzel
Bertrand, comte Clausel was a marshal of France.- Military career :Bertrand Clausel was born on 12 December 1772 at Mirepoix in the County of Foix, and served in the first campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars as one of the volunteers of 1791In June 1795, having distinguished himself...
and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to subsidize its settlement by European farmers, triggering a land rush
Land run
Land run usually refers to an historical event in which previously restricted land of the United States was opened for homesteading on a first arrival basis. Some newly opened lands were sold first-come, sold by bid, or won by lottery, or by means other than a run...
. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the Mitidja Plain and envisioned the production there of cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
on a large scale. As governor general (1835–36), he used his office to make private investments in land and encouraged army officers and bureaucrats in his administration to do the same. This development created a vested interest among government officials in greater French involvement in Algeria. Commercial interests with influence in the government also began to recognize the prospects for profitable land speculation in expanding the French zone of occupation. They created large agricultural tracts, built factories and businesses, and exploited cheap local labor.
Among others testimonies, Lieutenant-Colonel de Montagnac wrote on 15 March 1843, in a letter to a friend:
"All populations which do not accept our conditions must be despoiled. Everything must be seized, devastated, without age or sex distinction: grass must not grow any more where the French army has put the foot. Who wants the end wants the means, whatever may say our philanthropists. I personally warn all good militaries which I have the honour to lead that if they happen to bring me a living Arab, they will receive a beating with the flat of the saber... This is how, my dear friend, we must do war against Arabs: kill all men over the age of fifteen, take all their women and children, load them onto naval vessels, send them to the Marquesas IslandsMarquesas IslandsThe Marquesas Islands enana and Te Fenua `Enata , both meaning "The Land of Men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. The Marquesas are located at 9° 00S, 139° 30W...
or elsewhere. In one word, annihilate all that will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs."
In the same way, Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
, deputy and famous representative of the liberal tradition in political philosophy, declared in 1841:
"war in Africa is a science. Everyone is familiar with its rules and everyone can apply those rules with almost complete certainty of success. One of the greatest services that Field Marshal Bugeaud has rendered his country is to have spread, perfected and made everyone aware of this new science... As far as I am concerned, I came back from Africa with the pathetic notion that at present in our way of waging war we are far more barbaric than the Arabs themselves. These days, they represent civilization, we do not. This way of waging war seems to me as stupid as it is cruel. It can only be found in the head of a coarse and brutal soldier. Indeed, it was pointless to replace the Turks only to reproduce what the world rightly found so hateful in them. This, even for the sake of interest is more noxious than useful; for, as another officer was telling me, if our sole aim is to equal the Turks, in fact we shall be in a far lower position than theirs: barbarians for barbarians, the Turks will always outdo us because they are Muslim barbarians. In France, I have often heard men I respect but do not approve of, deplore that crops should be burnt and granaries emptied and finally that unarmed men, women and children should be seized. In my view these are unfortunate circumstances that any people wishing to wage war against the Arabs must accept. I think that all the means available to wreck tribes must be used, barring those that the human kind and the right of nations condemn.I personally believe that the laws of war enable us to ravage the country and that we must do so either by destroying the crops at harvest time or any time by making fast forays also known as raids the aim of which it to get hold of men or flocks."
- "Whatever the case", continued Tocqueville, "we may say in a general manner that all political freedomsFreedom (political)Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...
must be suspendedState of emergencyA state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...
in Algeria.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
, which was pledged to maintain the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, would move to fill the vacuum left by a French pullout. The French devised elaborate plans for settling the hinterland left by Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
provincial authorities in 1830, but their efforts at state building were unsuccessful on account of lengthy armed resistance.
Constantine, Algeria
Constantine is the capital of Constantine Province in north-eastern Algeria. It was the capital of the same-named French département until 1962. Slightly inland, it is about 80 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast, on the banks of Rhumel river...
. He initiated a radical overhaul of the Ottoman administration in his beylik by replacing Turkish
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
officials with local leaders, making Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
the official language, and attempting to reform finances according to the precepts of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. After the French failed in several attempts to gain some of the bey's territories through negotiation, an ill-fated invasion force led by Bertrand Clauzel
Bertrand Clauzel
Bertrand, comte Clausel was a marshal of France.- Military career :Bertrand Clausel was born on 12 December 1772 at Mirepoix in the County of Foix, and served in the first campaign of the French Revolutionary Wars as one of the volunteers of 1791In June 1795, having distinguished himself...
had to retreat from Constantine
Constantine, Algeria
Constantine is the capital of Constantine Province in north-eastern Algeria. It was the capital of the same-named French département until 1962. Slightly inland, it is about 80 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast, on the banks of Rhumel river...
in 1836 in humiliation and defeat. However, the French captured Constantine under Sylvain Charles Valée
Sylvain Charles Valée
Sylvain-Charles, comte Valée , born in Brienne-le-Château, was a Marshal of France.Upon the outbreak of the French Revolution, Valée enlisted in the French revolutionary army and was sent to serve in the Army of the Nord...
the following year, on 13 October 1837.
The controversial historian Daniel Lefeuvre has contested the common estimates concerning the death toll. He has recently alleged that if the Algerian population
Demographics of Algeria
This article is about the demographic features of the population of Algeria, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population....
has decreased by 875,000 people between 1830 and 1872, the French military were not responsible for all of them, as a fraction of these deaths could be explained by the grasshopper invasions of 1866 and 1868, as well as by a rigorous winter in 1867-68, which caused a famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
followed by an epidemic of cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
.
Resistance of Lalla Fadhma N'Soumer
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
. As occupation turned into colonization, Kabylia remained the only region independent of the French government. Pressure on the region increased, and the will of her people to resist and defend Kabylie increased as well.
A turning point in Lalla Fadma's life was the arrival in Kabylie, in about 1849, of a mysterious man who presented himself as Mohamed ben Abdallah (the name of the Prophet
Prophets of Islam
Muslims identify the Prophets of Islam as those humans chosen by God and given revelation to deliver to mankind. Muslims believe that every prophet was given a belief to worship God and their respective followers believed it as well...
), but who is more commonly known as Bou Baghla. He was probably an ex-lieutenant in the army of Emir Abdelkader, defeated for the last time by the French in 1847. Bou Baghla refused to surrender at that battle, and retreated to Kabylie. From there he began a war against the French armies and their allies, often employing guerrilla tactics . Bou Baghla was a relentless fighter, and very eloquent in Arabic. He was very religious, and some legends tell about his thaumaturgic skills.
Bou Baghla went often to Summer to talk with the high-ranking members of the religious community, and Lalla Fadhma was soon attracted by his strong personality. At the same time, the relentless combatant was attracted by a woman so resolutely willing to contribute, by any means possible, to the war against the French. With her inspiring speeches, she convinced many men to fight as imseblen (volunteers ready to die as martyrs) and she herself, together with other women, participated in combat by providing cooking, medicines, and comfort to the fighting forces.
Traditional sources tell that a strong bond was formed between Lalla Fadhma and Bou Baghla. She saw this as a wedding of peers, rather than the traditional submission as a slave to a husband. In fact, at that time Bou Baghla left his first wife (Fatima Bent Sidi Aissa) and sent back to her owner a slave he had as a concubine (Halima Bent Messaoud). But on her side, Lalla Fadhma wasn't free: even if she was recognized as tamnafeqt ("woman who left her husband to get back to his family", a Kabylie institution), the matrimonial tie with her husband was still in place, and only her husband's will could free her. However he did not agree to, even when offered large bribes. The love between Fadhma and Bou remained platonic, but there were public expressions of this feeling between the two.
Fadhma was personally present at many fights in which Bou Baghla was involved, particularly the battle of Tachekkirt won by Bou Baghla forces (18–19 July 1854), where the French General Randon was caught but managed to escape later.
On 26 December 1854, Bou Baghla was killed; some sources claim it was due to the treason of some of his allies. The resistance remained without a charismatic leader and a commander able to guide it efficiently. For this reason, during the first months of 1855, on a sanctuary built on top of the Azru Nethor peak, not far from the village where Fadhma was born, there was a great council among combatants and important figures of the tribes in Kabylie. They decided to grant Lalla Fadhma, assisted by her brothers, the command of combat.
Resistance of Abd al Qadir
Oran
Oran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest...
in 1832. In the same year, tribal elders chose Muhyi ad Din's son, twenty-five-year-old Abd al Qadir, to take his place leading the jihad
Jihad
Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...
. Abd al Qadir, who was recognized as Amir al-Muminin
Amir al-Muminin
Amīr al-Mu'minīn usually translated Commander of the Faithful or Leader of the Faithful, is the Arabic style of Caliphs and other independent sovereign Muslim rulers that claim legitimacy from a community of Muslims...
(commander of the faithful), quickly gained the support of tribes throughout Algeria. A devout and austere marabout, he was also a cunning political leader and a resourceful warrior. From his capital in Tlemcen
Tlemcen
Tlemcen is a town in Northwestern Algeria, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is located inland in the center of a region known for its olive plantations and vineyards...
, Abd al Qadir set about building a territorial Muslim state based on the communities of the interior but drawing its strength from the tribes and religious brotherhoods. By 1839, he controlled more than two-thirds of Algeria. His government maintained an army and a bureaucracy, collected taxes, supported education, undertook public works, and established agricultural and manufacturing cooperatives to stimulate economic activity.
The French in Algiers viewed with concern the success of a Muslim government and the rapid growth of a viable territorial state that barred the extension of European settlement. Abd al Qadir fought running battles across Algeria with French forces, which included units of the Foreign Legion, organized in 1831 for Algerian service. Although his forces were defeated by the French under General Thomas Bugeaud in 1836, Abd al Qadir negotiated a favorable peace treaty the next year. The treaty of Tafna
Treaty of Tafna
The Treaty of Tafna was signed by both Abd-el-Kader and General Thomas Robert Bugeaud on May 30, 1837. This agreement was developed after French imperial forces sustained heavy losses and military reversals in Algeria. The terms of the treaty entailed Abd-el-Kader recognizing French imperial...
gained conditional recognition for Abd al Qadir's regime by defining the territory under its control and salvaged his prestige among the tribes just as the shaykhs were about to desert him. To provoke new hostilities, the French deliberately broke the treaty in 1839 by occupying Constantine
Constantine, Algeria
Constantine is the capital of Constantine Province in north-eastern Algeria. It was the capital of the same-named French département until 1962. Slightly inland, it is about 80 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast, on the banks of Rhumel river...
. Abd al Qadir took up the holy war again, destroyed the French settlements on the Mitidja Plain, and at one point advanced to the outskirts of Algiers itself. He struck where the French were weakest and retreated when they advanced against him in greater strength. The government moved from camp to camp with the amir and his army. Gradually, however, superior French resources and manpower and the defection of tribal chieftains took their toll. Reinforcements poured into Algeria after 1840 until Bugeaud had at his disposal 108,000 men, one-third of the French army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
.
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, Abd ar Rahman II
Abderrahmane of Morocco
Moulay Sharif Abderrahmane was sultan of Morocco from 1822 to 1859. He was a member of the Alaouite dynasty.-Biography:He was born in 1778. His reign began at the start of the French occupation of Algeria...
, and launched raids into Algeria. This alliance led the French Navy
French Navy
The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...
to bombard and briefly occupy Essaouira
Essaouira
Mogador redirects here, for the hamlet in Surrey see Mogador, Surrey.Essaouira is a city in the western Moroccan economic region of Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, on the Atlantic coast. Since the 16th century, the city has also been known by its Portuguese name of Mogador or Mogadore...
(Mogador) under the Prince de Joinville on August 16, 1844. A French force was destroyed at the Battle of Sidi-Brahim
Battle of Sidi-Brahim
The Battle of Sidi-Brahim was a battle at Sidi Brahim in French Algeria between Berber troops under Abd al-Qadir and French troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Lucien de Montagnac from 22 to 25 September 1845...
in 1845. However, Abd al Qadir was obliged to surrender to the commander of Oran
Oran
Oran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest...
Province, General Louis de Lamoricière, at the end of 1847.
Abd al Qadir was promised safe conduct to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
or Palestine if his followers laid down their arms and kept the peace. He accepted these conditions, but the minister of war — who years earlier as general in Algeria had been badly defeated by Abd al Qadir — had him consigned in France in the Château d'Amboise
Château d'Amboise
The royal Château at Amboise is a château located in Amboise, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France.-Origins and royal residence:...
.
Colonization and military control
A royal ordinance in 1845 called for three types of administration in Algeria. In areas where Europeans were a substantial part of the population, colons elected mayors and councils for self-governing "full exercise" communes (communes de plein exercice). In the "mixed" communes, where Muslims were a large majority, government was in the hands of appointed and some elected officials, including representatives of the grands chefs (great chieftains) and a French administrator. The indigenous communes (communes indigènes), remote areas not adequately pacified, remained under the régime du sabre (rule of the sword).By 1848 nearly all of northern Algeria was under French control. Important tools of the colonial administration, from this time until their elimination in the 1870s, were the bureaux arabes (Arab offices), staffed by Arabists whose function was to collect information on the indigenous people and to carry out administrative functions, nominally in cooperation with the army. The bureaux arabes on occasion acted with sympathy to the local population and formed a buffer between Muslims and colons.
Under the régime du sabre, the colons had been permitted limited self-government in areas where European settlement was most intense, but there was constant friction between them and the army. The colons charged that the bureaux arabes hindered the progress of colonization. They agitated against military rule
Military rule
Military rule may mean:* Militarism or militarist ideology - the ideology of government as best served when under military control* Military occupation, when a country or area is occupied after invasion.** List of military occupations...
, complaining that their legal rights were denied under the arbitrary controls imposed on the colony and insisting on a civil administration for Algeria fully integrated with metropolitan France. The army warned that the introduction of civilian government would invite Muslim retaliation and threaten the security of Algeria. The French government vacillated in its policy, yielding small concessions to the colon demands on the one hand while maintaining the régime du sabre to control the Muslim majority on the other.
Under the French Second Republic and Second Empire (1848-1870)
Shortly after Louis Philippe's constitutional monarchy was overthrown in the revolution of 1848, the new government of the Second RepublicFrench Second Republic
The French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte which initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité...
ended Algeria's status as a colony and declared in the 1848 Constitution the occupied lands an integral part of France. Three civil territories — Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
, Oran, and Constantine
Constantine, Algeria
Constantine is the capital of Constantine Province in north-eastern Algeria. It was the capital of the same-named French département until 1962. Slightly inland, it is about 80 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast, on the banks of Rhumel river...
— were organized as French départements (local administrative units) under a civilian government. For the first time, French citizens in the civil territories elected their own councils and mayors; Muslims had to be appointed, could not hold more than one-third of council seats, and could not serve as mayors or assistant mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
s. The administration of territories outside the zones settled by colons remained under the French Army. Local Muslim administration was allowed to continue under the supervision of French Army commanders, charged with maintaining order in newly pacified regions, and the bureaux arabes. Theoretically, these areas were closed to European colonization.
The land and colonizers
Even before the decision was made to annex Algeria, major changes had taken place. In a bargain-hunting frenzy to take over or buy at low prices all manner of property — homes, shops, farms and factories — Europeans poured into Algiers after it fell. French authorities took possession of the beylik lands, from which Ottoman officials had derived income. Over time, as pressures increased to obtain more land for settlement by Europeans, the state seized more categories of land, particularly that used by tribes, religious foundations, and villages.Called either colons (settlers), Algerians, or later, especially following the 1962 independence of Algeria, pieds noirs
Pied-noir
Pied-Noir , plural Pieds-Noirs, pronounced , is a term referring to French citizens of various origins who lived in French Algeria before independence....
(literally, black feet), the European settlers were largely of peasant farmer or working-class origin from the poor southern areas of Italy, Spain, and France. Others were criminal and political deportees from France, transported under sentence in large numbers to Algeria. In the 1840s and 1850s, to encourage settlement in rural areas, official policy was to offer grants of land for a fee and a promise that improvements would be made. A distinction soon developed between the grands colons (great settlers) at one end of the scale, often self-made men who had accumulated large estates or built successful businesses, and smallholders and workers at the other end, whose lot was often not much better than that of their Muslim counterparts. According to historian John Ruedy, although by 1848 only 15,000 of the 109,000 European settlers were in rural areas, "by systematically expropriating both pastors and farmers, rural colonization was the most important single factor in the destructing of traditional society."
European migration, encouraged during the Second Republic, stimulated the civilian administration to open new land for settlement against the advice of the army. With the advent of the Second Empire in 1852, Napoleon III returned Algeria to military control. In 1858 a separate Ministry of Algerian Affairs was created to supervise administration of the country through a military governor general assisted by a civil minister.
Napoleon III visited Algeria twice in the early 1860s. He was profoundly impressed with the nobility and virtue of the tribal chieftains, who appealed to the emperor's romantic nature, and was shocked by the self-serving attitude of the colon leaders. He decided to halt the expansion of European settlement beyond the coastal zone and to restrict contact between Muslims and the colons, whom he considered to have a corrupting influence on the indigenous population. He envisioned a grand design for preserving most of Algeria for the Muslims by founding a royaume arabe (Arab kingdom) with himself as the roi des Arabes (king of the Arabs). He instituted the so-called politics of the grands chefs to deal with the Muslims directly through their traditional leaders.
To further his plans for the royaume arabe, Napoleon III issued two decrees affecting tribal structure, land tenure, and the legal status of Muslims in French Algeria. The first, promulgated in 1863, was intended to renounce the state's claims to tribal lands and eventually provide private plots to individuals in the tribes, thus dismantling "feudal" structures and protecting the lands from the colons. Tribal areas were to be identified, delimited into douars (administrative units), and given over to councils. Arable land was to be divided among members of the douar over a period of one to three generations, after which it could be bought and sold by the individual owners. Unfortunately for the tribes, however, the plans of Napoleon III quickly unraveled. French officials sympathetic to the colons took much of the tribal land they surveyed into the public domain. In addition, some tribal leaders immediately sold communal lands for quick gains. The process of converting arable land to individual ownership was accelerated to only a few years when laws were enacted in the 1870s stipulating that no sale of land by an individual Muslim could be invalidated by the claim that it was collectively owned. The cudah and other tribal officials, appointed by the French on the basis of their loyalty to France rather than the allegiance owed them by the tribe, lost their credibility as they were drawn into the European orbit, becoming known derisively as béni-oui-oui ("yes men").
Napoleon III visualized three distinct Algerias: a French colony, an Arab country, and a military camp, each with a distinct form of local government. The second decree, issued in 1865, was designed to recognize the differences in cultural background of the French and the Muslims. As French nationals, Muslims could serve on equal terms in the French armed forces and civil service and could migrate to metropolitan France. They were also granted the protection of French law while retaining the right to adhere to Islamic law in litigation concerning their personal status. But if Muslims wished to become full citizens, they had to accept the full jurisdiction of the French legal code, including laws affecting marriage and inheritance, and reject the competence of the religious courts. In effect, this meant that a Muslim had to renounce some of the mores of his religion in order to become a French citizen. This condition was bitterly resented by Muslims, for whom the only road to political equality was perceived to be apostasy
Apostasy
Apostasy , 'a defection or revolt', from ἀπό, apo, 'away, apart', στάσις, stasis, 'stand, 'standing') is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy is known as an apostate. These terms have a pejorative implication in everyday...
. Over the next century, fewer than 3,000 Muslims chose to cross the barrier and become French citizens. A similar status applied to the Jewish natives.
Under the Third Republic (1870-1940)
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
ns captured Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan
Battle of Sedan
The Battle of Sedan was fought during the Franco-Prussian War on 1 September 1870. It resulted in the capture of Emperor Napoleon III and large numbers of his troops and for all intents and purposes decided the war in favour of Prussia and its allies, though fighting continued under a new French...
(1870), ending the Second Empire, the colons in Algiers toppled the military government and installed a civilian administration. Meanwhile, in France the government of the Third Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
directed one of its ministers, Adolphe Crémieux
Adolphe Crémieux
Adolphe Crémieux was a French-Jewish lawyer and statesman, and a staunch defender of the human rights of the Jews of France. - Biography :...
, "to destroy the military regime … [and] to completely assimilate Algeria into France." In October 1870, Crémieux, whose concern with Algerian affairs dated from the time of the Second Republic, issued a series of decrees providing for representation of the Algerian départements in the National Assembly of France and confirming colon control over local administration. A civilian governor general was made responsible to the Ministry of Interior. The Crémieux Decrees also granted blanket French citizenship to Algerian Jews, who then numbered about 40,000. This act set them apart from Muslims, in whose eyes they were identified thereafter with the colons. The measure had to be enforced, however, over the objections of the colons, who made little distinction between Muslims and Jews. (Automatic citizenship was subsequently extended in 1889 to children of non-French Europeans born in Algeria unless they specifically rejected it.)
The loss of Alsace-Lorraine
Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...
to Prussia in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
, led to pressure on the French government to make new land available in Algeria for about 5,000 Alsatian
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
and Lorrainer
Lorraine (province)
The Duchy of Upper Lorraine was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany. The main cities were Metz, Verdun, and the historic capital Nancy....
refugees who were resettled there. During the 1870s, both the amount of European-owned land and the number of settlers were doubled, and tens of thousands of unskilled Muslims, who had been uprooted from their land, wandered into the cities or to colon farming areas in search of work.
The most serious native insurrection since the time of Abd al Qadir broke out in 1871 in the Kabylie and spread through much of Algeria. The revolt was triggered by Crémieux's extension of civil (that is, colon) authority to previously self-governing tribal reserves and the abrogation of commitments made by the military government, but it clearly had its basis in more long-standing grievances. Since the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
(1854–56), the demand for grain had pushed up the price of Algerian wheat to European levels. Storage silo
Storage silo
A silo is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store grain or fermented feed known as silage. Silos are more commonly used for bulk storage of grain, coal, cement, carbon black, woodchips, food products and sawdust. Three types of silos are in widespread use...
s were emptied when the world market's impact was felt in Algeria, and Muslim farmers sold their grain reserves — including seed grain — to speculators. But the community-owned silos were the fundamental adaptation of a subsistence economy to an unpredictable climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
, and a good year's surplus was stored away against a bad year's dearth. When serious drought struck Algeria and grain crops failed in 1866 and for several years following, Muslim areas faced starvation, and with famine came pestilence. It was estimated that 20% of the Muslim population of Constantine died over a three-year period. In 1871 the civil authorities repudiated guarantees made to tribal chieftains by the previous military government for loans to replenish their seed supply. This act alienated even pro-French Muslim leaders, while it undercut their ability to control their people. It was against this background of misery and hopelessness that the stricken Kabyles rose in revolt.
In the aftermath of the 1871 uprising, French authorities imposed stern measures to punish and control the whole Muslim population. France confiscated more than 5,000 km² of tribal land and placed the Kabylie under a régime d'exception (extraordinary rule), which denied the due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
guaranteed French nationals. A special indigénat
Indigénat
The Code de l'indigénat was a set of laws creating, in practice, an inferior legal status for natives of French Colonies from 1887 until 1944–1947. First put in place in Algeria, it was applied across the French Colonial Empire in 1887–1889...
(native code) listed as offenses acts such as insolence and unauthorized assembly not punishable by French law, and the normal jurisdiction of the cudah was sharply restricted. The governor general was empowered to jail suspects for up to five years without trial. The argument was made in defense of these exceptional measures that the French penal code as applied to Frenchmen was too permissive to control Muslims.
During World War II (1940-1945)
Colonial troops of French Algeria were sent to fight in the mainland during the battle of FranceBattle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
. After the Fall of France, the Third French Republic aborted and was replaced by the Philippe Pétain
Philippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
's French State
French state
The French state may refer to:*The Republic of France *Vichy France, 'French state' was the official name of the regime first directed by Philippe Pétain, explicitly opposed to the French Republic...
.
Under the Fourth Republic (1946-1958)
Many Algerians had fought as French soldiers during the Second World War. Thus Algerian Muslims felt that it was even more unjust that their votes were not equal to those of the other Algerians, especially after 1947 when the Algerian Assembly was created. This assembly was composed of 120 members. Algerian Muslims, representing about 6.85 million people, could designate 50% of the Assembly members, while 1,150,000 non-Muslim Algerians could designate the other half. Moreover, a massacre occurred in Sétif May 8, 1945. It opposed Algerians who were demonstrating for their national claim to the French Army. After skirmishes with Police, Algerians killed about 100 French. The French army retaliated harshly, resulting in the deaths of approximately 6,000 Algerians. This triggered a radicalization of Algerian nationalists and could be considered the beginning of the Algerian War.In 1956, about 512,000 French soldiers were in Algeria. No resolution was imaginable in the short term. A overwhelming majority of French politicians were opposed to the idea of independence while independence was gaining ground in Muslim Algerians' minds. France was deadlocked and the Fourth Republic collapsed over this dispute.
Under the Fifth Republic (1958-1962)
In 1958, Charles de Gaulle's return to power through a military coup in Algiers on MayMay 1958 crisis
The May 1958 crisis was a political crisis in France during the turmoil of the Algerian War of Independence which led to the return of Charles de Gaulle to political responsibilities after a ten year absence...
was supposed to keep Algeria's status quo as departments of France as hinted by his famous, yet ambiguous, speeches delivered in Oran and Mostaganem on June 6, 1958. De Gaulle's republican constitution project was approved through the September 1958 referendum
French constitutional referendum, 1958
A constitutional referendum was held in France on 28 September 1958. Voters were asked whether they approved of the adoption of a constitution for the French Fifth Republic written by Charles de Gaulle. It was overwhelmingly approved, with 82.6% in favour...
and the Fifth Republic was established the following month with De Gaulle as its President.
The latter consented independence in 1962 after a referendum on Algerian self-determination
French referendum on Algerian self-determination, 1961
A referendum on self-determination for Algeria was held in France on 8 January 1961. It was approved by 75.0% of voters overall and 69.5% in Algeria. Voter turnout was 92.2%.-Results:-Algeria:...
in January 1961 and despite a subsequent aborted military coup in Algiers led by four French generals in April 1961.
Algeria's population
1830 - 1,500,0001851 - 2,554,100
1900 - 4,675,000
1910 - 5,500,000
1940 - 7,600,000
1960 - 10,853,000
Hegemony of the Colons
A commission of inquiry set up by the French SenateFrench Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the Parliament of France, presided over by a president.The Senate enjoys less prominence than the lower house, the directly elected National Assembly; debates in the Senate tend to be less tense and generally enjoy less media coverage.-History:France's first...
in 1892 and headed by former Premier Jules Ferry
Jules Ferry
Jules François Camille Ferry was a French statesman and republican. He was a promoter of laicism and colonial expansion.- Early life :Born in Saint-Dié, in the Vosges département, France, he studied law, and was called to the bar at Paris in 1854, but soon went into politics, contributing to...
, an advocate of colonial expansion, recommended that the government abandon a policy that assumed French law, without major modifications, could fit the needs of an area inhabited by close to two million Europeans and four million Muslims. Muslims had no representation in Algeria's National Assembly and were grossly underrepresented on local councils. Because of the many restrictions imposed by the authorities, by 1915 only 50,000 Muslims were eligible to vote in elections in the civil communes. Attempts to implement even the most modest reforms were blocked or delayed by the local administration in Algeria, dominated by colons, and by the 27 colon representatives in the National Assembly (six deputies and three senators from each department) .
Once elected to the National Assembly, colons became permanent fixtures. Because of their seniority
Seniority
Seniority is the concept of a person or group of people being in charge or in command of another person or group. This control is often granted to the senior person due to experience or length of service in a given position, but it is not uncommon for a senior person to have less experience or...
, they exercised disproportionate influence, and their support was important to any government's survival . The leader of the colon delegation, Auguste Warnier (1810–1875), succeeded during the 1870s in modifying or introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to settlers and continue the Algerian state's appropriation of land from the local population and distribution to settlers. Consistent proponents of reform, like Georges Clemenceau
Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman, physician and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles at the...
and socialist Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
, were rare in the National Assembly.
The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...
, mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
, agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
, and trade
Trade
Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
was controlled by the grands colons . The modern European-owned and -managed sector of the economy centered around small industry and a highly developed export trade, designed to provide food and raw materials to France in return for capital and consumer goods. Europeans held about 30% of the total arable land, including the bulk of the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation . By 1900, Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in agriculture and practically all agricultural exports. The modern, or European, sector was run on a commercial basis and meshed with the French market system that it supplied with wine, citrus, olives, and vegetable
Vegetable
The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....
s. Nearly half of the value of European-owned real property was in vineyards by 1914. By contrast, subsistence cereal
Cereal
Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...
production — supplemented by olive, fig, and date growing and stock raising — formed the basis of the traditional sector, but the land available for cropping was submarginal even for cereals under prevailing traditional cultivation practices.
The colonial regime imposed more and higher taxes on Muslims than on Europeans . The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating from before the French conquest, also paid new taxes, from which the colons were normally exempted. In 1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost 90% of the population but produced 20% of Algeria's income, paid 70% of direct taxes and 45% of the total taxes collected. And colons controlled how these revenues would be spent . As a result, colon towns had handsome municipal buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, while Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little if at all from tax revenues .
The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for Algerian Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to learn reading, writing, and engage in religious studies. Not only did the state appropriate the habus lands (the religious foundations that constituted the main source of income for religious institutions, including schools) in 1843, but colon officials refused to allocate enough money to maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for enough teachers and religious leaders for the growing population . In 1892, more than five times as much was spent for the education of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many children of school age. Because few Muslim teachers were trained, Muslim schools were largely staffed by French teachers. Even a state-operated madrasah
Madrasah
Madrasah is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious...
(school) often had French faculty members. Attempts to institute bilingual, bicultural schools, intended to bring Muslim and European children together in the classroom, were a conspicuous failure, rejected by both communities and phased out after 1870. According to one estimate, fewer than 5% of Algerian children attended any kind of school in 1870 .
Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of Muslims along with European students in the French school system as part of France's "civilizing mission
Civilizing mission
is a rationale for intervention or colonisation, proposing to contribute to the spread of civilization, mostly amounting to the Westernization of indigenous peoples....
" in Algeria. The curriculum was entirely French and allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded even in Muslim schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated, gallicized Muslims — the évolués (literally, the evolved ones) — had been created. Almost all of the handful of Muslims who accepted French citizenship were évolués; ironically, this privileged group of Muslims, strongly influenced by French culture and political attitudes, developed a new Algerian self-consciousness .
Reporting to the French Senate in 1894, Governor General Jules Cambon
Jules Cambon
Jules-Martin Cambon was a French diplomat.He began his career as a lawyer , served in the Franco-Prussian War and entered the civil service in 1871...
wrote that Algeria had "only a dust of people left her." He referred to the destruction of the traditional ruling class that had left Muslims without leaders and had deprived France of interlocuteurs valables (literally, valid go-betweens), through whom to reach the masses of the people. He lamented that no genuine communication was possible between the two communities.
The colons who ran Algeria maintained a dialog only with the beni-oui-ouis
Beni-oui-ouis
The béni-oui-oui were Muslim yes-men who collaborated with the French colonial institutions in North Africa.The word is derived from "beni", the Arabic for "sons of", e.g. used to name tribes in Arabic, and "oui", the French for "yes", so it means "the tribe of the yes-men", a group of persons who...
. Later they thwarted contact between the évolués and Muslim traditionalists on the one hand and between évolués and official circles in France on the other. They feared and mistrusted the Francophone évolués, who were classified either as assimilationist, insisting on being accepted as Frenchmen but on their own terms, or as integrationists, eager to work as members of a distinct Muslim elite on equal terms with the French.
Discrimination
Following its conquest of OttomanOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
controlled Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
in 1830, for well over a century France maintained colonial rule
French colonial empires
The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
in the territory which has been described as "quasi-apartheid". The colonial law of 1865 allowed Arab and Berber Algerians to apply for French citizenship only if they abandoned their Muslim identity; Azzedine Haddour argues that this established "the formal structures of a political apartheid". Camille Bonora-Waisman writes that, "[i]n contrast with the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates", this "colonial apartheid society" was unique to Algeria.
This "internal system of apartheid" met with considerable resistance from the Muslims affected by it, and is cited as one of the causes of the 1954 insurrection.
Post colonial relations
Relations between post-colonial Algeria and France have remained close through-out the years, although sometimes difficult. In 1962, the Evian AccordsÉvian Accords
The Évian Accords comprise a treaty which was signed in 1962 in Évian-les-Bains, France by France and the F.L.N. . The Accords put an end to the Algerian War with a formal cease-fire proclaimed for March 19, and formalized the idea of cooperative exchange between the two countries...
peace treaty provided land in the Sahara for the French Army, which it had used under de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
to carry out its first nuclear tests (Gerboise bleue
Gerboise Bleue
Gerboise Bleue was the name of the first French nuclear test. It was an atomic bomb detonated in the middle of the Algerian Sahara desert on 13 February 1960, during the Algerian War...
). Many European settlers (pieds-noirs) living in Algeria and Sephardic Jews
Sephardic Judaism
Sephardic law and customs means the practice of Judaism as observed by the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, so far as it is peculiar to themselves and not shared with other Jewish groups such as the Ashkenazim...
, who both had been granted French citizenship by the Crémieux decrees at the end of the 19th century, were expelled to France where they formed a new community. On the other hand, the issue of the harki
Harki
Harki is the generic term for Muslim Algerians who served as auxiliaries in the French Army during the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962...
s, the Muslims who had fought on the French side during the war, still remained unresolved. Large numbers of harkis were killed in 1962, during the immediate aftermath of the Algerian War, while those who escaped with their families to France have tended to remain an unassimilated refugee community. The present Algerian government continues to refuse to allow harkis and their descendants to return to Algeria.
On February 23, 2005 the French law on colonialism
French law on colonialism
The February 23, 2005, French law on colonialism was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement conservative majority, which imposed on high-school teachers to teach the "positive values" of colonialism to their students...
was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement
Union for a Popular Movement
The Union for a Popular Movement is a centre-right political party in France, and one of the two major contemporary political parties in the country along with the center-left Socialist Party...
(UMP) conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
majority, which imposed on high-school (lycée) teachers to teach the "positive values" of colonialism
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
to their students, in particular in North Africa (article 4). The law created a public uproar and opposition from the whole of the left-wing, and was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
(UMP) at the beginning of 2006, after accusations of historical revisionism
Historical revisionism (negationism)
Historical revisionism is either the legitimate scholastic re-examination of existing knowledge about a historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more or less favourable light. For the former, i.e. the academic pursuit, see...
from various teachers and historians. It also jeopardized the Franco-Algerian Peace Treaty, which Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Abdelaziz Bouteflika
Abdelaziz Bouteflika is the ninth President of Algeria. He has been in office since 1999. He continued emergency rule until 24 February 2011, and presided over the end of the bloody Algerian Civil War in 2002...
refused to sign following the vote of this law.
Algerians feared that the French law on colonialism would hinder the task the French confronting the dark side of their colonial rule in Algeria because article four of the law decreed among other things that "School programmes are to recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa, ..." Benjamin Stora
Benjamin Stora
Benjamin Stora is a French historian, expert on North Africa, who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on Algerian history. He was born in a Jewish family in Constantine, then in French Algeria, which left the country following its War of Independence in 1962. Stora holds...
, a leading specialist on French Algerian history of colonialism, said "France has never taken on its colonial history. It is a big difference with the Anglo-Saxon countries, where post-colonial studies are now in all the universities. We are phenomenally behind the times." In his opinion, although the historical facts were known to academics, they were not well known by the French public and this led to a lack of honesty in France over French colonial treatment of the Algerian people.
Algérie française
Algérie française was a slogan used about 1960 by those French people who wanted to keep AlgeriaAlgeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
ruled by France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Literally “French Algeria
French Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
,” it means that the three départements of Algeria were to be considered integral parts of France. By integral parts, it is meant that they have their deputies (representatives) in the French National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....
, and so on. Further, the people of Algeria who were to be permitted to vote for the deputies would be those who universally accepted French law, rather than sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
(which was used in personal cases among Algerian Muslims under laws dating back to Napoleon III), and such people were predominantly of French origin or Jewish emigre origin. Many who used this slogan were returnees.
In Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, during the perennial traffic jams, adherence to the slogan was indicated by sounding one's automobile horn in the form of four telegraphic
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
dot
Dot
- Typography :* Full stop, also called period in American English, used as a sentence terminator and as a decimal separator in numerals - Typography :* Full stop, also called period in American English, used as a sentence terminator and as a decimal separator (decimal point) in numerals -...
s followed by a dash
Dash
A dash is one of several kinds of punctuation mark. Dashes appear similar to hyphens, but differ from them primarily in length, and serve different functions. The most common versions of the dash are the en dash and the em dash .-Common dashes:...
, as "al-gér-ie-fran-çaise." Whole choruses of such horn soundings were heard. This was intended to be reminiscent of the Second World War slogan, "V for Victory," which had been three dots followed by a dash. The intention was that the opponents of Algérie française were to be considered as traitorous as the collaborators with Germany during the Occupation of France.
See also
- Algerian War
- French Colonial EmpireFrench colonial empireThe French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
- HarkiHarkiHarki is the generic term for Muslim Algerians who served as auxiliaries in the French Army during the Algerian War from 1954 to 1962...
- History of AlgeriaHistory of AlgeriaThe history of Algeria takes place in the fertile coastal plain of North Africa, which is often called the Maghreb . North Africa served as a transit region for people moving towards Europe or the Middle East, thus, the region's inhabitants have been influenced by populations from other areas...
- History of FranceHistory of FranceThe history of France goes back to the arrival of the earliest human being in what is now France. Members of the genus Homo entered the area hundreds of thousands years ago, while the first modern Homo sapiens, the Cro-Magnons, arrived around 40,000 years ago...
- Le Chant des AfricainsLe Chant des Africains"Le Chant des Africains" is the unofficial anthem of the Pied-noir community in France and her former colonies in Africa.-World War I:...
- Nationalism and resistance in AlgeriaNationalism and resistance in Algeria-Algerian nationalism:A new generation of Muslim leadership emerged in Algeria at the time of World War I and grew to maturity during the 1920s and 1930s. It consisted of a small but influential class of évolués, other Algerians whose perception of themselves and their country had been shaped by...
- Scramble for AfricaScramble for AfricaThe Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa or Partition of Africa was a process of invasion, occupation, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the New Imperialism period, between 1881 and World War I in 1914...
- Pied-NoirPied-noirPied-Noir , plural Pieds-Noirs, pronounced , is a term referring to French citizens of various origins who lived in French Algeria before independence....
- July Monarchy#Colonization of Algeria
- Napoleon III of France#Algeria
- List of French possessions and colonies
Sources and bibliography
- Original text: Library of Congress Country Study of Algeria Patrick WeilPatrick WeilPatrick Weil is a French historian and political scientist. He is a research fellow at CNRS, at the Centre for the social history of the 20th century at the University of Paris 1. He studies the history of immigration in France...
, Le statut des musulmans en Algérie coloniale, Une nationalité française dénaturée, European University InstituteEuropean University InstituteThe European University Institute ' in Florence is an international postgraduate and post-doctoral teaching and research institute established by European Union member states to contribute to cultural and scientific development in the social sciences, in a European perspective...
, FlorenceFlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
(on the legal statuses of Muslim populations in Algeria) Olivier LeCour GrandmaisonOlivier LeCour GrandmaisonOlivier LeCour Grandmaison is a French historian. He is a professor of political science at the Evry-Val d'Essonne University and also teach at the Collège International de Philosophie, and mainly works on colonialism issues...
, Coloniser, Exterminer - Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial, FayardFayardFayard is a French Paris-based publishing house established in 1857. Fayard is controlled by Hachette Livre.-Works published:Works published by Editions Fayard include:...
, 2005, ISBN 2-213-62316-3 ( Table of contents) Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, 1871-1954, 1979 (a groundbreaking work on the historiography of French colonialism) - Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, (Viking Adult, 1978) (discusses the end of French rule in Algeria).
- General Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957. (New York: Enigma Books, 2010) ISBN 978-1-929631-30-8.
External links
- 1940~1962 Newsreel archives about French Algeria (from French National Audiovisiual Institute INA)
- Benjamin Stora on French Colonialism and Algeria Today! (from French Communist Party's newspaper L'Humanité)