French Algeria (french: Alger to 1839, then afterwards; unofficially , ar, الجزائر المستعمرة), also known as Colonial Algeria, was the period of French colonisation of
Algeria
)
, image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Algiers
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, relig ...
. French rule in the region began in 1830 with the
invasion of Algiers and lasted until the end of the
Algerian War of Independence
The Algerian War, also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence,( ar, الثورة الجزائرية '; '' ber, Tagrawla Tadzayrit''; french: Guerre d'Algérie or ') and sometimes in Algeria as the War of 1 November ...
in 1962. While the administration of Algeria changed significantly over the 132 years of French rule, the Mediterranean coastal region of Algeria, housing the vast majority of its population, was an
integral part of France from 1848 until its independence.
As 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 . However, the indigenous
Muslim population remained the majority of the territory's population throughout its history. Many estimates indicates that the native Algerian population fell by one-third in the years between the French invasion and the end of fighting in the mid-1870s due to warfare, disease and starvation. Gradually, dissatisfaction among the Muslim population due to their lack of political and economic freedom fueled calls for greater
political autonomy, and eventually independence from France. Tensions between the two groups came to a head in 1954, when the first violent events began of what was later called the
Algerian War, characterised by
guerrilla warfare and
crimes against humanity used by the French in order to stop the revolt. The war ended in 1962, when Algeria gained independence following the
Evian agreements
Evian ( , ; , stylized as evian) is a French company that bottles and commercialises mineral water from several sources near Évian-les-Bains, on the south shore of Lake Geneva. It produces over 2 billion plastic bottles per year.
Today, Evia ...
in March 1962 and the
self-determination referendum in July 1962.
During its last years of being part of France, Algeria was a founding member of the
European Coal and Steel Community and the
European Economic Community.
History
Initial conflicts
![Purchase of Christian captives from the Barbary States](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Purchase_of_Christian_captives_from_the_Barbary_States.jpg)
Since the
1516 capture of Algiers by the
Ottoman admirals, the brothers
Ours
One Union of Regional Staff (OURS) was a trade union in the United Kingdom.
The union was formed in early 2010 by the merger of the Derbyshire Group Staff Union and the Cheshire Group Staff Union. It organises former Derbyshire Building Soc ...
and
Hayreddin Barbarossa
Hayreddin Barbarossa ( ar, خير الدين بربروس, Khayr al-Din Barbarus, original name: Khiḍr; tr, Barbaros Hayrettin Paşa), also known as Hızır Hayrettin Pasha, and simply Hızır Reis (c. 1466/1478 – 4 July 1546), was an O ...
, Algeria had been a base for conflict and piracy in the Mediterranean. In 1681,
Louis XIV
, house = Bourbon
, father = Louis XIII
, mother = Anne of Austria
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
, death_date =
, death_place = Palace of Ver ...
asked Admiral
Abraham Duquesne
Abraham Duquesne, marquis du Bouchet (2 February 1688) was a French naval officer, who also saw service as an admiral in the Swedish navy. He was born in Dieppe, a seaport, in 1610, and was a Huguenot. He was the son of a naval officer and there ...
to fight the
Berber pirates and also ordered a large-scale attack on
Algiers between 1682 and 1683 on the pretext of assisting and rescuing Christian slaves. Again,
Jean II d'Estrées
Jean, Comte d'Estrées, (3 November 1624 in Solothurn, Switzerland – 19 May 1707 in Paris), was a Marshal of France, and an important naval commander of Louis XIV. He was born into a noble family from Picardy. His aunt was Gabrielle d'Es ...
bombarded
Tripoli
Tripoli or Tripolis may refer to:
Cities and other geographic units Greece
*Tripoli, Greece, the capital of Arcadia, Greece
* Tripolis (region of Arcadia), a district in ancient Arcadia, Greece
* Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient Greek city in ...
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
Directory may refer to:
* Directory (computing), or folder, a file system structure in which to store computer files
* Directory (OpenVMS command)
* Directory service, a software application for organizing information about a computer network's u ...
regime of the
First French Republic (1795–99), the Bacri and the Busnach, Jewish merchants of Algiers, provided large quantities of grain for
Napoleon's soldiers who participated in the
Italian campaign of 1796. However, Bonaparte refused to pay the bill, claiming it was excessive. In 1820,
Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII (Louis Stanislas Xavier; 17 November 1755 – 16 September 1824), known as the Desired (), was King of France from 1814 to 1824, except for a brief interruption during the Hundred Days in 1815. He spent twenty-three years in ...
paid back half of the Directory's debts. The
dey
Dey (Arabic: داي), from the Turkish honorific title ''dayı'', literally meaning uncle, was the title given to the rulers of the Regency of Algiers (Algeria), Tripoli,Bertarelli (1929), p. 203. and Tunis under the Ottoman Empire from 1671 o ...
, who had loaned to the Bacri 250,000
francs
The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' (King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centu ...
, requested the rest of the money from France.
The
Dey of Algiers
Dey (Arabic: داي), from the Turkish honorific title ''dayı'', literally meaning uncle, was the title given to the rulers of the Regency of Algiers (Algeria), Tripoli,Bertarelli (1929), p. 203. and Tunis under the Ottoman Empire from 1671 o ...
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
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
, then led by
Mahmud II
Mahmud II ( ota, محمود ثانى, Maḥmûd-u s̠ânî, tr, II. Mahmud; 20 July 1785 – 1 July 1839) was the 30th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 until his death in 1839.
His reign is recognized for the extensive administrative, ...
— but enjoyed relative independence. The
Barbary Coast was the stronghold of Berber pirates, who carried out raids against European and American ships. Conflicts between the Barbary States and the newly independent
United States of America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
culminated in the
First
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
(1801–05) and
Second (1815) Barbary Wars. An Anglo-Dutch force, led by
Admiral Lord Exmouth
Viscount Exmouth, of Canonteign in the County of Devon, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.
History
The title was created in 1816 for the prominent naval officer Edward Pellew, 1st Baron Exmouth. He had already been created a baro ...
, carried out a
punitive expedition
A punitive expedition is a military journey undertaken to punish a political entity or any group of people outside the borders of the punishing state or union. It is usually undertaken in response to perceived disobedient or morally wrong beh ...
, the August 1816
bombardment of Algiers. The Dey was forced to sign the
Barbary treaties, while the
technological advantage of U.S., British, and French forces overwhelmed the Algerians' expertise at
naval warfare.
Following the conquest under the
July monarchy
The July Monarchy (french: Monarchie de Juillet), officially the Kingdom of France (french: Royaume de France), was a liberal constitutional monarchy in France under , starting on 26 July 1830, with the July Revolution of 1830, and ending 23 F ...
, the Algerian territories, disputed with the Ottoman Empire, were first named "French possessions in North Africa" before being called "Algeria" by
Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult
Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, 1st Duke of Dalmatia, (; 29 March 1769 – 26 November 1851) was a French general and statesman, named Marshal of the Empire in 1804 and often called Marshal Soult. Soult was one of only six officers in Frenc ...
, Duke of Dalmatia, in 1839.
French conquest of Algeria
![Empire colonial français (1920)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Empire_colonial_fran%C3%A7ais_%281920%29.png)
The conquest of Algeria was initiated in the last days of the
Bourbon Restoration by
Charles X
Charles X (born Charles Philippe, Count of Artois; 9 October 1757 – 6 November 1836) was King of France from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. An uncle of the uncrowned Louis XVII and younger brother to reigning kings Louis XVI and Lou ...
, as an attempt to increase his popularity amongst the French people, particularly in Paris, where many veterans of the
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
lived. His intention was to bolster patriotic sentiment, and distract attention from ineptly handled domestic policies by "skirmishing against the dey".
Fly Whisk Incident (April 1827)
In the 1790s, France had contracted to purchase wheat for the French army from two merchants in Algiers, Messrs. Bacri and Boushnak, and was in arrears paying them. Bacri and Boushnak owed money to the dey and claimed they could not pay it until France paid its debts to them. The dey had unsuccessfully negotiated with
Pierre Deval
Pierre Deval (1897 in Lyon – 1993 in La Valette-du-Var), was a French figurative painter of the 20th century, noted as a colorist and for his subtle paintings of women and children. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Domaine d'Orvès, his h ...
, 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 to pay the merchants in 1820. Deval's nephew Alexandre, the consul in
Bône
Annaba ( ar, عنّابة, "Place of the Jujubes"; ber, Aânavaen), formerly known as Bon, Bona and Bône, is a seaport city in the northeastern corner of Algeria, close to the border with Tunisia. Annaba is near the small Seybouse River ...
, further angered the dey by fortifying French storehouses in Bône and
La Calle, contrary to 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
__NOTOC__
A fly-whisk (or fly-swish) is a tool that is used to swat flies. A similar gadget is used as a hand fan in hot tropical climates, sometimes as part of regalia, and is called a ''chowrie'', ''chāmara'', or ''prakirnaka'' in South Asia an ...
. 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. France demanded that the dey send an ambassador to France to resolve the incident. When the dey responded with cannon fire directed toward one of the blockading ships, the French determined that more forceful action was required.
Invasion of Algiers (June 1830)
Pierre Deval
Pierre Deval (1897 in Lyon – 1993 in La Valette-du-Var), was a French figurative painter of the 20th century, noted as a colorist and for his subtle paintings of women and children. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Domaine d'Orvès, his h ...
and other French residents of Algiers left for France, while the
Minister of War
A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in som ...
,
Clermont-Tonnerre
The House of Clermont-Tonnerre is a French noble family, members of which played some part in the history of France, especially in Dauphiné, from about 1100 to the French Revolution (1789–99).
History
Sibaud, lord of Clermont in Viennois, wh ...
, proposed a military expedition. However, the
Count of Villèle, an
ultra-royalist
The Ultra-royalists (french: ultraroyalistes, collectively Ultras) were a French political faction from 1815 to 1830 under the Bourbon Restoration. An Ultra was usually a member of the nobility of high society who strongly supported Roman Cath ...
, President of the council and the monarch's heir, opposed any military action. The Bourbon Restoration government finally decided to blockade Algiers for three years. Meanwhile, the Berber pirates were able to exploit the geography of the coast with ease. Before the failure of the blockade, the Restoration decided on 31 January 1830 to engage a military expedition against Algiers.
Admiral Duperré
Admiral is one of the highest ranks in some navies. In the Commonwealth nations and the United States, a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army or the air force, and is above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet, ...
commanded an armada of 600 ships that originated from
Toulon
Toulon (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Tolon , , ) is a city on the French Riviera and a large port on the Mediterranean coast, with a major naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, and the Provence province, Toulon is th ...
, leading it to Algiers. Using
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
's 1808 contingency plan for the invasion of Algeria,
General de Bourmont then landed west of Algiers, at
Sidi Ferruch on 14 June 1830, with 34,000 soldiers. In response to the French, the Algerian dey ordered an opposition consisting of 7,000
janissaries, 19,000 troops from the beys of
Constantine
Constantine most often refers to:
* Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from 306 to 337, also known as Constantine I
*Constantine, Algeria, a city in Algeria
Constantine may also refer to:
People
* Constantine (name), a masculine given name ...
and
Oran, and about 17,000
Kabyles
The Kabyle people ( kab, Izwawen or ''Leqbayel'' or ''Iqbayliyen'', ) are a Berber ethnic group indigenous to Kabylia in the north of Algeria, spread across the Atlas Mountains, east of Algiers. They represent the largest Berber-speaking populat ...
. 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 (Berber: ⵚⵟⴰⵡⴰⵍⵉ) is a municipalities of Algeria, municipality in Algiers Province, Algeria. It is located in Zéralda District, Zéralda district, on a Presque-isle on the Mediterranean Sea, hosting the resort town of Sidi ...
, and entered Algiers on 5 July after a three-week campaign. The dey agreed to surrender 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. 2,500 janissaries also quit the Algerian territories, heading for Asia, on 11 July.
The French army then recruited the first (a title given to certain
light infantry
Light infantry refers to certain types of lightly equipped infantry throughout history. They have a more mobile or fluid function than other types of infantry, such as heavy infantry or line infantry. Historically, light infantry often fought ...
regiments) in October, followed by the regiments, while France expropriated all the land properties belonging to the Turkish settlers, known as . In the western region of
Oran,
Sultan Abderrahmane of Morocco, the
Commander of the Faithful
Commander (commonly abbreviated as Cmdr.) is a common naval officer rank. Commander is also used as a rank or title in other formal organizations, including several police forces. In several countries this naval rank is termed frigate captain.
...
, could not remain indifferent to the massacres committed by the French Christian troops and to belligerent calls for
jihad from the
marabout
A marabout ( ar, مُرابِط, murābiṭ, lit=one who is attached/garrisoned) is a Muslim religious leader and teacher who historically had the function of a chaplain serving as a part of an Islamic army, notably in North Africa and the Sah ...
s. Despite the diplomatic rupture between Morocco and the
Two Sicilies
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ( it, Regno delle Due Sicilie) was a kingdom in Southern Italy from 1816 to 1860. The kingdom was the largest sovereign state by population and size in Italy before Italian unification, comprising Sicily and all ...
in 1830, and the naval warfare engaged against the
Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central-Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence ...
as well as with
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
, then headed by
Ferdinand VII
, house = Bourbon-Anjou
, father = Charles IV of Spain
, mother = Maria Luisa of Parma
, birth_date = 14 October 1784
, birth_place = El Escorial, Spain
, death_date =
, death_place = Madrid, Spain
, burial_plac ...
, Sultan Abderrahmane lent his support to the Algerian insurgency of
Abd El-Kader
Abd al-Qadir or Abdulkadir ( ar, عبد القادر) is a male Muslim given name. It is formed from the Arabic words '' Abd'', '' al-'' and '' Qadir''. The name means "servant of the powerful", ''Al-Qādir'' being one of the names of God in th ...
. The latter fought 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 recommended that the authorities of
Tetuan assist them, by providing jobs in the administration or the military forces. The inhabitants of
Tlemcen
Tlemcen (; ar, تلمسان, translit=Tilimsān) is the second-largest city in northwestern Algeria after Oran, and capital of the Tlemcen Province. The city has developed leather, carpet, and textile industries, which it exports through the p ...
, near the Moroccan border, asked that they be placed under the Sultan's authority in order to escape the invaders. Abderrahmane named his nephew Prince
Moulay Ali Caliph
A caliphate or khilāfah ( ar, خِلَافَة, ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with the title of caliph (; ar, خَلِيفَة , ), a person considered a political-religious successor to th ...
of Tlemcen, charged with the protection of the city. In retaliation France executed two Moroccans: Mohamed Beliano and Benkirane, as spies, while their goods were seized by the military governor of Oran,
Pierre François Xavier Boyer
Pierre François Xavier Boyer (7 September 1772 – 11 July 1851) became a French division commander during the Napoleonic Wars. He joined a volunteer regiment in 1792. He fought in the Italian campaign of 1796 and participated in the French ...
.
Hardly had the news of the capture of Algiers reached Paris than Charles X was deposed during the
Three Glorious Days
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution (french: révolution de Juillet), Second French Revolution, or ("Three Glorious ays), was a second French Revolution after the first in 1789. It led to the overthrow of King ...
of July 1830, and his cousin
Louis-Philippe
Louis Philippe (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France.
As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres, he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary Wa ...
, the "citizen king", was named to preside over a
constitutional monarchy
A constitutional monarchy, parliamentary monarchy, or democratic monarchy is a form of monarchy in which the monarch exercises their authority in accordance with a constitution and is not alone in decision making. Constitutional monarchies dif ...
. 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.
Characterization as genocide
Some governments and scholars have called France's conquest of
Algeria
)
, image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Algiers
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, relig ...
a
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...
.
For example,
Ben Kiernan, an Australian expert on
Cambodian genocide wrote in ''
Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur'' on the French conquest of
Algeria
)
, image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Algiers
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, relig ...
:
''By 1875, the French conquest was complete. The war had killed approximately 825,000 indigenous Algerians since 1830. A long shadow of genocidal hatred persisted, provoking a French author to protest in 1882 that in Algeria, "we hear it repeated every day that we must expel the native and, if necessary, destroy him." As a French statistical journal urged five years late, "the system of extermination must give way to a policy of penetration."''
—Ben Kiernan, ''Blood and Soil''
When France recognized the
Armenian genocide
The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...
, Turkey accused France of having committed
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...
against 15% of Algeria's population.
Popular revolts against the French occupation
Conquest of the Algerian territories under the July Monarchy (1830–1848)
![Sylvain Charles Valée](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Court_-_Sylvain_Charles_Val%C3%A9e_%281773-1846%29_-_MV_1176.jpg)
On 1 December 1830,
King Louis-Philippe
Louis Philippe (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France.
As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres, he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary Wa ...
named the
Duc de Rovigo as head of military staff in Algeria. De Rovigo took control of
Bône
Annaba ( ar, عنّابة, "Place of the Jujubes"; ber, Aânavaen), formerly known as Bon, Bona and Bône, is a seaport city in the northeastern corner of Algeria, close to the border with Tunisia. Annaba is near the small Seybouse River ...
and initiated colonisation of the land. 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 Tangier
The Bay of Tangier is a bay around Tangier on the Mediterranean in northern Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Se ...
. An ambassador was sent to Sultan
Moulay Abderrahmane
''Moulay'' Abd al-Rahman bin Hisham ( ar, عبد الرحمن بن هشام), born on 19 February 1778 in Fes and died on 28 August 1859 in Meknes, was a sultan of Morocco from 30 November 1822 to 28 August 1859, as a ruler of the 'Alawi dynas ...
in February 1832, headed by the Count
Charles-Edgar de Mornay and including the painter
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
. However the sultan refused French demands that he evacuate Tlemcen.
In 1834, France annexed as a
colony
In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state' ...
the occupied areas of Algeria, which had an estimated Muslim population of about two million.
Colonial administration
Colonial or The Colonial may refer to:
* Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology)
Architecture
* American colonial architecture
* French Colonial
* Spanish Colonial architecture
Automobiles
* Colonial (1920 au ...
in the occupied areas — the so-called (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.
Marshal Bugeaud
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly (15 October 178410 June 1849) was a Marshal of France and Governor-General of Algeria.
Early life
He was born at Limoges, a member of a noble family of Périgord (Occitania), the y ...
, who became the first governor-general, headed the conquest.
Soon after the conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician
Bertrand Clauzel
Bertrand, comte Clauzel (12 December 177221 April 1842) was a Marshal of France. When asked on Saint Helena which of his Generals was the most skillful Napoleon named Clauzel along with Louis-Gabriel Suchet and Étienne Maurice GérardOjala, Jea ...
and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to subsidize its settlement by European farmers, triggering a
land rush
A land run or land rush was an event in which previously restricted land of the United States was opened to homestead on a first-arrival basis. Lands were opened and sold first-come or by bid, or won by lottery, or by means other than a run. The ...
. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the
Mitidja Plain
Mitidja, (Arabic: , Berber: Mettijet ⵎⴻⵜⵙⵉⵛⵝ) is a plain stretching along the outskirts of Algiers in northern Algeria. It is about long, with a width of . Traditionally devoted largely to agriculture and serving as the breadbasket o ...
and envisioned the large-scale production there of
cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...
. 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 hired local labor.
Among others testimonies, Lieutenant-colonel Lucien de Montagnac wrote on 15 March 1843, in a letter to a friend:
All populations who 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 set foot. Who wants the end wants the means, whatever may say our philanthropists. I personally warn all good soldiers whom 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 make 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 Islands
The Marquesas Islands (; french: Îles Marquises or ' or '; Marquesan: ' ( North Marquesan) and ' ( South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in ...
or elsewhere. In one word, annihilate everything that will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs.
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 French presence there. France had reason for concern that
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
, which was pledged to maintain the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, would move to fill the vacuum left by a French withdrawal. 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.
![La prise de Constantine 1837 par Horace Vernet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/La_prise_de_Constantine_1837_par_Horace_Vernet.jpg)
The most successful local opposition immediately after the fall of Algiers was led by
Ahmad ibn Muhammad, of
Constantine
Constantine most often refers to:
* Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from 306 to 337, also known as Constantine I
*Constantine, Algeria, a city in Algeria
Constantine may also refer to:
People
* Constantine (name), a masculine given name ...
. He initiated a radical overhaul of the Ottoman administration in his by replacing
Turkish officials with local leaders, making
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
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 's territories through negotiation, an ill-fated invasion force, led by
Bertrand Clauzel
Bertrand, comte Clauzel (12 December 177221 April 1842) was a Marshal of France. When asked on Saint Helena which of his Generals was the most skillful Napoleon named Clauzel along with Louis-Gabriel Suchet and Étienne Maurice GérardOjala, Jea ...
, had to retreat from
Constantine
Constantine most often refers to:
* Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from 306 to 337, also known as Constantine I
*Constantine, Algeria, a city in Algeria
Constantine may also refer to:
People
* Constantine (name), a masculine given name ...
in 1836 in humiliation and defeat. However, the French captured Constantine under
Sylvain Charles Valée the following year, on 13 October 1837.
Historians generally set the indigenous population of Algeria at 3 million in 1830. Although the
Algerian population decreased at some point under French rule, most certainly between 1866 and 1872, the French military was not fully responsible for the extent of this decrease, as some of these deaths could be explained by the
locust
Locusts (derived from the Vulgar Latin ''locusta'', meaning grasshopper) are various species of short-horned grasshoppers in the family Acrididae that have a swarming phase. These insects are usually solitary, but under certain circumstanc ...
plagues of 1866 and 1868, as well as by a rigorous winter in 1867–68, which caused a
famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...
followed by an epidemic of
cholera.
Resistance of Lalla Fadhma N'Soumer
The French began their occupation of Algiers in 1830, starting with a landing in
Algiers. As occupation turned into colonization,
Kabylia
Kabylia ('' Kabyle: Tamurt n Leqbayel'' or ''Iqbayliyen'', meaning "Land of Kabyles", '','' meaning "Land of the Tribes") is a cultural, natural and historical region
Historical regions (or historical areas) are geographical regions which ...
remained the only region independent of the French government. Pressure on the region increased, and the will of her people to resist and defend Kabylia increased as well.
In about 1849, a mysterious man arrived in Kabiliya. He presented himself as Mohamed ben Abdallah (the name of the
Prophet
In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...
), but is more commonly known as
Sherif Boubaghla
Sherif Boubaghla or Cherif Boubaghla (in Arabic: الشريف بوبغلة , ''the man with the mule'') (full name Muhammad Al-Amjad bin Abd Almalik محمد الأمجد بن عبد المالك) was an Algerian military resistance leader who led ...
. He was probably a former lieutenant in the army of Emir
Abdelkader, defeated for the last time by the French in 1847. Boubaghla refused to surrender at that battle, and retreated to Kabylia. From there he began a war against the French armies and their allies, often employing
guerrilla tactics. Boubaghla was a relentless fighter, and very eloquent in Arabic. He was very religious, and some legends tell of his
thaumaturgic
Thaumaturgy is the purported capability of a magician to work magic or other paranormal events or a saint to perform miracles. It is sometimes translated into English as wonderworking.
A practitioner of thaumaturgy is a "thaumaturge", "thauma ...
skills.
Boubaghla went often to Soumer to talk with 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 (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 Boubaghla. She saw this as a wedding of peers, rather than the traditional submission as a slave to a husband. In fact, at that time Boubaghla 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 ("woman who left her husband to get back to his family", a Kabylia 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 this, 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 Boubaghla was involved, particularly the battle of Tachekkirt won by Boubaghla forces (18–19 July 1854), where the French general
Jacques Louis César Randon was caught but managed to escape later. On 26 December 1854, Boubaghla was killed; some sources claim it was due to treason of some of his allies. The resistance was left 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 Emir Abd al Qadir
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,
jihad was declared and to lead it tribal elders chose Muhyi ad Din's son, twenty-five-year-old
Abd al Qadir. Abd al Qadir, who was recognized as
Amir al-Muminin
Amir al-Mu'minin ( ar, أَمِير ٱلْمُؤْمِنِين, amīr al-muʾminīn) is an Arabic title designating the supreme leader of an Islamic community. It is usually translated as "Commander of the Faithful", though sometimes also as "Prin ...
(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 (; ar, تلمسان, translit=Tilimsān) is the second-largest city in northwestern Algeria after Oran, and capital of the Tlemcen Province. The city has developed leather, carpet, and textile industries, which it exports through the p ...
, 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
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly (15 October 178410 June 1849) was a Marshal of France and Governor-General of Algeria.
Early life
He was born at Limoges, a member of a noble family of Périgord (Occitania), the y ...
in 1836, Abd al Qadir negotiated a favorable peace treaty the next year. The
treaty of Tafna
The Treaty of Tafna was signed by both Abd-el-Kader and General Thomas Robert Bugeaud on 30 May 1837. This agreement was developed after French imperial forces sustained heavy losses and military reversals in Algeria. The terms of the treaty ent ...
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 most often refers to:
* Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from 306 to 337, also known as Constantine I
*Constantine, Algeria, a city in Algeria
Constantine may also refer to:
People
* Constantine (name), a masculine given name ...
. 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
The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed Force ...
.
![Prise de la smalah d Abd-El-Kader a Taguin 16 mai 1843 Horace Vernet](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Prise_de_la_smalah_d_Abd-El-Kader_a_Taguin_16_mai_1843_Horace_Vernet.jpg)
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
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...
,
Abd ar Rahman II, and launched raids into Algeria. This alliance led the
French Navy
The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...
to bombard and briefly occupy
Essaouira (
Mogador
Essaouira ( ; ar, الصويرة, aṣ-Ṣawīra; shi, ⵜⴰⵚⵚⵓⵔⵜ, Taṣṣort, formerly ''Amegdul''), known until the 1960s as Mogador, is a port city in the western Moroccan region of Marakesh-Safi, on the Atlantic coast. It ha ...
) under the
Prince de Joinville
The first known lord of Joinville (French ''sire'' or ''seigneur de Joinville'') in the county of Champagne appears in the middle of the eleventh century. The former lordship was raised into the Principality of Joinville under the House of Guise ...
on August 16, 1844. A French force was destroyed at the
Battle of Sidi-Brahim
The Battle of Sidi Brahim was a battle at Sidi Brahim in French Algeria between the troops of Abdelkader El Djezairi and French troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Lucien de Montagnac from 22 to 25 September 1845. The French force was made up of the ...
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
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
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
The Château d'Amboise is a château in Amboise, located in the Indre-et-Loire ''département'' of the Loire Valley in France. Confiscated by the monarchy in the 15th century, it became a favoured royal residence and was extensively rebuilt. K ...
.
French rule
Demography
French atrocities against the Algerian indigenous population
![Takin of Laghouat 1852](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Takin_of_Laghouat_1852.jpg)
According to
Ben Kiernan, Colonization and genocidal massacres proceeded in tandem. Within the first three decades (1830–1860) of French conquest, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Algerians, out of a total of 3 million, were killed due to war, massacres, disease and famine.
Atrocities committed by the French during the
Algerian War during the 1950s against Algerians include deliberate bombing and killing of unarmed civilians, rape,
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. definitions of tortur ...
, executions through "
death flights
Death flights ( es, vuelos de la muerte, links=no) are a form of extrajudicial killing practiced by military forces in possession of aircraft: victims are dropped to their death from airplanes or helicopters into oceans, large rivers or even mount ...
" or
burial alive
Premature burial, also known as live burial, burial alive, or vivisepulture, means to be buried while still alive.
Animals or humans may be buried alive accidentally on the mistaken assumption that they are dead, or intentionally as a form of t ...
, thefts and pillaging.
Up to 2 million Algerian civilians were also deported in internment camps.
During the
Pacification of Algeria
The Pacification of Algeria was a series of military operations after the French conquest of the Regency of Algiers that aimed to put an end to various tribal rebellions, razzias and massacres of French settlers that were sporadically held in ...
(1835-1903) French forces engaged in a
scorched earth policy against the Algerian population. Colonel
Lucien de Montagnac
Lucien-François de Montagnac (17 May 1803 – 23 September 1845) was a French lieutenant colonel. Sent to Africa in 1845, he was responsible for several massacres of civilians during the French conquest of Algeria and was killed at the Batt ...
stated that the purpose of the pacification was to "destroy everything that will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs"
[Quoted in Marc Ferro, "The conquest of Algeria", in The black book of colonialism, Robert Laffont, p. 657.] The scorched earth policy, decided by Governor General
Thomas Robert Bugeaud
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly (15 October 178410 June 1849) was a Marshal of France and Governor-General of Algeria.
Early life
He was born at Limoges, a member of a noble family of Périgord (Occitania), the y ...
, had devastating effects on the socio-economic and food balances of the country: "we fire little gunshot, we burn all douars, all villages, all huts; the enemy flees across taking his flock."
[ According to ]Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison
Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison (born 19 September 1960), is a French political scientist and author whose work chiefly centres on colonialism. He is best known for his book ''Coloniser, Exterminer - Sur la guerre et l'Etat colonial''.
Le Cour Grandm ...
, the colonisation of Algeria lead to the extermination of a third of the population from multiple causes (massacres, deportations, famines or epidemics) that were all interrelated.[Colonize Exterminate. On War and the Colonial State, Paris, Fayard, 2005. See also the book by the American historian Benjamin Claude Brower, A Desert named Peace. The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902, New York, Columbia University Press.] Returning from an investigation trip to Algeria, Tocqueville wrote that "we make war much more barbaric than the Arabs themselves ..it is for their part that civilization is situated."
French forces deported and banished entire Algerian tribes. The Moorish families of Tlemcen were exiled to the Orient, and others were emigrated elsewhere. The tribes that were considered too troublesome were banned, and some took refuge in Tunisia, Morocco and Syria or were deported to New Caledonia or Guyana. Also, French forces also engaged in wholesale massacres of entire tribes. All 500 men, women and children of the El Oufia tribe were killed in one night,[Blood and Soil: Ben Kiernan, page 365, 2008] while all 500 to 700 members of the Ouled Rhia tribe were killed by suffocation in a cave.[ The ]Siege of Laghouat
The siege of Laghouat was an episode of the French Pacification of Algeria. General Aimable Pélissier commanding an army of 6,000, besieged the city of Laghouat from November 21st until December 4, 1852 when the city capitulated. The brutal tr ...
is referred by Algerians as the year of the "Khalya", Arabic for emptiness, which is commonly known to the inhabitants of Laghouat as the year that the city was emptied of its population. It is also commonly known as the year of Hessian sacks, referring to the way the captured surviving men and boys were put alive in the hessian sacks and thrown into dug-up trenches.
From 8 May to June 26, 1945, the French carried out the Sétif and Guelma massacre
The Sétif and Guelma massacre was a series of attacks by French colonial authorities and pied-noir settler militias on Algerian civilians in 1945 around the market town of Sétif, west of Constantine, in French Algeria. In response to French ...
, in which between 6,000 and 80,000 Algerian Muslims were killed. Its initial outbreak occurred during a parade of about 5,000 people of the Muslim Algerian population of Sétif to celebrate the surrender of Nazi Germany in World War II; it ended in clashes between the marchers and the local French gendarmerie, when the latter tried to seize banners attacking colonial rule. After five days, the French colonial military and police suppressed the rebellion, and then carried out a series of reprisals against Muslim civilians. The army carried out summary executions of Muslim rural communities. Less accessible villages were bombed by French aircraft, and cruiser Duguay-Trouin, standing off the coast in the Gulf of Bougie, shelled Kherrata. Vigilantes lynched prisoners taken from local jails or randomly shot Muslims not wearing white arm bands (as instructed by the army) out of hand. It is certain that the great majority of the Muslim victims had not been implicated in the original outbreak.[Horne, p. 27.] The dead bodies in Guelma were buried in mass graves, but they were later dug up and burned in Héliopolis.
During the Algerian War (1954-1962), the French used deliberate illegal methods against the Algerians, including (as described by Henri Alleg
Henri Alleg (20 July 1921 – 17 July 2013), born as Harry John Salem, was a French-Algerian journalist, director of the '' Alger républicain'' newspaper, and a member of the French Communist Party. After Editions de Minuit, a French publish ...
, who himself had been tortured, and historians such as Raphaëlle Branche) beatings, torture by electroshock, waterboarding
Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning. In the most common method of waterboard ...
, burns, and rape.[Text published in ''Vérité Liberté'' n°9 May 1961.] Prisoners were also locked up without food in small cells, buried alive
Premature burial, also known as live burial, burial alive, or vivisepulture, means to be buried while still alive.
Animals or humans may be buried alive accidentally on the mistaken assumption that they are dead, or intentionally as a form of t ...
, and thrown from helicopters to their death or into the sea with concrete on their feet. Claude Bourdet
Claude Bourdet (28 October 1909 – 20 March 1996) was a writer, journalist, polemist, and militant French politician.
Peronal life
Bourdet was a son of the dramatic author Édouard Bourdet and the poet Catherine Pozzi, was born and died in Pari ...
had denounced these acts on 6 December 1951, in the magazine ''L'Observateur'', rhetorically asking, "Is there a Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
in Algeria?".Benjamin Stora
Benjamin Stora (born 2 December 1950) 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 that left the country following its War of ...
, ''La torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie''
D. Huf, in his seminal work on the subject, argued that the use of torture was one of the major factors in developing French opposition to the war. Huf argued, "Such tactics sat uncomfortably with France's revolutionary history, and brought unbearable comparisons with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. The French national psyche would not tolerate any parallels between their experiences of occupation and their colonial mastery of Algeria." General Paul Aussaresses admitted in 2000 that systematic torture techniques were used during the war and justified it. He also recognized the assassination of lawyer Ali Boumendjel
Ali Boumendjel (May 24, 1919 – March 23, 1957) was an Algerian revolutionary and lawyer.
Biography
Born in Relizane to an educated family from Beni Yeni region, Boumendjel was educated at the Duveyrier college in Blida, where he met with oth ...
and the head of the FLN in Algiers, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, which had been disguised as suicides. Bigeard, who called FLN activists "savages", claimed torture was a "necessary evil". To the contrary, General Jacques Massu denounced it, following Aussaresses's revelations and, before his death, pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during the war.
In June 2000, Bigeard declared that he was based in Sidi Ferruch, a torture center where Algerians were murdered. Bigeard qualified Louisette Ighilahriz Louisette Ighilahriz (born 22 August 1936) is an Algerian writer, former '' Conseil de la Nation'' member, and a former member of the ''Front de Libération Nationale'' (FLN) who came to widespread attention in 2000 with her story of captivity by t ...
's revelations, published in the ''Le Monde'' newspaper on June 20, 2000, as "lies." An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz had been tortured by General Massu. However, since General Massu's revelations, Bigeard has admitted the use of torture, although he denies having personally used it, and has declared, "You are striking the heart of an 84-year-old man." Bigeard also recognized that Larbi Ben M'Hidi was assassinated and that his death was disguised as a suicide.
In 2018 France officially admitted that torture was systematic and routine.
Hegemony of the
Political organization
A commission of inquiry established by the French Senate
The Senate (french: Sénat, ) is the upper house of the French Parliament, with the lower house being the National Assembly, the two houses constituting the legislature of France. The French Senate is made up of 348 senators (''sénateurs'' a ...
in 1892 and headed by former Prime Minister Jules Ferry
Jules François Camille Ferry (; 5 April 183217 March 1893) was a French statesman and republican philosopher. He was one of the leaders of the Moderate Republicans and served as Prime Minister of France from 1880 to 1881 and 1883 to 1885. He ...
, 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 the French National Assembly before 1945 and were grossly under-represented 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 , and by the 27 representatives in the National Assembly (six deputies and three senators from each department).
Once elected to the National Assembly, became permanent fixtures. Because of their seniority
Seniority is the state of being older or placed in a higher position of status relative to another individual, group, or organization. For example, one employee may be senior to another either by role or rank (such as a CEO vice a manager), or by ...
, they exercised disproportionate influence, and their support was important to any government's survival. The leader of the delegation, Auguste Warnier
Auguste Hubert Warnier (8 January 1810 – 15 March 1875) was a French medical doctor, journalist and politician who spent most of his career in Algeria.
At first he was a Saint-Simonian and was sympathetic to the local population.
He thought the ...
(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 Benjamin Clemenceau (, also , ; 28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A key figure of the Independent Radicals, he was a ...
and socialist Jean Jaurès
Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon Jaurès (3 September 185931 July 1914), commonly referred to as Jean Jaurès (; oc, Joan Jaurés ), was a French Socialist leader. Initially a Moderate Republican, he later became one of the first social dem ...
, were rare in the National Assembly.
Economic organization
The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...
, mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...
, agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...
, and trade
Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market.
An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...
was controlled by the . The modern European-owned and -managed sector of the economy centered on 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
Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, ...
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.
In 1953, sixty per cent of the Muslim rural population were officially classed as being destitute. The European community, numbering at the time about one million out of a total population of nine million, owned about 66% of farmable land and produced all of the 1.3 million tons of wine that provided the base of the Algerian economy. Exports of Algerian wine and wheat to France were balanced in trading terms by a flow of manufactured goods.
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 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 controlled how these revenues would be spent. As a result, 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.
In financial terms Algeria was a drain on the French tax-payer. In the early 1950s the total Algerian budget of seventy-two billion francs included a direct subsidy of twenty-eight billion contributed from the metropolitan budget. Described at the time as being a French luxury, continued rule from Paris was justified on a variety of grounds including historic sentiment, strategic value and the political influence of the European settler population.
Schools
The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for Algerian Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to learn reading and 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 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. As late as 1954 only one Muslim boy in five and one girl in sixteen was receiving formal schooling. The level of literacy amongst the total Muslim population was estimated at only 2% in urban areas and half of that figure in the rural hinterland.
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
The civilizing mission ( es, misión civilizadora; pt, Missão civilizadora; french: Mission civilisatrice) is a political rationale for military intervention and for colonization purporting to facilitate the Westernization of indigenous pe ...
" 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 (literally, the evolved ones)—had been created. Almost all of the handful of Muslims who accepted French citizenship were ; ironically, this privileged group of Muslims, strongly influenced by French culture and political attitudes, developed a new Algerian self-consciousness.
Relationships between the colons, Indigènes and France
Reporting to the French Senate in 1894, Governor-General Jules Cambon
Jules-Martin Cambon (5 April 1845 – 19 September 1935) was a French diplomat and brother to Paul Cambon. As the ambassador to Germany (1907–1914) he worked hard to secure a friendly détente. He was frustrated by French leaders such as Raym ...
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 (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 who ran Algeria maintained a dialog only with the . Later they thwarted contact between the and Muslim traditionalists on the one hand and between and official circles in France on the other. They feared and mistrusted the Francophone , 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.
Separate personal status
Two communities existed: the French national and the people living with their own traditions.
Following its conquest of Ottoman-controlled Algeria
)
, image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Algiers
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, relig ...
in 1830, for well over a century, France maintained what was effectively colonial rule
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colony, colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose the ...
in the territory, though the French Constitution of 1848
The Constitution of 1848 is the constitution passed in France on 4 November 1848 by the National Assembly, the constituent body of the Second French Republic. It was repealed on 14 January 1852 by the constitution of 1852 which profoundly change ...
made Algeria part of France, and Algeria was usually understood as such by French people, even on the Left.
Algeria became the prototype for a pattern of French colonial rule.
With nine million or so 'Muslim' Algerians "dominated" by one million settlers, Algeria had similarities with South Africa, that has later been described as "quasi-apartheid
Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
"["Algeria ... was a society of nine million or so 'Muslim' Algerians who were dominated by the
million settlers of diverse origins (but fiercely French) who maintained a quasi-apartheid regime." David Scott Bell. ''Presidential Power in Fifth Republic France'', Berg Publishers, 2000, p. 36.] while the concept of apartheid was formalized in 1948.
This personal status lasted the entire time Algeria was French, from 1830 till 1962, with various changes in the meantime.
When French rule began, France had no well-established systems for intensive colonial governance, the main existing legal provision being the 1685 ''Code Noir
The (, ''Black code'') was a decree passed by the French King Louis XIV in 1685 defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The decree restricted the activities of free people of color, mandated the conversion of all e ...
'' which was related to slave-trading and owning and incompatible with the legal context of Algeria.
Indeed, France was committed in respecting the local law.
Status before 1865
On 5 July 1830, Hussein Dey
Hussein Dey (real name Hüseyin bin Hüseyin; 1765 – 1838; ar, حسين داي) was the last Dey of the Deylik of Algiers.
Early life
He was born either in İzmir or Urla in the Ottoman Empire. He went to Istanbul and joined the Canoneers ...
, regent of Algiers, signed the act of capitulation to the Régence
The ''Régence'' (, ''Regency'') was the period in French history between 1715 and 1723 when King Louis XV was considered a minor and the country was instead governed by Philippe d'Orléans (a nephew of Louis XIV of France) as prince regen ...
, which committed General de Bourmont and France "not to infringe on the freedom of people of all classes and their religion".[.]
Muslims still remain submitted to the Muslim Customary law and Jews to the Law of Moses; all of them remained linked to the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
.[.]
That same year and the same month, the July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution (french: révolution de Juillet), Second French Revolution, or ("Three Glorious ays), was a second French Revolution after the first in 1789. It led to the overthrow of King ...
ended the Bourbon Restoration and began the July Monarchy
The July Monarchy (french: Monarchie de Juillet), officially the Kingdom of France (french: Royaume de France), was a liberal constitutional monarchy in France under , starting on 26 July 1830, with the July Revolution of 1830, and ending 23 F ...
in which Louis Philippe I
Louis Philippe (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850) was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, and the penultimate monarch of France.
As Louis Philippe, Duke of Chartres, he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary Wa ...
was King of the French.
The royal ''"Ordonnance du 22 juillet 1834"'' organized general government and administration of the French territories in North Africa and is usually considered as an effective annexation of Algeria by France;[.] the annexation made all people legally linked to France and broke the legal link between people and the Ottoman Empire, because International law
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
made annexation systematically induce a régnicoles. This made people living in Algeria "French subjects",[.] without providing them any way to become French nationals.[.] However, since it was not positive law, this text did not introduce legal certainty on this topic.
This was confirmed by the French Constitution of 1848
The Constitution of 1848 is the constitution passed in France on 4 November 1848 by the National Assembly, the constituent body of the Second French Republic. It was repealed on 14 January 1852 by the constitution of 1852 which profoundly change ...
As French rule in Algeria expanded, particularly under Thomas-Robert Bugeaud
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, marquis de la Piconnerie, duc d'Isly (15 October 178410 June 1849) was a Marshal of France and Governor-General of Algeria.
Early life
He was born at Limoges, a member of a noble family of Périgord (Occitania), the y ...
(1841–48), discriminatory governance became increasingly formalised. In 1844, Bugeaud formalised a system of European settlements along the coast, under civil government, with Arab/Berber areas in the interior under military governance.[Murray Steele, 'Algeria: Government and Administration, 1830–1914', ''Encyclopedia of African History'', ed. by Kevin Shillington, 3 vols (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005), I pp. 50–52 (at p. 51).] An important feature of French rule was ''cantonnement'', whereby tribal land that was supposedly unused was seized by the state, which enabled French colonists to expand their landholdings, and pushed indigenous people onto more marginal land and made them more vulnerable to drought;[Allan Christelow, 'Algeria: Muslim Population, 1871–1954', ''Encyclopedia of African History'', ed. by Kevin Shillington, 3 vols (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005), I pp. 52–53 (p. 52).] this was extended under the governance of Bugeaud's successor, Jacques Louis Randon
Jacques Louis César Alexandre Randon, 1st Count Randon (25 March 1795 – 16 January 1871) was a French military and political leader, also Marshal of France and governor of Algeria.
Early life
He was born at Grenoble in Dauphiné, of a Protesta ...
.
A case in 1861 questioned the legal status of people in Algeria. On 28 November 1861, the ''conseil de l'ordre des avocats du barreau d'Alger'' (Bar association of Algiers) declined to recognise Élie Énos (or Aïnos), a Jew from Algiers, since only French citizens could become lawyers. On 24 February 1862 (''appeal'') and on 15 February 1864 ''(cassation)'', judges reconsidered this, deciding that people could display the qualities of being French (without having access to the full rights of a French citizen).[.]
Status since 1865
Napoleon III
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
was the first elected president of the French Second Republic
The French Second Republic (french: Deuxième République Française or ), officially the French Republic (), was the republican government of France that existed between 1848 and 1852. It was established in February 1848, with the February Re ...
before becoming Emperor of the French
Emperor of the French (French: ''Empereur des Français'') was the title of the monarch and supreme ruler of the First and the Second French Empires.
Details
A title and office used by the House of Bonaparte starting when Napoleon was procla ...
by the 1852 French Second Empire referendum after the French coup d'état of 1851
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
. In the 1860s, influenced by Ismael Urbain
Ismael Urbain, also Ismayl Urbain (born Thomas Urbain, 31 December 1812 – 28 January 1884) was a French journalist and interpreter.
Born in Cayenne, French Guiana, Urbain was the illegitimate son of a merchant from Marseille named Urbain Brue ...
, he introduced what were intended as liberalizing reforms in Algeria, promoting the French colonial model of assimilation, whereby colonised peoples would eventually become French. His reforms were resisted by colonists in Algeria, and his attempts to allow Muslims to be elected to a putative new assembly in Paris failed.
However, he oversaw an 1865 decree (''sénatus-consulte du 14 juillet 1865 sur l'état des personnes et la naturalisation en Algérie'') that "stipulated that all the colonised indigenous were under French jurisdiction, i.e., French nationals subjected to French laws", and allowed Arab, Jewish, and Berber Algerians to request French citizenship—but only if they "renounced their Muslim religion and culture".
This was the first time ''indigènes'' (natives) were allowed to access French citizenship,[.] but such citizenship was incompatible with the ''statut personnel'',[.] which allowed them to live within the Muslim traditions.
* Flandin argued that French citizenship was not compatible with Muslim status, since it had opposing laws on marriage, repudiation, divorce, and children's legal status.
* Claude Alphonse Delangle, senator, also argued that Muslim and Jewish religions allowed polygamy, repudiation, and divorce.
Later, Azzedine Haddour argued that this decree established "the formal structures of a political apartheid".[Debra Kelly, ''Autobiography and Independence: Selfhood and Creativity in North African Postcolonial Writing in French'', Liverpool University Press, 2005, p. 43.] Since few people were willing to abandon their religious values (which was seen as apostasy
Apostasy (; grc-gre, ἀποστασία , 'a defection or revolt') is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that ...
), rather than promoting assimilation, the legislation had the opposite effect: by 1913, only 1,557 Muslims had been granted French citizenship.
Special penalties were managed by the ''cadis'' or tribe head but because this system was unfair it was decided by a Circulaire In France, Italy, Belgium, and some other civil law countries, a circulaire ( French), circolare (Italian) or omzendbrief (Dutch) consists of a text intended for the members of a service, of an enterprise, or of an administration.
Within the Frenc ...
on 12 February 1844 to take control of those specific fines. Those fines were defined by various prefectural decrees, and were later known as the ''Code de l'indigénat.'' Lack of codification means that there is no complete text summary of these fines available.
On 28 July 1881, a new law (''loi qui confère aux Administrateurs des communes mixtes en territoire civil la répression, par voie disciplinaire, des infractions spéciales à l'indigénat'') known as the '' Code de l'indigénat'' was formally introduced for seven years to help administration. It enabled district officials to issue summary fines Fines may refer to:
* Fines, Andalusia, Spanish municipality
* Fine (penalty)
* Fine, a dated term for a premium on a lease of land, a large sum the tenant pays to commute (lessen) the rent throughout the term
*Fines, ore or other products with a s ...
to Muslims without due legal process, and to extract special taxes.
This temporary law was renewed by other temporary laws: the laws of 27 June 1888 for two years, 25 June 1890, 25 June 1897, 21 December 1904, 24 December 1907, 5 July 1914, 4 August 1920, 11 July 1922 and 30 December 1922.[.] By 1897, fines could be changed into
forced labor.[.]
Periodic attempts at partial reform failed:
* In 1881, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu
Paul may refer to:
*Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
* Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...
created the ''Société française pour la protection des Indigènes des colonies (French society for the protection of natives)'' to give ''indigènes'' the right of vote.[.][.]
* In 1887, Henri Michelin and Alfred Gaulier
Alfred Gaulier (10 November 1829 – 17 January 1898) was a French journalist and politician.
His father was a cavalry officer and he seemed destined for a military career.
At the time of the coup that brought Napoleon III to power he was a sub- ...
proposed the naturalisation of the ''indigènes'', keeping the personal status from the local law but removing the personal status of common right from the Civil Code.[.]
* In 1890, Alfred Martineau proposed a progressive French naturalisation of all Muslim ''indigènes'' living in Algeria.
* In 1911, ''La revue indigène'' published several articles signed by law professors ( André Weiss, Arthur Giraud, Charles de Boeck and Eugène Audinet) advocating naturalization of the ''indigènes'' with their status.
* In 1912, the Jeunes Algériens movement claimed in its ''Manifeste'' that the naturalization with their status and with conditions of the Algerian ''indigènes''.
In 1909, 70% of all direct taxes in Algeria were paid by Muslims, despite their general poverty.
Opportunities for Muslims improved slightly from the 1890s, particularly for urban elites, which helped ensure acquiescence to the introduction of military conscription for Muslims in 1911.
Napoléon III received a petition signed by more than 10,000 local Jews asking for collective access to French citizenship.[.] This was also the desire, between 1865 and 1869, of the ''Conseils généraux des départements algériens''. The Jews were the main part of the population that desired French citizenship.[.]
Under the French Third Republic, on 24 October 1870, based on a project from the Second French Empire,[.] Adolphe Crémieux, founder and president of the Alliance israélite universelle and minister of Justice of the Government of National Defense defined with Patrice de Mac Mahon, Mac Mahon's agreement a series of seven decrees related to Algeria, the most notable being number 136 known as the ''Crémieux Decree'' which granted French citizenship to History of the Jews in Algeria, Algerian indigenous Jews. A different decree, numbered 137, related to Muslims and foreigners and required 21 years of age to ask for French citizenship.
In 1870, the French government granted History of the Jews in Algeria, Algerian Jews French citizenship under the ''Crémieux Decree'', but not Muslims.[Patrick Weil]
''How to Be French: Nationality in the Making since 1789,''
Duke University Press 2008 p.253. This meant that most Algerians were still 'French subjects', treated as the objects of French law, but were still not citizens, could still not vote, and were effectively without the right to citizenship.
In 1919, after the involvement of 172,019 Algerians in the First World War, the Jonnart Law eased access to French citizenship for those who met one of several criteria, such as working for the French army, a son in a war, knowing how to read and write in the French language, having a public position, being married to or born of an indigène who became a French citizen. Half a million Algerians were exempted from the ''indigénat'' status, and this status became void in 1927 in the mixed towns but remained applicable in other towns until its abrogation in 1944.
Later, Jewish people's citizenship was revoked by the Vichy government in the early 1940s, but was restored in 1943.
Muslim French
Despite periodic attempts at partial reform, the situation of the ''Code de l'indigénat'' persisted until the French Fourth Republic, which formally began in 1946.
On 7 March 1944 ''ordonnance'' ended the ''Code de l'indigénat'' and created a second electoral college for 1,210,000 non-citizen Muslims and made 60,000 Muslims French citizen and with a vote in the first electoral college.
The 17 August 1945 ''ordonnance'' gave each of the two colleges 15 MPs and 7 senators.
On 7 May 1946, the ''Loi Lamine Guèye'' gave French citizenship to every overseas national, including Algerians, giving them a right to vote at 21 years old.
The :fr:Constitution française du 27 octobre 1946, French Constitution of the French Fourth Republic, Fourth Republic conceptualized the dissociation of citizenship and personal status (but no legal text implements this dissociation).
Although Muslim Algerians were accorded the rights of citizenship, the system of discrimination was maintained in more informal ways. Frederick Cooper writes that Muslim Algerians "were still marginalized in their own territory, notably the separate voter roles of "French" civil status and of "Muslim" civil status, to keep their hands on power."
In the specific context following the second war, in 1947 is introduced the :fr:Statut de 1947, 1947 statute which granted a local status citizenship to the ''indigènes'' who became "Muslim French" (''Français musulmans''), while other French were ''Français non-musulmans'' remain civil status citizens[.].[.] The rights differences are no longer implied by a status difference, but by the difference between the two territories, Algerian and French.[.]
This system is rejected by some European for introducing Muslims into the European college, and rejected by some Algerian nationalists for not giving full sovereignty to the Algerian nation.
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 Algerian War, 1954 insurrection.
Algerian citizens
On 18 March 1962, the Évian Accords guaranteed of protection, non-discrimination and property rights for all Algerian citizens and the right of self-determination to Algeria. In France it was approved by the 1962 French Évian Accords referendum.
The agreement address various statuses:
* Algerian civil rights
* Rights and freedoms of Algerian citizens of ordinary civil status
* French nationals residing in Algeria as aliens.
The Évian Accords offered French nationals Algerian civil rights for three years, but required them to apply for Algerian nationality. During the three years period, the agreement offer:
The European French community (the ''colon'' population), the ''pieds-noirs'' and History of the Jews in Algeria, indigenous Sephardi Jews in Algeria were guaranteed religious freedom and property rights as well as French citizenship with the option to choose between French and Algerian citizenship after three years. Algerians were permitted to continue freely circulating between their country and France for work, although they would not have political rights equal to French citizens.
The Organisation armée secrète, OAS right-wing movement opposed this agreement.
Government and administration
Initial settling of Algeria (1830–48)
In November 1830, French colonial officials attempted to limit the arrivals at Algerian ports by requiring the presentation of passports and residence permits. The regulations created by the French government in May 1831 required permission from the Interior Ministry to enter Algeria and other French controlled territories.
This May circular allowed merchants with trading interests easy access to passports because they were not permanent settlers?, and wealthy persons who planned to found agricultural enterprises in Algeria were also freely given access to move. The circular forbade passage to indigents and needy unskilled workers. During the 1840s, the French government assisted certain emigrants to Algeria, who were mostly urban workers from the Paris basin and France's eastern frontier and were not the agricultural workers that the colonial officials wanted to be sent from France. Single men received 68 percent of the free passages and only 14 percent of the emigrants were women because of varying policies about the emigration of families that all favored unaccompanied males who were seen as more flexible and useful for laborious tasks. Initially in November 1840, families were eligible only if they had no small children and two-thirds of the family was able to work.
Later, in September 1841, only unaccompanied males could travel to Algeria for free and a complicated system for families was developed that made subsidized travel almost unavailable. These emigrants were offered many different forms of government assistance including free passage (both to the ports of France and by ship to Algeria), wine rations and food, land concessions, and were promised high wages. Between 1841 and 1845, about 20,000 individuals were offered this assisted emigration by the French government, though it is unknown exactly how many actually went to Algeria. These measures were funded and supported by the French government (both local and national) because they saw the move to Algeria as a solution to overpopulation and unemployment; those who applied for assisted emigration emphasized their work ethic, undeserved employment in France, a presumption of government obligation to the less fortunate. By 1848, Algeria was populated by 109,400 Europeans, only 42,274 of whom were French.
Colonisation 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, elected mayors and councils for self-governing "full exercise" communes (). 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 (great chieftains) and a French administrator. The indigenous communes (), remote areas not adequately pacified, remained under the (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 (Arab Bureaus), 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 on occasion acted with sympathy to the local population and formed a buffer between Muslims and .
Under the , the 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 charged that the hindered the progress of colonization. They agitated against military dictatorship, 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.
Under the French Second Republic and Second Empire (1848–70)
Shortly after Louis Philippe's constitutional monarchy was overthrown in the revolution of 1848, the new government of the French Second Republic, Second Republic ended Algeria's status as a colony and declared in the 1848 Constitution the occupied lands an integral part of France. Three civil territories — Alger (department), Alger, Oran (department), Oran, and Constantine (departement), Constantine — were organized as Departments of France (local administrative units) under a civilian government. This made them a part of France proper as opposed to a colony. 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 mayors. 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 . Theoretically, these areas were closed to European colonization.
Land and colonisers
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 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 (settlers), Algerians, or later, especially following the 1962 independence of Algeria, (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 (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 pastoralists and farmers, rural colonization was the most important single factor in the destructuring 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
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
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 leaders. He decided to halt the expansion of European settlement beyond the coastal zone and to restrict contact between Muslims and the , 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 (Arab kingdom) with himself as the (king of the Arabs). He instituted the so-called politics of the to deal with the Muslims directly through their traditional leaders.
To further his plans for the , 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 . Tribal areas were to be identified, delimited into (administrative units), and given over to councils. Arable land was to be divided among members of the 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 .
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 France proper. 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 authority 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 (; grc-gre, ἀποστασία , 'a defection or revolt') is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that ...
. 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)
When the Prussians captured Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan (1870), ending the Second Empire, demonstrations in Algiers by the led to the departure of the just-arrived new governor general and the replacement of the military administration by settler committees. Meanwhile, in France the government of the French Third Republic, Third Republic directed one of its ministers, Adolphe Crémieux, "to destroy the military regime ... [and] to completely assimilate Algeria into France." In October 1870, , 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 control over local administration. A civilian governor general was made responsible to the Ministry of Interior. The Crémieux Decrees also granted full 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 Alsace, Alsatian and Lorraine (province), 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.
Comte and colonialism in the Third Republic
Kabylie insurrection
The most serious native insurrection since the time of Abd al Qadir broke out in 1871 in Kabylia
Kabylia ('' Kabyle: Tamurt n Leqbayel'' or ''Iqbayliyen'', meaning "Land of Kabyles", '','' meaning "Land of the Tribes") is a cultural, natural and historical region
Historical regions (or historical areas) are geographical regions which ...
and spread through much of Algeria. The revolt was triggered by Crémieux's extension of civil (that is, ) authority to previously self-governing tribal reserves and the abrogation of commitments made by the military government, but it had its basis in more long-standing grievances. Since the Crimean War (1854–56), the demand for grain had pushed the price of Algerian wheat up to European levels. Storage silos 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 that the stricken Kabyles
The Kabyle people ( kab, Izwawen or ''Leqbayel'' or ''Iqbayliyen'', ) are a Berber ethnic group indigenous to Kabylia in the north of Algeria, spread across the Atlas Mountains, east of Algiers. They represent the largest Berber-speaking populat ...
rose in revolt, following immediately on the mutiny in January 1871 of a squadron of Muslim spahis in the French Army who had been ordered to embark for France. The withdrawal of a large proportion of the army stationed in Algeria to serve in the Franco-Prussian War had weakened France's control of the territory, while reports of defeats undermined French prestige amongst the indigenous population.
In the aftermath of the 1871 uprising, French authorities imposed stern measures to punish and control the entire Muslim population. France confiscated more than of tribal land and placed Kabylia under a (extraordinary rule), which denied due process guaranteed French nationals. A special (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. Some were deported to New Caledonia, see Algerians of the Pacific.
Conquest of the southwestern territories
In the 1890s, the French administration and military called for the annexation of the Touat, the Gourara and the Tidikelt, a complex that during the period prior to 1890, was part of what was known as the Bled es-Siba (land of dissidence)), regions that were nominally Moroccan but which were not submitted to the authority of the central government.
An armed conflict opposed 19th Army Corps (France), French 19th Corps' Oran and Algiers divisions to the Aït Khabbash, a faction of the Aït Ounbgui ''khams'' of the Aït Atta confederation. The conflict ended by the annexation of the Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt complex by France in 1901.
In the 1930s, the Saoura valley and the region of Tindouf were in turn annexed to French Algeria at the expense of Morocco, then under French protectorate since 1912.
Conquest of the Sahara
The French military expedition led by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Flatters, was annihilated by Tuareg people, Tuareg attack in 1881.
The French took advantage of long-standing animosity between Tuareg and Chaamba Arabs. The newly raised ''Méhariste, Compagnies Méharistes'' were originally recruited mainly from the Chaamba nomadic tribe. The ''Méhariste'' Méhariste, camel corps provided an effective means of policing the desert.
In 1902, Lieutenant penetrated Hoggar Mountains and defeated Kel Ahaggar, Ahaggar Tuareg in the battle of Tit, Tamanrasset, Tit.
During World War II (1940–45)
Colonial troops of French Algeria were sent to fight in metropolitan France during the Battle of France in 1940. After the Fall of France, the Third French Republic collapsed and was replaced by the Philippe Pétain's Vichy France, French State, better known as Vichy France.
Under the Fourth Republic (1946–58)
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 massacre, Sétif on 8 May 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. An 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 (1958–62)
In 1958, Charles de Gaulle's return to power in response to a May 1958 crisis, military coup in Algiers in May was supposed to keep Algeria's status quo as departments of France as hinted by his speeches delivered in Oran and Mostaganem on 6 June 1958, in which he exclaimed (lit. "Long live French Algeria!"). De Gaulle's republican constitution project was approved through the 1958 French constitutional referendum, September 1958 referendum and the Fifth Republic was established the following month with de Gaulle as its president.
The latter consented to independence in 1962 after a French referendum on Algerian self-determination, 1961, referendum on Algerian self-determination in January 1961 and despite a subsequent Algiers putsch of 1961, aborted military coup in Algiers led by four French generals in April 1961.
Post-colonial relations
Relations between post-colonial Algeria and France have remained close throughout the years, although sometimes difficult. In 1962, the Evian Accords peace treaty provided land in the Sahara for the French Army, which it had used under Charles de Gaulle, de Gaulle to carry out its first nuclear tests (''Gerboise bleue''). Many European settlers () living in Algeria and Algerian Jews, who contrary to Algerian Muslims 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 , the Muslims who had fought on the French side during the war, still remained unresolved. Large numbers of 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 and their descendants to return to Algeria.
On 23 February 2005, the French law on colonialism was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) conservatism, 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 of the French Republic, President Jacques Chirac (UMP) at the beginning of 2006, after accusations of historical revisionism (negationism), historical revisionism from various teachers and historians.
Algerians feared that the French law on colonialism would hinder the task of the French in 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 (born 2 December 1950) 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 that left the country following its War of ...
, a leading specialist on French Algerian history of colonialism and a pied-noir himself, 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.
In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron described France's colonization of Algeria as a "crimes against humanity, crime against humanity". He also said: "It's truly barbarous and it's part of a past that we need to confront by apologizing to those against whom we committed these acts." Polls following his remarks reflected a decrease in his support.[
In July 2020, the remains of 24 Algerian resistance fighters and leaders, who were decapitated by the French colonial forces in the 19th century and whose skulls were taken to Paris as war trophies and held in the Musee de l'Homme in Paris, were repatriated to Algeria and buried in the Martyrs' Square at El Alia Cemetery.]
In January 2021, Macron stated there would be "no repentance nor apologies" for the French colonization of Algeria, colonial abuses or French involvement during the Algerian independence war. Instead efforts would be devoted toward reconciliation.
was a slogan used about 1960 by those French people who wanted to keep
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ruled by France. Literally "French Algeria," it means that the three 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
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
), and such people were predominantly of French origin or Jewish origin. Many who used this slogan were returnees.[Mouloud Feraoun (1962) ''Journal, 1955–1962'', , Paris]
In Paris, during the perennial traffic jams, adherence to the slogan was indicated by sounding a car horn in the form of four morse code, telegraphic dots followed by a dash, as "". 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 were to be considered as traitorous as the collaboration with Nazis, collaborators with Germany during the German occupation of France during World War II, Occupation of France.
See also
*
* Boufarik colonization monument
* List of French possessions and colonies
* Nationalism and resistance in Algeria
* Scramble for Africa
References
Further reading
* Original text: '
Library of Congress Country Study
of Algeria''
* Aussaresses, Paul. ''The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955–1957''. (New York: Enigma Books, 2010) .
* Bennoune, Mahfoud. ''The Making of Contemporary Algeria, 1830–1987'' (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
* Gallois, William. ''A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony'' (2013), On French violence 1830–4
* Horne, Alistair. ''A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962'', (Viking Adult, 1978)
* Roberts, Sophie B. ''Sophie B. Roberts. Citizenship and Antisemitism in French Colonial Algeria, 1870–1962.'' (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2017) .
* Roberts, Stephen H. ''History Of French Colonial Policy 1870–1925'' (2 vol 1929) vol 2 pp 175–26
online
*; Cultural History
* Stora, Benjamin, Jane Marie Todd, and William B. Quandt. ''Algeria, 1830–2000: A short history'' (Cornell University Press, 2004)
* Vandervort, Bruce. "French conquest of Algeria (1830–1847)." in ''The Encyclopedia of War'' (2012).
In French
* Patrick Weil, , European University Institute, Florence (on the legal statuses of Muslim populations in Algeria)
* , 2005,
Table of contents
* Charles-Robert Ageron, , 1979 (a ground-breaking work on the historiography of French colonialism)
* , 2015, "L'Art & l'Essai" (vol. 15)
*
* Laure Blévis, , Genèses, volume=4, numéro=53, year 2003, pages 25–47
* Laure Blévis, , Français non citoyen, auteurs:Abderrahmane Bouchène, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, Ouanassa Siari Tengour et Sylvie Thénault, Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale, 1830–1962, Éditions La Découverte et Éditions Barzakh, year 2012, chapter=200, passage=212–218, , id=Blévis, 2012a
* Patrick Weil, Qu'est-ce qu'un Français, Histoire de la nationalité française depuis la Révolution, Paris, Grasset, year 2002, 403 pages, , bnf=38818954d
* Patrick Weil, La justice en Algérie, Le statut des musulmans en Algérie coloniale. Une nationalité française dénaturée, 1830–1962, Histoire de la justice, La Documentation française, year 2005, chapter 95, passage 95–109, http://www4.ac-lille.fr/~immigration/ressources/IMG/pdf/Statut_musul_alg.pdf
* Mohamed Sahia Cherchari, Indigènes et citoyens ou l'impossible universalisation du suffrage, Revue française de droit constitutionnel, volume=4, numéro=60, year 2004 , pages 741–770
* René Gallissot, Les effets paradoxaux de la catégorie « d'origine indigène », 25–26 octobre 2009
4e colloque international sur la Révolution algérienne : « Évolution historique de l'Image de l'Algérien dans le discours colonial » — Université du 20 août 1955 de Skikda
* Claude Collot, Les institutions de l'Algérie durant la période coloniale (1830–1962), Éditions du CNRS et Office des publications universitaires, year 1987, passage 291,
* Sylvie Thénault, Histoire de l'Algérie à la période coloniale, 1830–1962, Le "code de l'indigénat", Abderrahmane Bouchène, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, Ouanassa Siari Tengour et Sylvie Thénault, Éditions La Découverte et Éditions Barzakh, year 2012, chapter page 200, pages 200–206,,
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 )
{{Authority control
French Algeria,
Former colonies in Africa
Former French colonies, Algeria
French colonisation in Africa, Algeria
19th century in Algeria
20th century in Algeria
Contemporary French history
French Union, Algeria
1830 establishments in Algeria
1962 disestablishments in Algeria
1830 establishments in the French colonial empire, Algeria
1962 disestablishments in the French colonial empire, Algeria
States and territories established in 1830
States and territories disestablished in 1962