History
Initial conflicts
Since the 1516 capture of Algiers by the Ottoman admirals, the brothersFrench conquest of Algeria
The conquest of Algeria was initiated in the last days of theFly 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, 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, 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. 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 and other French residents of Algiers left for France, while the Minister of War, Clermont-Tonnerre, proposed a military expedition. However, the Count of Villèle, anCharacterization as genocide
Some governments and scholars have called France's conquest of''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."''When France recognized the
—Ben Kiernan, ''Blood and Soil''
Popular revolts against the French occupation
Conquest of the Algerian territories under the July Monarchy (1830–1848)
On 1 December 1830, King Louis-Philippe named the Duc de Rovigo as head of military staff in Algeria. De Rovigo took control of Bône 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. An ambassador was sent to Sultan Moulay Abderrahmane in February 1832, headed by the CountAll 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 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 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Britain, 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. The most successful local opposition immediately after the fall of Algiers was led by Ahmed Bey ben Mohamed Chérif, Ahmad ibn Muhammad, of Constantine. He initiated a radical overhaul of the Ottoman administration in his by replacing Turkey, Turkish officials with local leaders, making Arabic language, Arabic the official language, and attempting to reform finances according to the precepts of Islam. After the French failed in several attempts to gain some of the 's territories through negotiation, an ill-fated invasion force, led by Bertrand Clauzel, had to retreat from Constantine in 1836 in humiliation and defeat. However, the French captured Constantine under Sylvain Charles Valée the following year, on 13 October 1837. Historians generally set the indigenous population of Algeria at 3 million in 1830. Although the Demographics of Algeria, 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 plagues of 1866 and 1868, as well as by a rigorous winter in 1867–68, which caused a famine 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 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 Prophets of Islam, Prophet), but is more commonly known as Sherif Boubaghla. He was probably a former lieutenant in the army of Emir Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri, 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 thaumaturgy, thaumaturgic 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 atFrench rule
Demography
French atrocities against the Algerian indigenous population
According toHegemony of the
Political organization
A commission of inquiry established by the French Senate in 1892 and headed by former Prime Minister Jules Ferry, an advocate of colonial expansion, recommended that the government abandon a policy that assumed French law, without major modifications, could fit the needs of an area inhabited by close to two million Europeans and four million Muslims. Muslims had no representation in 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, they exercised disproportionate influence, and their support was important to any government's survival. The leader of the delegation, Auguste Warnier (1810–1875), succeeded during the 1870s in modifying or introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to settlers and continue the Algerian state's appropriation of land from the local population and distribution to settlers. Consistent proponents of reform, like Georges Clemenceau and socialist Jean Jaurès, were rare in the National Assembly.Economic organization
The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and trade 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 vegetables. 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" 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 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 empire, Ottoman-controlledStatus before 1865
On 5 July 1830, Hussein Dey, regent of Algiers, signed the act of capitulation to the Régence, which committed Louis Auguste Victor de Ghaisne de Bourmont, 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 theStatus since 1865
Napoleon III was the first elected president of the French Second Republic before becoming Emperor of the French by the 1852 French Second Empire referendum after the French coup d'état of 1851. In the 1860s, influenced by Ismael Urbain, he introduced what were intended as liberalizing reforms in Algeria, promoting the French colonial model of Assimilation (French colonialism), assimilation, whereby colonised peoples would eventually Évolué, 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), 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 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 (law), 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 fine (penalty), fines 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 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 Nicolas Gaulier, Alfred Gaulier 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 Albert Martineau, 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 (jurist), André Weiss, Arthur Giraud, Charles de Boeck and Eugène Audinet) advocating naturalization of the ''indigènes'' with their status. * In 1912, the Mouvement national algérien#Jeunes Algériens, 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 WeilMuslim 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.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 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. 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 al-Jaza'iri, Abd al Qadir broke out in 1871 in Kabylia 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 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 theUnder 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, 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
See also
* * Boufarik colonization monument * List of French possessions and colonies * Nationalism and resistance in Algeria * Scramble for AfricaReferences
Further reading
* Original text: 'In French
* Patrick Weil, , European University Institute, Florence (on the legal statuses of Muslim populations in Algeria) * , 2005,External links
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