Realm
Former French territory in North Africa (1830–1962)
French Algeria, also known as Colonial Algeria, was a colony and later an integral part of France. French rule lasted from the beginning of the French conquest in 1830 until the end of the Algerian War which resulted in Algeria gaining independence on 5 July 1962.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “French Algeria”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
French Algeria, also known as Colonial Algeria, was a colony and later an integral part of France. French rule lasted from the beginning of the French conquest in 1830 until the end of the Algerian War which resulted in Algeria gaining independence on 5 July 1962.
The French conquest of Algeria began in 1830 with the invasion of Algiers which toppled the Regency of Algiers, though Algeria was not fully conquered and pacified until 1903. It is estimated that by 1875, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Algerians had been killed from disease, starvation and violence. Various scholars describe the French conquest as genocide. French forces suffered 7,469 killed in action during the conquest by 1875, but suffered heavy losses from disease with another 110,000 dying in hospital. Algeria was ruled as a colony from 1830 to 1848, and then as multiple departments of France after the implementation of the 1848 French Constitution, a situation that lasted until Algerian independence in 1962. After a trip to Algiers in 1860, the French emperor Napoleon III became keen on establishing a client kingdom there which he would rule in a personal union, expanding freedoms for the indigenous population and limiting colonisation. This project was futile, however, and the newly established Third French Republic scrapped any plans for Algerian regional autonomy, even seeking to strengthen its hold by granting citizenship to Algeria's native Jewish population and propagating the Kabyle myth in what has been described as examples of divide and rule.
As a recognized jurisdiction of France, Algeria became a destination for hundreds of thousands of European settlers. They were first known as colons, and later as pieds-noirs, a term applied primarily to ethnic Europeans born in Algeria. The native Muslim population comprised the majority of the territory throughout its history. 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. The Sétif and Guelma massacre in 1945 marked a point of no return in Franco-Algerian relations and led to the outbreak of the Algerian War, which was characterised by the use of guerrilla warfare by National Liberation Front, and crimes against humanity by the French (including torture, rape and regroupment camps). The war ended in 1962, with Algeria gaining independence following the Évian Accords in March 1962 and a self-determination referendum in July 1962.
During its last years as part of France, Algeria was a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community.
Since the capture of Algiers in 1516 by the Ottoman admirals, brothers Oruç Reis and Hayreddin Barbarossa, Algeria had been a base for conflict and piracy in the Mediterranean basin. In 1681, French King Louis XIV asked Admiral Abraham Duquesne to fight the Barbary pirates. He also ordered a large-scale attack on Algiers between 1682 and 1683 on the pretext of assisting and rescuing enslaved Christians, usually Europeans taken as captives in raids. Again, Jean II d'Estrées bombarded Tripoli and Algiers from 1685 to 1688. An ambassador from Algiers visited the Court in Versailles, and a treaty was signed in 1690 that provided peace throughout the 18th century.
During the Directory regime of the French First Republic (1795–99), the Bakri and the Busnach, Jewish merchants of Algiers, provided large quantities of grain for Napoleon's soldiers who participated in the Italian campaign of 1796–1797. But Bonaparte refused to pay the bill, claiming it was excessive. In 1820, Louis XVIII paid back half of the Directory's debts. The Dey, who had loaned the Bacri 250,000 francs, requested the rest of the money from France.
The Dey of Algiers was weak politically, economically, and militarily. Algeria was then part of the Barbary States, along with Tunisia; these depended on the Ottoman Empire, then led by Mahmud II, but enjoyed relative independence. The Barbary Coast was the stronghold of the Barbary pirates, who carried out raids against European and American ships. Conflicts between the Barbary States and the newly independent United States of America culminated in the First (1801–05) and Second (1815) Barbary Wars. An Anglo-Dutch force, led by Admiral Lord Exmouth, carried out a punitive expedition, the August 1816 bombardment of Algiers. The Dey was forced to sign the Barbary treaties because the technological advantage of U.S., British, and French forces overwhelmed the Algerians' expertise at naval warfare.
Following the conquest under the July monarchy, France referred to the Algerian territories as "French possessions in North Africa". This was disputed by the Ottoman Empire, which had not given up its claim. In 1839 Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, first named these territories as "Algeria".
The invasion of Algeria was initiated in the last days of the Bourbon Restoration by Charles X, as an attempt to increase his popularity amongst the French people. He particularly hoped to appeal to the many veterans of the Napoleonic Wars who lived in Paris. His intention was to bolster patriotic sentiment, and distract attention from ineptly handled domestic policies by "skirmishing against the dey."
In the 1790s, France had contracted to purchase wheat for the French army from two merchants in Algiers, Messrs. Bakri and Busnach, and was in arrears paying them. Bakri and Busnach 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 in 1820 to pay the merchants. 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.
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, an ultra-royalist, 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 Barbary 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 in a military expedition against Algiers.
Admiral Duperré commanded an armada of 600 ships that originated from Toulon, leading it to Algiers. Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan for the invasion of Algeria, General de Bourmont then landed 27 kilometres (17 mi) west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch on 14 June 1830, with 34,000 soldiers. In response to the French, the Dey of Algiers ordered an opposition consisting of 7,000 janissaries, 19,000 troops from the beys of Constantine and Oran, and about 17,000 Kabyles. The French established a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization. The French troops took the advantage on 19 June during the battle of Staouéli, and entered Algiers on 5 July after a three-week campaign. The dey agreed to 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 zouaves (a title given to certain light infantry regiments) in October, followed by the spahis regiments, while France expropriated all the land properties belonging to the Turkish settlers, known as Beliks. In the western region of Oran, Sultan Abd al-Rahman of Morocco, the Commander of the Faithful, could not remain indifferent to the massacres committed by the French Christian troops and to belligerent calls for jihad from the marabouts. Despite the diplomatic rupture between Morocco and the Two Sicilies in 1830, and the naval warfare engaged against the Austrian Empire as well as with Spain, then headed by Ferdinand VII, Sultan Abd al-Rahman lent his support to the Algerian insurgency of Emir Abd al-Qadir. The latter fought for years against the French. Directing an army of 12,000 men, Abd al-Qadir first organized the blockade of Oran.
Algerian refugees were welcomed by the Moroccan population, while the Sultan recommended that the authorities of Tetouan assist them by providing jobs in the administration or the military forces. The inhabitants of Tlemcen, near the Moroccan border, asked that they be placed under the Sultan's authority in order to escape the invaders. Abd al-Rahman named his nephew Prince Moulay Ali Caliph 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.
Hardly had the news of the capture of Algiers reached Paris than Charles X was deposed during the July Revolution in 1830, and his cousin Louis-Philippe, the "citizen king", was named to preside over a constitutional monarchy. The new government, composed of liberal opponents of the Algiers expedition, was reluctant to pursue the conquest begun by the old regime, but withdrawing from Algeria proved more difficult than conquering it.
Alexis de Tocqueville's views on Algeria were instrumental in its brutal and formal colonization. He advocated for a mixed system of "total domination and total colonization" whereby French military would wage total war against civilian populations while a colonial administration would provide rule of law and property rights to settlers within French occupied cities.
Some governments and scholars have called France's conquest of Algeria a genocide. For example, Ben Kiernan, an Australian expert on the Cambodian genocide, wrote in Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur on the French conquest of Algeria:
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 later, "the system of extermination must give way to a policy of penetration."
When France recognized the Armenian genocide, Turkey accused France of having committed genocide against 15% of Algeria's population.
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 Abd al-Rahman of Morocco in February 1832, headed by the Count Charles-Edgar de Mornay and including the painter Eugène Delacroix. However the sultan refused French demands that he evacuate Tlemcen.
In 1834, France annexed as a colony the occupied areas of Algeria, which had an estimated Muslim population of about two million. Colonial administration in the occupied areas – the so-called régime du sabre (government of the sword) – was placed under a governor-general, a high-ranking army officer invested with civil and military jurisdiction, who was responsible to the minister of war. Marshal Bugeaud, who became the first governor-general, headed the conquest.
Soon after the conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician Bertrand Clauzel and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to subsidize its settlement by European farmers, triggering a land rush. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the Mitidja Plain and envisioned the large-scale production there of cotton. 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 or elsewhere. In one word, annihilate everything that will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs.
Text from the Wikipedia article “French Algeria”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.