The Algerian War of Independence
How Algeria's brutal eight-year war against France became the defining anticolonial conflict of the twentieth century and reshaped global attitudes toward empire.
Algeria — Not a Colony but 'France Itself'
Algeria was unique among France's colonial possessions. Conquered in 1830, it was not technically a colony but three departments of France — legally part of the French Republic, the same as Normandy or Provence. Over a million European settlers, known as pieds-noirs, lived in Algeria by the 1950s, many of whose families had been there for generations. They owned the best land, dominated the economy, and held nearly all political power.
The indigenous Algerian population, roughly nine million, was subject to a separate legal code. Most Algerians could not vote, could not freely travel, and faced systematic discrimination in education and employment. France's rhetoric of Algeria as an integral part of the Republic masked a deeply colonial reality of racial hierarchy and economic exploitation. This contradiction — Algeria as simultaneously French and colonial — made decolonization uniquely violent.
