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Algeria: France's Undeclared War
Invaded in 1830, populated by one million settlers who co-existed uneasily with nine million Arabs and Berbers, Algeria was different from other French colonies because it was administered as an integral part of France, in theory no different from Normandy or Brittany. The depth and scale of the colonization process explains why the Algerian War of 1954 to 1962 was one of the longest and most violent of the decolonization struggles.
An undeclared war in the sense that there was no formal beginning of hostilities, the war produced huge tensions that brought down four governments, ended the Fourth Republic in 1958, and mired the French army in accusations of torture and mass human rights abuses. In carefully re-examining the origins and consequences of the conflict, Martin Evans argues that it was the Socialist led Republican Front, in power from January 1956 until May 1957, which was the defining moment in the war. Predicated on the belief in the universal civilizing mission of the Fourth Republic, coupled with the conviction that Algerian nationalism was feudal and religiously fanatical in character, the Republican Front dramatically intensified the war in the spring of 1956.
Drawing upon previously classified archival sources as well as new oral testimonies, this book underlines the conflict of values between the Republican Front and Algerian nationalism, explaining how this clash produced patterns of thought and action, such as the institutionalization of torture and the raising of pro-French Muslim militias, which tragically polarized choices and framed all subsequent stages of the conflict.
An undeclared war in the sense that there was no formal beginning of hostilities, the war produced huge tensions that brought down four governments, ended the Fourth Republic in 1958, and mired the French army in accusations of torture and mass human rights abuses. In carefully re-examining the origins and consequences of the conflict, Martin Evans argues that it was the Socialist led Republican Front, in power from January 1956 until May 1957, which was the defining moment in the war. Predicated on the belief in the universal civilizing mission of the Fourth Republic, coupled with the conviction that Algerian nationalism was feudal and religiously fanatical in character, the Republican Front dramatically intensified the war in the spring of 1956.
Drawing upon previously classified archival sources as well as new oral testimonies, this book underlines the conflict of values between the Republican Front and Algerian nationalism, explaining how this clash produced patterns of thought and action, such as the institutionalization of torture and the raising of pro-French Muslim militias, which tragically polarized choices and framed all subsequent stages of the conflict.
458 pages, Hardcover
First published January 13, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 23, 2018
This was a reasonably good book if a little exhausting. 3.5, but marking 4.
The main reason for the exhausting comes from the somewhat academic approach to the topic. It get get a bit boring now and then. However, overall, the author managed to put together a pretty decent work that blends history, politics, racism, war, and humanity together.
This book covers France's affair with Algeria, from the early occupation all the way to the modern days. The book has four main parts: 1) The first 100 years during which the Algerian national identity was slowly born, mostly through the European influence and the strong racist/segregational politics that perversely allowed the nationalism to be born in the first place 2) the first attempt to transform the Algerian national identity into a state (with strong religious overtones) against the entrenched identity of the European settlers 3) the war of independence 4) the post-war politics and developments, and how they still resonance in both the Algerian and French psyche.
I won't go into every detail, because that would spoil the whoel narrative, but I will dwell on some rather interesting points. One, the similairty between the France-Algeria situation and that in the former British colonies, notably Rhodesia and South Africa. It is amazing to see the parallels, and the sad, inevitable outcome. Once the natives develop their sense of national identity - an exact mirror image of their European overlords - it's a path of no return. There will be independence, and what comes after that will be the same intolerance and racism that led to the creation of the local national identity in the first place. And so Zimbabwe is just like Rhodesia, and South Africa past 1993 is just like South Africa before 1993.
Two, the paradox of colonial occupation. Colonial policies keep the natives oppressed, preventing them from developing the faculties for self government - but they didn't have those to begin with, which makes the concept even more alien. Once the natives develop a sense of nationality, they then do actually need the colonial powers to help them transition to the state of self governance, but at this point, it's too late. There's no patience or trust to continue with the status quo. The independence is achieved, and it is flawed, based on racism and inadequate economy, which is why almost no post-colonial state has managed to achieve first-world level of development anywhere in the world. Add to this cultural and religious differences, and the best conclusion is that people shouldn't really mix, but since the planet is one giant Battle Royale for resources, then if occupation needs to happen, the Anglo-French model is not a good example. Perhaps the Ancient Romans did it better? Not sure.
Three, and this is the most astounding one: a large number of racial policies were instigated and led by the French left. They believed that all humans are the same (wrong), and so it is only expected that Algerians "need" French values, because those are "superior" values of liberty and whatnot. This is such self-deluded racism born out of some idealistic, utopian concept that "primitive" nations are just waiting for world powers to export their "liberty" over. Nowadays, this is known as "democracy" - and it being pushed on countries and nations even though the model is completely incompatible with their cultural, religious and self-identity values. I am still amazed that you have people in first world countries who think that people in Africa and Asia are just waiting for a shipment of democracy and European philosophy to enrich their lives.
Finally, there was the war itself - a sad series of atrocities committed on all sides, including the Algerian civil war among themselves, the French military war crimes, and the political and social rift in mainland France. In 1960, there was (almost) a coup d'etat by the military against de Gaulle. Things that you wouldn't think about today.
This is a good book, and it's an important lesson in the social and cultural divides of the world. Alas, the lesson does not seem to have been learned in the 21st century.
Worth reading.
Igor
The main reason for the exhausting comes from the somewhat academic approach to the topic. It get get a bit boring now and then. However, overall, the author managed to put together a pretty decent work that blends history, politics, racism, war, and humanity together.
This book covers France's affair with Algeria, from the early occupation all the way to the modern days. The book has four main parts: 1) The first 100 years during which the Algerian national identity was slowly born, mostly through the European influence and the strong racist/segregational politics that perversely allowed the nationalism to be born in the first place 2) the first attempt to transform the Algerian national identity into a state (with strong religious overtones) against the entrenched identity of the European settlers 3) the war of independence 4) the post-war politics and developments, and how they still resonance in both the Algerian and French psyche.
I won't go into every detail, because that would spoil the whoel narrative, but I will dwell on some rather interesting points. One, the similairty between the France-Algeria situation and that in the former British colonies, notably Rhodesia and South Africa. It is amazing to see the parallels, and the sad, inevitable outcome. Once the natives develop their sense of national identity - an exact mirror image of their European overlords - it's a path of no return. There will be independence, and what comes after that will be the same intolerance and racism that led to the creation of the local national identity in the first place. And so Zimbabwe is just like Rhodesia, and South Africa past 1993 is just like South Africa before 1993.
Two, the paradox of colonial occupation. Colonial policies keep the natives oppressed, preventing them from developing the faculties for self government - but they didn't have those to begin with, which makes the concept even more alien. Once the natives develop a sense of nationality, they then do actually need the colonial powers to help them transition to the state of self governance, but at this point, it's too late. There's no patience or trust to continue with the status quo. The independence is achieved, and it is flawed, based on racism and inadequate economy, which is why almost no post-colonial state has managed to achieve first-world level of development anywhere in the world. Add to this cultural and religious differences, and the best conclusion is that people shouldn't really mix, but since the planet is one giant Battle Royale for resources, then if occupation needs to happen, the Anglo-French model is not a good example. Perhaps the Ancient Romans did it better? Not sure.
Three, and this is the most astounding one: a large number of racial policies were instigated and led by the French left. They believed that all humans are the same (wrong), and so it is only expected that Algerians "need" French values, because those are "superior" values of liberty and whatnot. This is such self-deluded racism born out of some idealistic, utopian concept that "primitive" nations are just waiting for world powers to export their "liberty" over. Nowadays, this is known as "democracy" - and it being pushed on countries and nations even though the model is completely incompatible with their cultural, religious and self-identity values. I am still amazed that you have people in first world countries who think that people in Africa and Asia are just waiting for a shipment of democracy and European philosophy to enrich their lives.
Finally, there was the war itself - a sad series of atrocities committed on all sides, including the Algerian civil war among themselves, the French military war crimes, and the political and social rift in mainland France. In 1960, there was (almost) a coup d'etat by the military against de Gaulle. Things that you wouldn't think about today.
This is a good book, and it's an important lesson in the social and cultural divides of the world. Alas, the lesson does not seem to have been learned in the 21st century.
Worth reading.
Igor
January 23, 2012
There are two movies which gave me some limited understanding, like an archaeological evaluation, of the tragic modern history of Algeria – The Battle for Algiers and Of Gods and Men.
On the face of it they are about two completely unconnected events. The first deals with an episode in the Algerian War of Independence, which lasted from 1954 to 1962; the second with an incident in 1996, when a small community of French Cistercian monks, living in a monastery in the Atlas Mountains, were kidnapped and murdered, allegedly by mujahedeen guerrillas, fighting a prolonged and brutal war with the government.
The connection lies at a deeper level; it lies in the nature of French colonialism in Algeria and the reaction of the local people; it lies in the nature of the resistance movements created in the drive for national liberation; it lies in the nature of a particularly brutal war that, so far as France was concerned, at lest until fairly recently, wasn’t a war at all; in lies in forms of uncompromising extremism, in torture and murder as legitimate political techniques; it lies most particularly in the pursuit of power, to he seized and held at all costs.
In Algeria: France’s Undeclared War Professor Martin Evans, who has previously published on Algerian history, weaves the various threads together. It’s an exhaustive piece of work, looking deep into the prehistory of a conflict that stands apart from Africa’s other wars of liberation in the intensity of its brutality. It also draws attention to its lasting significance, an unhappy postscript.
For a long time the Algerian conflict, like Vichy and war-time collaboration in general, was a particularly sensitive area in French national consciousness, visited at some peril. How could it not be, given that over a million settlers, the so-called Pieds-Noirs, were obliged to resettle in metropolitan France after Algeria achieved independence in 1962? Full of bitterness and resentment against the right-wing government of General De Gaulle, they went even further to the right, forming an active constituency that would eventually become the backbone of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front.
That’s perhaps the central paradox of France’s Algerian conflict: it was started by the left and ended by the right. In 1956 Guy Mollet, head of the Socialist-led Republican Front government, ordered the army to begin ‘pacification’ operations against Algerian nationalists. Although himself opposed to colonialism on principle, he had a duty, as he saw it, to defend the civilising mission of the Fourth Republic against the fanatical and barbarous forms of Algerian nationalism. As so often the defence of civilization descended into the forms of barbarism allegedly being fought against.
Evans writes that Algeria was one of the longest and most difficult episodes in the whole decolonisation process. There is one simple reason for this: officially it wasn’t a colony at all; it was part of metropolitan France - it had been since the 1880s -, no different from Brittany or Normandy. It was an illusion, of course, a legalistic fiction, but one with particularly bloody consequences.
The civilising mission was always barbarous. From the outset in 1830 the French intrusion into what was then an Ottoman province was marked by savagery. This was a genocidal war, one of partial ethnic cleansing, which might usefully be compared with the American expansion in the West at the expense of the indigenous peoples. It is estimated that by the mid-1850s Algeria had lost almost half of its pre-colonial population of some four million people. That’s when the settlement was planted, with roots so deep that they could only be pulled up in extreme violence.
The difference between the French and American example is that there were never enough settlers; that strong as they were the native Algerians were stronger. Fighting a war against history and demography, the French settlers, unlike the American colonialists, could never go their own way, which meant that France could not go its own way either without difficulty; without the death of one republic and the birth of another.
The French were brutal, certainly but, as Evans shows, the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN), their leading opponent, were just as brutal, not just towards the colonialists but towards rival nationalist movements, applying savage cruelty even to deviationists within their own ranks. Liberation for them was about achieving power, to be held at all costs, which was to lead eventually to their own ‘pacification’ campaign against the Islamists in the 1990s.
The French mission was always hopeless. It gave rise to the ‘long hatred’, one of the key themes, as the author argues, that led to the revolt of 1 November, 1954, a new plague, that Albert Camus, author of The Plague and himself a Pied-Noir, had not anticipated.
There had been a prologue several years before in eastern Algeria, when a hundred Pieds-Noirs were killed in violent demonstrations, their corpses afterwards horribly mutilated. In wholly disproportionate acts of retaliation, the French slaughtered thousands, destroying many villages. “Nothing could be the same again,” Evans writes, “Rural Algeria had confronted European Algeria, producing a society more polarised than ever.”
The war caused thousands of lives and has left an unresolved legacy that exists so far as today; in Algeria, where the FLN ensures that there is no end to the Arab Winter; in France, where the 2005 riots by alienated migrants showed that the country still suffers from the ‘Algeria syndrome.’ For De Gaulle Algeria was a millstone around the neck of France. It still is.
Evans is to be congratulated on splendid piece of research, lucid, scholarly and balanced. He unfolds a tale whose lightest word harrows up the soul. Once again the lesson of history is that we learn nothing from history, otherwise we would not have had other ‘civilising’ missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, other plagues.
Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise
On the face of it they are about two completely unconnected events. The first deals with an episode in the Algerian War of Independence, which lasted from 1954 to 1962; the second with an incident in 1996, when a small community of French Cistercian monks, living in a monastery in the Atlas Mountains, were kidnapped and murdered, allegedly by mujahedeen guerrillas, fighting a prolonged and brutal war with the government.
The connection lies at a deeper level; it lies in the nature of French colonialism in Algeria and the reaction of the local people; it lies in the nature of the resistance movements created in the drive for national liberation; it lies in the nature of a particularly brutal war that, so far as France was concerned, at lest until fairly recently, wasn’t a war at all; in lies in forms of uncompromising extremism, in torture and murder as legitimate political techniques; it lies most particularly in the pursuit of power, to he seized and held at all costs.
In Algeria: France’s Undeclared War Professor Martin Evans, who has previously published on Algerian history, weaves the various threads together. It’s an exhaustive piece of work, looking deep into the prehistory of a conflict that stands apart from Africa’s other wars of liberation in the intensity of its brutality. It also draws attention to its lasting significance, an unhappy postscript.
For a long time the Algerian conflict, like Vichy and war-time collaboration in general, was a particularly sensitive area in French national consciousness, visited at some peril. How could it not be, given that over a million settlers, the so-called Pieds-Noirs, were obliged to resettle in metropolitan France after Algeria achieved independence in 1962? Full of bitterness and resentment against the right-wing government of General De Gaulle, they went even further to the right, forming an active constituency that would eventually become the backbone of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front.
That’s perhaps the central paradox of France’s Algerian conflict: it was started by the left and ended by the right. In 1956 Guy Mollet, head of the Socialist-led Republican Front government, ordered the army to begin ‘pacification’ operations against Algerian nationalists. Although himself opposed to colonialism on principle, he had a duty, as he saw it, to defend the civilising mission of the Fourth Republic against the fanatical and barbarous forms of Algerian nationalism. As so often the defence of civilization descended into the forms of barbarism allegedly being fought against.
Evans writes that Algeria was one of the longest and most difficult episodes in the whole decolonisation process. There is one simple reason for this: officially it wasn’t a colony at all; it was part of metropolitan France - it had been since the 1880s -, no different from Brittany or Normandy. It was an illusion, of course, a legalistic fiction, but one with particularly bloody consequences.
The civilising mission was always barbarous. From the outset in 1830 the French intrusion into what was then an Ottoman province was marked by savagery. This was a genocidal war, one of partial ethnic cleansing, which might usefully be compared with the American expansion in the West at the expense of the indigenous peoples. It is estimated that by the mid-1850s Algeria had lost almost half of its pre-colonial population of some four million people. That’s when the settlement was planted, with roots so deep that they could only be pulled up in extreme violence.
The difference between the French and American example is that there were never enough settlers; that strong as they were the native Algerians were stronger. Fighting a war against history and demography, the French settlers, unlike the American colonialists, could never go their own way, which meant that France could not go its own way either without difficulty; without the death of one republic and the birth of another.
The French were brutal, certainly but, as Evans shows, the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN), their leading opponent, were just as brutal, not just towards the colonialists but towards rival nationalist movements, applying savage cruelty even to deviationists within their own ranks. Liberation for them was about achieving power, to be held at all costs, which was to lead eventually to their own ‘pacification’ campaign against the Islamists in the 1990s.
The French mission was always hopeless. It gave rise to the ‘long hatred’, one of the key themes, as the author argues, that led to the revolt of 1 November, 1954, a new plague, that Albert Camus, author of The Plague and himself a Pied-Noir, had not anticipated.
There had been a prologue several years before in eastern Algeria, when a hundred Pieds-Noirs were killed in violent demonstrations, their corpses afterwards horribly mutilated. In wholly disproportionate acts of retaliation, the French slaughtered thousands, destroying many villages. “Nothing could be the same again,” Evans writes, “Rural Algeria had confronted European Algeria, producing a society more polarised than ever.”
The war caused thousands of lives and has left an unresolved legacy that exists so far as today; in Algeria, where the FLN ensures that there is no end to the Arab Winter; in France, where the 2005 riots by alienated migrants showed that the country still suffers from the ‘Algeria syndrome.’ For De Gaulle Algeria was a millstone around the neck of France. It still is.
Evans is to be congratulated on splendid piece of research, lucid, scholarly and balanced. He unfolds a tale whose lightest word harrows up the soul. Once again the lesson of history is that we learn nothing from history, otherwise we would not have had other ‘civilising’ missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, other plagues.
Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise
January 19, 2022
This is a great book about one of the bloodiest conflicts of the twentieth century, the war in Algeria from 1954-1962.
Algeria in North Africa was invaded by France and later became an integral part of France, with representation in the National Assembly. Algerians - both indigenous and the European settlers - were considered French citizens.
In the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Algerian - that is, Arab and Berber - nationalism evolved and eventually became a call for independence from France. The European settlers, however, were the most vociferous in their opposition to Algerian independence. This clash tragically led to a war when an Algerian nationalist group, the FLN, launched attacks against European settlers and French police and military outposts on November 1, 1954 across Algeria. The war had begun.
The war soon degenerated into atrocities committed by both sides, with the French military's use of torture and the FLN's policy of bomb attacks against the European settlers and French soldiers. And these atrocities were sanctioned by the Socialist government, supported by the Communists, in France and the FLN leadership.
Algeria became independent in 1962, but the country has since been ruled or influenced by the military, a legacy of the FLN's dictatorial methods during the war. And the violence did not end there. The 1990s saw another war, this time between the Algerian government and Islamists who were poised to win elections in 1992. It was a war that saw another horrific litany of atrocities.
A great read about one of the anti-colonial struggles of the 20th century.
Algeria in North Africa was invaded by France and later became an integral part of France, with representation in the National Assembly. Algerians - both indigenous and the European settlers - were considered French citizens.
In the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Algerian - that is, Arab and Berber - nationalism evolved and eventually became a call for independence from France. The European settlers, however, were the most vociferous in their opposition to Algerian independence. This clash tragically led to a war when an Algerian nationalist group, the FLN, launched attacks against European settlers and French police and military outposts on November 1, 1954 across Algeria. The war had begun.
The war soon degenerated into atrocities committed by both sides, with the French military's use of torture and the FLN's policy of bomb attacks against the European settlers and French soldiers. And these atrocities were sanctioned by the Socialist government, supported by the Communists, in France and the FLN leadership.
Algeria became independent in 1962, but the country has since been ruled or influenced by the military, a legacy of the FLN's dictatorial methods during the war. And the violence did not end there. The 1990s saw another war, this time between the Algerian government and Islamists who were poised to win elections in 1992. It was a war that saw another horrific litany of atrocities.
A great read about one of the anti-colonial struggles of the 20th century.
April 13, 2025
God this was long (for class) but also really great.
Had a few bits of narrative to keep you engaged. A bit dull at times, but also attempted to cover this heartbreaking and controversial conflict as factually as possible.
Had a few bits of narrative to keep you engaged. A bit dull at times, but also attempted to cover this heartbreaking and controversial conflict as factually as possible.
September 17, 2024
Frankly, this was a gruelling read, not because of the writing, which is excellent, but the subject. The brutality and ultimately for the French, the futility of the conflict is starkly recounted. Although I had a general understanding of the Algerian war, I had not appreciated how unstable the politics of France were in the 1950s or how the politicians of the left saw the Algerian struggle for independence through the prism of class conflict. I also have an understanding of why Charles de Gaulle is a devisive figure in France despite leading France in the second world war.
May 15, 2021
This was a very readable and informative look at the war in Algeria. It was well-balanced and I felt I ended up with a very full picture of the events in question, their origins, international context and legacy. From what I've seen, this is perhaps one of the few recent studies on the war in the English language, and therefore a must read for anyone trying to get a better understanding of decolonisation, cold war struggle, Pan-Arabism, and how Algeria and France continue to be shaped by it.
The slight negative feedback I would give is the lack of 'character development', in particular regarding Ben Bella (he's an outsider one minute, in a french prison the next, and then the 1st president of Algeria.. without his rise being explained). I had the feeling the book assumed the reader has existing knowledge of some of the key players in the story. Nevertheless, an excellent and highly recommended read.
The slight negative feedback I would give is the lack of 'character development', in particular regarding Ben Bella (he's an outsider one minute, in a french prison the next, and then the 1st president of Algeria.. without his rise being explained). I had the feeling the book assumed the reader has existing knowledge of some of the key players in the story. Nevertheless, an excellent and highly recommended read.
March 14, 2022
algeria
Ordenado relato de guerra atroz, ocultada, llena de tortura y desapariciones. Politica y milicia intimamente ligadas como tantas veces en la historia
Ordenado relato de guerra atroz, ocultada, llena de tortura y desapariciones. Politica y milicia intimamente ligadas como tantas veces en la historia
February 9, 2023
Solid resource, a little dense but beautifully detailed and good for teaching.
February 5, 2024
Comprehensive, shared a lot of perspectives. Definitely learned a lot
January 6, 2026
Useful for preparing lectures on Algeria.
October 5, 2016
Considering how pivotal a chapter in history the conflict in French Algeria was I found myself knowing very little about it until I read Martin Evans' "Algeria: France's Undeclared War". Evans follows the conflict from its roots in the French invasion of Algeria in 1830 (I didnt even know that was a thing) through 19th's century's growing nationalist rumblings among the Algerians through the weakening grip on North Africa felt by the French due to WW1 and WW2. By the late 1940s the FLN and the other opposition groups were escalating small attacks, mass strikes and other demonstrations, but it was in 1954 that the ful blown guerilla war broke out that would last 8 years and end in Algerian independence and take the lives of hundreds of thousands of Algerians and French, but mostly Algerians. The end of the war saw 99% of the French population of Algeria, totalling several million, leave and return to France in one of the largest human migrations ever for such a small time frame (18 months).
Evans' book focused more on the political history of the conflict on both the French and Algerian resistance side. The conflict coming so soon after the French collapse in Indo-China, tore French society apart and ended the French 4th Repblic and bought De Gaulle back to power. On the Algerian side the FLN squeezed out some of the more moderate and democratically oriented resistance groups to lay the groundwork for the countries following decades of military rule.
Some of the more fascinating areas concern how the French colonists began to fight their own army as they saw France abandoning them. Algerian French were far more right wing than their mainland countrymen and would attack both French soldiers and form death squads to kill muslim Algerians. When they all eventually migrated back to France in the early 1960s many would become the backbone of LePen's right wing party in France whose legacy continues today under LePen's daughter.
Some of the more tragic aspects centered around the "harkis" who were arab and berber Algerians who served in the colonial police, civil service and army and thus were targeted for retribtution by the resistance and forced to flee to France where they were treated as refugees and put in camps. It was only decades later the French govt recognized their plight.
Evans' book focused more on the political history of the conflict on both the French and Algerian resistance side. The conflict coming so soon after the French collapse in Indo-China, tore French society apart and ended the French 4th Repblic and bought De Gaulle back to power. On the Algerian side the FLN squeezed out some of the more moderate and democratically oriented resistance groups to lay the groundwork for the countries following decades of military rule.
Some of the more fascinating areas concern how the French colonists began to fight their own army as they saw France abandoning them. Algerian French were far more right wing than their mainland countrymen and would attack both French soldiers and form death squads to kill muslim Algerians. When they all eventually migrated back to France in the early 1960s many would become the backbone of LePen's right wing party in France whose legacy continues today under LePen's daughter.
Some of the more tragic aspects centered around the "harkis" who were arab and berber Algerians who served in the colonial police, civil service and army and thus were targeted for retribtution by the resistance and forced to flee to France where they were treated as refugees and put in camps. It was only decades later the French govt recognized their plight.
November 23, 2025
A comprehensive book recounting the origins, course, and aftermath of the Algerian War of Independence in Algeria and France. Likely the best introductory book on the topic, which scrupulously makes sure to discuss the perspectives of Algerians aligned with both factions as well as French settlers and inhabitants of the metropole. Even-handed, which fairly recounts the human rights abuses on both sides and suggests that the marginalization of the political element of the Algerian independence movement led to the bloodshed and Algeria's subsequent military-dominated regime. I did find it hard to follow some of the twists and turns of the FLN's internal power structures, but all in all I felt this is an excellent introductory text on the conflict.
February 15, 2014
Well-written overview of France's role in Algeria, focusing on the 1950s and 60s and the Algerian independence movement, but also looking at Algeria under French colonial power. Some sections were a bit too detailed for the general reader, but for the most part, it was an excellent history.
March 28, 2016
Great overview of the Algerian War of Independence. It also puts a lot of the discussion of French counterinsurgency literature into its French political context, which makes it much more questionable why American officers and academics should take it as gospel.
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