Algeria: colonial rule and the war of independence
After 132 years of French rule, a brutal eight-year war ends with Algerian independence, the exodus of about a million settlers and the fall of a French Republic.
- A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 — Alistair Horne, Macmillan (1977)
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
- Les questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la guerre d'Algérie — Benjamin Stora, Présidence de la République (2021)
- A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle — Julian Jackson, Allen Lane (2018)
France invaded Algeria in 1830, and conquest of the interior took decades of war, with mass killings and land seizures. Unlike most colonies, Algeria was made legally part of France, divided into departments, and settled by Europeans from France, Spain, Italy and Malta. By the 1950s about a million settlers, later called pieds-noirs, lived alongside some nine million Muslim Algerians who were, in most respects, second-class subjects. Algeria’s Jews had been made French citizens in 1870.
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
- A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 — Alistair Horne, Macmillan (1977)
The war
On 8 May 1945, the day Europe celebrated victory, a nationalist demonstration at Sétif turned into a rising and was put down with a repression that killed thousands; the exact number is still disputed. On 1 November 1954 the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched coordinated attacks. France, which had just lost Indochina, sent conscripts in large numbers; by the late 1950s around 400,000 troops were in Algeria.
- A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 — Alistair Horne, Macmillan (1977)
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
It was a war of terror on both sides. The FLN bombed cafés and killed civilians, settlers and Muslim rivals. The French army regrouped rural populations into camps, used systematic torture, notably during the “Battle of Algiers” in 1957, and carried out summary executions. In Paris on 17 October 1961, police attacked a peaceful demonstration of Algerians; dozens, and by some estimates over a hundred, were killed, some thrown into the Seine.
- A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 — Alistair Horne, Macmillan (1977)
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
- Les questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la guerre d'Algérie — Benjamin Stora, Présidence de la République (2021)
De Gaulle and the end
The crisis brought down the Fourth Republic. In May 1958 settlers and generals in Algiers rebelled, and de Gaulle returned to power. To their dismay, he moved towards self-determination. Diehard officers formed the OAS, a terrorist organisation that attacked both Algerians and French officials and tried to assassinate de Gaulle. The Évian Accords of 18 March 1962 ended the war, and Algeria became independent on 5 July 1962 after a referendum.
- A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle — Julian Jackson, Allen Lane (2018)
- A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 — Alistair Horne, Macmillan (1977)
The toll and the exodus
The death toll remains contested. Algeria officially speaks of 1.5 million dead; many French historians estimate between about 250,000 and 400,000 Algerian deaths, while some, like Alistair Horne, put it higher. About 25,000 French soldiers died. In 1962 nearly all the pieds-noirs left, along with most of Algeria’s Jews. Harkis left behind faced reprisals; estimates of those killed run from about 10,000 to well over 60,000.
- A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 — Alistair Horne, Macmillan (1977)
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
- Les questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la guerre d'Algérie — Benjamin Stora, Présidence de la République (2021)
The war that never ended
For decades France kept silent. Conscripts came home and did not talk; an amnesty covered crimes on all sides. Since the 1990s, testimony on torture, research and official gestures have broken the silence: in 2018 Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that the state was responsible for the torture and death of the mathematician Maurice Audin, and in 2021 historian Benjamin Stora delivered a report on reconciling memories. For many young French people of Algerian descent, the war is part of why they feel only half-accepted in France.
- Les questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la guerre d'Algérie — Benjamin Stora, Présidence de la République (2021)
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
A war of liberation after more than a century of dispossession, massacre and humiliation, beginning with the conquest of 1830 and the massacres at Sétif and Guelma in May 1945. Algeria's official figure is 1.5 million martyrs. Independence on 5 July 1962 is the founding moment of the nation, and many Algerians want France to apologise, not just acknowledge.
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
- Les questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la guerre d'Algérie — Benjamin Stora, Présidence de la République (2021)
For decades France called it "the events" or "operations to maintain order"; parliament only officially recognised it as a "war" in 1999. Presidents have since acknowledged torture and specific killings, but in 2021 the Stora report recommended gestures of recognition rather than a formal apology, an approach the government adopted.
- Les questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la guerre d'Algérie — Benjamin Stora, Présidence de la République (2021)
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
About a million European settlers, many with roots in Algeria going back generations, lost their homeland in 1962 and often felt unwelcome in France. Harkis, Algerians who served with the French army, were largely abandoned; tens of thousands were killed in Algeria (estimates range widely) and those who reached France were held in camps. France formally apologised to the harkis in 2021–22.
- Algeria: France's Undeclared War — Martin Evans, Oxford University Press (2012)
- A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 — Alistair Horne, Macmillan (1977)
Why it matters today
Millions of people in France have a family link to Algeria: descendants of Algerian immigrants, of the pieds-noirs settlers who left in 1962, of the harkis who fought for France, and of the conscripts who served there. Each group carries a different memory, and they rarely line up. The war shaped the Fifth Republic, the far right, debates over immigration and Islam, and still strains relations between Paris and Algiers.