French atrocities against the Algerian indigenous population (1852) during the
Pacification of Algeria. According to
Ben Kiernan, French colonization and genocidal massacres proceeded in tandem. During this period, the French destroyed mosques and other Islamic buildings and converted them into Catholic Churches. Atrocities committed by the French during the
Algerian War during the 1950s against Algerians include deliberate bombing and killing of unarmed civilians, the use of napalm to indiscriminately burn villages, rape,
torture, executions through "
death flights" or
burial alive, thefts and pillaging. Up to 2 million Algerian civilians were also deported in internment camps. During the
Pacification of Algeria (1835–1903) French forces engaged in a
scorched earth policy against the Algerian population. Colonel
Lucien de Montagnac stated that the purpose of the
pacification was to "destroy everything that will not crawl beneath our feet like dogs." The scorched earth policy, decided by Governor General
Thomas Robert Bugeaud, had devastating effects on the socio-economic and food balances of the country: "we fire little gunshot, we burn all douars, all villages, all huts; the enemy flees across taking his flock." Returning from an investigation trip to Algeria, Tocqueville wrote that "we make war much more barbaric than the Arabs themselves [...] it is for their part that civilization is situated." French forces deported and banished entire Algerian tribes. The Moorish families of Tlemcen were exiled to the Orient, and others were emigrated elsewhere. The tribes that were considered too troublesome were banned, and some took refuge in Tunisia, Morocco and Syria or were
deported to New Caledonia or Guyana. Also, French forces also engaged in wholesale massacres of entire tribes. All 500 men, women and children of
the El Oufia tribe were killed in one night, while all 500 to 700 members of the Ouled Rhia tribe were killed by suffocation in a cave. It is also commonly known as the year of Hessian sacks, referring to the way the captured surviving men and boys were put alive in the hessian sacks and thrown into dug-up trenches. , Kherrata From 8 May to June 26, 1945, the French carried out the
Sétif and Guelma massacre, in which between 6,000 and 80,000 Algerian Muslims were killed. Its initial outbreak occurred during a parade of about 5,000 people of the Muslim Algerian population of Sétif to celebrate the surrender of Nazi Germany in World War II; it ended in clashes between the marchers and the local French gendarmerie, when the latter tried to seize banners attacking colonial rule. After five days, the French colonial military and police suppressed the rebellion, and then carried out a series of reprisals against Muslim civilians. The army carried out
summary executions of Muslim rural communities. Less accessible villages were bombed by French aircraft, and cruiser
Duguay-Trouin, standing off the coast in the Gulf of Bougie, shelled Kherrata. Vigilantes lynched prisoners taken from local jails or randomly shot Muslims not wearing white arm bands (as instructed by the army) out of hand. The dead bodies in Guelma were buried in mass graves, but they were later dug up and burned in
Héliopolis. During the
Algerian War (1954–1962), the French used deliberate
illegal methods against the Algerians, including (as described by
Henri Alleg, who himself had been tortured, and historians such as Raphaëlle Branche) beatings, torture by electroshock,
waterboarding, burns, and rape. Prisoners were also locked up
without food in small cells,
buried alive, and
thrown from helicopters to their death or into the sea with concrete on their feet.
Claude Bourdet had denounced these acts on 6 December 1951, in the magazine ''L'Observateur'', rhetorically asking, "Is there a
Gestapo in Algeria? ." D. Huf, in his seminal work on the subject, argued that the use of torture was one of the major factors in developing French opposition to the war. Huf argued, "Such tactics sat uncomfortably with France's revolutionary history, and brought unbearable comparisons with
Nazi Germany. The French national psyche would not tolerate any parallels between their experiences of occupation and their colonial mastery of Algeria." General
Paul Aussaresses admitted in 2000 that systematic torture techniques were used during the war and justified it. He also recognized the assassination of lawyer
Ali Boumendjel and the head of the FLN in Algiers,
Larbi Ben M'Hidi, which had been disguised as suicides.
Bigeard, who called FLN activists "savages," claimed torture was a "necessary evil." To the contrary, General Jacques Massu denounced it, following Aussaresses's revelations and, before his death, pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during the war. In June 2000, Bigeard declared that he was based in
Sidi Ferruch, a torture center where Algerians were murdered. Bigeard qualified
Louisette Ighilahriz's revelations, published in the
Le Monde newspaper on June 20, 2000, as "lies." An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz had been tortured by General Massu. However, since General Massu's revelations, Bigeard has admitted the use of torture, although he denies having personally used it, and has declared, "You are striking the heart of an 84-year-old man." Bigeard also recognized that Larbi Ben M'Hidi was assassinated and that his death was disguised as a suicide. It is also estimated that between 27,000 and 60,000 Algerians were affected by radiation from
French nuclear weapons tests in the
Algerian Desert, with thousands having long-lasting health effects and deformities due to radiation exposure. The French Ministry of Defence states that 27,000 people were affected, including French military forces and technicians. Experts who have studied the effects of the tests estimate that over 42,000 Algerians were affected. Abdul Kadhim al-Aboudi, professor of nuclear physics at the
University of Oran, estimated that 60,000 people were affected. In 2018 France officially admitted that torture was systematic and routine. In October 2021, the office of Algerian president
Abdelmadjid Tebboune stated that 5.6 million Algerians died during French colonial rule. According to
The New Arab, the historian Mohammed Al-Amin estimates that the total Algerian death toll during the 132 years of French colonial occupation could be as high as 10 million. 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. Between 1860 and 1870, Napoleon III planned to establish an
Arab kingdom in Algeria, with the goal of taking Algeria out of legal limbo and making it a
client kingdom which he would rule in a
personal union. However, his project was abandoned by the
Third Republic.
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-controlled Algeria in 1830, for well over a century, France maintained what was effectively
colonial rule in the territory, though the
French Constitution of 1848 made Algeria part of France, and Algeria was usually understood as such by French people, even on the Left. Algeria became the prototype for a pattern of French colonial rule. With nine million or so Muslim Algerians "dominated" by one million settlers, Algeria had similarities with
South Africa, that has later been described as "quasi-
apartheid" while the concept of apartheid was formalized in 1948. This personal status lasted the entire time Algeria was French, from 1830 till 1962, with various changes in the meantime. When French rule began, France had no well-established systems for intensive colonial governance, the main existing legal provision being the 1685
Code Noir which was related to slave-trading and owning and incompatible with the legal context of Algeria. Indeed, France was committed in respecting the local law.
Status before 1865 On 5 July 1830,
Hussein Dey, regent of Algiers, signed the act of capitulation to the
Régence, which committed
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 the
Ottoman Empire. That same year and the same month, the
July Revolution ended the
Bourbon Restoration and began the
July Monarchy in which
Louis Philippe I was King of the French. The royal
"Ordonnance du 22 juillet 1834" organized general government and administration of the French territories in North Africa and is usually considered as an effective
annexation of Algeria by France; the annexation made all people legally linked to France and broke the legal link between people and the Ottoman Empire, without providing them any way to become French nationals. However, since it was not
positive law, this text did not introduce legal certainty on this topic. An important feature of French rule was
cantonnement, whereby tribal land that was supposedly unused was seized by the state, which enabled French colonists to expand their landholdings, and pushed indigenous people onto more marginal land and made them more vulnerable to drought; this was extended under the governance of Bugeaud's successor,
Jacques Louis Randon.
Status 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, whereby colonised peoples would eventually
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 ." 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. 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
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 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 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, Arthur Giraud, Charles de Boeck and
Eugène Audinet) advocating naturalization of the
indigènes with their status. This was also the desire, between 1865 and 1869, of the
Conseils généraux des départements algériens. 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
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
Algerian indigenous Jews. In the specific context following the second war, in 1947 is introduced the
Organic Statute of Algeria This system is rejected by some European for introducing Muslims into the European college, and rejected by some Algerian nationalists for not giving full sovereignty to the Algerian nation.<!-- reference was never defined, full citation is needed Algerian citizens On 18 March 1962, the Évian Accords guaranteed 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 addressed 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. The agreement stated that during this three-year period: The European French community (the
colon population), the
pieds-noirs and
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
OAS right-wing movement opposed this agreement. ==Government and administration==