Algerian Independence
In 1962, Algeria became an independent state after 132 years of French rule and an eight-year war of decolonization. The conflict was among the most brutal of the twentieth century's anti-colonial struggles, and its outcome reshaped both Algeria and France, hastening the end of the French empire and bringing down a republic along the way.
France invaded Algeria in 1830 and gradually conquered the territory, a process that involved heavy violence and the seizure of large amounts of land. Unlike most French colonies, Algeria was formally treated as part of France itself, divided into departments. Roughly a million European settlers, known as pieds-noirs, lived there alongside a much larger Muslim Arab and Berber majority, who were denied equal political rights and economic opportunity. Hopes for reform faded after World War II, particularly after the violent suppression of protests around Sétif and Guelma in May 1945, in which thousands of Algerians were killed.
The war began on 1 November 1954, when the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched coordinated attacks across the country. The fighting combined guerrilla warfare in the countryside with bombings and reprisals in cities, most famously in the Battle of Algiers in 1957. France deployed hundreds of thousands of troops and used methods that included torture, mass internment and forced resettlement of rural populations. The FLN, for its part, attacked civilians and carried out violent purges of rivals, including fellow nationalists. The war's toll is disputed: Algerian authorities have long cited well over a million dead, while many historians favor lower estimates, often several hundred thousand, though all agree the losses were enormous.
The conflict destabilized France. In 1958 a crisis involving the army and settler activists helped topple the Fourth Republic and brought Charles de Gaulle to power. De Gaulle eventually concluded that holding Algeria was unsustainable and moved toward negotiation. The Évian Accords, signed in March 1962, set a ceasefire and a referendum on independence. Voters in Algeria overwhelmingly approved, and independence was proclaimed in early July 1962. Hardline settlers and army officers responded with the terrorist campaign of the Organisation armée secrète, which failed to stop the process.
The aftermath was painful. Most of the European settlers, about 800,000 or more, left for France within months, and tens of thousands of Algerians who had served with the French, known as harkis, were left vulnerable, with many killed in reprisals. Ahmed Ben Bella became the first president, and the FLN ruled as a single party for decades. Algeria's victory inspired liberation movements elsewhere in Africa and the Global South, while memory of the war remains a sensitive subject in both countries today.