Algerian War of Independence
The Algerian War of Independence was a brutal conflict between France and Algerian nationalists that began in 1954 and ended with Algerian independence in 1962. It ended more than a century of French rule, helped bring down a French republic, and became a defining episode of decolonization, with consequences that still shape relations between the two countries.
France invaded Algiers in 1830 and gradually conquered the territory, eventually treating the northern part as an integral part of France rather than a colony, divided into departments. Alongside the Muslim Arab and Berber majority lived a substantial European settler population, often called pieds-noirs, who held most of the political power and economic advantage. Despite promises of reform, the great majority of Algerian Muslims were denied equal political rights. Frustration grew after the violent suppression of nationalist demonstrations around Sétif and Guelma in 1945, in which thousands of Algerians were killed, though estimates vary widely. Defeat in Indochina in 1954 and the example of other independence movements further encouraged radicals.
The war began on 1 November 1954, when the newly formed National Liberation Front (FLN) launched a series of coordinated attacks across Algeria. The FLN and its armed wing pursued guerrilla warfare and, at times, attacks on civilians, while also fighting rival Algerian nationalists. France sent hundreds of thousands of troops, including conscripts. In 1956 and 1957 the conflict reached Algiers itself, where the army used mass arrests, torture, and disappearances to dismantle the FLN network in what became known as the Battle of Algiers. Meanwhile the French resettled rural populations into camps, which caused severe hardship.
Although France won many military engagements, the war grew politically unsustainable. Revelations about torture divided French opinion, and international pressure mounted. In 1958 the crisis led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic and the return of Charles de Gaulle, who eventually concluded that Algeria could not be held. Settler and military hardliners reacted with an attempted coup in 1961 and with the terrorism of the Organisation armée secrète. The Evian Accords produced a ceasefire in March 1962, and a referendum that July led to independence.
The human cost was enormous. Estimates of Algerian deaths range from several hundred thousand to over a million, a figure that remains politically charged, while tens of thousands of French soldiers and many European civilians also died. Around a million pieds-noirs left for France in 1962, and the harkis, Algerians who had fought alongside the French, suffered reprisals and often received poor treatment in France. Independent Algeria became a one-party state under the FLN and an inspiration to anticolonial movements elsewhere. In both countries, memory of the war remains contested, shaping debates over history, migration, and national identity.