Algerian Independence
Algerian independence in July 1962 ended a brutal eight-year war (1954-1962) between the FLN and France that cost an estimated 300,000-400,000 Algerian lives and 25,000 French military dead, and displaced over a million Europeans (the pieds-noirs) and 90,000 Muslim Algerians who had served with French forces (the harkis). The Evian Accords (March 1962) that ended the war were preceded by OAS (Organisation de l'Armee Secrete) terrorist bombings in Algiers by settlers who refused to accept French withdrawal, and by a failed putsch by French generals against de Gaulle in 1961. Algeria's independence settlement created a one-party state under FLN rule that combined nationalism, socialism, and authoritarianism. The war's violence left a deep bilateral trauma — unacknowledged for decades in French public memory — and established the FLN's armed resistance as the founding myth of Algerian statehood, a myth that sustained the party's political monopoly until the 1990s multi-party opening that triggered the devastating civil war of 1991-2002.
- Year: 1962 CE
- Category: Independence
