Algerian Independence
Algeria became independent on 5 July 1962 after a war of seven and a half years that killed several hundred thousand people and destroyed the French Fourth Republic. Algeria was not a colony in French law. It was three departments of France, settled since 1830, with about a million European inhabitants — many of them Spanish, Italian and Maltese in origin — and nine million Muslim Algerians who were French nationals without full citizenship unless they renounced Islamic personal law. The FLN began the war on 1 November 1954 with coordinated attacks, and its strategy was to make coexistence impossible. The Battle of Algiers in 1957 is the episode that defined it: bombs in cafés, and paratroopers under Massu breaking the urban network by systematic torture, which was known in France at the time and defended by some of those who used it. The French won militarily. The frontier barriers sealed the borders, the guerrilla units inside were broken, and two million people were moved into resettlement camps. The political defeat was separate. The army revolted in 1958 rather than accept a government it thought would negotiate, brought de Gaulle back to power and gave France a new constitution, and then revolted against him in 1961 when he did negotiate. The OAS, a settler terrorist organisation, fought both sides. The Évian accords were signed in March 1962 and approved by referendum. Some 900,000 Europeans left within months, and the harkis who had fought for France were largely abandoned. France did not use the word war for it until 1999, calling it operations for the maintenance of order, and the archives were opened slowly and partially. Algeria's own count of a million and a half martyrs is higher than most historians accept and is part of the state's founding account of itself.
- Year: 1962 CE
- Category: Independence
