41 Facts About French Algeria

1.

French Algeria, known as Colonial Algeria, was the period of French colonisation of Algeria.

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2.

The war ended in 1962, when French Algeria gained independence following the Evian agreements in March 1962 and the self-determination referendum in July 1962.

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3.

Since the 1516 capture of Algiers by the Ottoman admirals, the brothers Ours and Hayreddin Barbarossa, French Algeria had been a base for conflict and piracy in the Mediterranean.

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4.

French Algeria was then part of the Barbary States, along with today's Tunisia – which depended on the Ottoman Empire, then led by Mahmud II — but enjoyed relative independence.

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5.

French Algeria's intention was to bolster patriotic sentiment, and distract attention from ineptly handled domestic policies by "skirmishing against the dey".

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6.

The French Algeria established a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization.

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7.

French Algeria was recalled in 1833 due to the overtly violent nature of the repression.

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8.

In 1834, France annexed as a colony the occupied areas of French Algeria, which had an estimated Muslim population of about two million.

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9.

The French Algeria devised elaborate plans for settling the hinterland left by Ottoman provincial authorities in 1830, but their efforts at state-building were unsuccessful on account of lengthy armed resistance.

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10.

French Algeria initiated a radical overhaul of the Ottoman administration in his by replacing Turkish officials with local leaders, making Arabic the official language, and attempting to reform finances according to the precepts of Islam.

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11.

However, the French Algeria captured Constantine under Sylvain Charles Valee the following year, on 13 October 1837.

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12.

French Algeria began their occupation of Algiers in 1830, starting with a landing in Algiers.

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13.

French Algeria presented himself as Mohamed ben Abdallah, but is more commonly known as Sherif Boubaghla.

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14.

French Algeria was probably a former lieutenant in the army of Emir Abdelkader, defeated for the last time by the French in 1847.

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15.

French Algeria was very religious, and some legends tell of his thaumaturgic skills.

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16.

French Algeria's saw this as a wedding of peers, rather than the traditional submission as a slave to a husband.

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17.

French Algeria's government maintained an army and a bureaucracy, collected taxes, supported education, undertook public works, and established agricultural and manufacturing cooperatives to stimulate economic activity.

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18.

French Algeria struck where the French were weakest and retreated when they advanced against him in greater strength.

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19.

French Algeria accepted these conditions, but the minister of war — who years earlier as general in Algeria had been badly defeated by Abd al Qadir — had him consigned in France in the Chateau d'Amboise.

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20.

Also, French Algeria forces engaged in wholesale massacres of entire tribes.

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21.

French Algeria 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.

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22.

Attempts to implement even the most modest reforms were blocked or delayed by the local administration in French Algeria, dominated by, and by the 27 representatives in the National Assembly .

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23.

The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating from before the French Algeria conquest, paid new taxes, from which the were normally exempted.

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24.

The curriculum was entirely French Algeria and allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded even in Muslim schools.

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25.

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.

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26.

French Algeria lamented that no genuine communication was possible between the two communities.

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27.

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.

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28.

An important feature of French Algeria rule was cantonnement, whereby tribal land that was supposedly unused was seized by the state, which enabled French Algeria 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.

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29.

French Algeria's reforms were resisted by colonists in Algeria, and his attempts to allow Muslims to be elected to a putative new assembly in Paris failed.

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30.

In 1870, the French government granted Algerian Jews French citizenship under the Cremieux Decree, but not Muslims.

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31.

The French Algeria government vacillated in its policy, yielding small concessions to the colon demands on the one hand while maintaining the regime du sabre to control the Muslim majority on the other.

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32.

French Algeria authorities took possession of the lands, from which Ottoman officials had derived income.

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33.

French Algeria was profoundly impressed with the nobility and virtue of the tribal chieftains, who appealed to the emperor's romantic nature, and was shocked by the self-serving attitude of the leaders.

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34.

French Algeria decided to halt the expansion of European settlement beyond the coastal zone and to restrict contact between Muslims and the, whom he considered to have a corrupting influence on the indigenous population.

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35.

French Algeria envisioned a grand design for preserving most of Algeria for the Muslims by founding a with himself as the .

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36.

French Algeria instituted the so-called politics of the to deal with the Muslims directly through their traditional leaders.

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37.

French Algeria took advantage of long-standing animosity between Tuareg and Chaamba Arabs.

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38.

Colonial troops of French Algeria were sent to fight in metropolitan France during the Battle of France in 1940.

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39.

An overwhelming majority of French politicians were opposed to the idea of independence while independence was gaining ground in Muslim Algerians' minds.

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40.

On 23 February 2005, the French Algeria law on colonialism was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement conservative majority, which imposed on high-school teachers to teach the "positive values" of colonialism to their students, in particular in North Africa .

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41.

Literally "French Algeria, " it means that the three of Algeria were to be considered integral parts of France.

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