1. French veteran from the Algerian War of Independence
1954 - 1962
“It was not a war, it was madness.”
2. “It is as if two insane people, crazed with wrath, had decided
to turn into a fatal embrace the forced marriage from which
they cannot free themselves. Forced to live together and
incapable of uniting, they decide at least to die together.”
Albert Camus
Letter to an Algerian Militant (1958)
14. Algeria: Part of France. Not a colony
Algerians:
complicated status
All Jews in Algeria are French citizens
All Algerians are French subjects who can/may
become French citizens if they give up their
status
Rules of power : Le Code Indigénat 1887-1947:
Inferior status for the natives of French colonies
All French in Algeria are French citizens and nationals
15. - Status and statehood
- Oppression
- French education and revolutions
- War veteran treatment (1914-18);
(1940-45)
- Torture
- Economy (Farming; Oil)
16. “In this admirable country in which spring without
equal covers it with flowers and unique light, men are
suffering hunger and demanding justice”
Albert Camus, 1958
French presence
In Algeria –
photo from
1870
17. “At their best, the French schools in Algeria provided
admirable breeding ground for revolutionary minds”.
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-62
Alistair Horne
“It’s not with you , but against you that we are learning
your language.”
young Muslim évolué
20. 8 May 1945 – The Massacre of Sétif: the first spark
La Toussaint Rouge (The Red All Saints Day)
1st of November 1954, Algiers
20 August 1955 - The Philippeville Massacre
The Battle of Algiers – La Bataille d’Alger:
September 1956 – October 1957
1958 – Return of General de Gaulle
1958 – Fall of the IV Republic
1961 – Referendums for Independence
17 October 1961 – The Paris Massacre
7 March – 18 April 1962 – The Evian Treaties
5 July 1962 – Algerian Independence Day
21. Algerians against Europeans
Europeans against Algerians
Algerians against Algerians
Europeans against Europeans
In Algeria
In mainland France
22. Education
Medical help
Patrols for “self-defence” Harkis
Protection or concentration camps?
Project abandoned after Philippeville ( August 1955)
Le toubib
1957
28. Contrairement à ce qui s’est passé en Tunisie et au Maroc, la bourgeoisie française
nous a privés de notre personnalité et de notre âme et ainsi nous neutralisa .
Contrary to what happened in Tunisia and in Morocco, the French bourgeoisie
deprived us of our character and of our soul and thus neutralised us.
Tomorrow The Day Will Dawn
1985
30. 17 October 1957 – Nobel Prize for Literature
l’Etranger (The Outsider); La Peste (The Plague),
Analytical Essays (The Myth of Sisyphus)
Jean-Paul Sartre urges him to refuse the prize
Excerpt from Camus’ acceptance speech in Stockholm:
“But the silence of an unknown prisoner, abandoned to humiliations at the other end of
the world, is enough to draw the writer out of his exile, at least whenever, in the midst of
the privileges of freedom, he manages… to transmit it (freedom)… by means of his art.”
L’écrivain engagé
The end of a” beautiful friendship” with Sartre
31. Oversees the
death of the IVth
French Republic
(1958) as Interior
Minister
Author of
• Vth Republic
• 3 referenda on Algeria,
• Evian agreements
• Independent Algeria
1958 - 1962
“Pourquoi voulez-vous qu'à 67 ans, je commence une carrière
de dictateur ?”
Re-elected President 1966
Forced to leave office 1969
33. A
A peaceful demonstration of Algerians brutally
crushed by the police (CRS)
“Here we drown Algerians”
34. A massacre: more that 200 dead
The police uses violence against a peaceful
demonstration in silence of Algerian Muslims
protesting against the curfew imposed 10 days earlier
by the Police Chief Superintendant Maurice Papon
http://www.ina.fr/video/CAB91053423/17-octobre-
1961-video.html