This Tuesday, July 5, Algeria will celebrate the 60th anniversary its independence from France after 132 years. Despite France’s symbolic gestures, France still has tensions with Algeria about this memory. Here’s a brief overview of the history between the two countries and their political consequences.
According to historians, the French conquest in Algeria in 19th century was centered around a settlement issue whose implementation was done at the expense of massacres. In particular, the 70 years that followed the arrival of French troops to Algeria in 1830 saw mass killings, including “smoke” and the displacement of hundreds upon thousands of people.
Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison is a French specialist in colonial history. He says that it was initially a logic for replacement, which was then called “refoulement to the Arabs”, then a logic for exploitation and spoliation. Hosni Kitouni from Algeria, a researcher at the British University of Exeter, agrees that it was a policy of replacing one person with another.
Benjamin Stora, a French historian, said that it was “not a replacement policy”, but “similar to the policy in the American West.” To take over the country, settlers are installed. There is no strategy. It is a progressive settlement that involves the addition of people arriving in disorder.
Benjamin Stora continues, “The army in Africa takes over the technique of the ”infernal column” used against Vendeans at the beginning of French Revolution… We massacre people and move them.” Hosni Kitouni, a historian, recalls that this was the case at Blida near Algiers in November 1830. “More than six hundred women, children and old people were killed there.”
Between 1830- 1930, 14 million hectares were seized by the colonial administration. Part of these lands were graciously resold to European migrants. Their numbers grew from 7,000 in 1836, to 881,000 in 1931.
Colonial troops invent “enfumade”. History has documented two of these events: the Sbehas’ (June 11, 1844), and the Dahra’s (June 18, 1845). Both involve the extermination and asphyxiating entire tribes in caves by fires set on orders by French generals.
After seven and a quarter years of war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, Algeria became the first former French colony to be freed by arms. France supervised.
After eight years of fighting between the French army and Algerian insurgents, the guns stopped firing on March 18, 1962, according to the Evian Accords. This opened the door for Algeria’s declaration of independence on March 5, 1967. It was approved by 99.72% in a referendum on self-determination.
Authorities plan a 60-year celebration that will culminate in a major military parade through the capital. This is the first such parade for 33 years.
According to Laid Rebiga’s program, an epic mega-show, which retraced “Algeria’s millennial history”, opened last night’s festivities at the Algiers Opera.
To mark the occasion, a special logo was created in a circle adorned with 60 stars. It featured the slogan “a glorious past and a new age”, as a symbol of power.
Three years after being shaken in the wake of the protests of the Hirak (pro-democracy movement), the Algerian power used this anniversary to ease tensions. This popular movement was opposed to Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s candidacy for a fifth term of office as president of the Algeria. In May, Abdelmadjid Tebboune was elected president. He received in turn leaders from political parties and trade union leaders.
Algeria’s independence has meant that it is not a peaceful country. The country’s history is turbulent, with the civil war in 1992-2002, the Black Spring 2001, a revolt in Kabylie, and the Islamist attacks. Politics are not to be overlooked: Abdelaziz Bouteflika was brought to power in April 1999 by the army. He resigned in April 2019, under the threat of demonstrations (Hirak).
60 years after the end colonization, Algeria still bears the scars of colonization. France does not allow any “repentance” nor “apologies.” In October, President Macron claimed that Algeria was built on “a memory rent” and maintained by the “political-military systems”, which provoked ire from Algiers.
Relations have been improving over the past months, and Emmanuel Macron and Abdelmadjid Tebboune, his Algerian counterpart, expressed their desire for “deepening” them in a telephone interview.
Athmane Mazouz (president of Rassemblement pour la culture et la democratie) points out that the “relations between power in Algerian and official France have been punctuated with crises and pseudoreunions since independence of the country. No one can afford to talk about refoundation at the moment. No one can escape the instrumentation of this relationship on either side.
According to historian Amar Mohand Amer, “The quick return to normality after the severe crisis of the recent months (…) was related to regional tensions in Libya which should not be hidden or minimized.” “The extremely unstable geopolitics in the region requires strong positions in the medium and longer term, and consolidation of economic and political relations between the two nations.”
Marine Le Pen, who stated that colonization had contributed to the development in Algeria in March, reproached Emmanuel Macron for a policy of “spending his time apologizing and not asking anything in return from an Algerian Government which continues to ‘insult France”. During the National Assembly’s first session, the dean, Jose Gonzalez, deputy RN, evokes with melancholy French Algeria in his speech.
“The rapid rise of the National Rally during the French legislative elections is not a good sign. “The French far right will make this mandate into a great memorial battle where revisionism, falsification and history will be omnipresent,” said historian Amar Mohand Amer.
