French Algeria, 1830-1962

This course provides an introduction to the colonial history of Algeria and France in the 19th and 20th centuries, at the high point of European imperial expansion. It covers the violent conquest of the Regency of Algiers starting in 1830, followed by population removal and settlement by the French; successive political regimes, forms of legal discrimination, and attempts at turning this North African territory into an integral part of the French Republic; and finally the emergence of Algerian nationalism, leading up to the war of liberation and independence in 1962. Algeria was the jewel of the French Empire, its only real settler colony; its independence became a beacon of post-colonial struggles, inaugurating an era of entangled memories and forgetting that continues today.