France gives all Algerians citizenship

[Ricardolindo]

As @SpanishSpy very well pointed out, you really have a diversity of origin in what makes or is perceived to make a Pied-Noir community out of the whole spectrum of Europeans from French Algeria, especially as the Pied-Noir category is not synonymous with Europeans of French Algeria (Français d'Algérie, Spaniards, Catalans, Italians, etc.) but, even while the name itself is from the early-to-mid XXth century, essentially a re-creation from the forced migration to France (and thus rarely includes the lot of Europeans that migrated to Spain or Portugal) ending up as virtually identical to the legal category of rapatriés at the general exception of harkis (Muslims refugees) and the partial exception of Jews.

Back in French Algeria, all of the components of the Pied-Noir identities would have likely been toughs as distinct and set in a broad colonial cultural hierarchy (the familial memory accounts for my grand-mother having not problem having his son using some Arab words but threatening him with cleaning his mouth with soap when it came to Spanish words) even while, of course, distinction between Europeans from one hand, Muslims from another and Jews in the middle remained primordial.
In order to give some idea, a name a French citizen in Algeria would have used to define himself relatively to both Muslims and other Europeans and from mainland France would have been Algérien (comparatively to Espagnols, Juifs, Arabes or Indigènes).

Now, a distinct French/Algérien identity amongst Europeans didn't meant that Spaniards (in the West) or Italians (in the East) weren't Frenchified or Algérianized, in the sense of forming a part of a colonial French social and political culture and in constant relations with other Europeans; but they also kept a strong distinct identity notably trough language and "nationalized" neighbourhoods without that much mixing up to 1962.

It's even more obvious with Jews, even as naturalisés themselves, definitely seen as non-French and non-Europeans, often victims of antisemit attacks from Europeans as "fraudulent" citizens, parasites, and the whole of charming bigotry that existed in Europe exacerbated by the context of a colonial hierarchy (the withdrawal of the Crémieux decree was even justified as "not being fair to Muslims"); while being seen as colonial accomplices and parasites by the Muslims. Even after 1962, Algerian Jews aren't fully counted among Pied-Noirs, first because of this distinct colonial (but also pre-colonial) history but also trough their own identitary re-construction : "Jews AND Pied-Noirs" is an actual take but alongside (IMHO more common) "Jews TOGETHER with Pied-Noirs" and "Jews from Algeria/Sefardin AND NOT Pied-Noir". For instance, Gargamel Eric Zemmour, while pandering to a victimizing Pied-Noir narrative and being from a Algerian Jewish family, never speak of himself as Pied-Noir or having Pied-Noir origin whereas another Jew born in Algeria would endorse it would it be to oppose the same narrative.

Thanks for the reply. Very interesting.
Leaving aside the complex definition of Pied Noirs, with regards to the origins of the non-Muslim population of Algeria in general, I found this old comment at alternatehistory.com: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...t-of-algeria-being-french.322770/post-9450591 providing a breakup:
"40% Spanish (Alicante, Murcia, Valencia and Menorca)
25% mainland France (mostly Languedoc and Provence and to a lesser extent Paris)
20% Italian (mostly Naples and Sicliy), Corsican and Maltese
12% Naturalised Jews (Granted in 1870 by the Crémieux Decree)
3% German (German, Swiss, Alsatian)"
Thus, Spaniards made up a plurality of the European population of Algeria and Spaniards and Algerian Jews combined did make up a slight majority of the non-Muslim population of Algeria (52%).

 

[Jackson Lennock]

France's sense of identity officially being more civic than ethnic/religious is something I've always found intriguing. I've heard folks mention the concept of an ethnic French person, but it confused me. I bring this up because I wonder what it would take to get the French (however that is defined) to accept many Muslim Algerians as being fully French by the mid-twentieth century. Overall it's ironic considering what some French propaganda was saying at the time. My understanding is that a lot of anticolonialism in the French Empire had to do with being annoyed that the French were hypocritical about the 'anybody can be French' mantra they preached (by contrast, the British didn't really make those promises, so the anticolonialism's flavor was a bit different).



The big stumbling block to a fully egalitarian Algeria in France is the French not wanting to give rights to the bulk of Algerians. So what would it take to change that? I think it would require more opportunities for Algerians earlier on to be allowed to be French if they chose without having to abandon so much of their customs. But France in the nineteenth century was busy suppressing the customs of its own people (Catalans, Bretons, Occitans, etc).

I sort of think France would need to view Algerians as their only way to measure up population-wise against their bigger and stronger neighbor next door (Germany) or the other Great/Super Powers (USA and USSR). The thing that always has intrigued me about France successfully integrating Algeria is it would plausibly make France a country that could punch with similar weight to the US and USSR in the twentieth century.

 

[SpanishSpy]

France's sense of identity officially being more civic than ethnic/religious is something I've always found intriguing. I've heard folks mention the concept of an ethnic French person, but it confused me. I bring this up because I wonder what it would take to get the French (however that is defined) to accept many Muslim Algerians as being fully French by the mid-twentieth century. Overall it's ironic considering what some French propaganda was saying at the time. My understanding is that a lot of anticolonialism in the French Empire had to do with being annoyed that the French were hypocritical about the 'anybody can be French' mantra they preached (by contrast, the British didn't really make those promises, so the anticolonialism's flavor was a bit different).

View attachment 60681

The big stumbling block to a fully egalitarian Algeria in France is the French not wanting to give rights to the bulk of Algerians. So what would it take to change that? I think it would require more opportunities for Algerians earlier on to be allowed to be French if they chose without having to abandon so much of their customs. But France in the nineteenth century was busy suppressing the customs of its own people (Catalans, Bretons, Occitans, etc).

I sort of think France would need to view Algerians as their only way to measure up population-wise against their bigger and stronger neighbor next door (Germany) or the other Great/Super Powers (USA and USSR). The thing that always has intrigued me about France successfully integrating Algeria is it would plausibly make France a country that could punch with similar weight to the US and USSR in the twentieth century.

I've read one book that argued that the reason for the effective ghettoization of its Muslim population is because that 'French' as a nationality is constructed in such a manner that requires a high degree of conformity. That book is The French Intifada: the Long War Between France and its Arabs by Andrew Hussey, if you're curious.

 

[LSCatilina]

I found this old comment at alternatehistory.com: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...t-of-algeria-being-french.322770/post-9450591 providing a breakup:

There's big issues about this post, especially how the break up is made (seriously, "Corsicans" and "Alsatians" as separate from "French", talk about an ethno-linguistic world-view, I'm almost surprised there's no further break-up with "Occitans", "Bretons" even if the post hints at that) and consider the existence of distinct sub-ensemble in the European as evidence for lack of "Frenchness".

The colonial identity break-up (and the one that is relevant on this discussion, especially when it comes to colonial hierarchy and racializations ) was actually quite different from how the break-up of identities was aligned (namely, Europeans, Jews, "Natives" and Europeans themselves subdivides into French and Non-French related to political and cultural identity) and how only the first one clearly set an expectation of "non-Frenchness" between Europeans and Non-Europeans whereas the first clearly regardless of the cultural and "genealogical" references endorsed a French political and civic identity (rather than trying to stress a Victoria-list of "ethnicities", one could simply look at the family names within the colonialist-nationalist OAS).

This study (Les Espagnols en Algérie : questions sur l'identité et sur l'intégration )is fairly interesting to look at.

I wonder what it would take to get the French (however that is defined) to accept many Muslim Algerians as being fully French by the mid-twentieth century.

What is at stake is not really the official stance on what supposedly founded French identity, what was debated between French intellectuals and officials as even in the heydays of French radicalism, there was never a consensus on a purely civic nationality and always a consideration of language, religion, (hello antisemitism), localism, etc.

But France in the nineteenth century was busy suppressing the customs of its own people

Frankly, it's not even comparable, even if it's a regular talking point on the interwebz on "French nationalism killed off languages". First because what happened was not that Occitan, Bretons, Catalans, etc. speakers were persecuted and put in a subordinated place, but that the institutional sphere was supposed to be primarily French, whereas French came to dominate the public sphere in an unequal bilingualism that it only monopolized in the early-to-mid-XXth century.
The whole thing kinda feels like "but Irishmen were slaves too" in a way, as we're considering really two different situations. (Let alone that I'd really like an exemple of how the state power was "busy suppressing the customs of its own people" when the XIXth was actually a period of regionalism flourishing under institutional control in culture from the state, of course).

My understanding is that a lot of anticolonialism in the French Empire had to do with being annoyed that the French were hypocritical about the 'anybody can be French' mantra they preache

No, the problem was more they were exploited and that the French state kow-towed to the colonialist lobbies and weren't going to provide actual colonial citizenship. The whole French vs. British colonialisms approach is really overplayed.

I'm going to, again, repeat what @SpanishSpy said before and better than me, but...

What's primordial is the understanding of nationality in French Algeria amongst Europeans that very clearly excluded Muslims from the Algerian identity unless they adopted French cultural values (and implicitly abandon Arabo-Islamic values, which Berbers were considered more "ripe" to) and entering in a colonial hierarchy on which these Frenchified natives would still be considered below Europeans if above Berbers and Arab Muslims, but something that would have effectively seen as betrayal and a form of religious as well as civic apostasy by its former community, hence why the number of Arab or Berber Algerians asking and receiving the status of citizen instead of "indigenous" was extremely low historically.
(cf Le regard colonial : Islam, genre et identités dans la fabrication de l’Algérie française, 1830-1962 and L’Algérie et les Algériens sous le système colonial. Approche historico historiographique)

Eventually the problem wasn't just that Algeria's Muslims were not French citizens : it's that Algeria's Muslims weren't Algerians citizens equals to Algeria's Europeans and had the choice between being stuck with an "indigenous" statute (whose abrogation in 1947 was both not enough, and mostly displaced the means and context of legal hierarchization) or to accept a naturalisation that wouldn't really make them equal to Europeans while risking to dissociate them from their communities.

Besides what happened IOTL, you have two fairly difficult paths to follow : either a colonialist radicalisation turning French Algeria as a South Africa equivalent, with all the international consequences that France itself might not be really comfortable to go by for the sake of Algeria's Europeans except if France pulls a Salazar, and then going a democratic road; either the road trough early democratisation.
Early democratization could take the form of a dominion-like status, but one that would be directed trough a voluntarist perspective of an "Arab kingdom" à la Napoléon III rather than empowering Europeans; or with another voluntarist policy fully supporting the naturalisation of Muslims elites (i.e. Jeunes Algériens) at the latest in the 20's if history goes more or less like IOTL (Blum-Violette was frankly too little too late and even that couldn't pass) in order to provide a counter-weight to Europeans bitching lobbies effectively preparing a largely autonomous or rather New Caledonia-like statute.

 

[Ricardolindo]

France's sense of identity officially being more civic than ethnic/religious is something I've always found intriguing. I've heard folks mention the concept of an ethnic French person, but it confused me. I bring this up because I wonder what it would take to get the French (however that is defined) to accept many Muslim Algerians as being fully French by the mid-twentieth century. Overall it's ironic considering what some French propaganda was saying at the time. My understanding is that a lot of anticolonialism in the French Empire had to do with being annoyed that the French were hypocritical about the 'anybody can be French' mantra they preached (by contrast, the British didn't really make those promises, so the anticolonialism's flavor was a bit different).

View attachment 60681

The big stumbling block to a fully egalitarian Algeria in France is the French not wanting to give rights to the bulk of Algerians. So what would it take to change that? I think it would require more opportunities for Algerians earlier on to be allowed to be French if they chose without having to abandon so much of their customs. But France in the nineteenth century was busy suppressing the customs of its own people (Catalans, Bretons, Occitans, etc).

I sort of think France would need to view Algerians as their only way to measure up population-wise against their bigger and stronger neighbor next door (Germany) or the other Great/Super Powers (USA and USSR). The thing that always has intrigued me about France successfully integrating Algeria is it would plausibly make France a country that could punch with similar weight to the US and USSR in the twentieth century.

Unlike the United Kingdom, France did fully integrate several colonies. The French overseas territories have representation in the French Parliament while no British overseas territories have representation in the British Parliament. However, all of those colonies were far less populous than Algeria and there was no religious difference except in Mayotte which is very much an outlier.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Unlike the United Kingdom, France did fully integrate several colonies. The French overseas territories have representation in the French Parliament while no British overseas territories have representation in the British Parliament. However, all of those colonies were far less populous than Algeria.

Which they did while they rendered the pre-colonial population utterly impotent in a political sense. Effectively, it is not that different from the British. Indeed, the British let the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland have representation in Parliament.

 

[Ricardolindo]

There's big issues about this post, especially how the break up is made (seriously, "Corsicans" and "Alsatians" as separate from "French", talk about an ethno-linguistic world-view, I'm almost surprised there's no further break-up with "Occitans", "Bretons" even if the post hints at that) and consider the existence of distinct sub-ensemble in the European as evidence for lack of "Frenchness".

The colonial identity break-up (and the one that is relevant on this discussion, especially when it comes to colonial hierarchy and racializations ) was actually quite different from how the break-up of identities was aligned (namely, Europeans, Jews, "Natives" and Europeans themselves subdivides into French and Non-French related to political and cultural identity) and how only the first one clearly set an expectation of "non-Frenchness" between Europeans and Non-Europeans whereas the first clearly regardless of the cultural and "genealogical" references endorsed a French political and civic identity (rather than trying to stress a Victoria-list of "ethnicities", one could simply look at the family names within the colonialist-nationalist OAS).

This study (Les Espagnols en Algérie : questions sur l'identité et sur l'intégration )is fairly interesting to look at.


What is at stake is not really the official stance on what supposedly founded French identity, what was debated between French intellectuals and officials as even in the heydays of French radicalism, there was never a consensus on a purely civic nationality and always a consideration of language, religion, (hello antisemitism), localism, etc.


Frankly, it's not even comparable, even if it's a regular talking point on the interwebz on "French nationalism killed off languages". First because what happened was not that Occitan, Bretons, Catalans, etc. speakers were persecuted and put in a subordinated place, but that the institutional sphere was supposed to be primarily French, whereas French came to dominate the public sphere in an unequal bilingualism that it only monopolized in the early-to-mid-XXth century.
The whole thing kinda feels like "but Irishmen were slaves too" in a way, as we're considering really two different situations. (Let alone that I'd really like an exemple of how the state power was "busy suppressing the customs of its own people" when the XIXth was actually a period of regionalism flourishing under institutional control in culture from the state, of course).


No, the problem was more they were exploited and that the French state kow-towed to the colonialist lobbies and weren't going to provide actual colonial citizenship. The whole French vs. British colonialisms approach is really overplayed.

I'm going to, again, repeat what @SpanishSpy said before and better than me, but...

What's primordial is the understanding of nationality in French Algeria amongst Europeans that very clearly excluded Muslims from the Algerian identity unless they adopted French cultural values (and implicitly abandon Arabo-Islamic values, which Berbers were considered more "ripe" to) and entering in a colonial hierarchy on which these Frenchified natives would still be considered below Europeans if above Berbers and Arab Muslims, but something that would have effectively seen as betrayal and a form of religious as well as civic apostasy by its former community, hence why the number of Arab or Berber Algerians asking and receiving the status of citizen instead of "indigenous" was extremely low historically.
(cf Le regard colonial : Islam, genre et identités dans la fabrication de l’Algérie française, 1830-1962 and L’Algérie et les Algériens sous le système colonial. Approche historico historiographique)

Eventually the problem wasn't just that Algeria's Muslims were not French citizens : it's that Algeria's Muslims weren't Algerians citizens equals to Algeria's Europeans and had the choice between being stuck with an "indigenous" statute (whose abrogation in 1947 was both not enough, and mostly displaced the means and context of legal hierarchization) or to accept a naturalisation that wouldn't really make them equal to Europeans while risking to dissociate them from their communities.

Besides what happened IOTL, you have two fairly difficult paths to follow : either a colonialist radicalisation turning French Algeria as a South Africa equivalent, with all the international consequences that France itself might not be really comfortable to go by for the sake of Algeria's Europeans except if France pulls a Salazar, and then going a democratic road; either the road trough early democratisation.
Early democratization could take the form of a dominion-like status, but one that would be directed trough a voluntarist perspective of an "Arab kingdom" à la Napoléon III rather than empowering Europeans; or with another voluntarist policy fully supporting the naturalisation of Muslims elites (i.e. Jeunes Algériens) at the latest in the 20's if history goes more or less like IOTL (Blum-Violette was frankly too little too late and even that couldn't pass) in order to provide a counter-weight to Europeans bitching lobbies effectively preparing a largely autonomous or rather New Caledonia-like statute.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I posted a thread about Algeria as a French protectorate like Tunisia and Morocco in 2021, https://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/index.php?threads/algeria-as-a-french-protectorate.4141/. However, the conclusion was that it would have been unfeasible except by avoiding Charles X's invasion of Algiers in the first place.

 

[LSCatilina]

Thanks for the detailed reply. I posted a thread about Algeria as a French protectorate like Tunisia and Morocco in 2021, https://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/index.php?threads/algeria-as-a-french-protectorate.4141/. However, the conclusion was that it would have been unfeasible except by avoiding Charles X's invasion of Algiers in the first place.

I don't think it's impossible : admitting we butterfly away the revolution of 1830 or the revolution of 1848, we could end up with a coastal French control not dissimilar to Spain's plazas de soberania on the basis of the campaigns of 1830 (i.e. Alger, Oran and Mers-el-Kébir) or 1837-1842 respectively.

The first French campaigns in Algeria were effectively mostly a matter of prestige policies before any other concern (settlements being sort of an after-tought and by-product) so a limited direct control could help things a bit. In 1831, they were several attempts at turning local beys under a French protectorate, mostly unsuccessfully (partly because troops had been repatriated to France) and the general military insecurity brought the later campaign of coastal control and the French army mostly acting on its own. Even in 1834, you had a strong anti-colonial party that might have been successful in denying further funding to the army in Algeria or, rather, means to conquer the coast with the treaty between Abdelkader and France being a possible step between a coastal French Algeria around Oran, Alger and Constantine and a successor Arab state to the regency.

Granted not something particularly obvious, but I don't think the "vulnerability" of the regency and local petty-states was obvious either, nor that French colonisation was somehow bound to happen.

 

[Ricardolindo]

Which they did while they rendered the pre-colonial population utterly impotent in a political sense. Effectively, it is not that different from the British. Indeed, the British let the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland have representation in Parliament.

While not a pre-colonial population, the majority of the population of all French Islands in the Caribbean except for St Barthelemy is non-white. The same in French Guyana and French Polynesia which in the latter case is overwhelmingly a pre-colonial population. There is also Mayotte which is overwhelmingly black and Muslim and I mentioned in my edit while you were typing your reply though I admit it's an extreme outlier. Read this r/AskHistorians thread at for an explanation of why Mayotte voted to stay with France unlike the rest of the Comoros. The people of Mayotte felt neglected by the people of the rest of the Comoros and trusted the French more. Anyways, the non-white population of those colonies was enfranchised at around the same time those colonies became integral parts of France.

 

[Nyvis]

France's sense of identity officially being more civic than ethnic/religious is something I've always found intriguing. I've heard folks mention the concept of an ethnic French person, but it confused me. I bring this up because I wonder what it would take to get the French (however that is defined) to accept many Muslim Algerians as being fully French by the mid-twentieth century. Overall it's ironic considering what some French propaganda was saying at the time. My understanding is that a lot of anticolonialism in the French Empire had to do with being annoyed that the French were hypocritical about the 'anybody can be French' mantra they preached (by contrast, the British didn't really make those promises, so the anticolonialism's flavor was a bit different).

What you have to understand about the civic identity cult is that it's a lie. France is very much a nation state in the standard mold, just more hypocritical than most about it. You'll always get some radicals in the old political sense who genuinely buy into it, but even when they do it's in very patronizing ways that end up betraying the idea. And further to the left, there's always been a strain of accepting the republican construct as face value and trying to make it work, but it never does because it's a sorry pile of hypocrisy and it just traps you into a framework where you can't criticize what you're trying to fix honestly.

So I think the potential is very low. Not nil, I can see a revolution blundering into attachment to that idea while discarding its existing state, or a French state in exile being taken over by colonial subjects it was forced to enfranchise for manpower and them claiming they're finally doing it right rather than something different. But in general, too many of the people on the inside are hypocritical about it and too many of the people on the outside are burned out by the hypocrisy, and it's too contrary to the material dynamic of colonialism, in both its extractive and its settler form.

 

[LSCatilina]

What you have to understand about the civic identity cult is that it's a lie. France is very much a nation state in the standard mold, just more hypocritical than most about it.

I'd disagree it would have been a merely an hypocritical lie that a somewhat clueless and naive left to swallow up hook and all.
It might rather be best understood as one of the component in the identitarian elaboration and back-and-forth of the XIXth century, as a set of pre-Romanticist (i.e. mostly Enlightenment and pre-Revolutionary "sovereignists") takes that never were mutually exclusive with Romanticist ones (i.e. ethnonationalism and racialism) precisely because they were constantly interacting and undergoing a back-and-forth.

Now of course the focus on this civic component as the pre-supposed reasonable, moderate and directive norm (relatively to far-right and far-left conceptions) is immensely flawed, but I think it's not the same just not considering this component as a functional drive and just an artificial concoction and doesn't allow to illustrate how French nationalism and racialism was closer to what existed in Portugal or Italy than Germany, United States or Russia; or, as far this conversation is concerned, how it can impress on a colonial reality where the matter of nationality was necessarily different (and much more racialized as being issued from an immediate confrontation and hierarchization of populations that, with the nobable partial exception of Jews, didn't exist as such in the context of France proper).

I'm sceptical, on this regard, that a revolution in metropolitain France would be enough : not because people would be hypocritical, evil or clueless and hang on a "lie" but because it would rely on the voluntarism of the state structure all the same that a non-revolutionary voluntarist policy (would it be Republican or Bonapartist) would have to adopt when dealing with French Algerian settler-colonialism, and assume the contradiction between the elaboration of national idea in the metropole AND its elaboration in a colonial context, something that clashed as well IOTL already. As you say, it would rather lead to a break-away from a French Algeria that would have rather felt any imposition of an anti-racial nationality (rightfully) as an existential threat and maybe joining de jure or de facto with a great power as protector (it had been proposed, altough marginally, in the late XIXth with Britain in some European circles)

Hence why the dominion idea for the AHC have immediate limits if not firmly controlled by a "personal union" of state power both in France and Algeria IMO; but also why I tend to be more optimistic it can be resolved; especially as the pre-Romanticist national takes were still an attractive idea for *Jeunes-Algériens* in particular (as a mean of discarding old pre-colonial constrains) in the same way marxising takes came to be in the post-colonial era, and a potential mean in this prospective timeline to reach an Algerian national citizenship in association/relation/dependence, etc. to a broader French (and French dominated at the very least at its inception) ensemble.

 

[LSCatilina]

While not a pre-colonial population...

But while territories were judicially and legally fully integrated (and the "fully" part could be fairly criticized, as outre-mer even when départementalisé, is still largely counted and considered apart would it be in national statistics or national management), it doesn't mean that people went from being colonized and colonizers to social or political (let alone economical) equals and sharing a same agency among themselves and metropolitan people, and still pretty much dealing with the legacy and the fallout even today, with different social-judicial situations (access to public services, wealth, redistribution and levelling, differentiated consideration, discriminations and obstacles to free intra-national movement, etc.) that territorial equality nor the constitutional principle of equality really managed to resolve to the point it was officially and even legally acknowledged and not without significant bitching about how "if *they* want equal treatment, then they should renounce their outre-mer status" (e.g. compensating primes and special consideration for public servants, privilegied access to local EEZ, etc.)

It'd be surprising that IATL that roughly looks like IOTL on which French Algeria would be part of outremer (and IMO, at the very best rather comparable to New Caledonia and almost certainly not a DOM, for the several reasons discussed above) these problems would just not exist, let alone not the lot of additional problems due to a very polarized colonial situation and even greater demographic imbalance than in New Caledonia (25% of Europeans vs. 15% of the population), a lesser living standard (before 1960's, comparable to South Italy for Europeans, much less so for Muslims), etc.

 

[Ricardolindo]

But while territories were judicially and legally fully integrated (and the "fully" part could be fairly criticized, as outre-mer even when départementalisé, is still largely counted and considered apart would it be in national statistics or national management), it doesn't mean that people went from being colonized and colonizers to social or political (let alone economical) equals and sharing a same agency among themselves and metropolitan people, and still pretty much dealing with the legacy and the fallout even today, with different social-judicial situations (access to public services, wealth, redistribution and levelling, differentiated consideration, discriminations and obstacles to free intra-national movement, etc.) that territorial equality nor the constitutional principle of equality really managed to resolve to the point it was officially and even legally acknowledged and not without significant bitching about how "if *they* want equal treatment, then they should renounce their outre-mer status" (e.g. compensating primes and special consideration for public servants, privilegied access to local EEZ, etc.)

It'd be surprising that IATL that roughly looks like IOTL on which French Algeria would be part of outremer (and IMO, at the very best rather comparable to New Caledonia and almost certainly not a DOM, for the several reasons discussed above) these problems would just not exist, let alone not the lot of additional problems due to a very polarized colonial situation and even greater demographic imbalance than in New Caledonia (25% of Europeans vs. 15% of the population), a lesser living standard (before 1960's, comparable to South Italy for Europeans, much less so for Muslims), etc.

Thanks for the reply. I am glad that we have an user who is so knowledgeable and writes so well.

 

[SpanishSpy]

While not a pre-colonial population, the majority of the population of all French Islands in the Caribbean except for St Barthelemy is non-white. The same in French Guyana and French Polynesia which in the latter case is overwhelmingly a pre-colonial population. There is also Mayotte which is overwhelmingly black and Muslim and I mentioned in my edit while you were typing your reply though I admit it's an extreme outlier. Read this r/AskHistorians thread at for an explanation of why Mayotte voted to stay with France unlike the rest of the Comoros. The people of Mayotte felt neglected by the people of the rest of the Comoros and trusted the French more. Anyways, the non-white population of those colonies was enfranchised at around the same time those colonies became integral parts of France.

Those are so small their effect on the politics of the metropole is practically nonexistent. It's like how Hawai'i is a state.

Algeria as fully integrated, with Algerians as full citizens, would break metropolitan politics, and that's why Paris would never allow it.

 

[Ricardolindo]

@LSCatilina As I brought it up months ago on 1 May at https://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/in...ia-retaining-the-bulk-of-it.4957/post-1051888, you once said at alternatehistory.com at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...t-of-algeria-being-french.322770/post-9444804 that the Pied Noirs weren't really well seen in Metropolitan France to begin with. @Hendryk replied but it was about how metropolitan French views of them got bad because of the Algerian War while you appeared to imply they had never been good. Could you, please, elaborate on that?

 

[Ricardolindo]

Those are so small their effect on the politics of the metropole is practically nonexistent. It's like how Hawai'i is a state.

No offense, but what I had thought was implied in your reply was that the people in the French overseas territories either were mostly French or could not vote, not the obvious fact that they had much smaller populations than Algeria.

Algeria as fully integrated, with Algerians as full citizens, would break metropolitan politics, and that's why Paris would never allow it.

From what I am understanding from this thread, that doesn't appear to have actually been the main issue with integrating Algeria, though. The big problem was the Pied Noirs.

 

[Hendryk]

@LSCatilina As I brought it up months ago on 1 May at https://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/in...ia-retaining-the-bulk-of-it.4957/post-1051888, you once said at alternatehistory.com at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...t-of-algeria-being-french.322770/post-9444804 that the Pied Noirs weren't really well seen in Metropolitan France to begin with. @Hendryk replied but it was about how metropolitan French views of them got bad because of the Algerian War while you appeared to imply they had never been good.

I don't recall being part of that conversation, but for the record I share the consensus expressed here that such a solution would have been a political non-starter. Algeria may have been an integral part of France on paper, but for all intents and purposes it was a colony in the same way that South Africa was, with a white settler community holding a stranglehold on power and a brutally oppressed native majority. Allowing the latter to enjoy equal rights would have defeated the purpose of colonizing the place to begin with.

Simply put, there is no plausible way for France to hold on to Algeria short of implementing quasi-genocidal policies. The only question all along was how Algeria would gain its independence, with OTL, sadly, being closer to the worst-case end of the probability spectrum than to the best-case one.

 

[Ricardolindo]

I don't recall being part of that conversation, but for the record I share the consensus expressed here that such a solution would have been a political non-starter. Algeria may have been an integral part of France on paper, but for all intents and purposes it was a colony in the same way that South Africa was, with a white settler community holding a stranglehold on power and a brutally oppressed native majority. Allowing the latter to enjoy equal rights would have defeated the purpose of colonizing the place to begin with.

Simply put, there is no plausible way for France to hold on to Algeria short of implementing quasi-genocidal policies. The only question all along was how Algeria would gain its independence, with OTL, sadly, being closer to the worst-case end of the probability spectrum than to the best-case one.

Thanks for the reply.
You said back then that it was possible that there was an alternate timeline where France managed to give Algeria a devolved or associate status acceptable to the Arab majority but that the odds were always against it. Would you agree with @LSCatilina's remarks about that in this thread?

 

[Hendryk]

You said back then that it was possible that there was an alternate timeline where France managed to give Algeria a devolved or associate status acceptable to the Arab majority but that the odds were always against it.

I don't think that was me, are you sure you don't have me confused with someone else?

My position regarding Algeria has always been that France had no business colonizing it and that the best outcome would have been to leave early and peacefully.

 

[Ricardolindo]

I don't think that was me, are you sure you don't have me confused with someone else?

My position regarding Algeria has always been that France had no business colonizing it and that the best outcome would have been to leave early and peacefully.

You said on 30 April at https://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/in...ia-retaining-the-bulk-of-it.4957/post-1051463 that "It's possible that there's an ATL out there in which the French managed to thread the needle and give Algeria a devolved or associate status of some sort that proved acceptable to the Arab majority, but the odds were always against it."