French historians: Settlement and displacement constituted the target of France’s invasion of Algeria

French historians acknowledged that displacement and settlement constituted the goal of the French invasion and colonization of Algeria in the nineteenth century, recalling that settling Europeans was accompanied by massacres and massive deportations in the country.

The 70 years following the invasion and landing of French forces in Algeria in 1830 witnessed great massacres, including the ominous smoke-strangulation and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their origin areas.

On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Algeria’s Independence on 5 July, AFP quoted Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, a French specialist in colonialism history, as saying: “The logic of expelling Arabs from their homes and exploiting and looting their lands initially prevailed”.

He added: “It was a period of terrible war when no distinction was made between civilians and military personnel, battlefields and places of worship, that were violated even when civilians took refuge in.”

In the same context, the French historian Benjamin Stora stressed that it was similar to the policy that was tested in the American west; to bring settlers to control the country, adding that it is a gradual settlement by bringing residents who arrive in an unregulated movement.

Stora described Algeria’s invasion as horrific and violent, explaining that in Algeria the French army used the barbaric columns that were used in the Fondé War at the beginning of the French Revolution, which were based on killing and deporting the population.

Algeria’s Hosni Qitoni, a researcher at the British University of Exeter, confirmed that the invasion was aimed at replacing one people with another, explaining that between 1830 and 1930 the colonial administration had taken over 14 million hectares of agricultural land, part of which had been ceded free of charge to European migrants, whose number increased from seven thousand in 1836 to 881,000 in 1931.

According to Mansour Qadideer, a researcher at the Center for Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology in Oran, the colonial forces adopted smoke strangulation, with the first two cases were documented, in the Sabih area of June 11, 1844, and the second in the Dahra area of June 18, 1845, during which entire tribes took refuge in caves that blocked thus everyone inside suffocated with smoke of the fires ordered by French Generals.

Qadideer believed that the first phase of the invasion involved a deliberate will to reduce the number of the native population so that they would not pose a threat to the occupying army.

Grandmaison classified these events as “State terrorism intended to commit massacres as a warning and to easily subjugate the native peoples through what he described as a crime against humanity”.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune confirmed in October 2021 that 5 million and 630,000 Algerians were killed between 1830 and 1962, i.e., the majority of the victims fell during the early years of the French occupation.

Amal Farhat