Host (possibly Robert or Rodney) (44:49)
So less than 50 of these 6,000 guys actually wind up settling in Algeria, which is kind of shit. Like this keeps happening where they'll have these grand ambitions. This'll let us get a popul. This'll do it. And it never really works. So for the next 50 years or so, France struggles to convince any French people to move to a place where they aren't wanted. And the climate and native illnesses will kill them very quickly in most cases. French intellectuals and political elites only grow more dedicated to holding onto Algeria during this time because they're continuing to pour troops and bullets into the territory. Territory while complaining that without French farmers, this project can't work. So by the end of the century, you know, in 1870, 71, we have Germany goes to war with France. Germany also becomes the thing. We have the Franco Prussian War, right? Napoleon falls at the end of the Franco Prussian War, and France becomes a republic yet again, right? And by the time the republic is back, French policy has settled into this uneasy conclusion re Algeria, which is that it's not a colony, in the same way that, like, Indochina is, right? And for a description of how they're looking at Algeria in this period, I want to quote from an article written by Jim House for the University of Leeds. Algerians were French subjects, but not French citizens. For decades, Algerians embodied a significant exception to the established French republican model that for men at least, combined nationality and citizenship. Algeria constituted a colonial territory fully integrated into the republic, that, as politicians like to say, ran from Dunkirk in the north to Tamanrasset in the Sahara. The Mediterranean separating France and Algeria, like the Seine running through Paris, right? So I think that's really important to dwell on a little. After the revolution, there are attempts to say, look, France is an empire. We govern a lot of territory that's outside of Europe, but all the men there are equal, right? Because, you know, liberty, egality, fraternity, right? We're all equal. There are attempt. Now, they're never perfect. We can talk about Haiti, right? The French are never perfectly consistent, but there is an attempt in most of their colonial possessions to say, we recognize the equality of all men, right? They don't really believe it. They're not consistent about it, but they are at least signposting that. And they don't even try to do that with Algeria, right? The final establishment of French policy is that Algerian land is ours and the people don't belong anywhere, right? They can move. They can move to Paris even if they want, but they won't have rights there. They can't vote. They're not citizens, right? And because shit is bad in Algiers, in Algeria, there's a lot of poverty, there's a lot of desperation, a lot of Algerians move to Paris, right? Both native Algerians and kind of people who for a couple generations had been part of this European population that call themselves Algerians. In Algeria, they also moved to Paris, and there's an extent to which they're all viewed kind of the same by Parisians, right? And they come to form a permanent underclass. And this is, by the way, still a thing in France, and particularly in Paris. The Algerian population, which is consistently mistreated and not. Not treated equally and abused by the police and like that is still a problem in France to this day, right? And this is kind of where that all starts, you know? And so these. These Algerians who are living in Paris are abused by the police, they're abused by their employers. They're unable to advocate for themselves in any legal way. This is not a happy situation for the Algerians who are living in Paris. And there's a lot of anger as a result of that. In 1892, the French Senate ordered an inquiry into Algerian affairs, which was written by emilien Chatroux. His 350 page report essentially summarized the final conclusion of the French state into the Algerian question. Chatroux was not only a government official who was supposed to be analyzing the country, he'd lived for years in Algeria. During a chapter in the history of colonial policies towards land use, he praised the richness of Algeria's land and blamed its constant famines, which had been incited by the government during Napoleon III's reign to starve Algerians and break the rebel movement, as instead being caused by negligence and lack of foresight by Algerian farmers. They didn't foresee that we were gonna kill em, you know, that's why they died.
