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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:29]
B
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anit Anand and me, William Trimble. This is episode two of our Algeria series. Now, last time we told the story of how France first colonized Algeria in the 1800s. And we describe the Corsair Republic with an economy built on slavery, the heroic resistance of Abdelkader, and the ultimate French victory through absolutely brutal tactics. Now, today we pick up that story with how the French ruled in Algeria and how VE Day and the Vietnam War were catalysts that lit the spark of Algerian resistance in the 30s and the 50s. It started one of the most vicious anti colonial wars in modern history.
- [01:15]
A
It's a really extraordinary story, but I think before you understand how it got quite as vicious and brutal as it did, anyone that's seen the Battle of Algiers, one of my favorite films, knows just how brutal it did become. You have to go right back to a crucial decision made in Paris in 1848. And at that point, France had been fighting in Algeria for 18 years and had killed an enormous number of people and in an odd sort of way had no clear idea what it was doing there. It had invaded for political reasons, for a dynasty which was no longer around. It had successfully conquered Algiers, it had successfully defeated the initial resistance of Abdul Qadir. But there was no kind of master plan on, on how to use this and what to do with it and what was going to be the scale of this colony. And the new government of the Second Republic was looking at the different options and it made a choice that was going to change the history of Algeria in the next century radically. And depending on how you look at it, it was either a sort of breathtaking idealism or breathtaking cynicism, or both. Simultaneously, it declared that Algeria was not a colony, it was actually France. There were three departments, Oran, Algiers and Constantine. These are the three coastal provinces. And if you go to Algeria, most of it is the Sahara. But there is this incredibly rich coastal strip at the coast, which is true of the entire North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. That is very, very rich and is very familiar to any, anyone that comes from France because it's, it's, you know, territory that vineyards can grow on, it's olive trees and it's plains full of grain next to the sea. It looks a bit like these you know, if you're coming from France, this is the sort of territory you want to seize, and this is what is going on now. And so they just incorporate this into a metropolitan republic. Algeria is now governed directly by the Ministry of the Interior in Paris. It was subject to French law and eligible to send deputies to the French Assembly. But. There's a lot of buts, Anita.
- [03:33]
B
Well, yeah, big, big buts. Because you have an implication immediately of this decision, and it turns into an implication that's going to torment the republic for the next 114 years, frankly. There's a historian called Jennifer Sessions, and she's written a definitive account of the French conquest. And I'm just going to borrow what she says, because I think she puts it really, really neatly. She says the incorporation of Algeria was a trap, and the Republic set that trap. If you know a little bit about the Algerian War of Independence, you might have heard of the Pied Noirs, but we should really explain who they were. So if you literally translate it, Pied Noir means black feet. And we sort of talked about a little bit in the last episode of why they might have been called that. Some said it was because the French who arrived in Algiers wore boots and everyone else wore sandals. Others said it was actually because when the Corsairs kidnapped Europeans and made them work in the vineyards and trample on grapes, they had stained feet.
- [04:31]
A
I like. I like the second one, but it's almost certainly not true.
- [04:34]
B
Of course you do. It has wine in it. Let's say when they. The things that we definitely know. The things we definitely know is that they start arriving in about the 1830s, and they continue to arrive through the 19th century, and the numbers peak in 1900. When I say peak, these are huge numbers, William.
- [04:54]
A
It's extraordinary because very quickly, in as little as 20 or 30 years, you get close to a million European settlers coming in and just taking the richest land, this incredibly fertile land by the coast. And at the top of the pile are wealthy landowners, wine producers, businessmen, people with fortunes built on Algerian land and Algerian labor known as the Grande Colon. But they're not the kind of fancy French aristocrats, these guys, you know, they are originally from the bottom of the French pile, and not just French. One of the weirdest things about the French settlers in Algeria is there's lots of Spaniards there and Corsicans and sort of random Italians who turn up too Maltese. The point is that they are not Arabs, and they are given priority over the Arabs. They seize the best land below those Grand Colons. You Have a whole world of Spanish laborers, Maltese artisans, Italian farmers, French smallholders and, you know, Pied Noir, factory workers, dockers, school teachers, that kind of stuff, the petit blanc, as they're called. These guys are people who are new, rich. They've come because they're trying to make a better life and they're doing it very consciously on the back of the Algerians whose land they're taking. And they have a very, very negative view of, of the local Algerians. They regard them as these, as these lower species to be exploited land to. And everything about their life depends on having seized the Algerians land.
- [06:30]
B
Yeah, I mean, you've probably heard of one of the Pied Noirs without even knowing that you've heard of one of the Pied Noirs, because the author and philosopher and theorist Albert Camus was born in 1913 in Mondovi and he is the most famous, I would suggest, Pied Noir that we have. So that Mondovis is in the northeast of the country. His father was exactly as William has described, a farm labourer. His mother was an illiterate laundress. And they grew up in a working class district of Algiers. So, you know, it was kind of an idyllic childhood.
- [07:04]
A
I've been to his flat, funnily enough.
- [07:06]
B
Then, you know, from what he's talked about, from what he's written, you know, it's an idyllic child of swimming in the Mediterranean, writing in the beating sun. And he becomes this amazing literary product of a community that actually does, and let's not make any bones about this, contain some really vicious racists. Now, you'd expect if you know Abba Camus and you know his body of work, you're probably thinking, well, he must have riled up against this, he must have stood up and said, this is disgusting, I can't bear this, because, you know, he writes about injustice very beautifully in a very convincing way. But the thing about Camus is that he actually pretty much sits on the fence throughout his life. I mean, and it's very, very weird. So, you know, very striking, very striking. And for a curious mind. And this man does have a curious mind. I mean, look, you know, he's. He's read Kierkegaard, he's read Nietzsche, he's read Greek, Latin, but he doesn't really engage with the Islamic culture in any respectful way at all.
- [08:08]
A
Doesn't have a word of Arabic, not at all. Doesn't know any Arabic, it doesn't know any Islamic history. Has no curiosity about, about this, this culture. He does have some Arab friends. I mean, he's not. He's not. He's not, you know, like the. The vicious, racist, beating the. The Algerian dock workers or whatever. But he's. He's astonishingly incurious about this whole civilization, which he's born on top of.
- [08:31]
B
Incurious. And also. And very careful about not making comment as well, because, I mean, you know, if you're in the middle of the maelstrom to sort of act as if you can't see what's going on around you is really, I think, peculiar. Anyway, that's my verdict on Camus. You can come at me if you like.
- [08:48]
A
So the key point, and this is what is the big But France declares that Algeria is part of France in 1948. But there's the catch. Algeria is France, in reality, only for the 1 million European settlers. The Pied Noire, the 9 million Muslim Algerians who actually live in this country, who have roots in the country, whose ancestors farmed the land for centuries, are not French citizens. They are French subjects, which means that they are governed by a completely different series of laws. So it's a form of formalized apartheid. You have one set of laws which are the French laws, which give you all the rights of a modern European nation, and that is for the French and other European immigrants. And then you have a completely different set of basic sort of military rules which allows no freedom, no freedom of expression, no right to protest, no votes. But no votes is the crucial one. They could not vote. They could not stand for election. They could not hold office in the French administration.
- [09:53]
B
If you want to parallel, I think Puerto Rico and the United States is one such, is it not? I mean, they can't vote in American presidential elections. They don't have the same rights. And yet Puerto Rico is part of the American umbrella. I think in the same way, you
- [10:08]
A
could also, I think, go more viciously South Africa in that these guys are subject to very vicious police regulations. And, you know, they are constantly being beaten up by the raided and, as we'll see later, tortured. It's a very, very brutal system. But the important point is that there is this, what they call the Code d', indigenard, the native code, which is an entirely separate legal system that has no equivalent in mainland France. And so some people are more French than others. And the French values of liberty, galaty and fraternity are not for everyone. They're just for the Europeans. It's a very straight racist divide.
- [10:48]
B
Yeah, you're right. I mean, you know, William, those are the Things that we know France for liberte, egalit, fraternity. But even though they have this ideology, they do something very, very different when it comes to North Africa, you know, and they have a word for it. It's civilisatrice. Civilisatrice, the civilizing miss that is a contradiction. You know, you can't believe in these three things and yet do what you do to your subjects. And there is one man who clearly exposes this contradiction. And his name is Alexis de Tocqueville, and he's one of the greatest liberal thinkers of the 19th century, author of Democracy in America, a man who no one can accuse of being unsympathetic to freedom. Now, de Tocqueville visits Algeria in 1841 and he writes with extraordinary candor. We have made Muslim society more miserable, more disorganized, more ignorant and more barbarous than it ever had been before our arrival. Just take that in for one second. So what was life like for ordinary Muslim Algerians before the revolution? Well, I mean, look, not good, in brief, because you could be fined, you could be imprisoned. If you think about the way we've talked about India, you know, in the lead up to 1919, where all sorts of basic human rights are suspended. So if you're an ordinary Muslim Algerian living your daily life, the code, you know, the indigenous code, means that you can be fined or imprisoned for an enormous number of things that a European is completely entitled to do. So you can be punished for traveling outside your local area without a permit. I mean, that's the South African parallel. You were talking about those pass laws, making a rude remark to a French official. I that is something that people used to get thrashed for, for not salaaming a British officer during the Raj, that kind of thing, you could face collective punishment for the actions of any one of your neighbours, so that, you know, somebody down your lane or street could be doing something and you are all guilty. You can also be conscripted for labour. So if there's a public works project, even if you've got another job, but this is a public works project that probably benefits the settlers, you have no choice, you cannot opt out. And if you want to become a French citizen, because, you know, maybe you would believe in this sort of greater French Empire, you have to, and this is the sticking point which makes it impossible for most Algerians to do this, you have to formally renounce your Muslim personal status. So you have to abandon Islamic civil law regarding marriage, regarding inheritance. In other words, you are French, you are fully French. You have to stop being fully Muslim. Simple as that. And you know what? People weren't prepared to pay that price. And I think, William, it might be worth noting that there was a brief moment when, I mean, if you do the sliding doors thing that we often do on this podcast, things could have been different because under Napoleon iii In the 1860s, there was a genuine attempt to implement what he called the Arab Kingdom. So that would have treated Algeria not as a colony, but to be stripped and settled, but as a realm in its own right. I suppose equivalent would be, you know, the Ottomans and their. Or the Persians and their satrapies, you know, that you're sort of normally in control, but they are allowed to do whatever they do. And Napoleon visited Algeria twice. He declared, this is a direct quote from him. The Arabs, like the colonists, are all my subjects. So that you know that equality is implied in what he says. His 1863 law was a genuine attempt to protect Arab communal land rights against settler appropriation. But even Napoleon III could not make that stick because his rule and edict was immediately subverted by the settler lobby. And when he falls, Napoleon III in 1870, the Third Republic hands authority over the indigenous population, the population that needs to be civilized to, directly to the settlers. So you. You just hear, you get to that date, you hear this window slam, it's never going to go to that vision that Napoleon III had in mind. So, you know what comes next, and, you know, all of the paving stones of contempt that lead to what comes next sort of seem inevitable, you know, and deliberately chosen, if you like.
- [15:17]
A
And the thing that cements this in place, this sort of massive system of justice, as well as the. The native code, this dual legal system that gives different rights to the colonists and lesser rights to the local Algerians, are a series of land laws that will be very familiar to anyone that listened to our series about the West bank after 1967. Because what happens is that in Ottoman law in both countries, there's a huge amount of communal land and communal land holding. And this is the land that the Israelis seized for settlements after 1967. It's exactly the same in Algeria a century earlier, 1860s, 1870s, the French dismantled this traditional system of tribal and communal landholding. And in exactly the same way as the settlers did throughout the 1960s. And indeed, today in the west bank, the French do in 1860s Algeria, they take the coastal strip, very fertile, the river valleys, and the whole lot passes into European ownership. And the Muslim Algerians are pushed into the marginal scrub. This has the whole intellectual superstructure that's very important. There's this guy Renault, who comes up with the intellectual justification of it. And this is where you see, for the first time, I think, in modern history, the clear statement that Islam is the opposite of Europe, that Europe represents egality, fraternity, and all the rest of it, liberty, but that Islam is a different system.
- [16:53]
B
And Islam, well, it's inferior and barbarous. To me, this sort of feels a little bit like the, I don't know, the period of the Crusades where, you know, the Christians were superior, the Muslims were inferior.
- [17:04]
A
It's certainly sense that Christians have just a right to take Muslim land. But the intellectual backup to this, and this is what's important, is that you get this idea of the Piedmont posing as the ambassadors of civilization, and they tell the metropolitan French that we are defending civilization for you against the barbarous Muslims. This is exactly the same rhetoric you get even today from people like Netanyahu saying that we in Israel are defending you guys in Europe and America. We are the front line against Muslim barbarism, against fanaticism, against extremism. And these ideas get formulated by Ernest Renan at this period to justify French rule in Algeria. And in the decades to come, we'll see the French rule extending into much of black Africa with the scramble of Africa, which is something we're going to have to deal with this podcast soon. It's a fascinating story, but these ideas are formulated in Algeria in the early 19th century and the mid 19th century and then get extended. So both the idea of the civilizing mission and the idea that there is almost a duty to keep these inferior races in their place. And there's this guy, the Prime Minister, Jules Ferry, who makes it explicit in a parliamentary speech in Paris in 1885. He says, Just quite simply, the superior races have a right over the inferior races. A right because they have a duty. They have a duty to civilize the inferior races. And this is the ideology that underpins everything. And it has also a very chilling division in that comes from Reynolds work, where you put on one side the Aryan races. This will sound familiar to anyone that knows that 20th, mid 20th century German history. And that is contrasted with the Semitic races, which means not in this case, not just the Jews, but the native Algerians.
- [19:05]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's sort of a sinister sorting hat, if you like, you know, that kind of ideology. Now, it's not surprising, is it, if you have that kind of mindset, with all the power by 1954, just to put some numbers again. On this, the European settlers make up about 10% of the population, but they own a quarter of the cultivated land. So, you know, anything that grows and is green and is pleasant and has a view that belongs to the very minority at 10% settler community. So it is not a surprise at all that actually Algerians don't like this. They do not think it is fair. And by the 1930s you have this nascent kind of political opposition that is growing. You know, I think it's been characterized as, you know, green shoots of nationalism and resistance. And there are two very important people you should know about. So the first is Ferhat Abbas. So he sort of has the, you know, the look of, oh, I don't know, an uncle, a stern uncle.
- [20:05]
A
I think he's rather more handsome than that, but rather sort of dashing. He's sort of person playing a commando in a kind of French World War II movie or something.
- [20:13]
B
He's the person who sends you to your room without your supper because you haven't said please is what he looks like to me. But anyway, look, he's, he's born in Sativ. He's the son of a local official and he was very smart. I mean, you're right, you know, double breasted suits. He also breaks that cultural, racial categorizing divide because he marries a French woman. You know, already that makes him unusual. But he is moderate, he's eloquent, he's reasonable, he wants to work within the system. You know, if you want the parallel with India, he's like the, oh, I don't know, the precursors to Gandhi maybe for the first part, Gandhi Mark 1 as opposed to Gandhi Mark 2.
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There are strong parallels.
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He says, Algerians, my Algerian brothers, absolutely. We have the right to demand more. But, you know, we want to be French citizens, we want equality within France. He's not talking about booting them out, he's talking about having rights in your own homeland. In, in 1936, this is what he writes. He says, I will not die for the Algerian homeland because such a homeland does not exist. But as with Gandhi, you know, things happen. And in 1936 you have this transformation. The episode for Gandhi was the massacre in Amritsar. And for Faridabas it is the Bloom Violette bill, which would have granted French citizenship To a mere 22,000 educated, professionally qualified Algerian Muslims without requiring them to renounce their personal status. That is sort of traveling through it
- [21:53]
A
is such a small concession, tiny 22,000.
- [21:56]
B
Yeah, it is a drop in the bucket. And even that gets shot down. So you've got the pied noire settler lobby in Algeria. Here they are rich, they are organized, they are politically plugged in. Every mayor of every Algerian town resigns in protest because they won't let this, even this tiniest thing through, okay? And this, this tells Abbas all he needs to know. Basically, the French are never going to do anything. There's not going to be any kind of concession. And that changes him. And he suddenly becomes not moderate anymore, but a man who wants them out.
- [22:33]
A
It is very much that same world that you describe in your book of the Amritsar moment. These people who were previously prepared to work within the colonial system suddenly saying, no, we've had enough. Now there's another character also who's a contrast with Abbas in that he's far more radical. And this is Masali Hajj. Masali Hajj has, has got a terrific dress set. He's this sort of bearded figure. He's got a fez and he's got the thing that's like a Kashmiri ferran, a sort of, sort of smock, a traditional Algerian smock, which looks spectacular. And he is from one of my favorite places in Algeria, Tlemcen, that is. It looks like a mini, a Granada, like a mini Alhambra. It's a wonderful place, full of these gorgeous Islamic palaces. Masalihaj is a fiery bearded working class orator. He's been radicalized in France in the 1920s where he's encountered the French communists. Also, he is an early adherent to pan Arabism and above all the organized Algerian immigrant workers in the Paris suburbs. Now this is something that we will be talking more about in our bonus episode with my friend Farah Manjour that we've just recorded because her, her family, also from Sativ, were very much part of this world. Anyway, he founds the first political party in Paris, 1926 and is arrested almost immediately. He becomes the most important politician in French Algeria and the most popular. And at a rally in 1936, Masali scoops up in a very operatic way. A handful of Algerian earth holds it above his head and roars to the crowd. This land is not for sale. Which goes down a treat as you come out to the crowd, goes wild. Now after the break, see how these two major events of the mid 20th century, World War II and Vietnam change the course of the Algerian war of independence and set it on a path that is going to be incredibly violent and lead to many, many death.
- [24:46]
B
Welcome back. Now, just before the break, willi was saying that you've got the, you know, the war, which is about to change everything. And the war is the Second World War. So France falls, as anybody who's ever read a history book at school knows, in 1940. And of course that has huge consequences for those who live in France. You have the resistance and all of that. But actually what we don't talk about is the ramifications beyond France and Algerian Muslims who've been told all their lives that, you know, France is superior, it is, you know, indomitable. It is, it is strong. You can't beat it. They watch this great land that has lorded it over them collapse in a period of just six weeks. And it tells them something. It tells them something really important. It tells them, hey, if they can fall, we can push, you know, and that changes a mindset in Algeria.
- [25:43]
A
When we did our series on the Indian Mutiny, when the Indians saw in the early part of the Crimean War the British were just being mowed down by the Russians, the same realization comes that these guys are not infallible, they're not unconquerable, they can be defeated. They are human, they are flesh and blood. And we can kill them and we can defeat them. Now the next thing that happens is 1942, when the Americans and the Brits turn up. This is in the aftermath of the defeat of Rommel after Tobruk and the beginning of the turning of the tide in the Second World War. And now there are not the Afrika Korps and Rommel running around in North Africa. It is Americans and Brits. And they hear the Americans talk about self determination. In November 1942, Operation Torch, there are landings in North Africa. The streets of Algiers and Ora fill with wealthy, confident American British soldiers. American planes drop leaflets across North Africa featuring Roosevelt's face and promises of self determination, the right of people to choose their own government. The very thing that France has spent so long denying 90% of Algerians.
- [26:56]
B
Yeah, I mean, a long time, 112 years denying the Algerians. This is very sort of basic equality and waiting in the wings. And this is music to his ears. Of course he's been waiting for this. It's that moderate revolutionary leader that we spoke about, that Willy kind of fancies more than I do. But Ferrat Abbas, and he sees I like his hat. He seizes like his kids.
- [27:18]
A
I want this ferret.
- [27:19]
B
That's fine. I mean, he seizes the moment and he publishes this manifesto of the Algerian people. It's disseminated everywhere, It's One of those things that gets, you know, duplicated, replicated. You show it to your friends in February 19, 1943, and it is a document that for the very first time demands an autonomous Algerian state. That this is no longer we want you out. We want no connection. We want to be on our own feet. And this is, you know, this is the same man. Do you remember the quote I just gave you? That I can't lobby for an independent Algeria, for such a thing does not exist. Well, now it sure exists. And that's all he wants. And nothing less will do. You know, it's not independence, I guess. I mean, he doesn't use the word independence, but it is autonomy. Okay, so he hasn't done the full, you know, we want nothing to do with you, you are our enemy, but we really want you out. And we're going to control our own affairs. That's what we're going to do. And that's a real sea change. And what do the French do? They put him under house arrest, William. They don't engage at all. You know, all of this is erupting. France is in a terrible parlor state. But you know, they just, they sling him into his house and they put an armed guard. Now bear in mind, Algerian soldiers are fighting in the liberation of France. They're fighting in Italy, they're fighting in Provence, they are involved in the push into the Rhine. And they are treated even then. Even then when they're fighting for the French as second class soldiers of a second class people segregated from European troops. They're paid less, they're given less recognition, they're denied the pensions, they're denied the benefits that French soldiers who march and bleed next to them get automatically. So all of this, just imagine this resentment now that is now sort of building and bubbling and it is set
- [29:10]
A
to boil over on VE Day, May 8, 1945, the day the world celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Algerian resistance is about to begin in Satif again. Satif, where Farah's family are from, where we've seen all this action begin. Around 8,000 Algerians assemble to march through the town centre. They're going to lay a wreath at the war memorial honoring the many Algerians who have died for France. Now, Satif is a market town in the east of Algeria. It's not far from Hippo, where those of you that grew up like I did with Augusta de Hippo, my monks who educated me would always talk about this as if it was the center of the world. Anyway, in this period, 1945, a Swiss owned company controls about 50,000 of hectares of fertile farmland. And the local Muslims face drought and near starvation. And it's also the hometown, as we know, of our nationalist hero, Farhat Abbas. The marchers agree with the police in advance that there will be no nationalist banners. But a rebellious Algerian proudly flies the forbidden Algerian flag imprinted with the words Long live free and independent Algeria. And of course, a police sergeant tries to seize it. The man refuse shots the Fahd. And a young man named Buzil Sal becomes the first person to die in the Algerian struggle against the French. And this begins a domino effect.
- [30:46]
B
Exactly. So, you know, we've had a very clear explanation, explanation about how Tinder is gathered. This is the spark. So news from Setif spreads like wildfire, forgive the pun, into the countryside very, very quickly. And what has been pent up for decades explodes. So in the hills around Setif, in the towns of Kerata and Guelma, armed groups of Algerians start attacking European settlers. And this is with horrific violence. Okay, 102 Europeans are killed. Many of them are mutilated in ways that have been used ever since to illustrate Algerian savagery. So, you know, that part is true. You know, the savage killings of these people did happen. But at the same time, also think about, you know, what led to this. You know, the humiliation, dispossession, you know, sort of of pleas for some kind of recognition that never comes. So, you know, understand the whole thing in the round. That was a horrific thing that happened. These are decades of awfulness that lead to it, if you like. How do the French respond, Willi?
- [31:56]
A
Well, exactly as you'd expect. It's swift and pretty apocalyptic. The Navy bombard coastal villages from their ships. Dive bombers attack mountain settlements. And in our wonderful bonus episode, which I strongly recommend, join the club and hear it, Farah talks about her grandmother describing the dive bombers attacking their Berber mountain villages. Above Satif, the French Foreign Legion is deployed. And in Guelma, the settler vigilante militia led by the local French sub prefect hunt down the educated Muslim middle class systematically through the town. Roughly 1500 Muslims are killed in Guelma alone, and their bodies are then chucked in a mass grave. And then to destroy the evidence, the graves are dug up and the bodies are incinerated in lime kilns.
- [32:49]
B
I mean, I should say, you know, that the death toll is hotly contested. So the official French figure at the time says around 1300 Muslims were killed. Algerian nationalists put the figure at 45,000. Now that's quite Discrepancy. So when modern historians have, you know, looked into this, their estimates lie between 6,000 and 20,000 souls, which is quite a bracket.
- [33:17]
A
It is an enormous 14,000 difference between the lowest and the highest.
- [33:20]
B
I mean, I should say, you know, at the time, a French general is worried about what's going on and the ramifications of what might happen next. So he warns his superiors in Paris, he says, I have given you peace for 10 years, but do not deceive yourself. What we have done is a duty, but it is an irreparable wrong. The Muslims have to choose between one way or the other, either becoming fully French or claim their independence. If we do not do what we refuse to do for Ferhata Abbas, they will want their revenge. And that is an ominous and actually very accurate warning, isn't it, Willi?
- [33:57]
A
It is. And we've now got to introduce one of the other crucial figures who'll be with us now for the next few episodes. This is Ahmed Ben Bella. He's the future president of Algeria, but at this point, he's just one of the men who returned from fighting for France in World War II. And he arrives back having been this incredibly distinguished fighting man who's decorated for bravery at Monte Cassino. He comes back in the middle of all this violence and the horrors of the spring of 1945. And this is as defining a moment for him as Amritsar was for Gandhi and Nehru. And he's completely radicalized. He refuses a promotion to become an officer, and instead he turns to local politics. Later, writing the horrors of the Constantine area in May 1945 succeeded in persuading me that the only path was Algeria. For the Algerians, this was a man who'd gone to become the first president. And he's not alone. A whole generation of Algerian men who'd served in the French army, who'd learned how to fight, who knew how to use weapons, and who'd fought and bled for the liberation of France, look to Sative, and they draw the same conclusion. The peaceful path is definitely closed. We've got to turn to violence.
- [35:12]
B
What surprises me is none of these colonial powers look to their left or the right because they could learn lessons. You know, these are templates for insurrection. They've happened, you know, in decades before. They've happened in continents that you can see and hear about. But, you know, they don't learn. And this is what happens anyway. So what happens next, again, is one of those moments that causes an explosion of anger, because I think you could sort of say it just very simply, the French commit election fraud in the 1948 in Algeria on a massive scale.
- [35:46]
A
Absolutely, yeah.
- [35:47]
B
So, you know, Algerians realize that, you know, this carrot of democracy that's being, you know, sort of dangled in front of them, it's not going to work if the system is completely rigged. So, you know, nationalist parties are prevented from winning. The United nations itself is sort of having a look and overseeing this. And what they see is, you know, seizure of ballot boxes, stuffing, you know, votes that don't exist, voting cards refused to Muslims. You know, all of that kind of thing happens. And it happens in plain sight. So of course, now, okay, if you want shut down the democratic means of improving your lot, what are you left with? Well, what those people who have been fighting against that kind of oppression say, well, if we don't have any democratic way out of this, it has to be to pick up a gun. What else can we do? What else have you left us with? And that is kind of what happens.
- [36:39]
A
The next thing that happens is Vietnam. Now, this we have dealt with in our wonderful Vietnam series, which is one of my favorite of all our episodes. May 1954. The French Regular army suffers this catastrophic defeat that we described in that series at Dien Bien Phu. They're besieged for 55 days in a remote valley in northern Vietnam by the Viet Minh. And the garrison of 12,000 French are forced to surrender. And it is a absolutely textbook example for the Algerians of how they can get rid of the French and how they can defeat it. It is absolutely absolute textbook example of how to do what they now want to do. They see France's hold on Indochine is completely finished. And for all these Algerians who've been told that France is this great unassailable power, the effect of the news of the defeat at Dien Bien Phu is electrifying.
- [37:40]
B
Well, I mean, if you like, it's sort of, you know, it's proof positive. There was the indication that France had defeatable in World War II. And now look what's happening to them. And, you know, this is from those who sort of were farming in paddy fields before. So it really does put fire in the belly. And in 1947, you've got, you know, the fiery radical Masali Hajj and Ahmed Ben Bala and others looking at what's happened during the war and saying, you know, what we can. We can learn from this. They're not undefeatable. And they form this armed group called the Organization Speciales. But that Organization just keeps getting shut down. And it's a, you know, it's a rotate. It's one of those swinging doors. You're in prison, you're out of prison, you know, they keep rounding up the leaders and arresting them. In 1954, though, after the Vietnam defeat, you've got the old members of this organization, Special, who hold a secret meeting in Algiers. They form themselves with this rather sort of anomalous, you know, it doesn't sound very threatening. Committee of the 22 it's called. And the committee of the 22, with all of these old sort of battle hardened warriors, decide this is the time to act and by October, they formally constitute something that sounds like what it's going to do. The Front de Liberation National.
- [38:57]
A
That sounds more like it. Exactly.
- [38:59]
B
Committee of the 22 sounds like some kind of sales symposium. But now, now you know what they are. And they appoint a leadership of nine. The Neuf Historique, the nine historical figures who are commemorated in every Algerian home, on every Algerian street corner today. They divide Algeria into five military zones. They have a date in mind. They issue a proclamation. And it is one of the great texts of anti colonial struggle. So it's a direct address to the Algerian people and a direct address to the French government. And its demands are really simple independence, the restoration of the Algerian state, the preservation of all fundamental freedoms without any distinction of race or religion. And it is a charter for the revolution that is to come.
- [39:49]
A
But it's ignored. And in the next episode, we will see that France is all set now to dig in and fight. There's 1 million French settlers, the Pied Noire, who are not going anywhere. They have nowhere to retreat to. This is their home as far as they're concerned. These are their vineyards, this is their fields. And the stage is set for an incredibly vicious showdown. The war that erupts will kill hundreds of thousands of people. It will destroy the Fourth Republic, and it will end with a million Europeans fleeing the countries their family had called home for at least five generations. It's a spectacular story. It's one of the most dramatic stories we've ever told on this podcast. So join us next time as the fuse lights.
- [40:38]
B
And if you want to access that episode right now and you want to go ad free, then just follow the link in the description to join the Empire Club today. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand, and goodbye
- [40:50]
A
from me, William Durimple.