Editing Algerian War of Independence (section)

== Background ==
=== Conquest of Algeria ===
[[File:Vernet-Combat de Somah.jpg|thumb|Battle of Somah in 1836]]
[[File:Arrival of Marshal Randon in Algier-Ernest-Francis Vacherot mg 5120.jpg|thumb|Arrival of Marshal [[Jacques Louis Randon|Randon]] in Algiers in 1857]]

On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algeria in 1830. Directed by Thomas Robert Bugeaud, who became the first Governor-General of Algeria, the conquest was violent and marked by a "scorched earth" policy designed to reduce the power of the native rulers, the [[Dey]], including massacres, mass rapes and other atrocities. Between 500,000 and 1,000,000, from approximately 3 million Algerians, were killed in the first three decades of the conquest. In Algeria, colonization and genocidal massacres proceeded in tandem. From 1830 to 1847, its European settler population quadrupled to 104,000. Of the native Algerian population of approximately 3 million in 1830, about 500,000 to 1 million perished in the first three decades of French conquest. French losses from 1830 to 1851 were 3,336 killed in action and 92,329 dying in hospital.

In 1834, Algeria became a French military colony. It was declared by the Constitution of 1848 to be an integral part of France and was divided into three departments: Alger, Oran and Constantine]]. Many French and other Europeans (Spanish, Italians, Maltese and others) later settled in Algeria.

Under the Second Empire (1852–1871), the ''Code de l'indigénat'' (Indigenous Code) was implemented by the ''sénatus-consulte'' of 14 July 1865. It allowed Muslims to apply for full French citizenship, a measure that few took since it involved renouncing the right to be governed by ''sharia'' law in personal matters and was widely considered to be apostasy. Its first article stipulated:

The indigenous Muslim is French; however, he will continue to be subjected to Muslim law. He may be admitted to serve in the army (armée de terre) and the navy (armée de mer). He may be called to functions and civil employment in Algeria. He may, on his demand, be admitted to enjoy the rights of a French citizen; in this case, he is subjected to the political and civil laws of France.

Prior to 1870, fewer than 200 demands were registered by Muslims and 152 by Jewish Algerians.

After [[World War II]], equality of rights was proclaimed by the ''ordonnance'' of 7 March 1944 and later confirmed by the ''loi Lamine Guèye'' of 7 May 1946, which granted French citizenship to all subjects of France's territories and overseas departments, and by the 1946 Constitution. The Law of 20 September 1947 granted French citizenship to all Algerian subjects, who were not required to renounce their Muslim personal status.

Algeria was unique to France because unlike all other overseas possessions acquired by France during the 19th century, Algeria was considered and legally classified to be an integral part of France.

=== Algerian Nationalism ===
[[File:Algier1954.ogg|thumb|1954 film about French Algeria]]

Both Muslim and European Algerians took part in World War II and fought for France. Algerian Muslims served as ''tirailleurs'' (such regiments were created as early as 1842) and spahis; and French settlers as Zouaves or Chasseurs d'Afrique. US President Woodrow Wilson's 1918 Fourteen Points had the fifth read: "A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of [[sovereignty]] the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined." Some Algerian intellectuals, dubbed ''oulémas'', began to nurture the desire for independence or, at the very least, autonomy and self-rule.

Within that context, a grandson of [[Emir Abdelkader|Abd el-Kadir]] spearheaded the resistance against the French in the first half of the 20th century and was a member of the directing committee of the French Communist Party. In 1926, he founded the ''Étoile Nord-Africaine'' ("North African Star"), to which [[Messali Hadj]], also a member of the Communist Party and of its affiliated trade union, the [[Confédération générale du travail unitaire]] (CGTU), joined the following year.

The North African Star broke from the Communist Party in 1928, before being dissolved in 1929 at Paris's demand. Amid growing discontent from the Algerian population, the French Third Republic|Third Republic (1871–1940) acknowledged some demands, and the Popular Front initiated the Blum-Viollette proposal in 1936, which was supposed to enlighten the Indigenous Code by giving French citizenship to a small number of Muslims. The ''pieds-noirs'' (Algerians of European origin) violently demonstrated against it and the North African Party also opposed it, leading to its abandonment. The pro-independence party was dissolved in 1937, and its leaders were charged with the illegal reconstitution of a dissolved league, leading to Messali Hadj's 1937 founding of the ''Parti du peuple algérien'' (Algerian People's Party, PPA), which, no longer espoused full independence but only extensive autonomy. This new party was dissolved in 1939. Under Vichy France, the French State attempted to abrogate the Crémieux Decree to suppress the Jews' French citizenship, but the measure was never implemented. December 2016

On the other hand, the nationalist leader [[Ferhat Abbas]] founded the Algerian Popular Union (''Union populaire algérienne'') in 1938. In 1943, Abbas wrote the Algerian People's Manifesto (''Manifeste du peuple algérien''). Arrested after the Sétif massacre of May 8, 1945, when the French Army and pieds-noirs mobs killed between 6,000 and 30,000 Algerians, Abbas founded the [[Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto]] (UDMA) in 1946 and was elected as a deputy. Founded in 1954, the [[National Liberation Front (Algeria)|National Liberation Front]] (FLN) created an armed wing, the ''Armée de Libération Nationale'' (National Liberation Army) to engage in an armed struggle against French authority. Many Algerian soldiers served for the French Army in the French Indochina War had strong sympathy to the Vietnamese fighting against France and took up their experience to support the ALN.

France, which had just lost French Indochina, was determined not to lose the next colonial war, particularly in its oldest and nearest major colony, which was regarded as a part of Metropolitan France (rather than a colony), by French law.