Making Algeria French

Making Algeria French relates the history of the pieds noirs and Algerians in colonial Bne renamed Annaba in 1962. Located in eastern Algeria this Mediterranean port city staked an early claim to world historical fame as the site of St. Augustine''s Hippo. Long after the Romans as well as the Arabs and Turks the French tried their hand at settling Algeria. Not content with mere occupation they constructed colonial cities along the Mediterranean littoral -Algiers Oran Bne - and populated them with twice as many European settlers - French Spanish Italians and Maltese - as native Algerians. Using the history of Bne as a lens David Prochaska looks at the nature of French colonialism in Algeria. His study is based on research in the former Bne municipal archives generally barred to researchers since 1962. Prochaska concentrates on the formative decades of settler society and culture between 1870 and 1920. After an overview of Bne in 1830 and a survey of French rule from 1830 to 1870 he describes in turn the economic social political and cultural history of Bne through the First World War. He argues that in making Bne a European city in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the settlers effectively blocked social evolution attempted to contain history and thereby precluded any genuine rapprochement with the Algerians in the twentieth century.