ABSTRACT
More than any other colonial confrontation, the French-Algerian War (1954–62) forcibly demonstrated North Africa’s impact on a major European power. The war in Algeria triggered a series of events that toppled the Fourth Republic, affected intellectual life and destroyed long-standing myths about the universality of French culture. On a grand scale, therefore, the decolonisation of Algeria forced a fundamental reconsideration of politics, the status of intellectuals and the role of French culture in the world. This reconsideration had, in fact, become so extreme that by the conclusion of the war in March 1962, the French nation was suffering from an unprecedented identity crisis. In short, the French-Algerian War and the process of decolonisation disrupted France and French perceptions of France on a level not seen since the German Occupation and, one can argue, even since the French Revolution. Unquestionably, France and Algeria continue to feel the repercussions of this ‘uncivil war’, and historians have only just begun to delve seriously into this troubled past. Recent brazen admissions of torture by French generals such as Paul Aussaresses and Jacques Massu have renewed national and international debates over how historians of modern France and the French government ought to proceed. 1
