ABSTRACT
Algeria was never a colony like others in the French empire, largely because of its huge settler population. This settler presence deeply interested French intellectuals of the 1960s, who were caught up in the debates over, and then the prospective dissolution of, the Algerian drama of the period. The first works of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the historian Pierre Nora, and the political scientist Bruno Etienne, dealt specifically with the problem of the “settler colony,” and sometimes judged it harshly. 1 With hindsight, and in light of new historical research, 2 however, one can offer a more nuanced and complex assessment. We begin by examining the system of representations and references elaborated by this “community,” one million strong at the beginning of the 1960s, the moment of Algeria's independence.
