ABSTRACT
Using a variation of the French warning at level crossings, Un train peut en cacher un autre, the French-Algerian historian Benjamin Stora once described how one memory (of the Algerian war of independence) may obscure another (of French colonial rule in Algeria): Quand une mémoire (de guerre) peut en cacher une autre (coloniale). The emotions around the final bloody phase of French colonial rule in Algeria are still so fresh and powerful, that to this day France is barely able to view this period with any detachment – and is, therefore, a long way from being able to explore the preceding colonial history seriously. 1
