Algerian nationalism

He would hope to take from us what is in our hands and expel us from the kingdom of our fathers and ancestors.The transition from "Central Maghrebi" to the "Algerian" identity started in the early 16th century, with the establishment of the Regency of Algiers ("Dawlat Al-Jaza'ir", or "State of Algeria" in Arabic).

Many local leaders wished to see the Regency of Algiers go and instead a completely independent Algerian state be established, such as Muhieddiene al-Hassani and his son Abdelkader ibn Muhieddine, and there had been tensions in the country regarding modernization.

Do you ignore the fact that our country stretches from Oujda all the way to Tunisia, the Djerid, the Tell, and the Sahara, and that a woman can roam this vast expanse alone without fear of being disturbed by anyone, while your influence extends only over the ground covered by the feet of your soldiers.

Some of these people were members of the few wealthy Muslim families that had managed to insinuate themselves into the colonial system in the 1890s and had with difficulty succeeded in obtaining for their sons the French education coveted by progressive Algerians.

In 1908 they delivered to France's Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau a petition that expressed opposition under the status quo to a proposed policy to conscript Muslim Algerians into the French army.

In 1911, in addition to demanding preferential treatment for "the intellectual elements of the country", the group called for an end to unequal taxation, broadening of the franchise, more schools, and protection of indigenous property.

He was able to win electoral victories in Algiers and to enliven political discourse with his calls for reform and full assimilation, but by 1923 he tired of the struggle and left Algeria, eventually retiring to Damascus.

Some of the Young Algerians in 1926 formed the Federation of Elected Natives (Fédération des Élus Indigènes, FEI), as many of the former group's members had joined the circle of Muslims eligible to hold public office.

In addition to independence from France, the Star called for freedom of press and association, a parliament chosen through universal suffrage, confiscation of large estates, and the institution of Arabic schools.

European influences had some impact on indigenous Muslim political movements because Ferhat Abbas and Messali Hadj even with opposite views, essentially looked to France for their more secular ideological models.

The colons also had powerful allies in the French National Assembly, the bureaucracy, the armed forces, and the business community, and were strengthened in their resistance by their almost total control of the Algerian administration and police.

The congress drew up an extensive Charter of Demands, which called for the abolition of laws permitting imposition of the régime d'exception, political integration of Algeria and France, maintenance of personal legal status by Muslims acquiring French citizenship, fusion of European and Muslim education systems in Algeria, freedom to use Arabic in education and the press, equal wages for equal work, land reform, establishment of a single electoral college, and universal suffrage.

Meanwhile, Viollette drew up for the Blum government a proposal to extend French citizenship with full political equality to certain classes of the Muslim "elite", including university graduates, elected officials, army officers, and professionals.

Outlining the perceived past and present problems of colonial rule, the manifesto demanded specifically an Algerian constitution that would guarantee immediate and effective political participation and legal equality for Muslims.

Catroux was reportedly shocked by the "blinded spirit of social conservatism" of the colons, but he did not regard the manifesto as a satisfactory basis for cooperation because he felt it would submerge the European minority in a Muslim state.

A new factor influencing Muslim reaction to the reintroduction of the Viollette Plan — which by that date even many moderates had rejected as inadequate — was the shift in Abbas's position from support for integration to the demand for an autonomous state federated with France.

Abbas gained the support of the AUMA and formed Friends of the Manifesto and Liberty (Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté, AML) to work for Algerian autonomie with equal rights for both Europeans and Muslims.

Upon his release from five-year house arrest, Messali Hadj returned to Algeria and formed the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties (Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques, MTLD), which quickly drew supporters from a broad cross-section of society.

The statute also replaced mixed communes with elected local councils, abolished military government in the Algerian Sahara, recognized Arabic as an official language with French, and proposed enfranchising Muslim women.

The sweeping victory of Messali Hadj's MTLD in the 1947 municipal elections frightened the colons, whose political leaders, through fraud and intimidation, attempted to obtain a result more favorable to them in the following year's first Algerian Assembly voting.

French socialists and moderates tried to initiate a formal inquiry into the reports of vote fraud but were prevented from doing so by the assembly's European delegates, who persuaded the governor general that an investigation would disturb the peace.

[17] Encouraged by i.e. Egypt's President Gamal Abdul Nasser (r. 1954–71), their role was to gain foreign support for the rebellion and to acquire arms, supplies, and funds for the wilaya commanders.

The FLN was a complex organisation, entailing much more than what perceived at first glance, they were characterised by an anti-intellectualism and a conviction that the country (and thereby also the abstract masses) had to be liberated by a violent group of dedicated revolutionaries.

[20] Spurred by i.e. internal political turmoil partly caused by an enormous presence of the French army, an effect of a vote in of special powers by the National Assembly, FLN was under severe pressure in the late 50s.

[30] In 1962, Ben Bella was after a turbulent couple of months named president of the independent Algeria, and drawing upon a largely mythical and invented past tried to ambitiously govern the post-colonial reality.

His travels to Cuba, where he met with both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to discuss the communist revolutions further amplified the socialist affiliation of the government were important signifiers of the nature of the Algerian self.

[opinion] Under the leadership of Boumediene, the city continued to play its role of a capital of liberation movements, although denunciation of the anti-Islamic "communist influences" Ben Bella was accused of having susceptible to.

[opinion] During a grand synopsium, Boumediene addressed three main questions that to a large extent shaped the discourse surrounding the festival and pointed to the role of culture in the construction of national as well as panafricain identities.

The nationalist project of Boumediène was is a way articulated as a dual one, in the sens that it aimed to go back to traditional values and norms, but at the same time to progress and develop in the modern world of science and technology.

[39] The current anti-Bouteflika demonstrations in Algeria (Manifestations de 2019 en Algérie or 2019 Algerian protests) were, especially in the beginning, extremely careful not to be identified with the Islamist civil war of the 1990s or with the Arab spring of early 2010.