French conquest of Algeria
The French conquest of Algeria took place between 1830 and 1847 resulting in French Algeria. In 1827, an argument between Hussein Dey, the ruler of the Regency of Algiers, and the French consul escalated into a naval blockade, following which the Kingdom of France invaded Algiers in 1830, and seized other coastal communities. Amid internal political strife in France, decisions were repeatedly taken to retain control of the territory, and additional military forces were brought in over the following years to quell resistance in the interior of the country. Although the conquest of Algeria largely ended by 1847, shortly before its formal annexation by France, it was not until 1903 that France fully secured its colonial borders, incorporating the Saharan south.
Initially, the Algerian resistance was mainly divided between forces under Ahmed Bey at Constantine, seeking to reinstate the Regency of Algiers, primarily in the east, and nationalist forces in the west and center. Treaties with the nationalists under Emir Abdelkader enabled the French to first focus on the elimination of the remnants of the Deylik, achieved with the 1837 siege of Constantine. Abdelkader continued to wage stiff resistance in the west. Finally driven into Morocco in 1842, by large-scale and heavy-handed French military action, he continued to wage a guerrilla war until the Moroccan government, under French diplomatic pressure following its defeat in the Franco-Moroccan War, attacked him and drove him out of Morocco. He surrendered to French forces in 1847. Various governments and scholars have considered France's conquest of Algeria as constituting a genocide.
Background
The coastal and mountainous parts of Algeria were controlled by the Regency of Algiers. The Regency, while nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, acted independently from the Ottoman Sultan. The dey ruled the entire Regency, but only exercised direct control in and around Algiers, with Beyliks established in the Western, Central, and Eastern parts of the country. The remainder of the territory, while nominally ruled by Algiers, was effectively under the control of local Berber and Arab leaders, who usually acted as vassals to Dey, albeit not always. In the northern Saharan parts some oasis kingdoms such as the Sultanate of Tuggurt were controlled by the Regency. The inner Saharan parts were only claimed by the Dey, while in reality they were completely controlled by tribal confederacies, and smaller kingdoms such as that of Kel Ahaggar. The Dey was supported, or in some cases controlled by the Janissaries of the Odjak of Algiers, although their power was heavily limited after 1817. The territory was bordered to the west by the Sultanate of Morocco and to the east by the Beylik of Tunis. The western border, the River, was particularly porous since there were shared tribal connections that crossed it.The Regency of Algiers was one of the main bases of the Barbary pirates and Barbary Slave Traders who attacked Christian ships and coastal settlements in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. Like the rest of the Barbary Coast, the Regency of Algiers lived from the trade of slaves or goods captured from Europe, America and Africa. The European powers bombarded Algiers on different occasions in retaliation and the United States initiated the Barbary Wars in order to put an end to Algerian privateering against Christian shipping.
The conquest of Algeria began in the last days of the Bourbon Restoration by Charles X of France. It aimed to put a definite end to Barbary privateering and increase the king's popularity among the French people, particularly in Paris, where many veterans of the Napoleonic Wars lived. Algerian slave trade and piracy immediately ceased after the French conquered Algiers.
Fan Affair
In 1795–96, the French Republic contracted to purchase wheat for the French army from two Jewish merchants in Algiers. The merchants, who had debts to Hussein Dey, the Dey of Algiers, claimed inability to pay those debts until France paid its debts to them. The dey unsuccessfully negotiated with Pierre Deval, the French consul, to rectify this situation, and suspected Deval of collaborating with the merchants against him, especially since the French government made no provision to pay the merchants in 1820. Deval's nephew Alexandre, the consul in Bône, further angered the dey by fortifying French storehouses in Bône and La Calle despite prior agreements. While the unpaid debts are attributed as the primary cause of the Fan Affair, David Todd argues in A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century that the substantive cause of the altercation was the French attempts to fortify a previously disused warehouse at La Calle, in an attempt to turn La Calle and the local region into a colonial outpost for the French, and that the dey's discussion of the debts arose as a secondary concern.After a contentious meeting on 29 April 1827 in which Deval refused to provide satisfactory answers, the dey struck Deval with his fly-whisk. Charles X used this slight against his diplomatic representative to first demand an apology from the dey, and then to initiate a blockade against the port of Algiers. The French blockade of Algiers lasted for three years, and was primarily to the detriment of French merchants who were unable to do business with Algiers, while Barbary pirates were still able to evade the blockade. When France in 1829 sent an ambassador to the dey with a proposal for negotiations, he responded with cannon fire directed toward one of the blockading ships. The French then decided that more forceful action was required.
Following the failure of the ambassador's visit, Charles appointed as prime minister Jules, Prince de Polignac, a hardline conservative. This outraged the liberal French opposition, which then had a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. Polignac opened negotiations with Muhammad Ali of Egypt to essentially divide up North Africa. Ali, although nominally a vassal of the Ottomans, eventually rejected this idea. As popular opinion continued to rise against Polignac and the King, they decided that a foreign policy victory such as the capture of Algiers would turn opinion in their favour again.
Invasion of Algiers
took command in Toulon of an armada of 635 ships and then headed for Algiers. Following a plan for the invasion of Algeria originally developed by Major Boutin under Napoleon in 1808, General de Bourmont then landed 34,000 soldiers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch, on 14 June 1830. To face the French, the dey sent 7,000 janissaries, 19,000 troops from the beys of Constantine and Oran, and about 17,000 Kabyles. The French established a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization. On 19 June the French defeated the dey's army at the battle of Staouéli, and entered Algiers on 5 July after a three-week campaign. The dey accepted capitulation in exchange for his freedom and the offer to retain possession of his personal wealth. Five days later, he went into exile in Naples with his family. The Turkish Janissaries also quit the territory, leaving for Turkey. The dey's departure ended 313 years of Ottoman rule of the territory.While the French command had nominally agreed to preserve the liberties, properties, and religious freedoms of the inhabitants, French troops immediately began plundering the city, arresting and killing people for arbitrary reasons, seizing property, and desecrating religious sites. By mid-August, the last remnants of Turkish authority were summarily deported without opportunity to liquidate significant assets. One estimate indicates that more than fifty million francs in assets were diverted into private hands during the plunder. This activity had a profound effect on future relations between the French occupiers and the natives. In 1833 a French commission wrote that "we have sent to their deaths on simple suspicion and without trial people whose guilt was always doubtful... we massacred people carrying safe conducts... we have outdone in barbarity the barbarians". The expulsion of the Turks created a power vacuum in significant parts of the territory, from which resistance to French occupation immediately arose.
The news of the capture of Algiers had hardly reached Paris when Charles X was deposed during the Three Glorious Days of July 1830, and his cousin Louis-Philippe, the "citizen king", was named to preside over a constitutional monarchy. The new government, composed of liberal opponents of the Algiers expedition, was reluctant to pursue the invasion begun by the old regime. However, the victory was enormously popular, and the new government of Louis-Philippe only withdrew a portion of the invasion force. General Bourmont, who had sent troops to occupy Bône and Oran, withdrew them from those places with the idea of returning to France to restore Charles to the throne. When it was clear that his troops were not supportive of this effort, he resigned and went into exile in Spain. Louis-Philippe replaced him with Bertrand Clauzel in September 1830.
The bey of Titteri, who had participated in the battle at Staouéli, attempted to coordinate resistance against the French with the beys of Oran and Constantine, but they were unable to agree on leadership. Clauzel in November led a French column of 8,000 to Médéa, Titteri's capital, losing 200 men in skirmishes. After leaving 500 men at Blida he occupied Médéa without resistance, as the bey had retreated.
Further expansion
Clauzel introduced a formal civil administration in Algiers, and began recruiting zouaves, or native auxiliaries to the French forces, with the goal of establishing a proper colonial presence. He and others formed a company to acquire agricultural land and to subsidize its settlement by European farmers, triggering a land rush. Clauzel recognized the farming potential of the Mitidja Plain and envisioned the production there of cotton on a large scale. During his second term as governor general, he used his office to make private investments in land and encouraged army officers and bureaucrats in his administration to do the same. This development created a vested interest among government officials in greater French involvement in Algeria. Commercial interests with influence in the government also began to recognize the prospects for profitable land speculation in expanding the French zone of occupation. Over a ten-year period they created large agricultural tracts, built factories and businesses, and bought cheap local labor.Clauzel also attempted to extend French influence into Oran and Constantine by negotiating with the bey of Tunis to supply "local" rulers that would operate under French administration. The bey refused, seeing the obvious conflicts inherent in the idea. The French foreign ministry objected to negotiations Clauzel conducted with Morocco over the establishment of a Moroccan bey in Oran, and in early 1831 replaced him with Baron Berthezène.
Berthezène was a weak administrator opposed to colonisation. His worst military failure came when he was called to support the bey at Médéa, whose support for the French and corruption had turned the population there against him. Berthezène led troops to Médéa in June 1831 to extract the bey and the French garrison. On their way back to Algiers they were continually harassed by Kabyle resistance, and driven into a panicked retreat that Berthezène failed to control. French casualties during this retreat were significant, and the victory fanned the flames of resistance, leading to attacks on colonial settlements. The growing colonial financial interests began insisting on a stronger hand, which Louis-Philippe provided in Savary, Duke Rovigo at the end of 1831.
Rovigo regained control of Bône and Bougie, cities that Clauzel had taken and then lost due to resistance by the Kabyle people. He continued policies of colonisation of the land and expropriation of properties. His suppression of resistance in Algiers was brutal, with the military presence extended into its neighborhoods. He was recalled in 1833 due to the overtly violent nature of the repression, and replaced by Baron Voirol. Voirol established French occupation in Oran, and another French general, Louis Alexis Desmichels, was given an independent command that gained control over Arzew and Mostaganem.
On 22 June 1834, France formally annexed the occupied areas of Algeria, which had an estimated Muslim population of about two million, as a military colony. The colony was run by a military governor who had both civilian and military authority, including the power of executive decree. His authority was nominally over an area of "limited occupation" near the coast, but the realities of French colonial expansion beyond those areas ensured continued resistance from the local population. The policy of limited occupation was formally abandoned in 1840 for one of complete control. Voirol was replaced in 1834 by Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Comte d'Erlon, who became the first governor of the colony, and who was given the task of dealing with the rising threat of `Abd al-Qādir and continuing French failures to subdue Ahmed Bey, Constantine's ruler.