The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France

In this account of the Algerian War's effect on French political structures and notions of national identity, Todd Shepard asserts that the separation of Algeria from France was truly a revolutionary event with lasting consequences for French social and political life. For more than a century, Algeria had been legally and administratively part of France; after the bloody war that concluded in 1962, it was other-its eight million Algerian residents deprived of French citizenship while hundreds of thousands of French pieds noirs were forced to return to a country that was never home. This rupture violated the universalism that had been the essence of French republican theory since the late eighteenth century. Shepard contends that because the amputation of Algeria from the French body politic was accomplished illegally and without explanation, its repercussions are responsible for many of the racial and religious tensions that confront France today. In portraying decolonization as an essential step in the inexorable "tide of history," the French state absolved itself of responsibility for the revolutionary change it was effecting. It thereby turned its back not only on the French of Algeria-Muslims in particular-but also on its own republican principles and the 1958 Constitution. From that point onward, debates over assimilation, identity, and citizenship-once focused on the Algerian "province/colony"-have troubled France itself. In addition to grappling with questions of race, citizenship, national identity, state institutions, and political debate, Shepard also addresses debates in Jewish history, gender history, and queer theory.

Table of Contents:
List of Abbreviations Chronology of French Occupation of AlgeriaIntroductionPart I; The Making and Forgetting of French Algeria 1. Muslim French Citizens from Algeria: A Short History 2. Inventing Decolonization 3. The "Tide of History" versus the Laws of the Republic 4. Forgetting French AlgeriaPart II: Between France and Algeria 5. Making Algerians 6. Repatriation Rather Than Aliyah: The Jews of France and the End of French Algeria 7. Veiled "Muslim" Women, Violent Pied Noir Men, and the Family of France: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnic DifferencePart III: The Exodus and After 8. Repatriating the Europeans 9. Rejecting the Muslims 10. The Post-Algerian RepublicConclusion: Forgetting Algerian FranceBibliography of Primary Sources Index

About the Author :
Todd Shepard is Associate Professor of History at Temple University.

Review :
A detailed, inventive, and engaging analysis of the debates surrounding the thorny issue of who could be French and under what conditions that arose as eight years of armed conflict drew to a close. Although he acknowledges that France's 'civilizing mission' never lived up to its press notices, Todd Shepard is probably correct when he notes that the war exposed once and for all the conceit that France's 'Republican universalism' could unite peoples of different races, cultures, and languages around a single vision of national unity. With the tremendous interest in French colonialism and identity, in the relationship of the former colonies to the French nation and in colonial and postcolonial discourses, Todd Shepard's timely and significant work will be of interest to a wide range of scholars. Using Algeria as a case study, Shepard shows how the history of French imperialism and anti-imperialism was rewritten after Algerian independence by bureaucrats, politicians, and journalists in such a way as to present decolonization as 'a predetermined end point' that was inevitable, rather than as the failure of a genuine project of national integration in the colonies.