🇫🇷 🇩🇿 Veterans: The French in Algeria | Featured Documentary

Algeria, Africa's second largest country was colonised by the French in the 19th century. But unlike the neighbouring French protectorates of Tunesia or Morocco, Algeria was considered French territory, legally a mere extension of mainland France itself. And by the mid-20th century it was home to over one million European settlers. While they enjoyed the privileges of French citizenship, the overwhelming majority of the population, Arab and Berber Muslims, reaped few benefits from the French presence. "The majority of the native population didn't have the same rights that were held by a French citizen. There was a contradiction between those supposedly egalitarian republican principles that France was supposed to be importing to Algeria as a colony, and the reality," historian Benjamin Stora says. In 1954, a group of Algerians, determined to end France's colonial rule and achieve independence, turned to violence. On Novermber 1, the recently formed National Liberation Front (FLN) l