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Answer

Who colonized Algeria?

North Africa — the powers that ruled Algeria, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Algeria?

France. French forces took Algiers in 1830 and ruled Algeria for 132 years — legally as part of France itself — until independence on 5 July 1962 after a war that killed hundreds of thousands.

Algeria was the settler colony France refused to call one. From 1848 the northern territory was constitutionally part of France, which is precisely why decolonisation there became a war rather than a transfer of power.

World map showing imperial possessions and spheres of rule in 1914
A world map of imperial possessions in 1914, offered as global context only. It is a single snapshot: countries that became independent earlier, later occupations, disputed borders and differences between colonies and protectorates require the chronology below.Source — Wikimedia Commons

How rule changed in Algeria

These periods describe different governing arrangements. The presence of a trading company, a military occupation and direct colonial government are not interchangeable; the notes preserve those distinctions where the record identifies them.

Political chronology

Rulers, periods and governing arrangements

PeriodRuler or administrationContext
1516–1830Regency of Algiers, under Ottoman suzeraintySee the chronology and context below.
1830–1962FranceNorthern départements annexed as metropolitan France from 1848
since 1962People's Democratic Republic of AlgeriaSee the chronology and context below.

Periods may overlap where control differed by territory. A national independence date does not imply that every enclave or dependency changed status on that day.

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
France
Independence
5 July 1962
Length of rule
132 years
Legal fiction
Algeria was governed as three French départements, not a colony
War dead 1954–62
French estimates from 300,000; Algerian estimate 1.5 million

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1830

    French invasion; Algiers falls in July.

  2. 1830s–40s

    Conquest campaigns and the enfumades; Abdelkader's resistance.

  3. 1881

    Code de l'indigénat: a separate penal law for the Muslim majority.

  4. 1945

    Sétif and Guelma massacres on the day Europe celebrates victory.

  5. 1954–62

    The Algerian War; systematic torture, resettlement camps.

  6. 1962

    Independence after the Évian Accords.

Context

What the record shows

The Code de l'indigénat created a two-tier legal order: French civil law for settlers, a separate punitive code for the Muslim majority. The war of 1954–62 industrialised torture and forcibly resettled over two million rural Algerians into camps.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Algeria?
France, from the invasion of 1830 until independence in 1962.
How long did France rule Algeria?
132 years, longer than any other French possession in Africa.
When did Algeria gain independence?
5 July 1962, after the Évian Accords ended a war that began in November 1954.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Algeria

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.