demanded more and more equal measures between French and Algerians, a concession Marcel Peyrouton, the governor-general of Algeria, was still unwilling to grant. Moreover, he tried to hold President Roosevelt and his allies accountable to the ideas within the Atlantic Charter by highlighting that Algerians did not choose nor did they want “the form of government under which they lived.”48
Angered over its dismissal, Abbas gathered additional signatures and verbal support from Messali Hadj who was still in prison, and wrote what is commonly referred to as “An Addition to the Manifesto” (Projet de réformes faisant suite au Manifeste). This document, which demanded “the political autonomy of Algeria as a sovereign nation with droit de regard by France and Allied military assistance in case of conflict” after World War II, went farther than the two previous ones in articulating a desire for Algerian sovereignty, distinct and separate from France.49 The addition to the manifesto also represented a rare moment when Abbas and Messali worked together, highlighting how once disparate Algerian political agendas were starting to converge.
Newly appointed governor-general Georges Catroux rejected the manifesto. General Charles de Gaulle, head of the Comité français de libération nationale, tried to appease the activists by passing a 7 March 1944 ordinance that granted citizenship to 65,000 Algerians. Furthermore, he abolished the Native Code that had been in place since 1881. Although de Gaulle’s initiative still focused on preserving and strengthening the colonial relationship, it also marked the first significant political reforms in Algeria since 1919. Despite de Gaulle’s marginal concessions, many Algerian political activists, including Ferhat Abbas, Messali Hadj and his followers, and the reformist ‘ulamā rejected the ordinance as inadequate.
Exactly one week after the 7 March 1944 ordinance, Abbas founded the Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté (AML), another attempt to build a broad coalition between the ‘ulamā and the Algerian People’s Party followers. He envisioned a more popular movement working toward “an Algerian nation,” an “autonomous republic federated to a new, anticolonial, and anti-imperial French republic.”50 According to the AML statute, Abbas created the group to “familiarize and defend the ‘Manifesto of the Algerian People’ in front of French and Algerian public opinion and to reclaim the freedom of speech and expression for all Algerians.” A second and related goal, Abbas wrote, was for the Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté to “participate in the birth of a new world,” which would respect human dignity.51
During the spring of 1944, Abbas moved closer toward Messali Hadj’s political position of total separation from France. For example, on 22 May 1944, at a meeting in Constantine, Abbas announced that he was against “the politics of annexation and assimilation,” and on 15 June, he discussed “forcing the French hand, to make them understand our will.”52 This rhetoric was not that of the same man who led the Federation of Elected Muslims in the late 1920s. By the end of 1944, the Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté counted 500,000 members, thanks to Messali Hadj’s open support. And yet, tensions between the two ideologues persisted; Abbas wanted to keep working with American president Franklin Roosevelt and French moderates to achieve a peaceful solution to the Algerian question, whereas Messali Hadj increasingly called for insurrection. The AML dissolved by 1 May 1945 and seven days later, after a series of tragic events, radical Algerian nationalists received an unexpected boost in men willing and eager to pursue independence at any cost.
One of the most violent and significant episodes in colonial Algerian history occurred while many people in Algeria and France celebrated the end of the war on 8 May 1945. In the eastern Algerian city of Sétif, 8,000–10,000 Algerian protesters carrying homemade banners and Algerian flags gathered in the streets. A scuffle erupted between them and the police, and by the end of the day twenty-nine Algerians were dead.53 A similar scene played out in Guelma, a nearby town in the Constantinois close to the Tunisian border. However, a major distinguishing factor between the two cities is that settler militias carried out the reprisals in Guelma.54 Threatened by what they considered to be a nationalist uprising and with the support of local subprefect André Achiary, the 4,000 settlers in Guelma organized themselves and killed 1,500 Algerians, mostly men between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, by the end of the month.55 The number of Algerians arrested soared in the weeks that followed. One estimate claims 5,560 individuals were rounded up for questioning.56 Sétif and Guelma were turning points in solidifying nationalist sentiment. They hardened the political line for both French and Algerians and were a chilling indicator of the war to come. For advocates of Algérie française, Achiary’s militias demonstrated the lengths they were willing to go to protect themselves and their interests. For anticolonialists, these events represented a definitive rupture in assimilationist policies. AML members recalled “the fallen innocent victims” who died as a result of “criminal acts” and vowed to push for stronger democratic reforms.57 Be that as it may, I do not agree with historians such as Jean-Pierre Peyroulou who argue that May 1945 started the war for national liberation. To be sure, it was a defining moment in the evolution of Algerian nationalism. However, important domestic, regional, and international developments that contributed to the FLN’s winning strategy for claiming sovereignty of Algeria had yet to take place.
Anticolonial Influences: North Africa and Indochina
In 1946, Ferhat Abbas and Messali Hadj continued to dominate the domestic political scene and a new generation of Algerian nationalists still had a choice between Abbas’s recently formed Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA) and Messali Hadj’s latest political party, the Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libértés Démocratiques (MTLD).58 World War II radicalized Abbas, and even though both men wanted the same outcome for Algeria, independence, they did not agree on the approach and pace at which this was to happen. Abbas and his reformist supporters thought a gradual timeline achieved through diplomatic and democratic steps was the best way to attain independence from France, whereas Messali Hadj thought military action would yield the most successful results. Due to Messali Hadj’s unwillingness to compromise, according to former FLN member Mohammed Harbi, by 1953, he was squeezed out of the MTLD by allies who were drawn to the UDMA’s gradual approach.59
On the eve of 1 November 1954, three major political strands competed for power: the Messalists who advocated for independence through armed struggle; the centralists who attracted students and intellectuals with their message of political pluralism; and, last, the men who founded the FLN on 23 October 1954, who wanted to take up arms against the French colonial regime immediately.60 One might notice that the Messalists and the FLN had extremely similar goals. They differed on one small point. Messali Hadj wanted to unite the various nationalist coalitions before initiating violence because he believed they stood a better chance of defeating the French. The FLN did not think that step was necessary and went ahead without the support of all Algerian nationalists. This rupture between the nationalists and lack of consensus reverberated into the early years of the struggle for national liberation as evidenced by the internal FLN divisions debated at Soummam in August 1956. It was also suggestive of the violent process by which Algerian nationalist “consensus” was established. Despite his being one of the most influential and experienced nationalist leaders dating back to the 1926 North African Star, Messali Hadj was marginalized by the FLN and postcolonial Algerian literature and relegated to the periphery of Algerian nationalist history. His charismatic personality and thirty years in Algerian politics threatened to undermine the FLN’s message of unity under one party supported by the entire Algerian population. As a result, he was largely written out of the nationalist record until the late 1980s.61
In the decade after 1945, the Maghrib underwent considerable political changes that influenced Algerian nationalists and expanded their political options.62 Immediately after World War II, Tunisian, Moroccan, and Algerian nationalists met to discuss pan-Maghribi action against French imperialism. Algeria’s “wings,” both French protectorates, were embroiled in similar nationalist mobilizations.63 In Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, the leader of the Neo-Destour Party and future first
