In fact, they had been deliberately excluded from the meeting’s proceedings and received a summary account after the fact. In an early fall 1956 letter, Ben Bella wrote to the internal FLN delegation and expressed his disappointment at having been marginalized from such a significant event. He asked that they “postpone the publication of [the Soummam] decisions until all points of view of all of the brothers … are considered.”9 Ben Bella’s wish was not fulfilled. On 22 October he was arrested when his plane, scheduled to fly from Rabat, Morocco, to Tunis, was intercepted over French airspace and he was imprisoned until the Evian negotiations six years later.
These initial glimpses into the FLN leadership present an alternative narrative about the nationalist movement. They raise questions about how the FLN ultimately became the nationalist party that diplomatically defeated the French, as Matthew Connelly has shown, and claimed sovereignty of Algeria. The FLN of 1962 was not the only party vying for power and its vision for how to achieve liberation was not the only course explored.
The long history of French colonial rule in Algeria is littered with instances of violence, legal and political inequality, a small but extremely influential European settler population, and repeated failure by innumerable colonial administrators to implement meaningful reform. Beginning in the 1920s, Algerian elites began formulating political groups, and for the next thirty years before the official start of the war for national liberation they pursued avenues ranging from assimilation to a Pan-Islamic ‘umma (community). Important moments in Franco-Algerian relations during the 1930s and 1940s further strengthened nationalist sentiment, yet I argue World War II outcomes—the 1941 Atlantic Charter, the American presence in Algeria beginning in the fall of 1942, the May 1945 Sétif and Guelma massacres, the creation of the United Nations and its charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949—were the most critical developments for Algerian nationalists. The texts provided a new discourse about rights from which anticolonial activists drew liberally, depending on the time and place.
By 1954 when the FLN announced itself as the leading nationalist group, its representatives, many of whom had been active in politics for several decades, used these changes to the international system to their political advantage and started cultivating their winning strategy of deploying universal rights rhetoric in order to appeal to an international audience. Despite their uneven use of rights discourse, Algerians most certainly relied upon the concepts of self-determination and international law to build their case for national sovereignty. The nationalists combined this international approach with an equally important local strategy in Algeria. Their quest for national liberation from France could not, and did not, hinge solely on the international arena, as some historians suggest.10
Origins of Nationalism, 1900–1940
The French began colonizing Algeria in June 1830. Close to forty thousand troops landed on the northern coast thirty miles from Algiers, under the pretext of avenging an alleged fly-whisk incident, which caused outrage in diplomatic circles. This inauspicious beginning led to one of the longest and most unique instances of colonialism.11 Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century the nature of French rule changed frequently. During the period of military rule (1830–1870), officials employed extreme violence to quell resistance and passed a series of laws, such as the 1846 Land Ordinance and the Senatus-Consulte of 14 July 1865, which were quite detrimental to the Algerian population.12 Civilian rule (1870–1940) further segregated Algerians from settlers and Jews and solidified French political control of Algeria.13 By the turn of the century, after seven decades of French colonial rule, the Algerian population had been marginalized in virtually every aspect of life and faced acute hardship. With educational opportunities curtailed and no political rights to speak of that would have enabled meaningful change in Algeria, their options for social and economic advancement were routinely hampered.
Beginning in 1910 several groups emerged that asked for varying degrees of reform from the French colonial state. The Young Algerians, who numbered no more than 1,200, were the first such group. These educated elites aspired to assimilate with France and its political institutions.14 The 1912 Young Algerian Manifesto was among their most political acts.15 In it, they requested that Algerian servicemen be treated the same as French soldiers. Furthermore, they asked for more Algerian representation in the Algerian assemblies and equitable taxes.16 The Young Algerians only alluded to French citizenship and at no point did they demand independence. They wanted political recognition for risking their lives alongside French soldiers.
In World War I, 173,000 Algerian men fought for France. Of that total number, 25,000 were killed and roughly 60,000–70,000 men were wounded.17 Those years were formative ones for many Algerians and other colonial conscripts throughout the European empires.18 Their mass mobilization initiated a political awakening that extended beyond the educated elite. However, the Young Algerians remained the mouthpiece for reform after 1918. Even though governor-general Charles Jonnart was amenable to increasing political rights for a certain Algerian (male) demographic, he struggled to placate the vocal settler lobby that vehemently opposed additional rights for the Algerian population. He passed the Jonnart Law of 1919, which expanded the Muslim electorate to 425,000 but still did not define a clear path to French citizenship and was a meek reflection of what the Young Algerians demanded.
President Woodrow Wilson’s 8 January 1918 address to Congress, which later became known as the Fourteen Points, also had a profound impact on Algerian educated elites and anticolonial activists. Wilson’s Point 5, “A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined,” was likely the most inspiring for Third World leaders.19 It gave them hope that they would be able to choose their form of government.
Historian Erez Manela has described the “Wilsonian Moment” as the months from the fall of 1918 to the spring of 1919, when the American president made speeches and public pronouncements about the right to self-determination.20 These ideas circulated globally and elites in India, Egypt, Korea, French Indochina, and China thought Wilson would support their demands for self-rule, when, in fact, Wilson had no intention of doing so. His rhetoric, at best, was intended for European allies, not colonized peoples in the Third World. Some Maghribi elites, including Tunisian professors Salah Cherif Ettounsi, Mohammed Elkhedir Ben el Houssine, and Emir Khaled, an Algerian who served in the French army in World War I but refused to be naturalized before the French implemented meaningful political reforms, wrote about Wilson’s Fourteen Points. They criticized the French government for agreeing to them while still maintaining colonies.21 As the Paris conference drew near, groups became disillusioned as they realized that Wilson would not take up their cause in the French capital. Their disappointment sowed the seeds of colonial discontent and sparked nationalist movements.
Despite their firm assimilationist and secular agenda, the settler lobby in Algeria demonized the Young Algerians for “nationalist” and “dogmatic” tendencies and, by the end of the decade these educated elites were no longer the only group endorsing reform and change in Algeria. By the 1920s, Algerian veterans, workers, and the educated elite were disillusioned by the nominal political changes in Algeria, and they began seeking alternative ways to unite and advance their goals, but still within a French-Algerian context. In the three decades before the FLN emerged as the nationalist leader, over ten bona fide political parties and visions were tested and refined as they struggled to live within an increasingly contradictory and restrictive Algeria.22
Two men in particular, Ferhat Abbas and Messali Hadj, represent the two most influential political courses explored during the 1920s and 1930s. Ferhat Abbas, born in the eastern village of Chahna in 1899 to a prominent local family, received a degree from Algiers University and had early contact with other Algerian évolués (educated elites). He spoke fluent French and was
