French Algeria in the context of "Algiers"

Albert Camus (/kæˈmuː/ ka-MOO; French: [albɛʁ kamy] ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, novelist, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.

Camus was born in French Algeria to pied-noir parents. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world. He married twice but had many extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was part of the left that opposed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union because of their totalitarianism. Camus was a moralist and leaned towards anarcho-syndicalism. He was part of many organisations seeking European integration. During the Algerian War (1954–1962), he kept a neutral stance, advocating a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, a position that was rejected by most parties.

Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia; to the east by Libya; to the southeast by Niger; to the southwest by Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara; to the west by Morocco; and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. The capital and largest city is Algiers, located in the far north on the Mediterranean coast.

Algeria has been at the crossroads of numerous cultures and civilisations for millennia, including the Phoenicians, Numidians, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantine Greeks. Its modern identity is rooted in centuries of Arab Muslim migration since the seventh century and the subsequent Arabisation of indigenous Berber populations. Following a succession of Islamic Arab and Berber dynasties between the eighth and 15th centuries, the Regency of Algiers was established in 1516 as a largely independent tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. After nearly three centuries as a major power in the Mediterranean, the country was invaded by France in 1830 and formally annexed in 1848, though it was not fully conquered and pacified until 1903. French rule brought mass European settlement that displaced the local population, which was reduced by up to one-third due to warfare, disease, and starvation. The Sétif and Guelma massacre in 1945 catalysed local resistance that culminated in the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954. Algeria gained independence in 1962. It descended into a bloody civil war from 1992 to 2002, remaining in an official state of emergency until the 2010–2012 Algerian protests during the Arab Spring.

Henri Hauser (19 July 1866 – 27 May 1946) was a French historian, geographer, and economist. A pioneer in the study of the economic history of the early modern period, he also wrote on contemporary economic issues and held the first chair in economic history to be established at a French university.

He was born in Oran into a middle-class Jewish family who had moved to French Algeria for health reasons but returned to France when Hauser was four years old. Hauser was educated at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris and then at the École Normale Supérieure where he came first in both the entrance and leaving examinations. He initially taught in provincial lycées before taking his doctorate in 1892 with a thesis on the 16th-century Huguenot leader, François de la Noue. Hauser went on to become a professor of ancient and medieval history at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, modern history and geography at the University of Dijon, and finally a professor of history and economic history at the Sorbonne from 1919 to 1936. His 1905 book L'impérialisme américain predicted the decline of Europe and the dominance of the United States, while his 1915 Méthodes allemandes d'expansion économique analyzed the role played by German industry in the outbreak of World War I. Hauser was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1919 and in 1945 the Académie française awarded him the Prix de l'Académie for his life's work.

The Stranger (French: L'Étranger [letʁɑ̃ʒe], lit. 'The Foreigner'), also published in English as The Outsider, is a 1942 novella written by French author Albert Camus. The first of Camus' novels to be published, the story follows Meursault, an indifferent settler in French Algeria, who, weeks after his mother's funeral, kills an unnamed Arab man in Algiers. The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative before and after the killing.

Camus completed the initial manuscript by May 1941, with revisions suggested by André Malraux, Jean Paulhan, and Raymond Queneau that were adopted in the final version. The original French-language first edition of the novella was published on 19 May 1942, by Gallimard, under its original title; it appeared in bookstores from that June but was restricted to an initial 4,400 copies, so few that it could not be a bestseller. Even though it was published during the Nazi occupation of France, it went on sale without censorship or omission by the Propaganda-Staffel.

The Plague (French: La Peste) is a 1947 absurdist novel by Albert Camus. The plot centers around the French Algerian city of Oran as it combats a plague outbreak and is put under a city-wide quarantine. The novel presents a snapshot into life in Oran as seen through Camus's absurdist lens.

Camus used as source material the cholera epidemic that killed a large proportion of Oran's population in 1849, but set the novel in the 1940s. Oran and its surroundings were struck by disease several times before Camus published his novel. According to an academic study, Oran was decimated by the bubonic plague in 1556 and 1678, but all later outbreaks (in 1921: 185 cases; 1931: 76 cases; and 1944: 95 cases) were very far from the scale of the epidemic described in the novel.

The pieds-noirs (French: [pje nwaʁ]; lit. 'black feet'; sg.: pied-noir) are an ethno-cultural group of people of French and other European descent who were born in Algeria during the period of French colonial rule from 1830 to 1962. Many of them departed for mainland France during and after the war by which Algeria gained its independence in 1962.

From the French invasion on 18 June 1830 to its independence, Algeria was administratively part of France; its ethnic European population were simply called Algerians or colons (colonists). The Muslim people of Algeria were called Arabs, Muslims or indigènes. The term pied-noir came into common use shortly before the end of the Algerian War in 1962.

The Allies or the Entente (UK: /ɒ̃ˈtɒ̃t/, US: /ɒnˈtɒnt/ on-TONT) was an international military coalition of countries led by the French Republic, the United Kingdom, the Russian Empire, the United States, the Kingdom of Italy, and the Empire of Japan against the Central Powers of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria in World War I (1914–1918).

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, the major European powers were divided between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. The Triple Entente was made up of the United Kingdom, France, and Russia. The Triple Alliance was originally composed of Germany, Austria–Hungary, and Italy, but Italy remained neutral in 1914. As the war progressed, each coalition added new members. Japan joined the Entente in 1914 and, despite proclaiming its neutrality at the beginning of the war, Italy also joined the Entente in 1915. The term "Allies" became more widely used than "Entente", although the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and Italy were also referred to as the Quadruple Entente and, together with Japan, as the Quintuple Entente. The five British Dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and the Union of South Africa) all fought alongside the British. The colonies of Allied countries, such as the American Philippines, Belgian Congo, British India, French Algeria, and Japanese Korea, were also used as a source of manpower by the colonial powers.

Indirect rule was a system of governance used by imperial powers to control parts of their empires. This was particularly used by colonial empires like the British Empire to control their possessions in Africa and Asia, which was done through pre-existing indigenous power structures. Indirect rule was used by various colonial rulers such as: the French in Algeria and Tunisia, the Dutch in the East Indies, the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique and the Belgians in Rwanda and Burundi. These dependencies were often called "protectorates" or "trucial states".

Through this system, the day-to-day government and administration of both small and large areas were left in the hands of traditional rulers, who gained prestige and the stability and protection afforded by the Pax Britannica (in the case of British territories). Consequentially done at the cost of losing control of their external affairs, and often of taxation, communications, and other matters. It was usually carried out with a small number of European "advisors" effectively overseeing the government of large numbers of people spread over extensive areas.