Pied noir

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With pieds noirs (French pied-noir "Blackfeet" French pronunciation: [pje'nwaʁ] ) were referred from the 1950s, the French Algerians , who since the beginning of the conquest of Algeria by France in 1830 in the North African had settled country. Before that, the term colons ("settlers") was common for this population group . About 40% of the settlers came from metropolitan France, namely Corsica , Alsace and Lorraine , most of the rest from Malta , Italy and Spain . There were also local Sephardic Jews ( israélites ) who had been resident in the Maghreb for a long time and who had received French citizenship in the 19th century with the “ Décret Crémieux ” . Towards the end of the Algerian War in 1962, when almost all Europeans left Algeria, the number of Pieds-Noirs was around 1.4 million (around 13% of the Algerian population). In a broader sense, the European or Jewish residents of Tunisia or Morocco who left these countries for France after their independence are also referred to as pieds-noirs .

history

The society of European colonists in Algeria was clearly socially divided throughout its existence. A small minority of long-established, very wealthy families faced a large layer of relatively poor settlers. However, through access to the capital market - Muslims were excluded from this by special taxes and the Sharia law, which applies under private law - the settler society managed to buy large parts of the land. There were also violent landings, mostly after revolts by the Muslim population. In 1936, the European settlers controlled 7.7 million hectares, around 40 percent of the arable land. This mostly occurs in the particularly fertile coastal regions of the country. The official standard of living index of the population of European descent was around 20 percent lower in 1950 than in the mother country.

Under French rule, only “Europeans” enjoyed full civil rights , while the locals ( indigènes ) were collectively referred to as “Arabs” ( arabes ) or “Muslims” ( musulmans ) and were disadvantaged by the discriminatory Code de l'indigénat . Although the coastal region of Algeria had been treated as French national territory and not just a colony since 1848, few received French citizenship. It was not awarded to all Algerian residents until 1944. No Muslims were represented in the Algerian parliament. After the end of the Algerian War, when Algeria gained its independence, most of the approximately 1.4 million pieds-noirs resettled in mainland France. The terror of the OAS in 1961/62, with which many pieds-noirs and a number of French military personnel sympathized if they did not actively support them, had not been able to prevent Algerian independence.

Many pieds-noirs had been resident in Algeria for generations or had no roots in France, as their families had acquired French citizenship as immigrants in Algeria. But they were forced to move there because the Algerian independence movement FLN threatened them with death if they did not leave Algeria after independence. The phrase “La valise ou le cercueil” describes this situation in an exaggerated way - they only had the choice between the suitcase ( la valise ) or the coffin ( le cercueil ). Threats that were brutally carried out in the case of some of the pieds-noirs remaining in the country, especially the so-called Harkis : they massacred thousands of members of this group of Muslim Algerians, who had been loyal to France during the struggle for independence and fought in its military FLN together with their families. On July 5, 1962, the day Algeria proclaimed its independence, there was a massacre of inhabitants of European descent in Oran , the city with the largest proportion of pieds-noirs in the total population and 3,500 people were killed. None of the perpetrators was ever punished.

The French government under President Charles de Gaulle - like public opinion in France - showed little sympathy for the Pied-Noirs. After July 1, 1962, the remaining army units were no longer used to protect the French Algeria and the admission of Muslim Harkis was restricted. Compassion, encouragement and even material help in moving to France were only available to a very limited extent for the Pied Noirs. De Gaulle himself said in the Council of Ministers regarding the French Algeria: "These people are confusing the interests of France with their own interests".

Most of the pieds-noirs settled along the south coast of France (for example in Aix-en-Provence , Perpignan , Montpellier , Marseille , Toulon or Nice ), in the greater Paris area or on the until then sparsely populated island of Corsica . Personalities from this heterogeneous group of rapatriés , as they were initially only called, exerted great influence in many areas of society in metropolitan France.

Well-known Pieds-Noirs

Literature (french)

  • Marie Cardinal: Les Pieds-Noirs . Place Furstenberg éditeurs. Paris 1994, ISBN 2-910818-00-4 .
  • Raphaël Delpard: L'Histoire des Pieds-Noirs d'Algérie. (1830-1962) . Michel Lafon, Neuilly-sur-Seine 2002, ISBN 2-8409-8761-9 .
  • Pierre Goinard: Algérie. L'œuvre française . 2nd edition Gandini, Nice 2001, ISBN 2-906431-29-X .
  • Marcel Gori: L'Algérie illustrée . Éditions Campanile. Sophia-Antipolis, 2005.
  • Jean-Jacques Jordi: 1962. L'arrivée des Pieds-Noirs . Autrement, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-86260-520-4 .
  • Jean-Jacques Jordi: De l'Exode à l'Exil. Rapatriés et pieds-noirs en France; l'exemple marseillais, 1954-1992 . L'Harmattan, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-7384-2305-1 .
  • Daniel Leconte: Les Pieds-Noirs. Histoire et portrait d'une communauté . Le Seuil, Paris 1980, ISBN 2-02-005397-7 .
  • Cécile Mercier: Les Pieds-Noirs et l'exode de 1962. À travers la presse française . L'Harmattan, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-7475-3794-3 .
  • Jean-Pax Méfret, Jean Bastien-Thiry : Jusqu'au bout de l'Algérie française . Pygmalion, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-85704-815-7 . (Description from a colonial nostalgic point of view)
  • Pierre Nora : Les Français d'Algérie . Éditions Julliard, Paris 1961.
  • Jeannine Verdès-Leroux: Les Français d'Algérie. De 1830 à aujourd'hui . Fayard, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-213-60968-3 .
  • Jean-Jacques Viala: Pieds-Noirs en Algérie après l'indépendance. Une éxperience socialist . L'Harmattan, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7475-0890-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernard A. Cook (Ed.): Europe since 1945. An encyclopedia, Vol. 1 . Garland, New York 2001. pp. 398 ff. ISBN 0-8153-1336-5 .
  2. ^ Martin Evans: Algeria. France's Undeclared War . University Press, Oxford 2012, pp. 24f, 26f. ISBN 978-0-19-280350-4 .
  3. ↑ Kantowicz, Edward R .: Coming apart, coming together . WB Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich. 2000, ISBN 0-8028-4456-1 , p. 207.
  4. ↑ Pierre Daum: The Trauma of Oran . In: Le Monde diplomatique , No. 9821 of June 8, 2012, ISSN  0026-9395 .
  5. ^ Wilfried Loth: Charles de Gaulle. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2015 ISBN 978-3-17-021362-3 p. 214