ALGIERS IN THE 1940S

HISTORY LESSON

• Ottoman rule at the beginning of the 19th century
• France began attacking in the 1820s
• Algeria declared French territory in 1848
• Calls for independence following World War I

THE 1940s

• From 1940-1945, colonial troops were sent to fight in WWII
• Algerian Assembly created in 1947
• Half represented 6.85 Muslim Algerians, half represented 1.15 non-Muslim Algerians
• Massacre at Sétif- Approximately 6,000 protesting Muslims killed in skirmishes with the police
• The Algerian War began in 1954

RAMPANT RACISM

• Government- Algerian Assembly and limited Arab votes
• Law- French considered more important and reliable than Arab
• Economic- French controlled 30% of land and produced two thirds of output
• Basic social structure placed the French above Arabs with various other branche

CAMUS AND ALGERIA

• Grew up in Algeria
• Attended only university in Algeria (open only to the French)
• "Camus' Algeria" by David Carrol
• "a general defense of the very colonialist system that produced the injustices he abhorred"
• "Camus was "wrong" about Algeria, then perhaps he was also wrong about everything"

THE STRANGER

• Meursault is middle class
• Legal inequality
• Killing the Arab vs. Raymond's beating
• Punishment is not for murder, but for rejecting French beliefs

WORKS CITED

• Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace : Algeria, 1954-1962. New York: New York Review Books, 2006
• "Country Guide: ALGERIA." The Washington Post, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2013. .
• Carrol, David. "Camus's Algeria: Birthrights, Colonial Injustice, and the Fiction of a French-Algerian People." MLN 112 (Sept. 1997): 517-549. JSTOR. Web. 8 Oct. 2013. .