Algeria today presents the world with a closed, distrustful face. Although its revolutionary state survived the tumultuous ruptures of the late twentieth century, it has been plagued by border conflicts, Islamist insurgencies, and, most recently, widespread youth protests. However, the legacy of the Algerian people and their liberation state is as dynamic, internationalist, and courageous as any in the world — the proud equal of a Cuba or a Vietnam in revolutionary heroics.

A century ago, Algeria stood at the heart of the French empire, as central to the French imperial project as India was to the British. Algeria was partly settled by white colons, who considered it their homeland and did not view themselves as a caste of imperial administrators. France maintained a legal fiction that Algeria was an integral part of the nation, just like any other domestic province, split from the mainland by the Mediterranean like Paris was split by the Seine.

The large majority of the Arab population had second-rate status as subjects, not citizens. Although a tiny minority were allowed to “evolve” into full French citizenship by renouncing Arab culture, in particular their Muslim faith, the majority were of no interest to the French settlers. As such, they were kept as segregated as possible and were not seen or heard from beyond their utility as domestic servants, farm laborers, or cannon fodder in times of war. Even the industrial working class in French Algeria was overwhelmingly composed of white settlers, allowing the vigorous French labor movement to remain distant from the economic destitution that blighted the majority Muslim population.