The sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Algerian War

Abstract

5 July 2022 marked the sixtieth anniversary of Algerian independence. Algeria’s liberation struggle, a war that France calls the Algerian War and Algeria, the war of national liberation, began in 1954 when guerrillas of the FLN (National Liberation Front) attacked military installations, police posts, communications facilities, and public utilities in various parts of the country. Fought in the cities and in the countryside, the war ended with the signing of the Evian Accords on 19 March 1962. Algeria officially became independent three months later. After 132 years of political domination, French colonialism came to an end and the new era of Algerian independence dawned. As the first successful anticolonial war in Africa and a historic struggle that influences French-Algerian relations sixty years later, Algeria’s successful fight for independence from French colonial rule continues to capture the attention of historians, writers, students, and the general public in Algeria, France, and beyond both their borders. This issue of Modern & Contemporary France proposes to examine the war and its aftermath in this particular moment, sixty years after it had ended in Algeria’s liberation. Adopting multiple analytical lenses—historical, political, sociological, and literary—the contributors posit that texts written by survivors of the conflict and their descendants as well as social scientists and writers from varying geographic, cultural and temporal spaces offer unique perspectives on the war, bringing greater clarity to the complex historical events. In this regard, all who write about the Algerian War—a war of national liberation for the colonised, a struggle to maintain the status quo for the coloniser—recognize that the trauma of that violent conflict scarred individuals and the collective psyche of both nations. As historian Benjamin Stora reminds us, neither side has really come to terms with one of the most painful conflicts of decolonisation of the twentieth century. Calling for an end to the amnesia that has plagued both nations, he writes: ‘Français et Algériens doivent regarder en face leur propre histoire intérieure, balayer mythes et chimères, démêler droits et souvenirs. On ne peut partager l’avenir en niant le passé commun conflictuel’ (Stora 1991: 320). Indeed, many writers and historians, including Stora, use the image of an unhealed wound to characterize the effects of the war on individuals and the community in France and Algeria. Revisiting a war that ended more than sixty years ago proves to be a revelatory experience. A six-decade time span grants unique historical perspectives as soldiers and civilians, former combatants and witnesses—some who were adults, and others who were