France The United States And The Algerian War

Departing from widely held interpretations of the Algerian war, Wall approaches the conflict as an international diplomatic crisis whose outcome was primarily dependent on French relations with Washington, the NATO alliance, and the United Nations, rather than on military engagement."--BOOK JACKET.

In this study, the author unravels the intertwining threads of the protracted agony of France's war with Algeria, the American role in the fall of the Fourth Republic, the long shadow of Charles de Gaulle, and the decisive postwar power of the United States.

The French army's war in Algeria has always aroused passions. This study offers an honest appraisal of the atrocities carried out on both sides to reveal that what happened in Algeria was indeed a war and not just a minor conflict.

Thoroughly sharp and honest treatment of a brutal conflict.The Algerian War (1954-1962) was a savage colonial war, killing an estimated one million Muslim Algerians and expelling the same number of European settlers from their homes. It was to cause the fall of six French prime minsters and the collapse of the Fourth Repbulic. It came close to bringing down de Gaulle and - twice - to plunging France into civil war.The story told here contains heroism and tragedy, and poses issues of enduring relevance beyond the confines of either geography or time. Horne writes with the extreme intelligence and perspicacity that are his trademarks.

The French Army's war in Algeria has always aroused passions. This book does not whitewash the atrocities committed by both sides; rather it focuses on the conflict itself, a perspective assisted by the French republic's official admission in 1999 that what happened in Algeria was indeed a war.

This engaging, knowledgeable book traces the American path France has followed since resolving its searing Algerian conflict in 1962. Barnett Singer convincingly demolishes two pervasive clichés about modern France: first, that the country has never been fit to fight wars, including wars on terror; and second, that the French have always been and remain overwhelmingly anti-American. The end of the war led to an important sea change, clearing the way for France to embrace American culture, especially rock 'n' roll, and more generally, an American-style emphasis on personal happiness. The author argues that today’s France, wounded by the loss of traditions and stability, is increasingly pro-American, clinging to trends from across the Atlantic as to a lifeline.

Algeria sits at the crossroads of the Atlantic, European, Arab, and African worlds. Yet, unlike the wars in Korea and Vietnam, Algeria's fight for independence has rarely been viewed as an international conflict. Even forty years later, it is remembered as the scene of a national drama that culminated with Charles de Gaulle's decision to "grant" Algerians their independence despite assassination attempts, mutinies, and settler insurrection. Yet, as Matthew Connelly demonstrates, the war the Algerians fought occupied a world stage, one in which the U.S. and the USSR, Israel and Egypt, Great Britain, Germany, and China all played key roles. Recognizing the futility of confronting France in a purely military struggle, the Front de Lib?ration Nationale instead sought to exploit the Cold War competition and regional rivalries, the spread of mass communications and emigrant communities, and the proliferation of international and non-governmental organizations. By harnessing the forces of nascent globalization they divided France internally and isolated it from the world community. And, by winning rights and recognition as Algeria's legitimate rulers without actually liberating the national territory, they rewrote the rules of international relations. Based on research spanning three continents and including, for the first time, the rebels' own archives, this study offers a landmark reevaluation of one of the great anti-colonial struggles as well as a model of the new international history. It will appeal to historians of post-colonial studies, twentieth-century diplomacy, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. A Diplomatic Revolution was winner of the 2003 Stuart L. Bernath Prize of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Akira Iriye International History Book Award, The Foundation for Pacific Quest.

Burning the Veil draws upon sources from newly-opened archives, exploring the "emancipation" of Muslim women from the veil, seclusion and perceived male oppression during the Algerian War of decolonization. The claimed French liberation was contradicted by the violence inflicted on women through rape, torture, and destruction of villages. This book examines the roots of this contradiction in the theory of "revolutionary warfare", and the attempt to defeat the National Liberation Front by penetrating the Muslim family, seen as a bastion of resistance. Striking parallels with contemporary Afghanistan and Iraq, French "emancipation" produced a backlash that led to deterioration in the social and political position of Muslim women. This analysis of how and why attempts to Westernize Muslim women ended in catastrophe has contemporary relevance and will be important to students and academics engaged in the study of French and colonial history, feminism, and contemporary Islam.