Jews were a different situation with their cousins having been a minority in continental Europe for a long time. And while Arab nationalism may not have been a thing, Arab identity, Muslim identity, and the expected primacy of Quaranic law over any other form of law very much was present.
Their success with Jews was in large part because they pursued a deliberate policy of divide-and-rule and pitting the native Shepardic community against the Muslim Algerian populace which resulted in amplified anti-semitism and ultimately the departure of almost all Jews from Algeria. It's hardly a victory.
Deleted member 180541
I'm not sure why people here are using OTL immigration numbers to Algeria to justify why it isn't possible. Settling in North Africa would be a far more attractive prospect then OTL. You not only have all these extra Frenchmen but you also have significantly more Italian and Spanish immigrants. Cities like Marseille, Toulon and Montpellier will become major trading hubs and urban centres compared to the dilapidated and decaying state they were left in OTL which will rapidly increase trade and transactions with North Africa. They would have similar industrial significance to Glasgow or Manchester. Imagine the shipbuilding reputation of the Clyde instead being attributed to Marseille. Also, the conquest of Algeria would play out differently, so the class and social dynamics are entirely different and can't simply be superimposed onto this scenario. You also need an earlier acquisition of Tunisia as 1881 is far too late. Considering the fact that the majority of France didn't even speak French in the 1800s I don't think North Africa could become Francophone even if the region is more prosperous and has more European immigrants. France has to assimilate Metropolitan France first before looking at expanding into the Mediterranean. North Africa ITL would likely be a very diverse and multicultural region that is richer and more closely aligned with Europe, with perhaps the coast and cities speaking French or having culturally French elements. Also, you haven't really said how France avoids this population decline. The only way you can really avoid it is preventing the French Revolution from occurring.
I have read that the early demographic collapse of France preceded the French Revolution. I don't think there is a general consensus about what were the real issues that caused it. There are some theories, but nothing conclusive so far.
Deleted member 180541
Regardless of whether the study is accurate or not it is undeniable that the French Revolution sped up secularisation in France by cementing liberalism as its governing ideology. Without the revolution, there is the chance that more reactionary and religious sentiment can take hold. And, combined with the huge amount of casualties France sustained from the Napoleonic Wars it is the best possible way to avoid the demographic collapse, at least to the extent of OTL. While the study is interesting and appears accurate, it doesn't really provide reasons for the decreasing religiosity. And presumably one could say that avoiding dechristianisation would also prevent the revolution from occurring in the first place, as the populace would be more religiously zealous and less receptive revolutionary ideas. So, upon reading the evidence I would now say that 'the declining influence and relevance of the Catholic Church in France caused its demographic collapse' or something to that effect so as to cover all the bases. Interestingly, this is also the reason why the Quebecois population declined in Canada. Prior to the 'Quiet Revolution' the Catholic Church basically ran everything, down to schools and hospitals, and Quebec was this catholic stronghold in North America which experienced huge amounts of natural population growth. Birth rates collapsed dramatically following the reforms.
Except that statistics did show that French birth rate was already falling since the 1750s, nearly 4 decades before the French Revolution.
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That is not really what happened. The Quiet Revolution in Quebec came about arguably as a consequence of economic forces, the old Church-driven model of social and economic development not working. The big gap between Montreal and Toronto did not come about after the 1960s, as Jane Jacobs pointed out, but rather in the first half of the 20th century, when higher levels of human development (public education, etc) and better policy meant that Toronto surged ahead in high-tech and highly-capitalized capitalism while Montreal stayed stuck. There are reasons that Ontario, not Quebec, had a car industry. It did not help matters, either, that there was an ethnolinguistic division of labour that consigned a majority of the population of Montreal to the lower echelons of the labour market; or, for that matter, the relative repression of women under traditionalist norms. The Catholic Church, as important an institution it had been in French Canadian identity, especially after the repression of Canadien political liberalism post-1837, had become too associated with dead-end policies; a break was inevitable when the policies it was promoting were increasingly onerous to individuals.
^ This. I have become convinced that, if you want to avoid the early relative decline in French fertility rates, you will have to seriously alter or do away with the course of the Enlightenment. (If you wanted to keep France's relative standing, well, maybe spread the Enlightenment to more countries earlier?) The kind of individual self-assertion against traditionalist norms that the Enlightenment introduced cannot be easily repressed, or reversed.
It goes without saying that if you have something like the aggressive and conservative Catholic French monarchy waging Ireland-style holy war/settlement colonialism campaigns in North Africa, this France will be notably different from our France in a lot of ways. We could probably speculate, sure, that if France had wanted to and was able to it could probably have committed genocide in Maghreb and repopulated the region with European Catholics, but this demands so many huge changes with our timeline that it is barely relevant. You would need to develop a specific scenario where the option of genocide, never wholly present in OTL even in the worst periods of the consequence, is actually a choice that can be taken up.
Hi! I saw this just now.
That was not what I said. I had said that there were limited opportunities for migration.
On the one hand, one million people is a lot of people.
On the other hand, the population of French Algerians at their numerical apogee was less than half the population of New Zealand, a country colonized at roughly the same time that was located on literally the other side of the world from its colonizer.
(It also goes without saying that French Algeria did not receive one million immigrants, hundreds of thousands.)
There were opportunities, just not enough good ones to attract the scale of immigration from Europe that would be transformative.
It is worth noting that unlike South Africa, Algeria's closest peer at the other end of the African continent, Algeria lacked the materials for the sort of relatively early industrialization that could have attracted lots of European migrants. Algeria did not have abundant coal or metal ores, for instance, and was only beginning to develop oil and gas resource at an early date. Colonial Algeria remained a deeply agricultural economy, one with a relatively closed frontier; there was just no empty land available, not with the Sahara neatly hemming in settlement and not with coastal Algeria having a latifundia sort of economy reliant on cheap native labour that worked well enough for the colonists.
Where would the migrants from Europe live? What would they do?
Yes. The French knew about Algeria quite well, Algeria being a conquered territory of France under French rule on just the other side of the Mediterranean, and were accordingly relatively likely to weight it.
That could be described as a consequence of French people, and French migrants, overrating the attractiveness of the destination, much more easily than the French somehow not knowing the advantages that a nearby territory under their control could have. Take away French rule, or even French direct rule, and the numbers of migrants would drop accordingly.
Well, no.
As we have seen in central and eastern Europe, particularly, countries can have very low or even negative rates of natural growth and still produce very large numbers of emigrants. Low fertility in a homeland may, or may not, have demographic consequences in the longer run; at least some sources suggest that French people of relatively recent southern European background have below-average fertility rates, although higher than in southern Europe. In the shorter run context of choices to emigrate, it has next to no consequence.
The French could well have emigrated in much larger numbers than OTL. That they did not go in such numbers to Algeria particularly indicates that they knew what Algeria could offer, not that they were somehow ignorant of its potential or choosing not to develop it.
Does it?
Ignoring that number of immigrants from France particularly never came (lots of other southern Europeans, remember), the fact that French Algeria at its peak in the 1950s had less than half of the population of a New Zealand colonized at the same time but located on the opposite side of the world as its colonizer shows the unattractiveness of the colony.
Of course not. Where do you get that idea?
Simply assuming that a larger population will produce more emigrants to a particular area is weird. How, exactly, would having a France of 50 million people in 1870 as opposed to 40 million do anything to make Algeria more attractive to settlement? What is the necessary link?
(A population between 20-25% larger does not have any relationship to the number of potential migrants. An age demographic just does not translate into that.)
That was not what I said. I had said that there were limited opportunities for migration.
On the one hand, one million people is a lot of people.
On the other hand, the population of French Algerians at their numerical apogee was less than half the population of New Zealand, a country colonized at roughly the same time that was located on literally the other side of the world from its colonizer.
(It also goes without saying that French Algeria did not receive one million immigrants, hundreds of thousands.)
There were opportunities, just not enough good ones to attract the scale of immigration from Europe that would be transformative.
It is worth noting that unlike South Africa, Algeria's closest peer at the other end of the African continent, Algeria lacked the materials for the sort of relatively early industrialization that could have attracted lots of European migrants. Algeria did not have abundant coal or metal ores, for instance, and was only beginning to develop oil and gas resource at an early date. Colonial Algeria remained a deeply agricultural economy, one with a relatively closed frontier; there was just no empty land available, not with the Sahara neatly hemming in settlement and not with coastal Algeria having a latifundia sort of economy reliant on cheap native labour that worked well enough for the colonists.
Where would the migrants from Europe live? What would they do?
Yes. The French knew about Algeria quite well, Algeria being a conquered territory of France under French rule on just the other side of the Mediterranean, and were accordingly relatively likely to weight it.
That could be described as a consequence of French people, and French migrants, overrating the attractiveness of the destination, much more easily than the French somehow not knowing the advantages that a nearby territory under their control could have. Take away French rule, or even French direct rule, and the numbers of migrants would drop accordingly.
Well, no.
As we have seen in central and eastern Europe, particularly, countries can have very low or even negative rates of natural growth and still produce very large numbers of emigrants. Low fertility in a homeland may, or may not, have demographic consequences in the longer run; at least some sources suggest that French people of relatively recent southern European background have below-average fertility rates, although higher than in southern Europe. In the shorter run context of choices to emigrate, it has next to no consequence.
The French could well have emigrated in much larger numbers than OTL. That they did not go in such numbers to Algeria particularly indicates that they knew what Algeria could offer, not that they were somehow ignorant of its potential or choosing not to develop it.
Does it?
Ignoring that number of immigrants from France particularly never came (lots of other southern Europeans, remember), the fact that French Algeria at its peak in the 1950s had less than half of the population of a New Zealand colonized at the same time but located on the opposite side of the world as its colonizer shows the unattractiveness of the colony.
Of course not. Where do you get that idea?
Simply assuming that a larger population will produce more emigrants to a particular area is weird. How, exactly, would having a France of 50 million people in 1870 as opposed to 40 million do anything to make Algeria more attractive to settlement? What is the necessary link?
(A population between 20-25% larger does not have any relationship to the number of potential migrants. An age demographic just does not translate into that.)
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This is it, too.
Beyond that, suggesting that a larger population necessarily means more emigrants (and more emigrants to a specific area) or has other implications kind of begs the question. Where, exactly, does it hold that a larger population must produce more emigrants? For all we know, a larger French domestic market might well spur economic growth, keeping France comfortably ahead of Germany in per capita income and limiting the numbers of immigrants.
There could maybe be some policies which could drive such rapid growth within 1870/1871 frontiers. We might imagine a boom in industrial growth that absorbs millions of migrants from neighbouring countries, pushing French population numbers up.
It is difficult, however, to imagine policy options or regimes that could propel this sort of transformation while also being compatible with the sort of colonization described here. If France is a stable liberal republic that is a beacon to liberty, the massacre of Algerians as a prelude to settlement will have consequences, if it will not contradict things altogether.
Frankly, this makes no sense. You can't explain away a demographic collapse in the 1750s through 'Enlightenment values'. For that to work, the Enlightenment would have had to reach into the vast majority of the country, the poor illiterate masses. Which they didn't.
And beside, while France was a leading light of the Enlightenment, it wasn't the only one - England also had its share of it, and had a most vigorous eighteenth century; and the US was literally founded on Enlightenment ideals and certainly had no trouble growing its population. If you want an explanation for the French demographic crisis, you should look at material causes, not ideological.
That assertion is unsourced and implausible besides. Why wouldn't there be top-down cultural diffusion in France?
A France that has been one of the richest countries of Europe since the 17th century is not a candidate for that sort of slow growth through immiseration.
Some of the latest work has highlighted the diffusion of more secular norms surrounding pleasure and individual autonomy, this perhaps being linked to the extent to which nakedly political use of religion in the Counter-Reformation and later consequences undermined the standing of religion in much of France.
France's baby bust - Works in Progress
France was once Europe’s superpower, thanks above all to its enormous population. Its decline coincided with a collapse in its birth rate – now we know why.
worksinprogress.co
The material world matters but so does culture.
Going back to the original point being discussed, while you could plausibly make France over into a sort of uber-Catholic power that might carry out a genocidal colonization of North Africa, this in itself would require huge changes that would have consequences. A France that avoids religious wars would be scarcely recognizable.
Something like that may just barely have been possible. For that to happen, though, at the very least you would need to weaken the Algerian colons' lobby; they were deeply opposed to any radical improvement in the status of the Algerian Muslims.
Agreed.
In a way, this might echo the history of Irish emigration in the 19th century, as a population made increasingly less distinctive culturally over the course of the century (cf the collapse in the Irish language) became increasingly visible in the wider world as they necessarily have to venture out to make a living.
Algerian integration may have been fatally sabotaged by the relatively large number of European colonists disinterested in a short-term weakening of their position relative to the natives. Have fewer colonists or at least less powerful ones and you might well be able to engineer lasting shifts.
This is just an unfalsifiable argument, there is literally nothing I can say or bring forward that will ever convince you, because your a priori assumptions simply takes what happened as a proof thar anything else couldnt happen, that any migration we saw fit a perfect economic calculation that at best satisfied all the economic demand that existed for immigration and at worst actually exceeded(lets ignore the inherent hypocrisy of you assuming that)
No point in engaging further, you are not the first person on this forum that just tries to unproductively deny the art of alt history using these unfounded assumptions.
I am not the person who, making background assumptions about different people wanting to commit genocide and the acceptability of said, argued that people can be shifted from one territory to another as if they were NPCs in some colonization sim game.
You need to create reasons for people to move to a territory if you want them to move. If you do not create them, or if they simply do not exist, then you have a problem. Pretending the problem does not exist is not nearly the same as solving the problem.
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I just read through this threat and am appalled at the casual flippancy in which genocide is discussed as a solution to any problem. The problem being "not enough french people".
Part of the issue is the core assumption that increasing the French population must be primarily through natural births of an ethnically french core population at the expense of all others, and that "assimilation" is driven by demographically drowning your lebensraum instead of social or cultural promotion...
Even if we assume a scenario where France increases its population by capturing North African territory, wouldn't it make more sense to have the conflict be less deadly instead of more deadly, so that there are more people left to assimilate?
Foreign majorities of different religion can and have been historically assimilated, especially considering France is secular and could find a path towards citizenship that does not involve the difficult task of christianization, but merely non-islamic education.
Basically, considering the potential fertility rates of africans, you wouldn't even have to solve the metropolitan fertility issue.
Here's brief example scenario
During the Napoleonic Wars (or equivalent) an expedition seizes Ottoman Algeria. After the war, the protectorate is annexed and begins the process of administrative integration. Due to the earlier takeover from another faraway empire, the conquest is more of a smooth transition and offers less immediate impetus for resistance.
Napoleonic-inspired tolerance edicts are extended to the muslim population early as a gesture of goodwill to ensure decent local cooperation, such as was attempted in Egypt but hopefully better implemented. Such measures combined with the state's interest in public education results in a rapidly growing francophile algerian elite.
Through combinations of cultural osmosis, employment opportunity and social mobility, the rest of Algeria conforms to their social elite in following francophile cultural practices.
From this spreads francophone proficiency, accelerating administrative, social, and economic integration and Algerians and mainlanders are able to do business with each other directly.
The military recruits heavily from Algeria, increasing francophone assimilation among recruits while also increasing French acceptance of Algerians in the ranks of society.
This pattern of francization follows a similar pattern to islamization, which does not require any significant migration to work.
Preventing the migration of a French colonial elite would probably help in preventing a situation like OTL with the Piednoirs blocking assimilation to uphold their aparthied local supremacy. Instead middle-class migration should be preferred as part of a more general economic exchange, while plenty of Algerians migrate to France for labour, filling in the manpower dearth from the demographic slowdown earlier which should help the economy.
Part of the issue is the core assumption that increasing the French population must be primarily through natural births of an ethnically french core population at the expense of all others, and that "assimilation" is driven by demographically drowning your lebensraum instead of social or cultural promotion...
Even if we assume a scenario where France increases its population by capturing North African territory, wouldn't it make more sense to have the conflict be less deadly instead of more deadly, so that there are more people left to assimilate?
Foreign majorities of different religion can and have been historically assimilated, especially considering France is secular and could find a path towards citizenship that does not involve the difficult task of christianization, but merely non-islamic education.
Basically, considering the potential fertility rates of africans, you wouldn't even have to solve the metropolitan fertility issue.
Here's brief example scenario
During the Napoleonic Wars (or equivalent) an expedition seizes Ottoman Algeria. After the war, the protectorate is annexed and begins the process of administrative integration. Due to the earlier takeover from another faraway empire, the conquest is more of a smooth transition and offers less immediate impetus for resistance.
Napoleonic-inspired tolerance edicts are extended to the muslim population early as a gesture of goodwill to ensure decent local cooperation, such as was attempted in Egypt but hopefully better implemented. Such measures combined with the state's interest in public education results in a rapidly growing francophile algerian elite.
Through combinations of cultural osmosis, employment opportunity and social mobility, the rest of Algeria conforms to their social elite in following francophile cultural practices.
From this spreads francophone proficiency, accelerating administrative, social, and economic integration and Algerians and mainlanders are able to do business with each other directly.
The military recruits heavily from Algeria, increasing francophone assimilation among recruits while also increasing French acceptance of Algerians in the ranks of society.
This pattern of francization follows a similar pattern to islamization, which does not require any significant migration to work.
Preventing the migration of a French colonial elite would probably help in preventing a situation like OTL with the Piednoirs blocking assimilation to uphold their aparthied local supremacy. Instead middle-class migration should be preferred as part of a more general economic exchange, while plenty of Algerians migrate to France for labour, filling in the manpower dearth from the demographic slowdown earlier which should help the economy.