Napoléon III wanted to create an "Arab Kingdom" and partnership with natives; maybe he could have enough powers to crush the colonists' lobby.
But how to motivate industry to recruit migrant workers from Algeria instead of elsewhere?
Circling back to the original post:
First you say "France already has a colonial empire, so surplus population in France is likely to immigrate to that empire and not elsewhere." Then you state a reason why this might happen, but it's a "perhaps" reason, and furthermore it's the kind of reason that in practice does not motivate millions of people to move.
Individuals are not subordinate drones of some abstract national will. They are individuals. They make decisions based on what they expect to produce good results for themselves or their families, not because "it is the manifest destiny of our nation to fill the empty land we just created by shooting everyone who used to live there, which makes it therefore totally terra nullius am I right."
So don't ask "could France evolve a sense of 'Manifest Destiny' about pouring eight jillion people into North Africa, even if they had eight jillion people to pour.
Ask, "What about North Africa should I expect to attract this notional extra wave of French migration?"
Killing 875,000 people and calling it "pacification," well, I'll quote Tacitus. Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. Words like "invasion," "occupation," "subjugation," and so on seem more appropriate. Especially if one then escalates to twice as many. And let me also point out that methodical killings of 1.5 million people over the course of forty-five years, when the initial population of the territory (Algeria) was only about 2.5 to three million to begin with, tends to alter the character of the killings. Or rather, amplify them.
Consider the basic arithmetic. We are discussing a roughly 45-year span of time. Roughly time for two generations to grow to adulthood and have children, assuming they're quick about it. For an initial population of 2.5 to 3 million people (the approximate population of Algeria before the French showed up) to lose 1.5 million people in two generations would require multiple rounds of genocide killing 20%, 30%, or more of the population.
That most certainly cannot be rationalized as "pacification."
________________________________
See... Military age males only make up a relatively modest proportion of any population.
Half the population consists of women, who are usually noncombatants, to the point where demographically speaking they are not dying in combat in large enough numbers for combat deaths to impact population sizes directly.
Average life expectancy in this era before modern medicine is relatively shorter, so oldsters make up a lower percentage of the population, but still a significant one- and even many people we wouldn't consider all that old are still partially disabled from wounds, diseases, or other causes, and are thus noncombatants in practice. Children make up a large percentage of the population.
And realistically, a population's military age males do not all fight to the death, unless they expect you to murder them anyway. Many will be wounded and unable to continue fighting, and yet not die. Many will run away from battles or surrender.
________________________
If your army kills 10% of a population, it's at least vaguely plausible that said population just put up a very, very hard fight against your attempt to conquer them.
If your army kills 20% of a population, it's a lot less plausible that this was just "them putting up a hard fight," because that would be 40% of all males in the entire region- and that is counting male infants and toddlers, who most assuredly were not fighting you, and male sexagenarians and septuagenarians, who might have been but probably weren't if they didn't expect you to murder them anyway.
If your army kills 30% of a population, it becomes virtually unimaginable that there was anything other than a deliberate policy of genocide targeting noncombatants.
If your army kills 40% of a population... Well, at that point, either your army is murdering a lot of women and children, like, a lot. Or it's deliberately disrupting food production so badly that the population undergoes something analogous to the Irish Potato Famine in addition to battle casualties. Or your army is killing so many males that...
Remember Genghis Khan slaughtering every Tatar man and boy who stood higher than a wagon axle? That's the kind of atrocity that you do it once and people are still talking about it eight hundred years later. You'd have to do that to an entire population of millions, to get a 40% reduction in size by targeting men alone. Realistically, it'd just be indiscriminate mass murder.
__________________________________
So frankly, I feel like you kind of glide over the part where you say "well, there are more people in France, so of course the French would do a genocide, or double down on a genocide they already did OTL, to "make room" in North Africa." You seem to be taking that assumption kind of for granted, all casual-like.
Remind me again why you think it a logical, if not desirable, consequence of France having several million more citizens that they would do this thing?
This feels like motivated reasoning chaining into:
"Likely, the Pied Noir would completely dominate the coast which would make independence impossible... But I want to go a step further... by 1960 the Algerian identity is completely destroyed with the Arabs assimilating into the dominate French culture."
Because you line up a number of historical dominos here, all pointing in that direction, and gloss over a lot of the underlying reasoning as to why any of this would even happen. Including some pretty sinister steps that "of course" would happen. When I think about it, you're making some fairly damning accusations about just how much murder Orleanist France and Napoleon III would do for the sake of some extra Lebensraum, and how freely and easily they'd get away with it.
The OTL 1914 population of France was about forty million, come to think of it. You're proposing to more than double it. Remind me again what is making the French so super-fecund over such a protracted time? Because at this point you're not talking about the kind of thing that can be solved by removing a relatively minor demographic hiccup.
This is interesting. I'm a little confused about why you expect this extra wave of mass French migration to go in this specific direction in the first place.
First you say "France already has a colonial empire, so surplus population in France is likely to immigrate to that empire and not elsewhere." Then you state a reason why this might happen, but it's a "perhaps" reason, and furthermore it's the kind of reason that in practice does not motivate millions of people to move.
Individuals are not subordinate drones of some abstract national will. They are individuals. They make decisions based on what they expect to produce good results for themselves or their families, not because "it is the manifest destiny of our nation to fill the empty land we just created by shooting everyone who used to live there, which makes it therefore totally terra nullius am I right."
So don't ask "could France evolve a sense of 'Manifest Destiny' about pouring eight jillion people into North Africa, even if they had eight jillion people to pour.
Ask, "What about North Africa should I expect to attract this notional extra wave of French migration?"
I'd like to just pause here and point a few things out.
Killing 875,000 people and calling it "pacification," well, I'll quote Tacitus. Ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. Words like "invasion," "occupation," "subjugation," and so on seem more appropriate. Especially if one then escalates to twice as many. And let me also point out that methodical killings of 1.5 million people over the course of forty-five years, when the initial population of the territory (Algeria) was only about 2.5 to three million to begin with, tends to alter the character of the killings. Or rather, amplify them.
Consider the basic arithmetic. We are discussing a roughly 45-year span of time. Roughly time for two generations to grow to adulthood and have children, assuming they're quick about it. For an initial population of 2.5 to 3 million people (the approximate population of Algeria before the French showed up) to lose 1.5 million people in two generations would require multiple rounds of genocide killing 20%, 30%, or more of the population.
That most certainly cannot be rationalized as "pacification."
________________________________
See... Military age males only make up a relatively modest proportion of any population.
Half the population consists of women, who are usually noncombatants, to the point where demographically speaking they are not dying in combat in large enough numbers for combat deaths to impact population sizes directly.
Average life expectancy in this era before modern medicine is relatively shorter, so oldsters make up a lower percentage of the population, but still a significant one- and even many people we wouldn't consider all that old are still partially disabled from wounds, diseases, or other causes, and are thus noncombatants in practice. Children make up a large percentage of the population.
And realistically, a population's military age males do not all fight to the death, unless they expect you to murder them anyway. Many will be wounded and unable to continue fighting, and yet not die. Many will run away from battles or surrender.
________________________
If your army kills 10% of a population, it's at least vaguely plausible that said population just put up a very, very hard fight against your attempt to conquer them.
If your army kills 20% of a population, it's a lot less plausible that this was just "them putting up a hard fight," because that would be 40% of all males in the entire region- and that is counting male infants and toddlers, who most assuredly were not fighting you, and male sexagenarians and septuagenarians, who might have been but probably weren't if they didn't expect you to murder them anyway.
If your army kills 30% of a population, it becomes virtually unimaginable that there was anything other than a deliberate policy of genocide targeting noncombatants.
If your army kills 40% of a population... Well, at that point, either your army is murdering a lot of women and children, like, a lot. Or it's deliberately disrupting food production so badly that the population undergoes something analogous to the Irish Potato Famine in addition to battle casualties. Or your army is killing so many males that...
Remember Genghis Khan slaughtering every Tatar man and boy who stood higher than a wagon axle? That's the kind of atrocity that you do it once and people are still talking about it eight hundred years later. You'd have to do that to an entire population of millions, to get a 40% reduction in size by targeting men alone. Realistically, it'd just be indiscriminate mass murder.
__________________________________
So frankly, I feel like you kind of glide over the part where you say "well, there are more people in France, so of course the French would do a genocide, or double down on a genocide they already did OTL, to "make room" in North Africa." You seem to be taking that assumption kind of for granted, all casual-like.
Remind me again why you think it a logical, if not desirable, consequence of France having several million more citizens that they would do this thing?
This feels like motivated reasoning chaining into:
"Likely, the Pied Noir would completely dominate the coast which would make independence impossible... But I want to go a step further... by 1960 the Algerian identity is completely destroyed with the Arabs assimilating into the dominate French culture."
Because you line up a number of historical dominos here, all pointing in that direction, and gloss over a lot of the underlying reasoning as to why any of this would even happen. Including some pretty sinister steps that "of course" would happen. When I think about it, you're making some fairly damning accusations about just how much murder Orleanist France and Napoleon III would do for the sake of some extra Lebensraum, and how freely and easily they'd get away with it.
Fifty?
The OTL 1914 population of France was about forty million, come to think of it. You're proposing to more than double it. Remind me again what is making the French so super-fecund over such a protracted time? Because at this point you're not talking about the kind of thing that can be solved by removing a relatively minor demographic hiccup.
Last edited:
Deleted member 172985
- The French conquest of Algeria, the historical event, is called the 'Pacification of Algeria' and did kill around 15% of it's population through murder, disease, and famine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Algeria
- It wouldn't be an outright genocide, it would be a mass migration of French people into the coast of North Africa.
- It wouldn't be several more million, it would be about triple the number of settlers from OTL (because the number of French people has tripled). And I said that if there is a more robust colonial policy and an initiative by the French government to move some more Frenchmen over there could be more.
- I calculated the French population using the German population growth numbers and adding 1% to 3% more to account for the fact that France has always been the demographic hegemon of Europe. A large part of the population would move out of metropolitan France.
Yes, and it's a curiously bloodless word for a rather bloody event. The irony is not lost on me, and I wanted to point it out. Again, I will quote Tacitus, this time translating from the Latin:
"They make a desolation, and they call it peace."
That's a very peculiar statement. Because there most certainly is a genocide built into your timeline. Namely, the part where to kill off as many Algerians as you describe, the French need to intentionally slaughter every Algerian male they can catch who's taller than a wagon axle, or to somehow engineer starvation on the level of the Irish Potato Famine, or something horrific like that.
What we are talking about here is a level of death among the native Algerian population that cannot plausibly explained without a deliberate French campaign to slay Algerians in order to make room for French settlers on a large scale.
It's a genocide. Let us call a shovel a shovel, not a metallo-organic composite spatulate man-powered earthmoving implement.
You wouldn't say "Generalplan Ost wasn't an outright genocide, it would be a mass migration of German people into the plains of Belarus and Ukraine," would you? The idea of saying such a thing is horrifying. So surely you wouldn't mean to characterize what happens to the Algerians in this scenario as involving anything less than a genocide.
Adding up the total French population being... shoveled... into these colonies, "several more million" seems a reasonable description. Especially when you get coy about how "there could be more" than the numbers you actually cite.
That doesn't begin to address the question.
First, why was there a difference between German and French population growth rates? Do you know? I confess that I do not, but there were probably reasons and knowing why makes a difference.
Second, that "adding 1% to 3%" bit smacks of motivated reasoning. Increasing a population growth rate by 1-3% is not a small change when integrated over a period of roughly 100-150 years. And "because France has always been the demographic hegemon of Europe" smacks even harder of motivated reasoning. That's not a quantifiable argument, and notably it isn't even true given that as you yourself admit, OTL is a counterexample. France has been a large, powerful country in Western Europe for a long time, but...
Actually, what does "demographic hegemon" even mean? I'm not sure that's a real term. What does it look like to be a demographic hegemon, anyway?
Is there something in this timeline
I didn't say it was controversial.
I said you're proposing a timeline in which some pretty drastic stuff needs to happen. Buoyed by an unstoppable onrush of aphrodisiac-laced crêpes, starting around 1800, the French population explodes to roughly equal that of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany (both halves) combined by 1960. Napoleon III, seeing this trend coming, decides he needs Lebensraum (we'll find a French term for it later) and orders every Algerian his forces can catch slaughtered or starved for several years to "make room."
The fact that all this stuff is happening in your timeline seems to be concealed from you behind your own insistence that this is just a bloodless arithmetic problem. But neither the anomalous tripling of the French population, nor the slaughter of so many Algerians, can occur without blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
Such misrepresentations!
Two or three million people is not "some." It is the population of a great city, or even several great cities. You speak of rather more than "at least some."
There is considerable room between "two or three million" and "none." Only in your own mind is the "literally no extra" statement correct, so far as I can ascertain.
But you would definitely "enjoy discussing the social and economic ramifications of the transformation of North Africa." Your words. I'm not disputing them. I'm just pointing out that this transformation would be achieved by slaughtering a third or so of the Algerians, probably more than once since it would have to be done across multiple generations given the timeframe you gave us, and moving in a great many anomalous Frenchmen to fill the shoes of the dead.
Oh me, oh my, why are people being mean and pointing out the bad things that happen in my timeline?
Well, I don't know. I'm not accusing you of killing, or even wanting to kill, huge numbers of Algerians.
Unless of course you are secretly Napoleon III from a parallel universe or something.
I was given to understand that Napoleon III was dead and buried, lo these fifteen decades ago.
Am I mistaken?
Pacification is not really such a word, the standard definitions already contain negative readings.
You don't know but you just assume it's not possible? Why?
Again, you have no clue but you just know it's not possible, this is just circular logic at this point and doesn't lead us anywhere, either you provide a way this growth could happen or you show exactly why you think it's not possible given that's the level of growth we see in virtually all neighbours of France.
Are you just being a contrarian and argumentative for no reason? Rhetorical question.
France being demographically dominant in the early modern period is something everyone that has any clue on the topic should know, it may not have had higher growth than other countries but what it did have is a strong starting base from 1500, by the late 18th century France had around as many people as the Russian or Ottoman empire.
Reductio ad absurdum, while the growth OP presumes might be too big, you and others also have some rather unjustified beliefs on why migration to Algeria was supposedly constrained by rather rigid limits without actually justifying why those limit supposedly exist.
Again, this is literally mindless argumentative diatribe with no substance. Whether you personally consider 2-3 million migrants to be a "a lot" or not is not an argument, the fact is that similar numbers of Irish, Italians, Spaniards, Brits, Jews and Germans migrated oversea or even migrated internally within their own countries during the same period, any ad hoc arguments that tries to explain why this happened in those 2 cases ultimately has to acknowledge that the scale of the event in of itself IS possible, no ifs or buts.
Once again why do people that have no clue about the basic demographic history of the discussed region jump into the topic anyway...
While a great amount of death did happen what also is true is that the native Algerian population grew about 3-4 times from 1830 to independence, if the native population had to be killed to make place for settlers then the total population of Algeria would have been just 2-4 million by 1960 and it would have been 25-35% Pied-Noirs, not 10% of a total of 10 million.
While you could consider any given region to be in some part a 0 sum game in terms of who can live there, this has to take into account whether the overall population is growing as well.
Last edited:
My appreciation to the Lutetian, by the way. Given the circumstances, a vote of confidence from someone I gather to be a Frenchman (Joe the Parisian, even!) means a lot.
It's a bit like "police action" in that it gets used to cover everything from cases where soldiers are actually deployed to keep the peace (that is, to avoid or prevent violence) and are not killing people, to cases where soldiers are deployed and given free-fire zones to shoot up at will and wind up killing many thousands.
As such, the word "pacification" is remarkable and worth identifying for what it is, especially in cases where it seems unclear whether it's being used in a truthful manner to describe "the act of making something peaceful" or in a weaselly manner to describe "they make a desert and call it peace."
Because Gul Dukat is proposing a pretty significant departure from OTL. I infer that he has a clear reason in mind. Or that he has in his mind a clearly formed hypothesis explaining why France's population growth rates were slower than other Western European countries in OTL, and is asking "what if this well understood force were not in play?"
Except it can't be that second one, because Gul Dukat didn't just ask "what if [force] didn't lower French population growth rates and France grew at the same rate as Germany?" He, what was the phrase, wanted to go farther, so he tacked on an extra 1-3% of population growth. Such that France winds up with 150 million citizens (be they in metropolitan France or overseas) by 1960, more than Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. By contrast, in real life they had less than fifty million citizens in 1960, based on a quick Googling.
It seems reasonable to inquire as to exactly what is supposed to be going on under the hood here, so I did. I have made no assumptions. I have only made some tongue-in-cheek speculations such as "aphrodisiac crêpes."
This is the core point of departure of his entire proposed timeline. I think I'm entitled to dig a little as to what he thinks might be happening here, how, or why.
And I think that if I posted an OP positing that an ATL nation's population would end up over a 160-year period three times the size of what it ended up being OTL, someone would ask some questions about how that outcome might occur. I'd be disappointed if they didn't, frankly. It would show a remarkable lack of curiosity and insight if no one thought to look into that question. I like to think we're all sharper than that here.
So in context, what does "demographically dominant" mean? Does France reliably "demographically dominate" all of Western Europe? What are the sources of this? Does it automatically and logically confer a +1% or +3% bonus to population growth rates throughout a 160-year period even when compared to other "non-dominant" demographics such as "the Germans," as Gul Dukat implies?
Please clarify.
Per Wikipedia, I get that France had a large population in 1345 (about twenty million) and in 1715 (about twenty million) and a pretty sizeable population in 1800 (about thirty million for a change!) But the proposition that this would just... keep happening, and indeed cause the French to multiply like rabbits, dramatically faster year over year than the Germans or other Western European peoples...
I can believe it, but I am curious as to what Gul Dukat thinks is going on "under the hood" here.
I think you may be conflating my opinions with someone else's.
Han Solo Gul Dukat shot first. Read our posts.
I said that there would need to be some compelling reason to motivate millions of Frenchmen to leave their homeland and settle in the freshly blood-soaked soil of North Africa. A sense of 'Manifest Destiny' would not in itself suffice. Which seems to me rather obvious- people are not mindless drones who live to implement the national will. Surely you agree with that, Gloss, yes?
...
But then Gul Dukat said: "Why wouldn't at least some Frenchmen move to Algiers and Tunis, which are major regional trading hubs? I would of [sic] enjoyed... but alas people genuinely believe that literally no extra Frenchmen"
Now, perhaps Gul Dukat was responding to someone else's post. I don't know. I may have missed something; I was more interested in engaging with the OP.
But the thing is... He only quoted my post, you see. And the idea that "the Masked Discombobulator genuinely believes that literally no extra Frenchmen..." cannot be reasonably understood as an interpretation of my post.
...
So his response to me? I would hesitate to call it "mindless," because that would be a rude thing that rude people do. It would be very rude to call someone "mindless" when they have not insulted you personally before, Gloss.
But it is assuredly an argumentative diatribe. It is clearly intended as a tool of argument and not of understanding, thus, 'argumentative.' And it is 'diatribe,' that is to say, a bitter (if perhaps passive-aggressive) verbal attack, as can clearly be told from the tone.
And it lacks substance, because it does not engage with what I actually said.
And yet.
And yet.
I don't think my own reply was "literally" "mindless" or "of no substance" at all. I might concede the point that it is argumentative, because I felt I was being grossly misrepresented by someone else's misplaced sense of persecution. I might even grant you "diatribe," because I get sarcastic and snippy when I am grossly misrepresented by someone else's misplaced sense of persecution.
But it is a quite substantial objection to say "I disagree with your claim that because I questioned whether two or three million people would do X, therefore I believe that NO people would do X." There is some definite substance there. That is not a mindless objection, no sir-and/or-ma'am, it is not.
And it is most assuredly not "literally" either of those things. You are doing grave violence to the meaning of the words 'literally' and 'mindless' here, and considerable violence to the meaning of the word 'substance.'
The proposed level of mass murder being discussed would greatly diminish the Algerian population on net, such that there would be many fewer living Algerians in 1875 than in OTL. This would, in turn, have knock-on effects for the population dynamics at all future times. Especially if the millions of transplanted Frenchmen prove as spectacularly and unusually fecund in the lands outre-mer as they did in metropolitan France.
Further complicating the analysis, as already noted by Gul Dukat himself, the coastal belt in particular would be far more heavily seized by the French settlers than the inland regions. This might well act to inhibit population growth among the Algerians, simply because the most fertile land and the best opportunities to raise a family are all the more firmly in French hands and not in Algerian hands. See also, for instance, the way the Irish population never really recovered from the Potato Famine, to the point where even today Ireland is less populated than in 1840.
Perhaps Gul Dukat took that into account. I'm a bit unclear on that at the moment. I was hoping Gul Dukat was going to go into detail on his approach to Algerian population modeling, but alas, he did not seem interested in doing so in his last post. Maybe he'll have a change of heart.
Oh, and one more thing.
Had to be?
What an interesting way to put it. What did you mean by that?
And yet it can also be readily used to imply "no bloody-handed slaughtering of the local noncombatants, no sirree."
It's a bit like "police action" in that it gets used to cover everything from cases where soldiers are actually deployed to keep the peace (that is, to avoid or prevent violence) and are not killing people, to cases where soldiers are deployed and given free-fire zones to shoot up at will and wind up killing many thousands.
As such, the word "pacification" is remarkable and worth identifying for what it is, especially in cases where it seems unclear whether it's being used in a truthful manner to describe "the act of making something peaceful" or in a weaselly manner to describe "they make a desert and call it peace."
I didn't say I assumed it's not possible. I asked the OP why he thought it was possible. There's a difference. You know that, surely.
Because Gul Dukat is proposing a pretty significant departure from OTL. I infer that he has a clear reason in mind. Or that he has in his mind a clearly formed hypothesis explaining why France's population growth rates were slower than other Western European countries in OTL, and is asking "what if this well understood force were not in play?"
Except it can't be that second one, because Gul Dukat didn't just ask "what if [force] didn't lower French population growth rates and France grew at the same rate as Germany?" He, what was the phrase, wanted to go farther, so he tacked on an extra 1-3% of population growth. Such that France winds up with 150 million citizens (be they in metropolitan France or overseas) by 1960, more than Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom combined. By contrast, in real life they had less than fifty million citizens in 1960, based on a quick Googling.
It seems reasonable to inquire as to exactly what is supposed to be going on under the hood here, so I did. I have made no assumptions. I have only made some tongue-in-cheek speculations such as "aphrodisiac crêpes."
This is the core point of departure of his entire proposed timeline. I think I'm entitled to dig a little as to what he thinks might be happening here, how, or why.
And I think that if I posted an OP positing that an ATL nation's population would end up over a 160-year period three times the size of what it ended up being OTL, someone would ask some questions about how that outcome might occur. I'd be disappointed if they didn't, frankly. It would show a remarkable lack of curiosity and insight if no one thought to look into that question. I like to think we're all sharper than that here.
What circular logic? I didn't say anything was impossible. Whose posts are you reading, anyway?
Ah, so you use this "demographically dominant" phrase too! What does it mean, exactly? I know what "demographic" means; it means "of or pertaining to the numbers and distribution of a population." I know "dominant" means "overpowering all others."
So in context, what does "demographically dominant" mean? Does France reliably "demographically dominate" all of Western Europe? What are the sources of this? Does it automatically and logically confer a +1% or +3% bonus to population growth rates throughout a 160-year period even when compared to other "non-dominant" demographics such as "the Germans," as Gul Dukat implies?
Please clarify.
Per Wikipedia, I get that France had a large population in 1345 (about twenty million) and in 1715 (about twenty million) and a pretty sizeable population in 1800 (about thirty million for a change!) But the proposition that this would just... keep happening, and indeed cause the French to multiply like rabbits, dramatically faster year over year than the Germans or other Western European peoples...
I can believe it, but I am curious as to what Gul Dukat thinks is going on "under the hood" here.
And these beliefs are, pray tell? Or rather, the "you" beliefs that I myself have espoused. Not the "others" beliefs, which I cannot take responsibility for, cannot comment on, and in some cases have not read.
I think you may be conflating my opinions with someone else's.
I said that there would need to be some compelling reason to motivate millions of Frenchmen to leave their homeland and settle in the freshly blood-soaked soil of North Africa. A sense of 'Manifest Destiny' would not in itself suffice. Which seems to me rather obvious- people are not mindless drones who live to implement the national will. Surely you agree with that, Gloss, yes?
...
But then Gul Dukat said: "Why wouldn't at least some Frenchmen move to Algiers and Tunis, which are major regional trading hubs? I would of [sic] enjoyed... but alas people genuinely believe that literally no extra Frenchmen"
Now, perhaps Gul Dukat was responding to someone else's post. I don't know. I may have missed something; I was more interested in engaging with the OP.
But the thing is... He only quoted my post, you see. And the idea that "the Masked Discombobulator genuinely believes that literally no extra Frenchmen..." cannot be reasonably understood as an interpretation of my post.
...
So his response to me? I would hesitate to call it "mindless," because that would be a rude thing that rude people do. It would be very rude to call someone "mindless" when they have not insulted you personally before, Gloss.
But it is assuredly an argumentative diatribe. It is clearly intended as a tool of argument and not of understanding, thus, 'argumentative.' And it is 'diatribe,' that is to say, a bitter (if perhaps passive-aggressive) verbal attack, as can clearly be told from the tone.
And it lacks substance, because it does not engage with what I actually said.
And yet.
And yet.
I don't think my own reply was "literally" "mindless" or "of no substance" at all. I might concede the point that it is argumentative, because I felt I was being grossly misrepresented by someone else's misplaced sense of persecution. I might even grant you "diatribe," because I get sarcastic and snippy when I am grossly misrepresented by someone else's misplaced sense of persecution.
But it is a quite substantial objection to say "I disagree with your claim that because I questioned whether two or three million people would do X, therefore I believe that NO people would do X." There is some definite substance there. That is not a mindless objection, no sir-and/or-ma'am, it is not.
And it is most assuredly not "literally" either of those things. You are doing grave violence to the meaning of the words 'literally' and 'mindless' here, and considerable violence to the meaning of the word 'substance.'
Who said anything about 1830 to independence? All the killing being described took place in the much narrower time window from 1830 to, I believe, 1875. Which would have a much greater demographic impact, especially given that it would inevitably mean either near-total slaughter of the Algerian people's adult males, or great slaughter among Algerians of all ages and sexes.
The proposed level of mass murder being discussed would greatly diminish the Algerian population on net, such that there would be many fewer living Algerians in 1875 than in OTL. This would, in turn, have knock-on effects for the population dynamics at all future times. Especially if the millions of transplanted Frenchmen prove as spectacularly and unusually fecund in the lands outre-mer as they did in metropolitan France.
Further complicating the analysis, as already noted by Gul Dukat himself, the coastal belt in particular would be far more heavily seized by the French settlers than the inland regions. This might well act to inhibit population growth among the Algerians, simply because the most fertile land and the best opportunities to raise a family are all the more firmly in French hands and not in Algerian hands. See also, for instance, the way the Irish population never really recovered from the Potato Famine, to the point where even today Ireland is less populated than in 1840.
Perhaps Gul Dukat took that into account. I'm a bit unclear on that at the moment. I was hoping Gul Dukat was going to go into detail on his approach to Algerian population modeling, but alas, he did not seem interested in doing so in his last post. Maybe he'll have a change of heart.
If both populations grow, then there is a certain tension at all future times- and French populations in this timeline seem to grow very quickly. Anomalously so. I still blame the aphrodisiac crêpes, myself.
Oh, and one more thing.
Had to be.
Had to be?
What an interesting way to put it. What did you mean by that?
Last edited:
Compared to OTL layout, would European settlers be still concentrated around the same regions as they were or would a sizeable amount of colonists end up in region where very few Europeans settled IOTL?
Looking at that map reminds me of almost every Australian state/territory, with a few large population centres around the coastal areas, and then the population density decreasing and becoming sparsely populated as you go further inland. Some parts of Australia with a Mediterranean climate (Perth, Western Australia) have a similar climate to coastal Algeria, so perhaps settlement patterns would be similar.
Perhaps French Algeria would follow a similar pattern concentrated around Algiers, Oran and Constantine (except with a much larger population than OTL), especially if the climate is less favourable inland the further south you go. Similar to most of the Australian population being concentrated around a few coastal metropolitan areas.
Last edited:
The point people are objecting to is not the number of Frenchmen showing up to lands annexed to or rendered protectorates of Paris. It is the even greater (and make no mistake, for all of the polite talk of 'pacification' the numbers were great as it is) slaughter of the people already there rather than reconciling them somehow to the new status quo.
As already mentioned and as a number of posters on this thread are trying to run with, were you asking how things would shake down had the Arabs and Berbers of French North Africa received treatment comparable to the Arpetans/Occitans/Corsicans you would not get this sort of pushback.
Depending on who you ask "genocide" might have been pretty close to OTL if wikipedia is correct (it puts the initial conquest as having a fatality toll of somewhere between 1/6 and 1/3 of the population).
Beside the inevitable settlement of saharan cities when oil and gas production takes off (like In Hassi messaoud), the only way to radically change that would be to somehow have a livestock farming colonisation, how do you lure any frenchmen to the atlas and their steppes tho, I have no idea, it's not like there are any boers on this side of africa.Compared to OTL layout, would European settlers be still concentrated around the same regions as they were or would a sizeable amount of colonists end up in region where very few Europeans settled IOTL?
I guess you could increase smallholder colonisation in the Mitidja and maybe parts of the constantinois, maybe through less large industrial vineyards, or some using partially southern european labour if the Algerian population was genocided... Cereal cultivation will always be mainly done by natives or latifundas, it's just not attractive compared to France.
Iberia(the idea that all Muslims were kicked out is flat out wrong, not only did half of the people that got kicked out return and eventually became full Christians, many people outside of Granada flat out never were kicked out and were likely even directly assimilated into the Old Christian communty.
Sicily applies as well, insofar as Muslim slaves in Christian lands had children those children also didn't stay Muslim apparently. I think the same applies for some amount of Muslim slaves to the Americas.
Can we get back to this train of thought? Talking about migration in both directions, wage equalisation, and its social effects, is more interesting than arguing about genocide.
With regards to the religious divide, if I remember correctly, urban labour immigrants generally tend towards abandoning traditional religion, so early Algerian immigrants might adapt to their environment and adopt secularism (due to socialist influence) or a Europeanised form of Islam. I don't think conversion to Catholicism would be common, but I wonder if new religious movements like evangelicalism, Bahai, or Antoinism might attract some Algerians. If traditional Islam becomes tied to anti-French resistance in Algeria (as in OTL), Algerians in France might be repelled, being integrated into French society and seeing radical independantism as a threat to their jobs and their position in French society.
Earlier Algerian immigration could mean that French-Algerian culture, and French attitudes towards French-Algerians, will more closely mirror the history of French-Italian or French-Portuguese immigrants - adopting the French language, abandoning traditional religious forms, and intermarriage - and social connections would spread these trends to Algeria itself, so long as labour scarcity in Algeria leads to higher wages, and therefore agricultural modernisation, more European immigration, native political freedoms, and social integration.
I'm not really familiar with the decision making processes of French factory hiring in the 19th century, so I'm spitballing here, but I think two things could encourage earlier immigration.
I think, during the Napoleonic occupation of Egypt, there was a troop of Egyptian soldiers who were sent to France, and there were intentions to begin large-scale trade between France and Egypt. If Egypt was successfully brought under French control (whether under Napoleon or not - the idea of conquering Egypt preceded Napoleon), perhaps more Egyptian troops could be brought to Europe, who would learn of Europe and perhaps remain. Egyptians would also arrive via trade (e.g. cotton farmers/traders in Egypt would be connected to French textile mills), and I wonder if Egyptian labourers might be brought to France as cheaper labour for difficult megaprojects like the canals, harbours, and monuments planned by Napoleon. These Egyptians would spread word of higher French wages in Egypt and popularise immigration, and acclimatise French industry to the idea of hiring people from North Africa. Eventually this would spread to Algerians, either through Egyptian-Algerian contacts, or by French hiring agents seeing Algerian peasants as an 'untapped resource' similar to Egyptians. The risk of this strategy is that the early mass immigration of Egyptian and Algerian labourers might be too much for French workers and kickstart xenophobic resentment amongst the European working class.
Supercharging French industrialisation (most easily achieved through the French control of Belgian/Dutch/German coalfields) could be the force to create a massive demand for labour, pushing French factory hirers even further afield (France's low birth rate means that French industries, if they grew as large as British industries, would not be able to hire locally the way British industries did, and would depend on immigration even more than OTL). Algerians, being under French rule, might be seen as easily controllable, and not too foreign. Greater industrialisation would also lead to higher food prices (which would encourage French farmers to cultivate more land in Algeria, and keep French peasants happy) and higher wages (keeping French urban workers happy, and encouraging more immigration in general). A more industrial France would also be a France with stronger liberal and socialist movements, which might solve the political problem I mentioned before, by pushing the balance of political power in favour of assimilationist and integrationist policies and against the potential use of racist politics to suppress immigrant wages.
I like the idea of kickstarting Algerian immigration to France earlier - I imagine assimilation (within reasonable bounds) would be easier if there's more time for it to occur before modern racism and Islamist/anti-colonial politics spread. I imagine early labour activism would also serve as an engine for social integration. I think France would need more liberal and left-wing governments, however - conservative regimes would be more likely to encourage cultural segregation to control Algerians, keep them separate from French labour activism, and suppress their wages. This might require more a more liberal Napoleon III, or a republic controlled by more Jacobin-aligned figures (who will instinctively oppose conservative forces).
With regards to the religious divide, if I remember correctly, urban labour immigrants generally tend towards abandoning traditional religion, so early Algerian immigrants might adapt to their environment and adopt secularism (due to socialist influence) or a Europeanised form of Islam. I don't think conversion to Catholicism would be common, but I wonder if new religious movements like evangelicalism, Bahai, or Antoinism might attract some Algerians. If traditional Islam becomes tied to anti-French resistance in Algeria (as in OTL), Algerians in France might be repelled, being integrated into French society and seeing radical independantism as a threat to their jobs and their position in French society.
Earlier Algerian immigration could mean that French-Algerian culture, and French attitudes towards French-Algerians, will more closely mirror the history of French-Italian or French-Portuguese immigrants - adopting the French language, abandoning traditional religious forms, and intermarriage - and social connections would spread these trends to Algeria itself, so long as labour scarcity in Algeria leads to higher wages, and therefore agricultural modernisation, more European immigration, native political freedoms, and social integration.
I'm not really familiar with the decision making processes of French factory hiring in the 19th century, so I'm spitballing here, but I think two things could encourage earlier immigration.
I think, during the Napoleonic occupation of Egypt, there was a troop of Egyptian soldiers who were sent to France, and there were intentions to begin large-scale trade between France and Egypt. If Egypt was successfully brought under French control (whether under Napoleon or not - the idea of conquering Egypt preceded Napoleon), perhaps more Egyptian troops could be brought to Europe, who would learn of Europe and perhaps remain. Egyptians would also arrive via trade (e.g. cotton farmers/traders in Egypt would be connected to French textile mills), and I wonder if Egyptian labourers might be brought to France as cheaper labour for difficult megaprojects like the canals, harbours, and monuments planned by Napoleon. These Egyptians would spread word of higher French wages in Egypt and popularise immigration, and acclimatise French industry to the idea of hiring people from North Africa. Eventually this would spread to Algerians, either through Egyptian-Algerian contacts, or by French hiring agents seeing Algerian peasants as an 'untapped resource' similar to Egyptians. The risk of this strategy is that the early mass immigration of Egyptian and Algerian labourers might be too much for French workers and kickstart xenophobic resentment amongst the European working class.
Supercharging French industrialisation (most easily achieved through the French control of Belgian/Dutch/German coalfields) could be the force to create a massive demand for labour, pushing French factory hirers even further afield (France's low birth rate means that French industries, if they grew as large as British industries, would not be able to hire locally the way British industries did, and would depend on immigration even more than OTL). Algerians, being under French rule, might be seen as easily controllable, and not too foreign. Greater industrialisation would also lead to higher food prices (which would encourage French farmers to cultivate more land in Algeria, and keep French peasants happy) and higher wages (keeping French urban workers happy, and encouraging more immigration in general). A more industrial France would also be a France with stronger liberal and socialist movements, which might solve the political problem I mentioned before, by pushing the balance of political power in favour of assimilationist and integrationist policies and against the potential use of racist politics to suppress immigrant wages.
Begging your pardon, sir, but I'm new here. I'm a bit curious.
May I ask for some guidance as to where the line is drawn between the presumably acceptable acts of "noticing a pattern" and "asking a question" and the presumably unacceptable act of "making an accusation?"
Personally, I didn't come here with the intent of making any accusations against anyone. But I do like to ask questions sometimes, and occasionally I ask questions other people might consider pretty tough. And I do sometimes notice a pattern when I read enough of what someone says.
And I'm hoping to avoid any misunderstandings about why I do those things.
Do I need to be careful to avoid publicly acknowledging certain patterns I think I notice? Or is it just a matter of not using accusative language and not making personal attacks, which is rather easier to do? Or is it something else I haven't quite understood properly?
I may be missing something here. Why would a bunch of Muslims have to convert to Christianity to become properly French? Is "convert to Christianity" part of our definition of "assimilate?" France has a pretty energetic anticlerical tradition; there is no "you must be this Catholic to enter" requirement to count as being truly French, is there?
On the other hand, the Spanish spent literally centuries chasing themselves around in circles hysterically trying to stamp out "secret Muslims" and "secret Jews" and enforce assorted limpieza standards, to the point where the Spanish Inquisition became something of a legend. And Spain didn't exactly come out of it a spectacularly healthy European country on the other side of that process; despite having huge inherited tracts of land from being part of the Habsburg dynasty and having ridiculous amounts of gold, a literal mountain of silver, and predominant access to nearly all the best cash crop islands in or near the Atlantic Ocean, Spain wound up in a more or less continuous decline from the late 1500s on down into the 1700s, by which point they were competing with the Ottomans for "sick old man of Europe" status.
Maybe that's a coincidence, but...
It seems to me that forcing a large population to convert is hard; religious tolerance is much less work all around. And nations that enforce religious homogeneity don't seem to thrive better than nations that tolerate religious differences on any consistent basis.
Honestly, yes. Scenarios where people feel free to move and learn from each other and respect each other interest me more than scenarios where half the population of a territory "had to" (and I quote) be killed to make room for settlers from the metropole.
I think your second solution is more plausible than the first, among other things because it's easier to imagine an exceptionally rapid rise of industrialization in France than to imagine France holding onto firm control of Egypt from Napoleon's starting position, which was rather unfavorable to that end.
But both scenarios are quite interesting!
I don’t think there would ever be a depopulation of the indigenous people like in the Americas. Disease was the Europeans’ big ally there, but that was not the case in Africa.
There would always still be a fair number of Algerians of native origin. The question is whether the European immigration could be large enough to compel most of the Algerian population to assimilate. Eventually the division would not necessarily be European vs Muslim but assimilated vs unassimilated.
There would always still be a fair number of Algerians of native origin. The question is whether the European immigration could be large enough to compel most of the Algerian population to assimilate. Eventually the division would not necessarily be European vs Muslim but assimilated vs unassimilated.
Well yes, in that time and place following Muslim law was wrapped up in Arab Algerian identity, you saw very few devout Muslims who identified as French.
The French for their part were never willing to offer full status citizenship to the largely Muslim population.
Last edited:
I think eventually even if the demographics did change (and I don't think it's realistic) the now culturally changed Algeria wpuld still want independence. Geography pushes them apart in the long run.
They more-or-less managed it with the Jews (and pan-Arab nationalism did not really catch on until the 20th century)....
Which is why they blew their chance to assimilate/hang onto Algiera. IIRC De Gaulle pulled out not due to military defeat but because getting enough of the population on-side to avoid bleeding blood and treasure indefinitely would require... well... them being equal citizens with full mobility.
Like Corsica? Yes there will be activists and even insurgents. The trick is to get enough of the population on-side that they are politically impotent and militarily irrelevant.