OOC: So, I start with Algeria, right?
During the first world war, France needs more manpower for its armies fighting the Germans who had invaded them. Knowing this, France breeds a number of fighting forces from their colonies, with French officers leading men from the colonies, with the men from the armies being granted citizenship if they fight for the French. They do, and do very nicely at it, with Algerians being lionized by the media in France as being competent fighters. Numerous daring actions done by aggressive French officers and Doberman-mean Algerian soldiers makes it impossible for the French Army to look down on them. After the war, Paris follows through on its promises, ending uprooting of settlers and granting Algerian soldiers citizenship in France. Over 150,000 French Algerians became citizens, and these people sponsored over half a million others through family connections and marriage. French Algerians spend the interwar period adapting their identity, with the propaganda largely being based on the idea of France showing Algeria the way into the future, and the Algerians following it. Literacy skyrockets over this period, to over 70% by 1940. Oil in Algeria is used extensively by France, and new generations of French settlers are considerably more tolerant of the Berber majority in Algeria.
During the depression, many French move to Algeria, with the number of French in Algeria growing to form over 25% of the population by 1939. As storm clouds grow on the horizon in Europe, Paris begins looking at ways of changing its way of doing business in all of its colonies, with Algeria being the model of things to come. By 1935, Berber languages are accepted as languages of government in Algeria along with French, and in 1938 Paris decrees that any Algerian resident with at least ten years of education and who can speak fluent French has the right to become a French citizen.
War breaks out in 1939, and in 1940 Hitler's Wehrmacht invades France. The French and their allies fight valiantly, but the Germans are too strong. But in a massive curveball, The French accept Churchill's offer of a unification between France and the United Kingdom. Knowing this, the French fleet leaves their bases at Brest and Toulon and goes to the UK or French bases in Africa, including Algiers. Algeria falls solidly on the side of the Free French, and as in World War I, Algerian units join the French in big numbers. But this time, Algerian Berber officers are there as well, and they prove plenty capable. Four complete divisions are raised from Algeria, and they assist Montgomery and de Gaulle in the war in North Africa and against Erwin Rommel's mighty Afrikakorps, and later in the war, the First French Algeria Army is one of the primary units that invades France in Operation Dragoon.
After the war, Rebuild sees a focus on the building of a collective identity between the United Kingdom and France. The nationalists of both can see that France is devastated, Britain is nearly bankrupt and they needed to work with each other in order to survive. Algeria's oil is important, and France seeks to keep the territory. In 1951, all Algerians are made equal citizens, and in 1952, Queen Elizabeth II is crowned as the first Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, France, Algeria and Northern Ireland. This port-war period sees the first British settlers begin arriving in North Africa, adding yet more flavor to an already eclectic mix. Algeria's considerable energy reserves provide fuel to the Union State, particularly after the Suez Crisis causes brief energy shortages in the Union state. The whole area's population and economic growth swell rapidly in the aftermath of World War II, and by the late 1960s, Algeria's wide spaces and wild mix of people made the area one of the popular places for people of the Union State, and as the Union's identity grew into a greater reality in the fifties and sixties, Algeria's place came to be the exotic portion of the Union.
After the 1973 energy crisis, the Union State turned rapidly to its own energy reserves, and this sector provided vast revenue to Algerians. The first Algerian full ministers in the Union State came in 1959, and Algeria elected its first party leader in the Union State in 1974.
As of 2011, Algeria is still the southern region of the Union State. The combined nation, with a population of 167 million people, is by far the largest of the European Union (twice that of second-place Germany) and the Union is the world's third-largest economy, behind only the United States and China. Berber languages became official languages in Algeria and many parts of southern France in the late 1970s and early 1980s, though the majority of Algerians speak French, English or both. Algeria is the energy center of the Union States, and is one of the highest-living standard areas of the Union states. Algiers is the third-largest city of the Union States (behind London and Paris) with a population of 6.7 million. Europeans of Algeria descent make up 32% of the population. Islam is by far the biggest single creed, though Algerian Muslims are known for their tolerance and forward thinking abilities.
