Algeria without WWI

What would be the fate of Algeria if not for WWI?

WWI had the effect of triggering a demographic stagnation in France.

Prior to the war about 10,000 to 25,000 Spaniards a year were relocating to Algeria as migrant laborers. Most would relocate home, but many would remained. This flow stopped due to the war as many Spaniards wanted to avoid getting conscripted - many Spaniards in Algeria actually opted to go back to Spain.

To give you an idea, in 1886 there were 144,530 Spaniards in Algeria and in 1939 12,000 Republicans went to Algeria.
 
Another factor at work here would have been the experience of the many Algerian Muslims who, under a law passed in 1912, would have been conscripted into an expanded Armée d'Afrique. As this formation would have required additional officers, and there was already a shortage of junior officers in the French Army of the day, there might well have been a campaign to encourage talented conscripts to "assimilate," that is, become full-fledged citizens of the French Republic. This, in turn, might have created a "third force" in Algerian politics, one distinct from both the Algerian nationalists and the Pieds Noirs.

This development might have been enhanced by the creation of "all-Empire" units composed of men who wished to obtain French citizenship, whether for purposes of promotion or purposes of advancement in civil life. One can imagine, for example, the creation of such units in those arms and services which had previously been the exclusive province of Frenchmen of European descent.


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Another factor at work here would have been the experience of the many Algerian Muslims who, under a law passed in 1912, would have been conscripted into an expanded Armée d'Afrique. As this formation would have required additional officers, and there was already a shortage of junior officers in the French Army of the day, there might well have been a campaign to encourage talented conscripts to "assimilate," that is, become full-fledged citizens of the French Republic. This, in turn, might have created a "third force" in Algerian politics, one distinct from both the Algerian nationalists and the Pieds Noirs.

The French military was a great force of cultural and national unification in European France. I wonder if this would result in a similar occurrence happening in Algeria. Hopefully this would mean Algerians could get full voting rights and other rights as citizens, as they ought to have gotten as citizens of the French metropole.

I like the idea of a French Algeria that moves beyond inequality and discrimination to become part of a more diverse and cosmopolitan France. It's an interesting alternative compared to OTL.


If a trans-saharan railroad is ever established, we might see parts or all of French West Africa integrated into the Metropole over time. There's already precedent for this in the form of the Four Communes of Senegal. It'd likely be an Algiers-Bamako-Dakar line, so French Sudan (Mali), Mauritania, and Senegal becoming part of Metropolitan France seems especially plausible.
 
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I think it's a question of numbers.
How many would join and, despite the poster up there, how many would actually be accepted as full citizens?

Still in 1959 De Gaulle worried that his hometown Colombey-les-Deux-Églises would have become Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquées if they had allowed in too many immigrants from the colonies.

At best a tighter link between the native population and the European one could make for an amicable separation and Algeria would remain in some sort of loose association with France instead of going socialist/unaligned.
 
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