France + Algeria = Great(er) Power?

The usefulness of more people/area strengthening a country depends on how much blood/treasure the polity in question has to spend in order to hang onto the additional people/area.

In short, if Paris can/does successfully integrate Algeria/Djibouti/Senegal/what-have-you (and this is less hard than people think, considering how many of the early FLN leaders started out pushing for mass enfranchisement a saner response to the Setif mess could end up with violent successionism reduced to something on the scale of Corsica) then yes it will help.
 
The usefulness of more people/area strengthening a country depends on how much blood/treasure the polity in question has to spend in order to hang onto the additional people/area.

In short, if Paris can/does successfully integrate Algeria/Djibouti/Senegal/what-have-you (and this is less hard than people think, considering how many of the early FLN leaders started out pushing for mass enfranchisement a saner response to the Setif mess could end up with violent successionism reduced to something on the scale of Corsica) then yes it will help.
The best way to prevent the Algerians from gaining independence is to split the independence movement. Palestinian nationalists have failed where Algerians have succeeded because Palestinian nationalism is so internally divided between Hamas, Fatah, PLO, etc. A nationalist group doesn't just want an independent state, it also wants an independent state led by them. A nationalist group will prioritize the immediate fortunes rather than sacrifice for the nationalist cause as a whole.

The book Rebel Power: Why National Movements Compete, Fight, and Win is a political science book that explains the logic and incentive structure of these movements. The book explains the theory through four case studies: the Zionist Movement, the Palestinian movement, the fight for Algerian independence, and the Northern Ireland conflict.

The FLN had become the hegemonic group in the Algerian movement by 1957 or so, and the failure of the French to re-split the Algerian national movement meant that one group could negotiate with the French and petition for international recognition, and resources would be directed toward the actual cause rather than competition for leadership of the movement. If they were more internally divided like the Kurdish national movement's alphabet soup of competing militias and parties, an independent Algeria would be a distant possibility like Kurdish independence.
 
The best way to prevent the Algerians from gaining independence is to split the independence movement. Palestinian nationalists have failed where Algerians have succeeded because Palestinian nationalism is so internally divided between Hamas, Fatah, PLO, etc. A nationalist group doesn't just want an independent state, it also wants an independent state led by them. A nationalist group will prioritize the immediate fortunes rather than sacrifice for the nationalist cause as a whole.
I have been under the impression that two major points where 1) On a purely military level Paris had the FLN defeated but De Gaulle was not willing to make the status quo changes that would gut FLN support in the long term and 2) Israel has nowhere to fall back to nor a metropole willing to order the guns of the military turned on the colonizers so is far less willing to throw in the towel.
 
I have been under the impression that two major points where 1) On a purely military level Paris had the FLN defeated but De Gaulle was not willing to make the status quo changes that would gut FLN support in the long term and 2) Israel has nowhere to fall back to nor a metropole willing to order the guns of the military turned on the colonizers so is far less willing to throw in the towel.
Israël also has way more powerful allies. In the 50's, the American mood was anticolonial and France had no support there.
More than material aid, it helps for the international image and how far you can push repression
 
I meant the US war against N. Vietnam.

I understood. What I was saying is that the French fight to keep their Indochinese colonies (Vietnam,Laos,Cambodia) was like the US War with Vietnam in its similar end, aka the defeat of a world power.
 
I understood. What I was saying is that the French fight to keep their Indochinese colonies (Vietnam,Laos,Cambodia) was like the US War with Vietnam in its similar end, aka the defeat of a world power.
I'll add that more and more, it's seen as one long war, and not two separate ones.
Indochina is also decisive in how Algeria was fought as it showed Algerians that France could be defeated by its subjects and it made the French military very angry. They didn't want to lose their third war in a row and it created a stab in the back myth
 
IIRC Senegal was one of the first subsaharan countries to declare independence. Also the "Tirailleur Senegalais" were from all across French Africa, not just modern day Senegal.
That federated state kind of existed (the French Union and then the French Community), but in practice the metropole had all the power and the other states could only give their opinion.
What you want is to avoid the Algerian War. It's difficult because Algeria wasn't colonial territory but full French departments, the Pieds Noirs and the Algerian Nationalists weren't open to compromises in the positions and the IVth Republic was politically weak (it was a parliamentary regime with no clear majority in the assembly, so governments would fall every couple months). Maybe if a strong socialist coalition emerged early on they could force some kind of compromise were Oran and other areas were Pied Noirs are a majority would stay as French Departements while the rest of Algeria would become its own state within the French Union. Algerians may still push for independance afterwards but the chance that the two countries have good relations is much higher.

Actually, Senegal's independence was weird, see https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ch-guiana-not-decolonise.223744/#post-5391532.
 
Israël also has way more powerful allies. In the 50's, the American mood was anticolonial and France had no support there.
More than material aid, it helps for the international image and how far you can push repression

Except the French have a reasonably valid argument that it isn't a colonial conflict. Algeria was a part of the French metropole, complete with parliamentary representation for a good chunk of the population.

Honestly, there's a strong parallelism between the US South and Algeria that could be brought up.
 
complete with parliamentary representation for a good chunk of the population.
Who the small French minority ?
Honestly, there's a strong parallelism between the US South and Algeria that could be brought up.
They are uncomparable as the Algerians and the French population viewed Algerians as non-French and the Algerians were not citizens of France. They also were concentrated in a single area, where they outnumbered the white population and by increasing amount every year. They also made up a larger and growing portion of the French population.
 
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the Pied-Noirs, Harkis and their families, etc probably a quarter of the population was extremely Pro-French
Where did you get that figure for the Harkis along with their families and would the Harkis remain loyal long-term? Many of them were conscripted or just fought as a way of improving their economic status.
 
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where Algerians have succeeded because Palestinian nationalism is so internally divided between Hamas, Fatah, PLO, etc.
It was dominated and controlled by the PLO which included Fataḥ up until Hamas took Gaza in 2007
The best way to prevent the Algerians from gaining independence is to split the independence movement
A lot of colonies had divided independence movements didn't stop them from gaining independence when the colonizer lost the will to hold them.
 
The latter for certain
i doubt it as the majority of the Harkis were quite poor and granting them French citizenship would lead to a large amount of immigration which the French population might not tolerant.

but application of a universal franchise by 1950 or so would undercut support for the FLN quite severely.
Not happening, 1950 would require a very farsighted and very dominate politician. It would lead to a great deal of lost support in mainland France for no gain. It result in Algerians making up 17% and growing percent of the French population.
 
The only way I really see Algeria remaining "French" is if the French Union worked + survived. And that too, it would likely only be able to work as a truer confederation, rather than something under French supremacy.

A variation on this might be a French Union, along with the rest of N. Africa and the Levant being incorporated into a wider European-Mediterranean Community -- maybe instead of the OTL EU you get something like an inner core Western European Union and an outer tier that incorporates the Balkans, Turkey, the Levant, N. Africa, and the French possessions (including Algeria) into a wider block.

The problem is getting from most plausible post-1900 scenarios to something like this. Theoretically possible, but I don't know that anything like this really that plausible.
 
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