A pied noir liberal resigned his Paris seat to implement reform honestly.
Evidence
Not every pied noir leader, however, was quite so short-sighted at this time. Liberals like Jacques Chevallier foresaw a grave danger that French tactics would force the Muslims “to attempt to unite themselves in a kind of policy of the worst, and to push them into compromising themselves in a desperate gesture.” To do something about it, to attempt to see the 1947 statute loyally and properly enacted, Chevallier himself resigned his mandate in Paris to take a seat in the Algerian Assembly in 1951. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 223
Categorization
- SEED: The figure of Chevallier—a settler who saw the catastrophe coming and acted—could frame an essay on the rarity and fate of reformist voices within colonial orders.