Algerian integration would numerically swamp metropolitan France politically.

Evidence

On demographic calculations alone, Aron reckoned that within twenty-five years an integrated Algeria 18 million strong would swamp a metropolitan France of 48 million, politically if not numerically. Acting as a bloc, the seventy-five Muslim deputies which it would be Algeria’s right to send to the Palais Bourbon could provide a balance of power to whichever side of the Assembly they wished, thus preventing it from functioning normally. Integration would also slow down, if not halt, any rise in the French standard of living, and he concluded, “An Algerian France, if it pretends to regenerate France by governing it, will irremediably tear asunder the nation.” — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 943

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Demographic reversal will erode France’s capacity to back the CFA currencies — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 337; Demographic arithmetic made Algerian integration untenable for France by 1958; Integration would have demographically swamped metropolitan France (+1 more)

Related

• Integration would have demographically swamped metropolitan France (similarity 0.98)
• Demographic arithmetic made Algerian integration untenable for France by 1958 (similarity 0.94)
• Algerian integration was only ever workable before 1958 (similarity 0.85)
• Demographic reversal will erode France’s capacity to back the CFA currencies (similarity 0.84)
• Integration was feasible in 1936 but a delusion by 1958 (similarity 0.83)
• French metropolitan democracy attenuated, while colonial Algeria criminalized, dissent against empire. (similarity 0.83)
• Demographic pressure rather than French presence produced Algerian misery (similarity 0.82)
• Both Muslims and pieds noirs read integration through self-serving demographic math. (similarity 0.82)
• Pieds noirs read integration as a path to numerical submergence of Muslims (similarity 0.81)
• Post-independence Arabization made French integrationist dreams seem never realistically possible (similarity 0.81)
• Algeria’s separate electoral colleges made 60,000 Muslims equal to 500,000 French (similarity 0.81)
• Franco-Algerian coexistence was destroyed by accumulated missed chances (similarity 0.81)
• Francisation destroyed Algeria’s native political cadres, leaving no negotiating partners. (similarity 0.80)
• Defeat in Algeria paradoxically produced a stronger France (similarity 0.80)
• The ‘Algeria is France’ consensus spanned nearly the whole French political spectrum (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Metropolitan France was largely oblivious to the gravity of the Algiers crisis. #complicates (0.35) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1106