Algerians credited France’s Algerian achievements as benefiting French settlers, not natives.

Evidence

As a summing up on how Algerians viewed the material benefits bestowed on them by France in 1944, the words of Messali Hadj strike a relevant note: “The achievement of France is self-evident. It leaps to the eyes, and it would be unjust to deny it; but if the French have done a lot, they did it for themselves.” Or, phrased perhaps even more succinctly by a Frenchman, Robert Aron: “France did much for Algeria, too little for the Algerians.” — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 189

Categorization

• XREF: The pithy parallel quotes get at the core colonial grievance structure the reader is tracing through the book. — connects to: Pieds noirs actually wanted economic privilege, not formal French Algeria — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1652; France’s civilizing mission was not chiefly about cultural assimilation; Algerians voted overwhelmingly for independence while European settlers abstained — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1615
• SEED: Angle: the credit-attribution gap between colonizer and colonized as a central driver of anticolonial resentment.

Related

• Pieds noirs actually wanted economic privilege, not formal French Algeria (similarity 0.85)
• Most Algerian colons were not ethnically French at all. (similarity 0.85)
• Algerians fighting for France outnumbered those fighting for independence (similarity 0.84)
• By 1917 only one in five Algerian Europeans was of true French descent (similarity 0.83)
• France made substantial material and infrastructural improvements in Algeria (similarity 0.83)
• French settlers never exceeded thirteen percent of Algeria’s population (similarity 0.83)
• By 1917 only a fifth of Algeria’s non-Muslim settlers were French-born. (similarity 0.82)
• European settlers actively aided the F.L.N. and died for the Algerian cause (similarity 0.82)
• Algerian war sacrifices for France earned no meaningful citizenship in return (similarity 0.81)
• Pied noirs justified Frenchness by blood shed in two world wars (similarity 0.81)
• Cooperation between settlers and Muslims could have preserved a European future in Algeria (similarity 0.81)
• A liberal colonia could have kept Europeans in independent Algeria. (similarity 0.81)
• The national conflict canalized Algerian anger that had previously surfaced as common crime (similarity 0.81)
• The Algerian Communist Party sided with French settlers rather than Muslim nationalists (similarity 0.81)
• The European settler minority is the central obstacle to ending the Algerian war (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• France’s civilizing mission was not chiefly about cultural assimilation #expands (0.70)
• Algerians voted overwhelmingly for independence while European settlers abstained #corroborates (0.45) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1615