By 1917 only one in five Algerian Europeans was of true French descent

Evidence

By 1917 it was estimated that only one European in five was of true French descent (and these included Corsicans and Alsatians), and in the 1950s you could still hear more Spanish than French spoken in the poorer quarters of Oran. Arriving, many of them, under the Second Empire, these Spaniards had adapted themselves readily to the climate and had proved perhaps the best workers on the land. Then there were the Italians who, like most of the Spaniards, had come with empty pockets and with little more than the hope of an Eldorado where either work or land would be readily available. They were artisans, builders, miners and fishermen. There were the Maltese who, being Catholic and speaking a language akin to Arabic, had a foot in both camps and established themselves swiftly as a class of petits commerçants. Of the French, apart from the Alsatians of post-1870, most came from the climatically similar Midi; especially after the phylloxera had wiped out the vineyards there. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 152

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows why metropolitan France failed to rally to the pieds noirs; connects to later divided-loyalty themes. — connects to: By 1917 only a fifth of Algeria’s non-Muslim settlers were French-born.; Most Algerian colons were not ethnically French at all. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 88; Most French Algerian settlers were actually Spanish and Italian immigrants. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 50
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 152

Related

• By 1917 only a fifth of Algeria’s non-Muslim settlers were French-born. (similarity 0.95)
• Most Algerian colons were not ethnically French at all. (similarity 0.93)
• Most French Algerian settlers were actually Spanish and Italian immigrants. (similarity 0.90)
• French settlers never exceeded thirteen percent of Algeria’s population (similarity 0.88)
• Algerians credited France’s Algerian achievements as benefiting French settlers, not natives. (similarity 0.83)
• Algeria split between Europeanised coast and Muslim-populated mountain interior (similarity 0.82)
• Europeans were only one-third of Algiers’ 900,000 population yet dominated its cityscape (similarity 0.82)
• The French state classified settlers and harkis unequally to erase Algeria’s Frenchness. (similarity 0.82)
• Pieds noirs faced Europe while Muslim Algerians faced inland Africa (similarity 0.81)
• The pied noir exodus far outpaced French government predictions (similarity 0.81)
• The European settler minority is the central obstacle to ending the Algerian war (similarity 0.81)
• Most of the million-plus pieds noirs resettled in metropolitan France (similarity 0.81)
• Nearly 1.4 million pieds noirs resettled in France after Algerian independence (similarity 0.81)
• Pieds noirs actually wanted economic privilege, not formal French Algeria (similarity 0.80)
• Pieds noirs and metropolitan French spoke different political languages. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• By 1917 only a fifth of Algeria’s non-Muslim settlers were French-born. #corroborates (0.90)
• Most Algerian colons were not ethnically French at all. #expands (0.80) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 88