Challe believed Algeria was Europe’s lost bridge to Africa

Evidence

Challe, of all the rebel officers perhaps the one most commanding sympathy, was released in 1966 after serving five years of his fifteen years’ sentence, amnestied in 1968 with the rest, and stricken with cancer of the throat. Against all odds he survived, and ran a freight company from a small office near the Gare St Lazare, surrounded by devoted and caring secretaries. Behind his desk hung an ancient map of the Barbary Coast. He would still speak passionately of France’s betrayal of the “loyal” Algerians, believed that the war could have been won, and that Europe lost her great opportunity to create a “bridge” to Africa through Algeria. Deeply pessimistic, he felt that “Europe now is finished”. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1669

Categorization

• XREF: Challe’s ‘bridge to Africa’ thesis connects to the reader’s theme of extending colonial subjects beyond Algeria into Africa. — connects to: Cooperation between settlers and Muslims could have preserved a European future in Algeria — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1672; Algeria split between Europeanised coast and Muslim-populated mountain interior — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 144
• SEED: The ‘road not taken’ of a European-African bridge through Algeria is an essay angle on what a longer colonial presence might have meant for Africa.

Related

• A liberal colonia could have kept Europeans in independent Algeria. (similarity 0.79)
• Challe’s revolt was driven by moral obligation to the harkis, not ideology. (similarity 0.78)
• Cooperation between settlers and Muslims could have preserved a European future in Algeria (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Cooperation between settlers and Muslims could have preserved a European future in Algeria #expands (0.40) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1672
• Algeria split between Europeanised coast and Muslim-populated mountain interior #corroborates (0.35) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 144