Pied noir civilians treated a deadly frontier battle as a public spectacle.
Evidence
For the best part of a week an intense and merciless battle raged. A twenty-year-old French conscript who took part, Alain Manévy, records how the entire pied noir population of Souk-Ahras turned out to watch, infuriating the military by blocking the highways with their cars, and accompanied by Arab street vendors plying the spectators with sticky cakes. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 819
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: how settler publics turned brutal counterinsurgency into spectator entertainment, and what that reveals about colonial detachment.
Related
- Pied noir civilians enthusiastically participated in killing O.A.S. targets directly (similarity 0.81)
- Pied noir soldiers balked at shooting Muslim demonstrators to save Algérie française (similarity 0.80)
- Pieds noirs never honestly wanted Algérie française but a protected white-ruled Algeria (similarity 0.79)
- The pied noir lobby immediately demanded violent suppression of the revolt (similarity 0.79)
- Pied noir survival in Algeria was untenable even without O.A.S. violence (similarity 0.79)
- Pied noir culture contained a capacity for reflex violence. (similarity 0.79)
- The pieds noirs, not Muslims, triggered the events sealing Algérie française’s fate (similarity 0.78)