The French Constituent Assembly passes an amnesty law after the 1945 repression

The French cabinet considered the Blum–Viollette proposal, which would have extended citizenship rights to a limited number of Algerian Muslims while preserving French sovereignty and settler...

The proposed law was formally deposited in the French Chamber of Deputies. It would have granted French citizenship, without loss of Muslim personal status, to a limited category of Algerian...

The French government dissolved the ENA, an anticolonial organisation that had mobilised North African workers and called attention to colonial inequality. The move constrained political association...

After the dissolution of the ENA, Messali Hadj and supporters formed the Parti du peuple algérien (PPA). The new party carried forward anticolonial organisation among Algerians in France and...

Algerians joined demonstrations marking the Allied victory over Nazi Germany while asserting demands for freedom and national rights. In Sétif, police gunfire and the killing of demonstrators were...

The organic statute presented Algeria as having a degree of internal autonomy, but retained French sovereignty and a two-college electoral system that gave European settlers representation...

Nationalist activists formed the Comité révolutionnaire d’unité et d’action (CRUA) to overcome divisions and prepare an organised struggle for sovereignty. The committee drew on veterans of the MTLD...

A meeting of nationalist organisers resolved to transform the CRUA into the Front de libération nationale (FLN) and to begin an armed uprising on 1 November. The decision followed years of political...

Coordinated attacks and the FLN’s declaration marked the beginning of the war for independence. The uprising challenged French claims that Algeria was an integral part of France and demanded...

Mourad Didouche, one of the FLN’s historic organisers and a commander in the northeast, was killed during a French military operation. His death demonstrated the risks faced by the movement’s early...