Nationalist organisers decide to launch the FLN

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 French Constituent Assembly voted an amnesty law concerning prosecutions connected with the May 1945 events. Amnesty followed executions, mass arrests, and an uneven process of judicial...

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...

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...

The FLN and allied villagers attacked police, military, and settler targets in North Constantine in an effort to break the image of a contained rebellion and draw attention to Algeria internationally....

French prime minister Guy Mollet was confronted by a hostile settler crowd in Algiers while seeking to install General Catroux as minister-resident. The confrontation and his retreat under pressure...

The National Assembly voted special powers for the Mollet government to act in Algeria. The measure enabled emergency policies and facilitated the transfer of broad policing authority to the military....