Quote · Empire: World History
375. Algerian Revolution: The French Invasion (Ep 1)
Where this was said
Setting the Scene: Why Algeria Matters
At 3:39 · chapter starts 3:03
William Dalrymple launches into an enthusiastic preview of the series, confessing he knew almost nothing about Algeria until he sat in his garden with a pile of books three weeks earlier. He sketches the arc of the story: a pirate republic built on European slavery, the French conquest, the settlement of a million colonists, the revolutionary chic of 1960s Algiers — home to the Black Panthers, Tim Leary and Nina Simone — and finally the pieds-noirs repatriation to France. Crucially, he links this directly to the present, noting that Jean-Marie Le Pen, who led the pieds-noirs political party and was implicated in anti-resistance torture, is the father of Marine Le Pen, who may yet seize power in France.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, described as one of the torturers involved in French anti-resistance activities in Algeria, later led the political party formed by repatriated pieds-noirs settlers in France.
Algiers was built on the enslavement of over a million Europeans captured across the Mediterranean. A third of the city's population were slaves — but the Ottoman system allowed some to rise to the highest positions in the state.
In the era of the Barbary corsairs, roughly a third of Algiers' population consisted of enslaved Europeans captured from across the Mediterranean and beyond.
