Kabyle people

Spanish expeditions had been sent to take over Algiers, first in 1516 under Don Diego de Vera, and again in 1519 under Don Ugo de Moncada, but both expeditions had ended in failure.

Hizir, or Hayreddin, had succeeded Oruç after the latter was killed in battle against the Spaniards at the Fall of Tlemcen in 1517, as well as inheriting his nickname "Barbarossa".

The capture of Algiers in 1516 had been made possible with the support of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I.

This support had been discontinued with Sultan Selim's death in 1520, causing Barbarossa to lose the city to a local kabyle chieftain in 1524, and to retreat …

…to his fief of Djidjelli.

Hardly has the news of the capture of Algiers reached Paris than Charles X is deposed, and his cousin Louis Philippe, the "citizen king," is named to preside over a constitutional monarchy.

The new government, composed of liberal opponents of the Algiers expedition, is reluctant to pursue the conquest ordered by the old regime, but withdrawing from Algeria proves more difficult than conquering it.

A parliamentary commission that examines the Algerian situation concludes that although French policy, behavior, and organization are failures, the occupation should continue for the sake of national prestige.

In 1834 France annexes the occupied areas, which have an estimated Muslim population of about three million, as a colony.

Colonial administration in the occupied areas—the so-called regime du sabre (government of the sword)—is placed under a governor general, a high-ranking army officer invested with civil and military jurisdiction, who is responsible to the minister of war.

Major changes had taken place in Algeria even before the decision was made to annex the country.

In a bargain-hunting frenzy to take over or buy at low prices all manner of property—homes, shops, farms, and factories—Europeans pour into Algiers after it falls.

French authorities take possession of the beylik lands, from which Ottoman officials had derived income.

Over time, as pressures increased to obtain more land for settlement by Europeans, the state seizes more categories of land, particularly that used by tribes, religious foundations, and villages.

Soon after the conquest of Algiers, the soldier-politician Bertrand Clauzel and others form a company to acquire agricultural land and, despite official discouragement, to subsidize its settlement by European farmers, triggering a land rush.

Clauzel recognizes the farming potential of the Mitidja Plain and envisions the production there of cotton on a large scale.

As governor general (1835-36), he uses his office to make private investments in land and encourages army officers and bureaucrats in his administration to do the same.

This development creates a vested interest among government officials in greater French involvement in Algeria.

Commercial interests with influence in the government also begin to recognize the prospects for profitable land speculation in expanding the French zone of occupation.

They create large agricultural tracts, build factories and businesses, and exploit  cheap local labor.

The French face other opposition as well in the area.

The superior of a religious brotherhood, Muhieddine (Muhyi ad Din), who had spent time in Ottoman jails for opposing the dey's rule, launches attacks against the French and their Moroccan makhzen allies at Oran in 1832.

In the same year, tribal elders choose Muhieddine's son, twenty-five-year-old Abdelkader, to take his place leading the jihad.

Abdelkader, who is recognized as amir al muminin (commander of the faithful), quickly gains the support of tribes throughout Algeria.

A devout and austere marabout, he is also a cunning political leader and a resourceful warrior.

From his capital in Tlemcen, Abdelkader sets about building a territorial Muslim state based on the communities of the interior but drawing its strength from the tribes and religious brotherhoods.

By 1839 he controls more than two-thirds of Algeria.

His government maintains an army and a bureaucracy, collects taxes, supports education, undertakes public works, and establishes agricultural and manufacturing cooperatives to stimulate economic activity.

Thirty-four thousand French soldiers, using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan for the invasion of Algeria, land twenty-seven kilometers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch, on June 12, 1830.

To face the rench, the dey sends seven thousand janissaries, nineteen thousand troops from the beys of Constantine and Oran, and about seventeen thousand Kabyles.

The French establish a strong beachhead and pushed toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization.

Algiers is captured after a three-week campaign, and Hussein Dey flees into exile.

French troops rape, loot (taking fifty million francs from the treasury in the Casbah), desecrate mosques, and destroy cemeteries.

It is an inauspicious beginning to France's self-described "civilizing mission," whose character on the whole is cynical, arrogant, and cruel.

The French in Algiers view with concern the success of a Muslim government and the rapid growth of a viable territorial state that bars the extension of European settlement.

Abdelkader fights running battles across Algeria with French forces, which include units of the Foreign Legion, organized in 1831 for Algerian service.

Although his forces are defeated by the French under General Thomas Bugeaud in 1836, Abdelkader negotiates a favorable peace treaty the next year.

The treaty gains conditional recognition for Abdelkader's regime by defining the territory under its control and salvages his prestige among the tribes just as the shaykhs are about to desert him.

To provoke new hostilities, the French deliberately break the treaty in 1839 by occupying Constantine.

Abdelkader takes up the holy war again, destroys the French settlements on the Mitidja Plain, and at one point advances to the outskirts of Algiers itself.

He strikes where the French were weakest and retreats when they advance against him in greater strength.

The government moves from camp to camp with the amir and his army.

Gradually, however, superior French resources and manpower and the defection of tribal chieftains take their toll.

Whatever initial misgivings Louis Philippe's government may have had about occupying Algeria, the geopolitical realities of the situation created by the 1830 intervention argue strongly for reinforcing the French presence there.

France has reason for concern that Britain, which is pledged to maintain the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, will move to fill the vacuum left by a French pullout.

The French devise elaborate plans for settling the hinterland left by Ottoman provincial authorities in 1830, but their efforts at state building are unsuccessful on account of lengthy armed resistance.

The most successful local opposition immediately after the fall of Algiers is led by Ahmad ibn Muhammad, bey of Constantine.

He initiates a radical overhaul of the Ottoman administration in his beylik by replacing Turkish officials with local leaders, making Arabic the official language, and attempting to reform finances according to the precepts of Islam.

After the French fail in several attempts to gain some of the bey's territories through negotiation, an ill-fated invasion force led by Bertrand Clauzel has to retreat from Constantine in 1836 in humiliation and defeat.

Nonetheless, the French capture Constantine the following year.

King Charles X has initiated the conquest of Algeria as an attempt to increase his popularity among the French people, particularly in Paris, the home of many veterans of the Napoleonic conquests.

"Skirmishing against the dey” is intended to bolster patriotic sentiment while turning eyes away from his domestic policies.

On the other hand, the dey of Algiers itself is weak politically, economically, and militarily.

Algeria is currently part of the Barbary States, along with today's Morocco and Tunisia, which depend on the Ottoman Empire, then now by Mahmud II, but enjoy relative independence.

The Barbary Coast is the stronghold of the Barbary pirates, which have for decades carried out raids against European, and later American, ships.

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British Navy which has maintained a blockade and put the Mediterranean Sea under military surveillance.

Conflicts between the Barbary States and the newly independent United States of America had culminated in the First and Second Barbary War (1801-1805 and 1815).

The same year, an Anglo-Dutch expedition, led by Admiral Exmouth, had carried out a punitive expedition, the August 1816 bombardment of Algiers.

The dey had been constrained to sign the Barbary treaties, while the technological advance of U.S., British and French armies had overwhelmed the pirates' expertise at naval warfare.

King Charles X had made Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont, minister of war in 1829 and Marshal of France in 1830.

Using Napoleon's 1808 contingency plan for the invasion of Algeria, de Bourmont lands twenty-seven kilometers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch on June 14, 1830, with thirty-four thousand soldiers.

To face the French, the dey sends seven thousand janissaries, nineteen thousand troops from the beys of Constantine and Oran, and about seventeen thousand Kabyles.

The French establish a strong beachhead and push toward Algiers, thanks in part to superior artillery and better organization.

Taking the advantage on June 19 during the battle of Staoueli, ...