Algerian War of Independence

Date

1 November 1954 – 5 July 1962

Category

Military & conflict

Region

North Africa (Algeria)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The Algerian War began on 1 November 1954, when fighters of the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched coordinated attacks across French Algeria in the 'Toussaint Rouge', and ended with Algerian independence on 5 July 1962.

Unlike most French colonies, Algeria was legally part of France and home to about one million European settlers, making the conflict especially intractable. The war was marked by guerrilla warfare, urban terrorism and brutal French counterinsurgency, including the systematic use of torture and mass resettlement of rural populations. Estimates of Algerian deaths range from several hundred thousand to over a million; hundreds of thousands of harkis (Algerians who fought for France) and European settlers fled after independence. The crisis destabilised French politics, brought down the Fourth Republic in 1958 and returned Charles de Gaulle to power. De Gaulle ultimately negotiated the Évian Accords, signed on 18 March 1962, followed by referendums in France and Algeria; Algeria became independent on 5 July 1962. The war became a defining anticolonial conflict and a model studied by liberation movements worldwide.

Empires active in 1 November 1954 – 5 July 1962

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE – 1962 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Solomonic dynasty
  1270 CE – 1974 CE

Related military & conflict events

• Korean War
  25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953
• Creation of Israel and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
  14 May 1948 (war May 1948 – July 1949)
• Cuban Missile Crisis
  16–28 October 1962
• Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam
  30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
• Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero
  1975
• The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi
  7 April – 19 July 1994

Also relevant

• Formation of the Warsaw Pact
  14 May 1955
• Hungarian Uprising
  23 October – 10 November 1956

Further reading

The Ethiopians: A History

The wider story

The Ethiopians: A History

Richard Pankhurst

Standard general history of Ethiopia and its dynasties.

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