The French conquest of Algeria (1830-1847) was the first major European invasion of Africa, occurring when the French drove out the Dey of Algiers (a vassal of the Ottoman Empire) and began the occupation of Algeria. The coastal regions were swiftly subdued, but a determined resistance movement grew up around the figure of Abd al-Qadir. As France continued its conquests he proclaimed a holy war against the invading infidels. The French retaliated with a brutal scorched earth policy and eventually occupied his headquarters at Mascara. In 1844 the Sultan of Morocco intervened but was defeated by the French. al-Qadir eventually surrendered in 1847. Algeria soon became an important source of troops for the French army, notably the zouaves, who served as light infantry.
Background[]
By 1830 most of the territory of Algeria was nominally under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Emperor, but in practice he had little control over the area. Most of the interior was controlled by local Arab and Berber tribal leaders while the Dey of Algiers, leader of the Ottoman Regency of Algiers, only had authority over that city as well as a couple of other population centers in the north, such as Oran and Constantine. Outside of those cities, most of the territory was only under nominal Ottoman control. During that time the northern coast of Algeria was also the center of the Barbary piracy and slave trade, which frequently harassed European Christian ships in the Mediterranean Sea. This provoked retaliation from different European powers and the United States, such as during the Barbary Wars (1810–1815).
The conquest of Algiers by France began in the last days of the reign of Charles X of France during the Bourbon Restoration in an attempt to win him more popularity. An affair that occurred in the 1820s led to the situation, which was a dispute between merchants in Algiers who had been contracted by the First French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s to supply wheat to the French Army and one of the local Ottoman rulers. They told him that they could not pay back their debts to him until the French paid them back for their services, which the French consul refused to do, and eventually the dispute led to the Bey of Algiers opening fire on French ships with cannons. This convinced King Charles X that forceful action was required to settle the matter.
The invasion of Algiers (1830)[]
The French dispatched a fleet from Toulon in southern France with an invasion force to take the northern Algerian coast, with some 600 vessels under Admiral Guy-Victor Duperre. They landed 34,000 troops on 14 June 1830 near Algiers and secured a beachhead. To counter this the Bey had about 7,000 janissaries and 35,000 tribesmen from the beys of Oran and Constantine. The French defeated this force on June 19 and entered Algiers on July 5 after a three week campaign. After being granted freedom by the French commanders and the right to his wealth, the bey departed in exile for Naples while much of the janissaries and other Turkish supporters had left the area as well. The French Army engaged in looting and plundering of the civilians, which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and caused native resentment for their new lords.
News of the victory reached Paris around the same time as King Charles X was deposed in the July Revolution and the creation of a liberal constitutional monarchy under his relative from a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon, Louis Philippe I, the "citizen king," took place. The liberal Orléanists were opposed to the Algerian expedition but the French victory became immensely popular with the French public. The new government thus only withdrew a portion of the invasion force, while the various tribesmen in Algeria attempted minor uprisings against the French Army, only to be quelled.
Over the next several years the French authorities consolidated their rule and began to colonize the northern territories of Algeria, formally annexing them as departments of France. Rebel leaders in the interior continued to resist French rule, such as Abd al-Qader, who rose to command anti-French tribes. They fought several skirmishes after his negotiations with the French broke down, only to be eventually defeated in 1836. However, he escaped and waged a guerilla war against the French, which led to France undertaking a campaign to bring some of the Algerian interior under its control.
Invasion of Setif (1837)[]
On 1 January 1837, France declared war as the 27,000 men of the Army of Algeria entered the mountainous Setif region, along with the 9,000 men of the unattached 7th Infantry Division, while 12,000 troops of the 1st Cavalry Division marched on Constantine, where they defeated the 6,000-man Algerian force of the Bey of Constantine. After several months of pacifying these provinces of north-central Algeria, the Bey surrendered and gave up the northern Setif region to France. This left the Bey with only the interior desert provinces of the country and Constantine, which remained his seat of power.
Acquisition of French Algeria (1844–1847)[]
However, the French government's foreign minister Francois Guizot was not satisfied with leaving an independent Algerian domain to serve as a thorn in the side of the French Empire. Thus, France declared war on 19 May 1844 after finishing up its involvement in several other conflicts and European squabbles. The French Army once again entered the Algerian interior, with the 1st Cavalry Division defeating a small force of 3,000 tribesmen in Constantine on May 26, which constituted the Bey's only remaining military strength. Resistance from tribesmen continued throughout the Algerian interior, however, fighting a guerrilla war against the occupying French force. This dragged on for months as the French were forced to occupy every province of Algeria, into 1845.
It was not until 22 February 1845 that the country was fully secured and military operations ceased. Resistance by Algerian nationalists would continue until 1847 formally brought the war to an end when the French concluded a treaty with a number of tribal leaders that recognized French rule over Algeria.