Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.
Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.
In the spirit of synergy, this week's book selection ties in with this week's film selection. On Monday, Dec. 23, we screened Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers." To accompany that powerful film, we are recommending a seminal work recounting the history of the Algerian war: Alistair Horne’s "A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962," published in 1977.
Horne's book is a comprehensive historical account of the Algerian War of Independence against French colonial rule, and draws on numerous primary sources, interviews, and official documents.
The Algerian War lasted eight years, from 1954 to 1962, and culminated in Algeria's gaining of independence from France. The conflict was marked by torture, executions, brutal reprisals and terrorism, with civilians often getting the worst of it.
Horne traces Algeria's colonial history and the institutionalized inequalities that contributed to the rise of the National Liberation Front (FLN). On one side stood the Muslim majority, which had legitimate grievances against the French such as economic marginalization and political disenfranchisement. On the other side, stood metropolitan France and, most importantly, the French settlers ("pied-noir" ) who were determined to ensure that Algeria remained a part of France.
The book examines key events such as the Battle of Algiers (1956–1957), the subject-matter of Pontecorvo's film. During the battle, FLN fighters orchestrated a sustained campaign of urban guerrilla warfare, which involved of course terroristic attacks against civilian targets. Such terroristic attacks triggered terroristic reprisals from the French authorities, including murders, abductions, bombings and torture.
Horne details the internal divisions within the FLN as well as the political instability that was gradually overtaking France as a result of the bitter clashes sparked by the war. Most ominously for the Fourth Republic, France's military, disgusted by the weakness and indecisiveness of the republic's politicians, essentially freed itself from civilian oversight and control.
Horne vividly describes the generals' mutiny that led to General Charles de Gaulle’s return to power, ostensibly in order to win the war once and for all and to keep Algeria French. To the mutineers' astonishment, de Gaulle went on to do the opposite. He granted independence to Algeria through the Evian Accords of 1962. While the pied-noirs were granted French citizenship and received assistance relocating to France, the fate of the Algerian Muslims who had supported the French during the war was much grimmer. The so-called harkis did not receive French citizenship and were largely abandoned by Paris. Many faced violent reprisals in Algeria, including executions and imprisonment. The few who did manage to escape and to resettle in France encountered marginalization, living in isolated camps or rural areas.
Horne masterfully blends narrative history with critical analysis. Refreshingly, he avoids taking sides, and indulge in easy moralizing. He lets the story he tells speak for itself. He is able to sympathize with all of the protagonists: FLN fighters, French soldiers, pied-noirs and Muslim civilians. Horne’s prose is clear, lively and engaging, and he succeeds in making a complex subject accessible to general readers.
