Pieds-noirs

The Pieds-Noirs (French pronunciation: [pje nwaʁ]; lit. 'black feet'; sing.: Pied-Noir) are an ethno-cultural group of people of French and other European descent who were born in Algeria during the period of French colonial rule from 1830 to 1962. Many of them departed for mainland France during and after the Algerian War of Independence. From the French invasion on 18 June 1830 to its independence, Algeria was administratively part of France; its ethnic European population were simply called Algerians or colons (colonists). The Muslim people of Algeria were called Arabs, Muslims or indigènes. The term pied-noir came into common use shortly before the end of the Algerian War in 1962. As of the last census in French-ruled Algeria, taken on 1 June 1960, there were 1,050,000 non-Muslim civilians, some 10 percent of the population. Most pieds-noirs were Catholic and of European descent, but their population included around 130,000 indigenous Algerian Jews who were granted French citizenship through the Crémieux Decree and were viewed as a part of the pieds-noirs community. During the Algerian War, a vast majority of pieds-noirs were loyalists and overwhelmingly supported colonial French rule in Algeria. They were opposed to Algerian nationalist groups such as the Front de libération nationale (English: National Liberation Front) (FLN) and Mouvement national algérien (English: Algerian National Movement) (MNA). The roots of the conflict lay in political and economic inequalities perceived as an "alienation" from the French rule as well as a demand for a leading position for the Berber, Arab and Islamic cultures and rules existing before the French conquest. The conflict contributed to the fall of the French Fourth Republic and the exodus of European and Jewish Algerians to France. After Algeria became independent in 1962, about 800,000 pieds-noirs of French nationality evacuated to mainland France, while about 200,000 remained...