Colonial Violence and Collective Identity in French Algeria

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_4How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Algeria; Colonialism; Identity

Abstract

French Algeria was a settler colony in which military conquests and repressions were combined with economic inequalities, establishing a structure that privileged European settlers and exploited Algerian Muslims. Nationalism, whose origin was often drawn upon European models, was taking a different path of evolvement in Algeria. This article examines how colonial violence shaped the emergence of Algerian collective identity and nationalism by impairing the Algerians physically, economically, and psychologically. This research combines a close investigation of Algerian thinker Frantz Fanon with contemporary policies such as the Code de l’indigénat, as well as the proclamation of the National Liberation Front, to develop an analysis linking the broad colonial and societal context with the ultimate organizational consequence. In French Algeria, systematic violence of physical coercion, dispossession, and identity deformation generated a manichaean regime that normalized and institutionalized the subjugation of Muslim Algerians, which gave rise to nationalism and the subsequent reformation of Algerian identities. The analysis shows firstly how physical violence fractured the society into a Manichaean reality, secondly how legalized discrimination functioned as an instrument for exploitation that dispossessed people, and lastly how the rigid hierarchy subjugating Muslim Algerians distorted their self-perception. These dynamics later transformed into rising political awareness and demand for independence culminating the FLN insurgency. Overall, this analysis offers a comparative leverage for studies of colonialism and the recovery of narratives of the oppressed.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lingyi Qian
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - Colonial Violence and Collective Identity in French Algeria
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 31
EP  - 39
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_4
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_4
ID  - Qian2026
ER  -