Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

The small amount of money from French factories was unfortunately one of the only potential
sources of income for North Africans. When the French withdrew after the war, this was especially true for
Algerians. One of de Gaulle’s greatest priorities before allowing Algeria their independence was to secure
the rights to oil that was recently found in Algeria, taking the potential revenue and many jobs with them
(Virtue). Scholars agree that “the conduct and the aims of [de Gaulle’s] Algerian policy remain among the
most controversial questions about the war” (Talbott 359). This influenced the economic crisis that gripped
Algeria after France’s withdrawal; an economic collapse of this nature is characteristic of new nations who
have not had experience functioning independently, and the political upheaval that accompanied Algeria’s
independence added to the general disorder of the country. My uncle recalls the many Algerians who
sought work in France as the result of Algeria’s political and economic failure. According to my uncle, these
failures were due to the FLN’s control which, he says, was no more than a “communist regime” or a
“military dictatorship” (de Montchenu). Still many of the struggles that Algeria faces today can be traced
back to the tension introduced by France’s preferential treatment of different ethnic groups during the
initial colonization of Algeria.
Migration and Settlement of the Pied-noirs in France
For the pied-noirs who were relocated from Algeria to France, many felt a similar sense of
displacement when they moved to Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyon, or other southeast cities in France (Virtue),
almost directly north of Algiers. Unfortunately, many pied-noirs like my grandfather who was born in
Algiers in 1929 or my great-uncle who migrated in 1937 to start a family, had no or only little knowledge
of France, so the land was as unusual to them as it was to the North Africans. There was a slight animosity
between the pied-noirs who felt abandoned by the French government in Algeria among the still hostile FLN
(Stora Histoire 77). While many French citizens had waited for three days in Algeria for a plane to France,
my family was fortunate enough to wait only a day, but “most of the families leaving Algeria had to leave so
quickly that they only had a suitcase. A terrible shame for an entire population” (de Montchenu). Since
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