The Algerian War ends French rule in Algeria
An eight-year colonial war brings down the Fourth Republic
Quick facts
- Location
- Algeria
- Key organization
- Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN)
- Ended
- Evian Accords, 18 March 1962
What happened
The Algerian National Liberation Front, the FLN, launched a coordinated uprising against French colonial rule on 1 November 1954, beginning a war that grew increasingly brutal on both sides, with widespread use of torture documented by contemporaries including in the British Parliament, where a 1960 Commons debate cited French sources estimating around 180,000 people killed over the war's course. The conflict destabilized the French Fourth Republic so severely that it led to Charles de Gaulle's return to power in 1958 and the founding of the Fifth Republic, and de Gaulle eventually concluded that Algerian independence, not continued French rule, served France's interests. The Evian Accords, signed on 18 March 1962, ended the war and led to an independence referendum that Algeria overwhelmingly approved that July.
Why it matters
The war ended 132 years of French colonial rule in Algeria and triggered the exodus of nearly a million pied-noir settlers of European descent to mainland France, reshaping French domestic politics and immigration for the rest of the twentieth century.
How we know
Contemporary parliamentary debate records from both France and Britain, along with the text of the Evian Accords and subsequent referendum results, document the war's toll and its political resolution.
Sources
- Hansard, UK Parliament. Algeria (House of Commons debate, 4 November 1960) · Primary source (author-declared)hansard.parliament.uk · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. Algeria · Primary source (author-declared)history.state.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- Lumen Learning / SUNY World History. The Algerian War of Independence · General sourcecourses.lumenlearning.com · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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