Algeria was one of the biggest and oldest French colonies. In 1918, the colonial regime was almost 90 years old. Algeria took first place among French overseas possessions not only for the number of European (mainly French) colons and the land they held, but also for invested capital, again chiefly French. On the eve of the First World War, Algeria accounted approximately for half of all the capital exported to the French colonies. In later years, the influx of capital to Algeria and the greater degree of her capitalist development, as compared with other French colonies, resulted in a lower rate of profit and somewhat reduced the flow of new investments. Nevertheless, in the interwar period and after the Second World War, France channelled to Algeria from one-fourth to one-third of her colonial investments.

• At the beginning of the 1920's   ( 3 Articles )
  

  

  The theorists of colonialism claim that the conversion of Algeria into the biggest investment sphere among the French colonies promoted the country's economic progress and the prosperity of the Algerians. But the facts speak of the opposite.
  
  
   

   

   

• Algeria after World War I   ( 4 Articles )
  

  During the First World War, 120,000 workers were sent from Algeria to France, where there was a shortage of manpower. Since then Algerian workers have been constantly employed in France; their number reached 300,000-400,000. The colonial authorities drafted 175,000 Algerians into the army. Algerians took part in the famous mutiny of French sailors on the Black Sea in 1919. On returning to Algeria, the soldiers and workers brought back news of the socialist revolution in Russia, which awakened the national consciousness of the masses.

   

• Algeria During the World War II   ( 4 Articles )
  

  The disintegration of the Popular Front in France (1938-1939) and the outbreak of the Second World War enabled imperialist reaction to take the offensive both in France and in Algeria. The colonial authorities abolished the social and political gains of the Popular Front period. In September 1939, the Algerian Communist Party and progressive trade unions were banned and their leaders thrown into prison. The same thing happened to the Algerian People's Party. Other nationalist organisations actually discontinued their activities.

   

• First Ten Years after the War   ( 5 Articles )
  

  

  Suppression of the  May rebellion, however, did not strengthen the colonial regime. On the contrary, in postwar years, when a new balance of forces arose in the world, the liberation movement assumed an unparalleled scale in Algeria, as in other colonies. Economically, the postwar period was marked by greater colonial exploitation.

   

   

• The Algerian Revolution   ( 9 Articles )
  

  The armed struggle began in Aures, south of Constantine. On November 12, hostilities also started in Greater Kabylia, a mountainous region east of Algiers. Before long guerrilla warfare spread all over the country. Guerrilla detachments waging a war of liberation against the French colonialists came to be called the National Liberation Army.

   

   

   

   

   

   

• Independent Algeria   ( 10 Articles )
  

  The colonialists left a terrible legacy of 130 years of colonial slavery, seven and a half years of war and the orgy of OAS terror and sabotage after the conclusion of peace. All this turned Algeria into a "scorched earth" country. More than two million Algerians were languishing in "regroupment camps". More than 100,000 were in dire straits in neighbouring countries; in Algeria herself, 2.2 millions people were jobless. Starvation, disease and economic chaos reigned in the country. It was necessary to begin healing the war wounds at once. The task was not merely to regain the prewar level but to build a new, free Algeria. And here the leaders of the revolution and the entire Algerian people faced the problem of choosing the country's ways of development.