The French conquest of Algeria (French: Conquête de l'Algérie par la France; Arabic: الغزو الفرنسي للجزائر) took place between 1830 and 1903. In 1827, an argument between Hussein Dey, the ruler of the Regency of Algiers, and the French consul escalated into a blockade, following which the July Monarchy of France invaded and quickly seized Algiers in 1830, and seized other coastal communities. Amid internal political strife in France, decisions were repeatedly taken to retain control of the territory, and additional military forces were brought in over the following years to quell resistance in the interior of the country.
Initially, the Algerian resistance was mainly divided between forces under Ahmed Bey ben Mohamed Chérif at Constantine, seeking to reinstate the Regency of Algiers, primarily in the east, and nationalist forces in the west and center. Treaties with the nationalists under Emir Abdelkader enabled the French to first focus on the elimination of the remnants of the Deylik, achieved with the 1837 Siege of Constantine. Abd Al-Qādir continued to give stiff resistance in the west. Finally driven into Morocco in 1842, by large-scale and heavy-handed French military action, he continued to wage a guerrilla war until the Moroccan government, under French diplomatic pressure following its defeat in the Franco-Moroccan War, attacked him and drove him out of Morocco. He surrendered to French forces in 1847. Some governments and scholars have considered France's conquest of Algeria as constituting a genocide.[15][16][17]
^ abGreenhalgh, Michael (2014). The Military and Colonial Destruction of the Roman Landscape of North Africa. Brill. p. 366. ISBN9789004271630. by 1870 the army had lost over 150,000 men. As for the wider carnage, Urbain states in 1862 that the previous 32 years had killed, at a conservative estimate, over 480,000 people, not just soldiers. The troops suffered most at first but then, as barracks and hospitals were built, it was civilians who fell sick in greater proportion – and the natives probably lost over 500,000 souls
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