Les Français d'Algérie. De 1962 à 2014

A still gaping wound...

Preface by Thierry Rolando, National President of the Cercle algérianiste.

• Who are the Pieds-Noirs, those French people exiled from Algeria in 1962 after 132 years of French presence in this country they had helped create, and 8 years of a civil war that tore it apart?
• Why are they called that?
• What exactly was their history and the tragedy of their exodus?
• How did they integrate into mainland France?
• What are the motivations that drive them to band together and fight for the preservation of their identity, their culture, and their collective memory?
• What remains of this culture, the traditions, and the personality of this uprooted people?
• What are their demands even today, as well as those of the Harkis, their brothers in misfortune?
• What are their feelings regarding Algerians, Algeria, and France, and what are their political attitudes?
• What are the reasons for their anger, and which files remain pending?
• What is becoming of their cemeteries left behind across the Mediterranean?
• What are their associations, their gatherings, their newspapers, and their websites? How do their children and grandchildren position themselves?
• Does this people of pioneers, cut off from their roots, have a future?

It is to all these questions that Maurice Calmein wanted to respond in this book, to break out of the rut of disinformation that has for too long stifled this page of the history of France and to give a voice to these French people of Algeria who are still very much unknown to their fellow metropolitan citizens.

The responses are all the more substantiated as the author, born in 1947 in Oran, is one of them and has been active in Pied-Noir movements since the age of 16. He has even created and led several. This book is the fourth he has dedicated to his compatriots and to the history of French Algeria.

Maurice Calmein is a Knight of the Legion of Honor and the National Order of Merit.

432 pages, several photos, maps, etc.

New, revised, and corrected edition of the 2012 edition.

France-Algérie Collection 38