Home from the Djebel: the Making of Algerian War Veterans in France, 1956-1974

Home from the Djebel: the Making of Algerian War Veterans in France, 1956-1974 Public Deposited

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Narayanan, Anndal
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

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This dissertation examines the return experiences of French veterans of the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), focusing on the movement they created and its activism. Service in the Algerian War affected over one million Frenchmen during a period of rapid modernization in France, but these citizens would go unrecognized as veterans by their government for over a decade after the war’s end. Analyzing veterans’ return experiences, memory, and activism helps us understand the political consequences of the Algerian War in postcolonial French society—how the generation of soldiers who fought a “war without a name” brought the war back home. Drawing on state archives, veterans’ association archives, press coverage, and interviews and surveys of veterans, this dissertation finds that long before the French state deigned to recognize them or their war, veterans of Algeria were already politically active, as veterans and as citizens—both to promote their group interests, and to reshape French society based on lessons they drew from the war. Using perspectives of political history, military history, and memory, this dissertation presents a case study of how decolonization affected former colonizers, and the long-term consequences of sending citizens to fight in a controversial and unconventional war with changing war aims.

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