French Colonial Empire in Paris POI 1


Le Pont Saint-Michel

Our tour begins at the bridge named Pont Saint-Michel where Quai des Grands Augustins meets Quai Saint-Michel. From here we have a great view of the island that the Seine River straddles called the Ile de Paris and Notre Dame Cathedral in the distance. This bridge has been rebuilt several times during the ages since 1378. The bridge before you was built in 1857 and it is important in the history of Algerian Independence. The bridge, as the plaque says, commemorates where Algerian protesters who at the hands of the repressive regime and the police tortured and murdered Algerian Muslims. The victims’ hands were tied behind them and they were thrown into the river to drown. The dark side of Algerian colonization began in 1830. French colonization of Algeria was brought about with extreme violence and so was its decolonization and independence. With the aim of ‘civilizing’, French colonization began in earnest in 1830, with warfare which finally ended in 1875. It is estimated that 835,000 indigenous Algerians and 96,000 French died in the violent struggle. France ruled Algeria as a département of France until its independence in 1962. Migration by French settlers into Algeria was great as Algerian lands were made available to French nationals. By the twentieth century approximately 20% of the Algerian population was of European origin. The nationalist struggle for independence has a very violent history in Algeria and in Paris. In 1954 the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) initiated guerrilla war in Algeria, and bombings and assassinations in Paris. By 1958, 60 policemen had been killed and 200 were wounded. Paris authorities reacted violently to Algerian activists in the city, who were reacting to the brutality and torture perpetrated on Algerians in their homeland by the French army. The European descendants in Algeria opposed independence for Algeria and organized their own terrorist group, Organisation armée secrète (OAS), to influence the French government. They launched their own terrorist campaign in Paris, making an attempt on President De Gaulle’s life. By 1961, “a curfew for all Muslims in the capital (Paris) led to sickeningly vicious police violence, climaxing in the beating and murder of possibly two hundred demonstrators, whose bodies were dumped by night into the Seine.” Independence came in 1962 and was soon followed by the relocation of one million former Algerian colonists and other Europeans in France with a large number settling in Paris.

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