Becuase Everything Else Sucks

This Week in Capitalism: July 5th 1830

By Manila Ryce
Published Friday, July 7th, 2006, 3:09 am
Filed under: This Week in Capitalism

On July 5th 1830, the French invaded the Algerian capital of Algiers. Algeria is a North African country whose coast became a base for the Barbary pirates from about 1550-1830 AD. Various European nations attempted to subdue the pirates of Algiers, who constantly disrupted shipping in the Mediterranean. The French, of all people, were eventually successful in occupying the capital, though their progress was slow due an intense resistance. Algiers was not completely under French rule until the early 1900s.

The French made Algeria a colony and confiscated its land. This meant that tens of thousands of European settlers poured into Algiers after it fell to buy cheap property. French army officers and bureaucrats horded vast amounts of Algerian land to sell to white farmers.European settlers were granted the most desirable lands and coastal farming plains. Meanwhile, the native Muslim population was uprooted as their land was sold. The settlers were granted French citizenship and the right to vote, two rights denied to Muslim Algerians.

The French occupation was also detrimental to the schooling of Muslim Algerians, who had previously relied on religious schools for their education. Failing to allocate money to mosques and schools, the French government spent more than five times as much on the education of Europeans (less than 10% of the population) over Muslims. Arabic studies were severely downgraded, and an increased emphasis was placed on French curriculum. In 1870, fewer than 5% of Algerian children attended any type of school. Within a generation, Algerian consciousness was changed. In 1962 Algeria finally gained its independence after eight years of guerrilla warfare.

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2 Responses to “This Week in Capitalism: July 5th 1830”

  1. On May 29th I’ll be expecting to see a sad post about the Turks sacking Constantinople and colonizing it, as well as the rest of Anatolia and south eastern europe. I’ll be disappointed if there aren’t any tears shed for all the christians enslaved by muslims, the castrations, rape, and oppression that followed for 500 years.

    Kaziglu Bey
    07/9/06 at 5:31 am

  2. @Kaziglu Bey
    i don’t think that really qualifies as capitalism.

    Administrator
    07/9/06 at 10:34 am

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