Independence · a Light

Algeria chose the anniversary of its own conquest

Algeria proclaimed its independence on 5 July 1962, and the date was not an accident. French troops had entered Algiers on 5 July 1830, so the new state closed the account exactly 132 years later, to the day. The war that ended in 1962 had lasted almost eight years and cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and afterwards close to a million European settlers left within months. The country's first task was practical and enormous: at independence the great majority of the population could not read, and teachers had to be recruited from Egypt, Syria and elsewhere to staff the schools of a country the size of Western Europe.

Algiers · 5 July 1962