As Algeria celebrates 63 years of independence from France on July 5, this year’s anniversary feels more like a reckoning than a triumph. Far from reconciliation, relations between Algiers and Paris have sunk to one of their lowest points in decades – fuelled by France’s refusal to fully confront its colonial crimes, and Algeria’s renewed demands for justice. Amid calls for formal apologies and reparations, the shadow of empire still looms. So why revisit this history now? Because even six decades after the French flag was lowered over Algiers, the wounds of colonialism remain open, and the battle over memory rages on.

To understand the depth of today’s diplomatic rupture, we must go back to where the story began – France’s invasion of Algeria starting on June 15, 1830, when French naval forces sailed from Toulon and seized Algiers in less than three weeks. The expedition’s commander, General de Bourmont, boasted: “Twenty days were enough to destroy a state whose existence had burdened Europe for three centuries.” He was referring to Ottoman Algeria, a semi-autonomous province with its own identity and institutions. France’s quick victory fed a dangerous illusion: that conquest would be simple. What followed was anything but.

The swift victory gave French leaders an illusion that Algeria’s fall signaled smoother days ahead. Few anticipated serious resistance – an attitude that partly explains how quickly the territory was absorbed into the colonial empire. No one imagined that a national liberation movement, the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale), would one day reclaim Algeria, and force France to retreat.

Algeria was a peaceful, semi-autonomous Ottoman province with a distinct identity shaped by local political systems, Islamic scholarship, Mediterranean trade, and tribal alliances. For France, however, it was more than a colony – it was a conquest driven by ambition and a bid to restore prestige after Napoleon’s decline. What began as a punitive expedition soon became a 132-year project of domination, costing hundreds of thousands of Algerian lives – Algeria still claims at least 1.5 million people killed.

The invasion was sparked by one of history’s most trivial diplomatic incidents. In 1827, the Dey of Algiers – effectively head of state – met French consul Pierre Deval to discuss Algeria’ s unpaid debts. Frustrated by Deval’s attitude, the Dey struck him with a fly whisk. Deval reported the insult to Paris, triggering a chain of events that led to the invasion.

France seized on the minor incident as a convenient pretext for war. Behind it lay a post-Napoleonic regime eager to distract from domestic unrest and reassert power abroad. Algeria, geographically close and politically weak, was an ideal target – symbolically vital as the gateway to........

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