How many Europeans moved to Algeria in the interwar period?

[Futurist]

Does anyone here have any data as to how many Europeans moved to Algeria in the period between the end of WWI in 1918 and the start of WWII in 1939?

[Futurist]

Basically, I want to get a picture of demographic trends in Algeria in the interwar period.

[Loïc]

the European net migration in Algeria between two census is
-1926 census +3 948 Europeans more (since 1921)
-1931 census +13 360
-1936 census +24 106

Algeria counted with this last census before the war 946 013 European (+154 643 since 1921 due mainly to natural increase than the european migration as shown)
https://www.persee.fr/doc/pop_0032-4663 ... 28_6_15622
Regards
Loïc L.

[Futurist]

Thank you very much for this link, Loic! I've taken a look at it and found the table with the relevant data. I can read French to some extent due to me taking it for four years in high school and thus I was able to understand what that table said.

Anyway, why was there less migration to Algeria in the interwar era than there was before World War I? Was it because Italian migrants who might have otherwise moved to Algeria ended up moving to Libya or other Italian colonies instead? Or was there another reason for this?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Futurist,

If I remember rightly, French Tunisia had the main Italian population in North Africa and it was even bigger than the local French population. It was therefore one of Mussolini's potential war aims when he attacked France in June 1940.

In 1939 Libya had about 108,000 relatively recent Italian settlers. At that time there were about 90,000 Italians in Tunisia of longer standing settlement, but another ±40,000 had taken out French citizenship in the previous 35 years.

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. Try: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Tunisians

[Futurist]

Very interesting information! Thanks, Sid!

[Futurist]

BTW, I did some number-crunching of the data in the article that Loic gave me and got these results:

Pieds-noirs Muslims Total Pied-noir % Muslim %
1856 159 2310 2469 6.44% 93.56%
1861 193 2738 2931 6.58% 93.42%
1866 218 2656 2874 7.59% 92.41%
1872 280 2134 2414 11.60% 88.40%
1876 345 2479 2824 12.22% 87.78%
1881 412 2860 3272 12.59% 87.41%
1886 465 3287 3752 12.39% 87.61%
1891 531 3577 4108 12.93% 87.07%
1901 634 3781 4415 14.36% 85.64%
1906 680 4089 4769 14.26% 85.74%
1911 752 4478 5230 14.38% 85.62%
1921 791 4923 5714 13.84% 86.16%
1926 833 5151 5984 13.92% 86.08%
1931 882 5588 6470 13.63% 86.37%
1936 946 6201 7147 13.24% 86.76%
1948 922 7460 8382 11.00% 89.00%
1954 984 8675 9659 10.19% 89.81%

If my calculations here are correct, it appears that the percentage share of pieds-noirs among the total Algerian population had already stabilized in the decade before the start of World War I. If so, barring some unexpected development, this would bode favorably for Algeria's prospects for eventual independence from France even if the two World Wars would have never occurred.

[Futurist]

The raw data here is in thousands, BTW.

[Futurist]

BTW, I did some number-crunching of the data in the article that Loic gave me and got these results:

Pieds-noirs Muslims Total Pied-noir % Muslim %
1856 159 2310 2469 6.44% 93.56%
1861 193 2738 2931 6.58% 93.42%
1866 218 2656 2874 7.59% 92.41%
1872 280 2134 2414 11.60% 88.40%
1876 345 2479 2824 12.22% 87.78%
1881 412 2860 3272 12.59% 87.41%
1886 465 3287 3752 12.39% 87.61%
1891 531 3577 4108 12.93% 87.07%
1901 634 3781 4415 14.36% 85.64%
1906 680 4089 4769 14.26% 85.74%
1911 752 4478 5230 14.38% 85.62%
1921 791 4923 5714 13.84% 86.16%
1926 833 5151 5984 13.92% 86.08%
1931 882 5588 6470 13.63% 86.37%
1936 946 6201 7147 13.24% 86.76%
1948 922 7460 8382 11.00% 89.00%
1954 984 8675 9659 10.19% 89.81%

If my calculations here are correct, it appears that the percentage share of pieds-noirs among the total Algerian population had already stabilized in the decade before the start of World War I. If so, barring some unexpected development, this would bode favorably for Algeria's prospects for eventual independence from France even if the two World Wars would have never occurred.

What I find especially striking is that the pied-noir percentage in Algeria was always in the 11.5%-14.5% range between 1872 and 1911. So, yeah, it really does look like after 1872 France's potential to increase Algeria's pied-noir percentage was rather limited. I mean, it did try as hard as it could to do this, did it not?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Futurist,

Very nice number crunching.

France's problem was that it was trying to colonize in the Old World.

European colonization was only successful in changing the racial balance in the New World, where Old World pathogens went ahead of the colonizers, killing most of the original inhabitants first. The same was true in Australasia and Oceania. In all these areas disease may have killed 90% or more of the original populations.

Africa is in the Old World and had similar immunity to Europe to its pathogens. They therefore did not clear a path for French colonization by largely wiping out the indigenous population.

In sub-Saharan Africa the European animal disease rinderpest did help to pave the way by killing most of the cattle and game in the area in the 1880s and 1890s, but most of the human population survived the consequent food shortages. However, rinderpest was already present north of the Sahara in the areas the French were trying to colonize, so they could not take advantage of it in Algeria.

Cheers,

Sid

[Futurist]

Actually, AFAIK, southern Mexico, Central America, and northern South America still have huge Native American or at least partly-Native American populations today. The "white man" was most successful in his colonization of the Americas in the northernmost and southernmost tips of the Americas--so, Canada, the United States of America, possibly northern Mexico and/or Cuba, southern Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.

[Futurist]

The reason for the more successful European colonization of the northernmost and southernmost tips of the Americas likely has to do with the fact that these territories likely had much less people even in 1492 than the central part of the Americans had back then. In the central part of the Americas, even if a lot of Native Americans succumbed to diseases, there were still enough of them to gradually replenish their numbers and to once again develop huge populations of them. Meanwhile, it was much harder to develop huge Native American populations in territories that never had huge Native American populations to begin with.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Futurist,

Much of that is true.

However, the losses of exploitable Amerindian labour to introduced pathogens was so great (even annihilatory in many Caribbean islands) that the Atlantic slave began to provide an alternative source of labour. Demographically, Africans benefited from the mass deaths of Amerindians more than Europeans did in the tropics.

Also, the pre-Columbian population of the USA was much larger than originally recognized. It is clear from early settler diaries that when they first landed the Amerindian population was denser than it was shortly afterwards. Major settlements, such as Cahokia, seem to have been so ravaged by disease and its consequences so far ahead of European penetration that they had disappeared without trace when they finally turned up. Only archaeology is recovering some of their story.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Futurist]

I thought that Cahokia already went into severe decline long before the "white man" came over to the Americas?

As for blacks, Yes, they certainly benefited from the decline in Amerindian labor and also from any moral questions that Europeans might have had or eventually developed about enslaving Armerindians. Even in the 16th century, there actually were some advocates in favor of Amerindian rights in Europe--such as this Spanish guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom% ... _las_Casas

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Futurist,

Yup, Cahokia itself was in decline before European arrival, but the Missisippian Culture from which it came was still apparently thriving. The Mississippi region seems to have had dozens of urban settlements until European pathogens arrived. Populations fell so much thereafter that all obvious trace of urban settlement seems to have disappeared before English speakers penetrated the area.

Cheers,

Sid