Deeply aware of the stirrings of discontent beneath the then apparently placid surface of Algeria, he issued this prophetic warning the year after the centenary: “before twenty years are up we will know the gravest of difficulties in North Africa”. Five years later, Viollette succeeded in getting a set of liberal reforms tabled by the Assembly, the Blum—Viollette Bill. His declared ideal was that “Muslim students, while remaining Muslim, should become so French in their education, that no Frenchman, however deeply racist and religiously prejudiced he might be… will any longer dare to deny them French fraternity”. It spelt, in one word, “assimilation”. The provisions of his bill, however, were once again extremely modest, notably offering citizenship to no more than 25,000 (out of some six million) Muslims, without renouncing their statutory rights to Islamic law. … But the well-oiled mechanism of pied noir protest began to run; the Algerian Press fulminated against the “explosive situation” provoked by Parisian ignorance; the anciens combattants marched through the streets; the mayors threatened to resign; the powerful lobbies in Paris burrowed away. “We will never tolerate that in even the smallest commune an Arab might be mayor” was a not untypical pied noir reaction. Under pressure at home and the threat of Hitler abroad, Leon Blum’s Popular Front hesitated, and finally collapsed before the bill could be passed.

XREF: Connects to broader history of French colonialism and failed assimilation policies, and the path to the Algerian War of independence. SEED: The 25,000-of-six-million citizenship figure is a striking statistic for an essay on why tokenist reform fails.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 102