Napoleon III, who was perhaps one of the first French leaders to concern himself seriously with the Algerian plight, in 1863 passed a law aimed at "reconciling an intelligent, proud warlike and agrarian race" in which was stipulated, inter alia, that "France recognises the ownership by Arab tribes of territories of which they have permanent and traditional benefit". As so often with the more liberal acts of this well-intentioned ruler, however, their execution did not match up to his ideals; while a decade earlier he had himself pushed the floodgates of immigration ajar with his own political exiles and the unemployed of the Parisian ateliers. In his constant search for fresh funds abroad, he had also sold to the Compagnie Genevoise some fifteen thousand hectares of the best land round Sétif; but in the long run this would benefit neither France (in that the substantial income off it flowed into the pockets of Swiss bankers) nor Algeria (in that, contrary to Louis-Napoleon's intentions, its intensive operations offered but little employment for land-hungry peasants), and in itself was to provide one of the contributory causes to the 1945 events.

XREF: Connects to broader history of colonial land expropriation and how well-intentioned reform backfires, echoing patterns seen in French Algeria land policy.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 87