Why did France fight a nearly eight-year war to keep Algeria?

France fought for Algeria because it did not see Algeria as a colony. The Constitution of 1848 declared it an integral part of France, divided into three departments, and many French and other Europeans settled there. Giving it up would mean splitting France itself, and a large settler community, the pieds-noirs, was determined to prevent it. Algerian nationalists, by contrast, wanted independence.

The war came in 1954. The conflict began effectively on 1 November 1954 with attacks by the National Liberation Front, the FLN. The FLN was weak at first, with an armed wing of only 3,000 badly equipped men. But the war escalated, and atrocities were committed on both sides.

In the end, politics decided the war more than battles did. The conflict led to serious political crises in France and caused the fall of the Fourth Republic, replaced by a Fifth Republic with a strengthened presidency. Revelations of torture, and the strain of a colonial war that tied down half the manpower of France's armed forces, wore down support at home and abroad. On 16 September 1959 de Gaulle dramatically reversed his stand and spoke of self-determination.

The Evian Accords of 1962 brought a cease-fire, and in a referendum on 1 July 99.72 percent of voters voted for independence. The human cost was heavy and is known only through disputed estimates. Algerian historians and the FLN put Algerian deaths at 1.5 million, the British journalist Alistair Horne at around 1 million, and French officials and historians at about 350,000, a figure many regard as too low.