War In The Mountains
Peasant Society and Counter-Insurgency in Algeria, 1918-1958

While the French invaders had succeeded in crushing tribal resistance in the Dahra and Ouarsenis regions in 1843 through brutal slash-and-burn tactics, the colonial regime continued to fear that the mountain peasants would rise up in a bloody insurrection, a fear that ultimately materialized in the 1954 War of Independence.

The geography of the Chelif region, with its close relationship between the plains and the mountains, a natural "bandit country," offered ideal conditions for irregular warfare and was chosen by the Algerian Communist Party (PCA) and the National Liberation Front (FLN) as a redoubt for their guerrilla forces.

French counterinsurgents, as well as historians, following the classic Maoist formulation of the partisan as a fish to water, perceived the guerrillas as being supported by the peasantry, which provided an inexhaustible supply of fighters.

The Author

Neil MacMaster is a historian. He received his PhD from Cambridge University in 1972 and taught European history early in his career. Since the 1980s, he has focused on contemporary Algeria and has become a recognized specialist in the colonial period, the War of Liberation, emigration, and racism in France. He is currently an honorary lecturer at the School of Political, Social, and International Studies at the University of East Anglia (Norwich).


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