His traditional approach, however, stood out in post-1968 France. Reprinted on numerous occasions and translated into English, it became the standard introduction to Algeria for student and lay reader alike.Īgeron was appointed to the University of Tours in 1970. In 1964, two years after Algeria gained independence, he published a history of modern Algeria, Histoire de l'Algérie Contemporaine. The result, Les Algériens Musulmans et la France, 1871-1919, published in 1968, was the benchmark for all subsequent work. Ageron wanted to understand the mechanisms by which Muslims had been discriminated against under the third republic. In the early 1960s, he began a thesis under the historian Charles-André Julien. Ageron returned to Paris, where he gravitated towards the new left groupings that broke away from old-style socialism. But with the Battle of Algiers in 1957, where in the kasbah's tiny streets French paratroopers broke the FLN, this middle ground became untenable. He argued for a middle path between the terrorism of the National Liberation Front (FLN), and the repression imposed by the government in Paris. Confronted with atrocious violence on both sides, Ageron held a liberal position: independence was not inevitable reconciliation was possible. There, in November 1954, the tensions spilled over into an all-out war that lasted until 1962. Back in France, he qualified as a history teacher, and in 1947 returned to teach at the lycée Gautier in Algiers.
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