A Savage War of Peace

Description

The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It brought down six French governments, led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic, returned de Gaulle to power, and came close to provoking a civil war on French soil. More than a million Muslim Algerians died in the conflict and as many European settlers were driven into exile. Above all, the war was marked by an unholy marriage of revolutionary terror and repressive torture. Nearly a half century has passed since this savagely fought war ended in Algeria’s independence, and yet―as Alistair Horne argues in his new preface to his now-classic work of history―its repercussions continue to be felt not only in Algeria and France, but throughout the world. Indeed from today’s vantage point the Algerian War looks like a full-dress rehearsal for the sort of amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, from Beirut to Baghdad―struggles in which questions of religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism take on a new and increasingly lethal intensity. A Savage War of Peace is the definitive history of the Algerian War, a book that brings that terrible and complicated struggle to life with intelligence, assurance, and unflagging momentum. It is essential reading for our own violent times as well as a lasting monument to the historian’s art. Review: Completely outstanding - Alistair Horne's awesome narrative of the Algerian War of Independence is compelling reading, for everything that it illuminates about the folly of colonialism in all its guises. It's surely something every senior US politician and military strategist (and many of our own UK MPs) ought to be forced to read. It's 566 pages long but the narrative is fluent. Horne obtained impressive access for personal interviews with large numbers of key players. Indeed, he had amazingly privileged interviews with senior figures all the way up to de Gaulle. There's an element of detective work in figuring out what truly happened; and there appears to be true determination to be objective regardless of the scope for participants to want the story to be told with their own slant. Inevitably he struggles a bit with the hopelessly long roll-call of people with important but still minor parts. But in the end the story emerges compellingly and casts a dynamic light upon (1) the absurdity of colonialism (2) specifically the collapse of the Fourth Republic if you did not already have that in good focus (3) the importance of stepping away and leaving former colonies to find their own destiny (4) the folly of attempting to superimpose western values, priorities and attitudes upon people whose roots lead them to think and feel completely differently and (5) the completely negative consequences (aside from the war criminality) of the use of torture. Among these Horne is particularly lucid on the use of torture. He makes plain that it was used to excellent effect at the tactical level, and indeed for much of the middle-to-late period of the war France had substantially won it at the purely military level thanks to intelligence extracted by torture. But Horne is equally clear that the battle to create a world in which Algerians could be happy under French sovereignty could never be won while anyone who had suffered torture lived to tell the tale, something de Gaulle understood far more clearly than his putsch-prone army. This is an outstanding volume. It’s a remarkable achievement in a genre of the telling of very recent history where far too many writers inflict their own distortions, wilfully or otherwise. But above all it is a warning to all leaders to keep away from other nations, of whose worlds they are almost always woefully ignorant. Review: Excelente - Excelente! Em perfeito estado.