Pied-noir: Encyclopedia II - Pied-noir - In France

Pied-noir - In France

The French government left control of Algerian administrative records to the new Algerian government; for the pieds-noirs, this led to a situation where hundreds of thousands could not access their birth or marriage certificates after independence, with some unable to prove that they were French, or unable to obtain legal papers. In the 1970's the French government finally sent a mission to Algeria to copy the birth, marriage, and death certificates in the main cities and towns of former European settlement, but village records were not copied, with the result that even today some pieds-noirs in France are still unable to prove their identity.

More generally, the pieds-noirs felt rejected in France, where they were often portrayed as nasty colonialists, especially by the Communist Party. Famously, as the pieds-noirs arrived in Marseille throughout 1962, they were greeted by the words "The pieds-noirs to the sea!" ("Les pieds noirs à la mer!"), as painted by the Communist longshoremen (dockers) of the Port of Marseille on the mole at the entrance of the harbor. Communist posters showing a brutal pied-noir whipping Arab workers were also a frequent sight in French cities at the time. In reality, though, the vast majority of Algeria's European and Jewish population was lower middle-class or poorer, with less than 5% of the pieds-noir population belonging to the economic elite of major merchants and land-owners. Their rejection by the French Left meant that pied-noirs quickly became the strongest element within the Far Right in France. Despite this lack of initial acceptance, the major economic boom that France experienced in the 1960's allowed the pied-noirs to assimilate rather quickly and easily into their new home.

More recently, the French government has acknowledged the trauma and suffering felt by the pieds-noirs, with frequent ceremonies organized to commemorate their tragedy. Many pieds-noirs have received some compensation from the French government for the loss of their property in post-independence Algeria. The French government did, however, cap the amount of compensation, with the result that many pieds-noirs have never received full compensation for what they lost. In any case, the feeling among the majority of the exiles is that money could not compensate for their lost lives. It is not uncommon to hear of pieds-noirs requesting that, after death and cremation, their ashes be strewn on the Mediterranean Sea, in the hope that the currents will wash them up on Algerian shores.

Symbolically, the pieds-noirs were allowed in the 1990s to use the old codes of their départements in French Algeria for official purposes. Until recently, when filing papers, or obtaining social security numbers, they had to list number 99, the code for people born in foreign countries. Many pieds-noirs found this insulting because they were born in Algerian départements that were considered, by the French state, to be an integral part of France (unlike other colonial areas.) Thus, on official documentation, they can now use the numbers 91, 92, and 93, the codes for the three old départements of Algeria. Other oddities still remain. For instance, since driving licenses in France are delivered by the prefect of the département for life, hundreds of thousands of pieds-noirs in France still carry a driving license with the stamp of one of the former départements of French Algeria on it, although these départements do not exist anymore.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "In France", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki