Although a number ofEuropean states had colonial dominions, it is only in the cases of Britain and France that Muslim immigrants came mainly from their own overseas territories. These cases, along with Germany, will receive longer treatment here to illustrate the range of ways in which Muslims and European countries have responded to each other.
France has a long history of direct engagement with Muslim societies, most importantly through French settlement in Algeria. Invaded in 1830, it was, by its 1962 hard fought independence, the home to French and other European settlers of the third and fourth generation. From 1871 on, French policy was fully to incorporate Algeria into France, while leaving Muslims as second class subjects, though holding out the tantalising prospect of citizenship.11 The geographical proximity and intensity of colonial rule facilitated circular labour migration beginning in the late 1880s. During the First World War, thousands of Algerians were recruited to fight or to replace drafted French workers. The Great Mosque of Paris, built in the 1920s, was intended to display France’s goodwill toward Muslims and to manifest France’s desire to become a great Muslim power. The Mosque has always been under both French and foreign control; even today its leader is appointed by the Algerian government.12 The war that led to Algeria’s independence in 1962 left bitterness and resentment on the part of French former settlers and Algerians, but increased the rate of emigration to France. By 1972 about 800,000 Algerians, including speakers of Arabic and Berber speakers from Kabylia, lived in France.13
10 On the role of converts, see Stefano Allievi, 'Les conversions a l’islam’, in Felice Dassetto (ed.), Paroles d’Islam (Paris, 2000), pp. 157 82; on the role played by the Catholic Church, see Claire de Galembert, 'L’attitude de l’Eglise Catholique a l’egard des Musulmans en France et en Allemagne’, Ph. D. thesis, Institut d’Etudes Politiques, these de doctorat (Paris, 1995).
11 Todd Shepard, The invention of decolonization: The Algerian War and the remaking ofFrance (Ithaca, 2006).
12 Gilles Kepel, Les banlieues de l’Islam: Naissance d’une religion en France (Paris, 1991),
Pp. 64 94.
13 Neil MacMaster, Colonial migrants and racism: Algerians in France, 1900 62 (New York,
1997), p. 188.
World History
