Product 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15502 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-10
• Released on: 2006-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
When Americans talk about the raging insurgency in Iraq, they often draw parallels with the Vietnam War, but a better analogy is probably the French war against nationalist rebels in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. That's one reason why the landmark history of that conflict, Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace, has been an underground bestseller among U.S. military officers over the last three years, with used copies selling on Amazon.com for $150. Indeed, "Algeria" has become almost a codeword among U.S. counterinsurgency specialists -- a shorthand for the depth and complexity of the mess we face in Iraq. Earlier this year, I referred to Horne's book while conversing with one such expert in Taji, Iraq, and got a grim nod of agreement.

Now a new paperback edition of Horne's 1977 classic has been issued, cutting the price of wisdom to a more reasonable $19.95. In a new preface, Horne makes the connection to Iraq explicit. First, he notes, the Algerian insurgents fighting to end France's colonial control over the country avoided taking on the French army directly; instead, they attacked the police and other more vulnerable targets, thereby demoralizing local supporters of the French presence. Second, Algeria's porous borders greatly aided the insurgents, who could receive reinforcements, arms and sanctuary from neighboring countries such as Tunisia and Morocco. Third, and most emphatically, he writes that "torture should never, never, never be resorted to by any Western society."

Those three parallels are provocative enough, as far as they go. But many other, perhaps less obvious points in Horne's lucid, well-organized history may do even more to deepen our understanding of the Iraq War.

Again and again, Horne wrote passages about the French in Algeria that could describe the U.S. military in Iraq. As I wrote about the U.S. Army's big "cordon-and-sweep" operations that detained tens of thousands of civilian Iraqi males in the Sunni Triangle in the fall of 2003, I remembered Horne: "This is the way an administration caught with its pants down reacts under such circumstances. . . . First comes the mass indiscriminate round-up of suspects, most of them innocent but converted into ardent militants by the fact of their imprisonment."

Like the Americans in Iraq, the French in Algeria consistently misunderstood the nature of the opposition, focusing too much on supposed foreign support and too little on the local roots of the insurgency. Horne also detected a distinctly familiar pattern of official optimism among French officials, who were quick to declare their war "virtually over" four years before it ended in their defeat.

Moreover, A Savage War of Peace draws an important distinction between torture by the police and torture by the military. The former damages mainly individuals and need not be hugely damaging to the war effort; the latter, Horne quotes a former French officer as saying, involves the honor of the nation -- as it did at Abu Ghraib and other facilities where Iraqis were abused by American soldiers in 2003-04.

Along the way, Horne offers three other comments that are not particularly encouraging. First, when considering the Bush administration's policy of having U.S. forces stand down as newly trained Iraqi forces stand up, it is worth noting that throughout the eight years of the Algerian war, more Algerians were fighting on the French side than on the rebel side -- and the French still lost.

Second, when trying to understand Iraq's current violence, it is good to recall Horne's comment that "such a simultaneous internal 'civil war' " often rages alongside a "revolutionary struggle against an external enemy."

Finally, when we hear U.S. military officers arguing that they achieved their mission in Iraq but that the rest of the U.S. government failed or the will of the American people faltered, remember Horne's quotation from a French general, Jacques de Bollardière, who was critical of his army's performance: "Instead of coldly analysing with courageous lucidity its tactical and strategic errors, it gave itself up to a too human inclination and tried -- not without reason, however -- to excuse its mistakes by the faults of civil authority and public opinion."

To be sure, there are huge differences between the two wars. Most notably, the United States isn't a colonial power in Iraq, seeking to maintain a presence of troops and settlers as long as possible. Rather, in Iraq, victory would consist of getting U.S. personnel out while leaving behind a relatively friendly, open, stable and independent government. And while elements of the French military tried to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle for pulling out from what he termed "a bottomless quagmire," there is little fear that U.S. officers will go down that rebellious road.

But there are numerous suggestive parallels -- mainly relating to conventional Western militaries fighting primarily urban insurgencies in Arab cultures while support for their wars dwindles back home and while the insurgents hope to outlast their better-armed opponents. As such, anyone interested in Iraq should read this book immediately.

Reviewed by Thomas E. Ricks
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From AudioFile
This detailed chronicle of Algeria also provides abundant information about the Mediterranean conflict, religion, geography, and politics that affected it. Bill Kelsey's precise pronunciation and measured pace escort one through a long and pedantic session on North Africa, but with well-told asides and anecdotes maintain the listener's interest and attention. However, one disadvantage of learning history with audiobooks is the lack of maps and pictures. Horne's rather disorganized placement of events would benefit if the timeline in the back of the printed version were available. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
“He brings a long historical perspective and six decades of experience to bear on the affairs of the day.” –Salon.com

"First the Pentagon plugged the movie, now President Bush is reading the book...A Savage War of Peace, British historian Alistair Horne's celebrated 1977 account of the [Algerian] war...Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who recommended A Savage War of Peace to Bush, said recently on PBS' Charlie Rose Show that he did not believe 'that the French experience could be applied precisely to the United States. But I thought there were enough similarities and enough complexities and enough tragedy for the president to gain a perspective on his own period.'" —Associated Press

"Anyone interested in Iraq should read this book immediately." —Thomas Ricks, The Washington Post

“[Horne’s] tome is so well written it reads more like a novel but is, in fact, a work of superior historical narrative…There are few historical works that provide so comprehensive a treatment of revolutionary and counterinsurgency warfare, domestic and international politics, and economics and ideology.” –Marine Corps Gazette

“When Horne’s book first appeared, it seemed to be an account of one major, but now largely closed, chapter in the history of postwar decolonization. Subsequent developments–in Algeria and elsewhere–have made the past prologue. [It] has become a de facto textbook for American Military officers facing time in Iraq...” —Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed

“This thirty-year-old history, written before the Iranian revolution, the Algerian civil war, and Al Qaeda, captures a contingent moment in the conflict between the West and the Arab world, when present-day dogmas were hardly imagined by most. It provides a much needed reminder that modern history is not made by the ‘clash of civilizations’ but by people.” —Harper’s Magazine

"The present conflict in the Middle East is frighteningly similar, making this book a good volume to have on library shelves. Horne provides a new preface."—Library Journal (Classic Returns)

"[T]he read of choice for many U.S. military officers serving in Iraq...[this] universally acclaimed history...should have been mandatory reading for the civilian and military leaders who opted to invade Iraq" —The Washington Times

“There is enough to make this the most complete history of the Algerian war yet written, one which will be indispensable for future historians. It is compelling reading, filled with intimate detail about characters and situations that have served as inspiration for a dozen novels from The Day of the Jackal on.” –The Los Angeles Times

A “highly readable, toughly edited history that blends the pace and sweep of a work of fiction with a relentless pursuit of every main actor still alive and willing to talk about the war.”–The Washington Post Book World

“Alistair Horne is one of the best writers of history in the English speaking world. A Savage War of Peace shows him at the peak of his powers."–The Financial Times

“An awesome and superlative piece of historical narrative…Mr. Horne has a terrible and tremendous tale to tell, one full of omen for posterity.”–The Times (London)

“An accomplished historian of earlier French wars has written an admirably impartial, lucid and readable book…as full and objective a history of the Algerian war as we are likely to see for some years.” –The New York Times Book Review

“A book of compelling power…magnificent. It has the poetic sense of place without which no great work of history can be written.”–The Spectator

“…brilliantly and compassionately told by an historian whose mastery of this subject is complete.”
–The Washington Post

Customer Reviews

Positively 6 stars
Alistair Horne is one of the preeminent historians of the 20th Century. I've read several of his books, including the entire trilogy on the three Franco - German wars. I've found each of his books excellent, but this one will always rate as his best - for the complexity of the material that he has mastered. In the preface is an impressive list of the principal actors interviewed. He acknowledged that it is virtually impossible to have seen the "entire picture," and suggests that no one will. He combines the specific information on the war with an overall splendid erudition. He tells the drama lucidly, with irony where appropriate, as it is so often. I first read this book over 30 years ago, and was even more impressed the second time around.

He draws you in immediately with the ironic title to his first chapter; a quote from former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, that Setif was "A Town of No Great Interest." It was in this non-descript town that the native Muslim Algerians revolted against the French at the end of the WW II, and were in turn brutally massacred. And it was near Setif that two young French teachers, "dedicated liberals", bookish and bespectacled, were murdered on All Saint's Day, 1954, in the commencement of Algeria's war of liberation.

Horne uses a wild range of sources for incisive epigraphs at the commencement of each chapter, and perhaps none is better than the one from Jonathan Swift: "In war opinion is nine parts in ten." That opinion was spun and spun again as events repeatedly outraced the expectations of the actors.

France first went to Algeria in 1830, colonizing it under the rubric of a "civilizing mission," (a forerunner of bringing the natives democracy). But they carried the seeds of their own destruction, believing their mission involved the education of the natives, and after a few generations, was it any surprise that the natives were asking: Where are our fraternity, equality and most definitely, liberty? Generations of white French, ironically called "pied noirs," considered the country there own too. Horne's strength in this work is his understanding and depiction of the numerous factions on the two principal sides. After the humiliating French defeat in Indochina, occurring only six months prior to the commencement of this struggle, it was imperative that they not lose again. Furthermore, unlike Indochina, Algeria was considered an integral part of France (though, of course, by in large, the Muslims did not get the vote). The struggle on the French side nearly lead to civil war. It did culminate in the collapse of the Fourth Republic, when tanks surrounded the key government buildings in Paris, in anticipation of an assault by rebel French paratroopers, lead by four French generals who had revolted. De Gaulle rode to the rescue, creating the Fifth Republic, and going to Algiers, where he gave his famous "Je vous ai compris" (I understood you) speech to the pied noirs. He was a master of ambiguity, and would ultimately betray pied noirs aspirations.

As for the political maneuvering and machinations on the side of the FLN (National Liberation Front), Horne is not able to describe as well, fundamentally because so many of the principals did not survive the war, or its immediate aftermath. Like in the French revolution of 1789, the revolution "consumed its children." He does quote some cri de coeurs of Frantz Fanon, one of the giants of the anti-colonial movement.

Complementing Horne's knowledge of the military tactics and strategy, he is equally adept at describing the intellectual struggles, with a principal axis being between Sartre-Beauvoir and Albert Camus. This culminated when the later, a pied noir, made the famous statement upon receiving his Nobel Prize for Literature: "I love justice; but I will fight for my mother before justice."

The book contains some excellent maps, a substantial bibliography, and extensive pictures of the main characters in the drama. Particularly haunting is one of a young boy arrested during a "ratonnade." (literally, a raid against the "rats.")

I strongly feel the book should be read as an excellent, almost certainly the best history of one of the major tragedies of the 20th Century. Inevitably though, the question is asked: What lessons can we learn? This question took on additional relevance when it was reported that George W. Bush was reading the book. As a cautionary counterpoint to projecting these events on other circumstances, after my reading of it 30 years ago, I firmly felt this was how a similar situation, a minority of whites, who considered their country home, ruling over a majority of native blacks, in South Africa, would be resolved - through bloody war. Fortunately the Algerian precedent did not hold, as a few principled persons made decisions that avoided that denouement. The circumstances in Iraq, for the United States, are quite different that France in Algeria. Nonetheless, there may be at least two "takeaways". One from Horne himself, who, in the preface to a recently released reprint, said that no country should adopt the tactic of torture, as the French did in Algeria, primarily for what it does to the values and soul of those who torture. Sadly, a significant minority of Americans follow Dick Cheney's lead in embracing torture. The other takeaway is to decide how we would view Camus's position: Would we adopt injustice on behalf of a false concept of "mother"?

Excellent, but...
I read Horne's book on Paris and loved it, so I was anxious to read more of his work. This is a comprehensive, straight forward account of the Algerian War. You probably won't find a better book.

However, there are a few problems. First, Horne uses a fair amount of French quotes and expressions in this book, but provides no English translation. I have some knowledge of French, so I was able to comprehend some of them. For someone with no knowledge, they would be left in the dark.

Also, this book needs a listing of major characters. There are just too many people in this book and it is a challenge to keep them all straight, particuarly the Arab names. Some people are mentioned only once and it gets confusing.

A Slightly Slow, yet Very Good Analysis.

Alistair Horne provides the reader with an extensive and very detailed narrative of the Algerian War. His familiarity with the subject matter is plainly evident. On the down side, the book can be slow and confusing in certain parts. It is long at 566 pages and is divided into three parts.

The author does a superb job in describing all aspects of this conflict. The first three chapters are focused on the period of 1830 to 1854. This part provides a good understanding of the problems surrounding French colonialism, the European settlers in Algeria (the pied noirs), and why the F.L.N. began the war. Part two focuses on the actual war years of 1954 - 1958. The detail provided in this part, especially the chapter on the Battle of Algiers, is very informative. Part three covers the period from 1958 to 1962. This includes not only the peace negotiations, but also such events as Barricades Week and the General's putsch. The author not only does an excellent job of describing these events, he also explains why so many high ranking French officers turned against De Gaulle. The author also describes the internal conflicts within the F.L.N. as well as the rise of the O.A.S., the French rebel group that fought against Algerian independence. Of particular interest is the fact that the author interviewed several people who participated, and also survived, the war.

On the down side, the book is slightly difficult to read. Although some parts flow well, other parts seem to drag. One confusing aspect is the author's tendency to use French phrases without providing a translation. In some instances, he will use a French term when an English term would have served equally well. For example, on page 179, he describes the "presence francaise" in Indochina as opposed to simply using "French presence." In other cases, the reader will simply not understand what is being said unless they speak French. For example, the author uses the term "Ce-con-la" in a sentence on page 181. The term is not further explained. Finally, he will add references that do not contribute to the story. Mr. Horne quotes Jean Paul Sartre on page 196 even though it really adds nothing. He also makes references to other people's memoirs and the movie "Battle of Algiers." Such references are indeed useful, albeit at the end of the book, not scattered through the text.

Bottom line: this is an extremely detailed account of the Algerian War. Mr. Horne does a good job of bringing many of the main characters, such as Ben Bella, Ali La Pointe, Generals Massu and Salan to life. The difficulty of reading this book can be found in its writing style and sheer length. That said, any reader who can overcome these minor difficulties, will come away with an excellent understanding of this forgotten conflict.