117,000 foreigners (Algeria 55). Almost all the European, primarily French, settlers (pieds-noirs), who had come to Algeria after it was conquered by the French in the 1830s, left Algeria after 1962 together with almost the Jews and some pro-French Muslims. More than a million people, almost four percent of the total population fled abroad (Metz 55).
The Berbers have a long history of bitter resistance to foreign rule by Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Turks and French. The first national hero, the Numidian king Jugartha, was tortured to death by the Romans. The Arab conquest arrived in the mid-7th century. It took the Arabs more than 50 years to conquer the Berbers. According to Entelis, "Arab rule was dictatorial, with the conquerors setting themselves apart as an urban clique that refused to admit the newly converted to the equality granted by Islam" (13). Under the Turks, nests of pirates who marauded Western shipping operated from Algerian coasts. Behr says that outside the coastal area, "real Turkish authority hardly existed" (15).
The first French expeditionary forces arrived in Algiers in 1830 to avenge a slap administered to the French consul by the Dey of Algiers and easily subdued the coastal littoral. Behr says the "long and bloody conquest of Algeria" took more than 17 years (24). The leaders of the initial opposition to French rule were Kabyle Berbers who revolted in 1871, 1876 and 1882. Although less numerous than Arabs, the Berbers supplied more than a proportionate share of the officers and men of the FLN military.
According to Nickerson, the "colony [was] run by the F
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