The Algerian parliament’s unanimous adoption of a law criminalizing French colonialism on December 24 marks a significant and provocative escalation in the already tense diplomatic relations between Algiers and Paris. This legislative move, emerging from a period of crisis that began in July 2024, shifts the longstanding, painful debate over memory from the realms of historical discourse and diplomacy into the sphere of criminal justice.
France’s reaction was swift and critical. The Quai d’Orsay denounced the law as a “manifestly hostile initiative, both to the desire to resume Franco-Algerian dialogue and to serene work on memory issues.” This response underscores a fundamental clash in approach: Algeria seeks a legal and categorical condemnation, while France advocates for a dialogic, historical reconciliation process—a disconnect that now threatens to freeze the very dialogue it claims to seek.
What future for Franco-Algerian memory work?
At the heart of this complex moment stands Benjamin Stora, the renowned French historian of Algerian origin. Contacted for his analysis, Stora offered a nuanced, deeply informed perspective that illuminates the core tension. He expressed immediate reservation, stating, “It’s difficult for me to comment at the moment (even though I have always been reserved about the judicialization of History, including against French memory laws like the Gayssot Law).” This is not a dismissal of Algerian grievances but a principled stance on the role of law versus history. For Stora, a historian’s task is to analyze, contextualize, and explain complexity, not to deliver verdicts. Judicialization, he implies, risks simplifying multifaceted historical trauma into binary legal categories of guilt and innocence, potentially stifling the nuanced understanding required for true reconciliation.
However, Stora was careful to separate his methodological objection from the moral and political claim at the law’s core. He immediately added, “But the demands for memorial recognition are legitimate as I wrote in my report five years ago.” Here, he references his landmark 2021 report, commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron, which contained some thirty recommendations for reconciling the memories of colonization and the Algerian War (1954-1962). In that report, Stora advocated for symbolic acts—official recognition of crimes, the return of archives and skulls of resistance fighters, the creation of mixed commissions—precisely to address the “legitimate” Algerian need for acknowledgment that France has often been slow or incomplete in providing.
The current law, therefore, represents a profound frustration with the pace and outcomes of the very process Stora helped design. The joint Franco-Algerian commission of historians he co-chairs “has not met since the outbreak of the crisis between the two countries in July 2024.” When asked about the impact of the new law on this memory work, Stora’s caution reveals the depth of the impasse: “Very frankly, I don’t know what will happen now. We have moved from memory work to the application of legislative work, which is not within my competence.” This statement highlights a critical pivot. The collaborative, academic “memory work” is now overshadowed by unilateral “legislative work,” a move that may satisfy a domestic political need in Algeria but which complicates, if not paralyzes, binational historical dialogue.
Context and Implications: This law cannot be viewed in isolation. It follows a series of diplomatic fractures, including disputes over diplomatic visas and historical statements. It serves as a powerful domestic political instrument for Algeria, solidifying a foundational national narrative. For France, it challenges the delicate balance Macron has sought between acknowledging historical wrongs—such as his recognition of the 1961 Paris massacre of Algerians and the role of torture during the war—and avoiding official apologies that could trigger legal claims for reparations. The law effectively forces a confrontation France has long sought to manage through gradual, symbolic gestures.
In essence, Benjamin Stora’s reaction frames the dilemma at its most stark: Algeria’s pursuit of long-overdue justice and recognition is morally understandable, yet the tool it has chosen—criminalization by law—may inadvertently sabotage the patient, shared work of historical understanding that is the only viable foundation for a future relationship free of the past’s ghosts. The path forward now appears more juridical and political, and less historical, than ever before.