Causes of France's colonisation of Algeria (1830)

03Causes of France's colonisation of Algeria (1830)

The story of the wheat debts

• France had kept good relations with Algeria because it imported wheat from it, owing to the economic blockade Britain imposed on France during the battles of the French Revolution against the monarchies of Europe.
• France did not pay for the wheat at once but took it as a loan, and so owed Algeria very large sums.
• The rulers of Algeria began demanding payment from 1800, but France kept postponing.
• It formed a financial committee in Paris which cut the debt from 24 million francs to only seven million, and in August 1826 the ruler of Algeria was told that the payment procedures would take a long time.

Exploiting the opportunity

• Clashes took place between Algerian ships and the ships of the Pope in the Mediterranean, within the mutual privateering carried on by the peoples of both shores. France seized the opportunity to delay payment further and demanded that Algeria compensate for the Pope's ships.
• France moved warships to blockade the coast of Algiers, and the blockade lasted more than two years (1827 – early 1830).
• It demanded that the Algerians stop sea privateering, return what had been taken from the Pope's ships, recognise France's right to most-favoured-nation status in Algeria, and renounce the debts.
• The ruler of Algeria refused these demands, so the French government ordered the fleet blockading Algiers to occupy the country. This happened in June 1830 after fierce resistance, and the Ottoman state made no move to help Algeria.