1830–1881: (The French Conquest of Algeria and the Seizure of Tunisia — Piracy as Pretext for Invasion in 1830, Abd al-Qadir’s Qadiriyya Resistance Through t…

1830–1881: (The French Conquest of Algeria and the Seizure of Tunisia — Piracy as Pretext for Invasion in 1830, Abd al-Qadir’s Qadiriyya Resistance Through the 1830s Drawing the French South, Systematic Conquest from 1841, Over 100,000 Settlers by the Late 1840s and 350,000 by the 1880s, and the Domino Effect on Tunisia Which Fell to France in 1881): Through the early nineteenth century, the nominally Ottoman states west of Egypt — Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers — were increasingly independent of Istanbul. The threat was most dramatically manifest in Algiers, which had long been a source of piratical trouble — the perceived haughtiness of the dey of Algiers, Hussein, provided the French with an excuse for invasion in 1830, though it was actually undertaken to bolster the flagging monarchy at home. Algiers and Oran fell quickly, and by 1832 French troops controlled a narrow coastal strip. In the mountainous interior, the chief enemy was Abd al-Qadir of the Qadiriyya, who held together a range of groups under the banner of jihad against the infidel conqueror — it was his formidable presence through the 1830s that drew the French south, with systematic conquest launched in 1841. The war was bitter and brutal, involving massacres of civilians, and resistance continued after Abd al-Qadir’s capture in 1847 down to the 1870s. With conquest came large-scale white settlement — over 100,000 by the late 1840s, 350,000 by the 1880s — the fertile coastal plain systematically cleared of its original inhabitants. Algeria loomed large in the French imagination and in time was regarded as part of France itself. The French conquest had ramifications across the region: the neighboring Regency of Tunis felt threatened and requested British protection. Tunisia became one of the more reformist-minded regimes, abolishing slavery in the 1840s and moving toward constitutional modernization. But by the time France seized Tunis in 1881, the scramble for Africa was well underway.