Muslim-European Civilizational Encounters; French Colonization of Algeria; Its Framework and Impacts on Algerian Society and Culture

The paper discusses the French colonization of Algeria, within the context of Muslim European civilizational encounters. It focuses more on the European colonization process in the world in general, and the so-called “mission civilisatrice” of French colonization of Algeria in particular. It takes the period from 1830 until 1962 as its interval of analysis, by analyzing the various changes that the colonizers brought to the Algerian society and people during their 132 years of colonization. The paper found that the French Colonization of Algeria is one of the most violent, radical and hegemonic civilizational encounters between the Muslim world and Europe. Moreover, Algeria has experienced one of the severe processes of colonization, which affected all aspects of the Algerian natives’ lives, and the colonizers changed the structure of society and the social institutions as well as their cultural traditions, which experienced severe damage.