Some governments and scholars have called the French conquest of Algeria a genocide . Ben Kiernan , an Australian expert on the Cambodian genocide , wrote in '' Blood and Soil : A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur '' on the French conquest of Algeria : By 1875 , the French conquest was complete . The war had killed approximately 825,000 indigenous Algerians since 1830 . A long shadow of genocidal hatred persisted , provoking a French author to protest in 1882 that in Algeria , " we hear it repeated every day that we must expel the native and if necessary destroy him . " As a French statistical journal urged five years later , " the system of extermination must give way to a policy of penetration . " French Algeria became the prototype for a pattern of French colonial rule which has been described as " quasi-apartheid " . Napoleon III oversaw an 1865 decree that allowed Arab and Berber Algerians to request French citizenship — but only if they " renounced their Muslim religion and culture " : by 1913 , only 1,557 Muslims had been granted French citizenship . Despite periodic attempts at partial reform , the situation of the '' Code de l'indigénat '' persisted until the French Fourth Republic , which began in 1946 , but although Muslim Algerians were accorded the rights of citizenship , the system of discrimination was maintained in more informal ways . This " internal system of apartheid " met with considerable resistance from the Muslims affected by it , and is cited as one of the causes of the 1954 insurrection
Cambodian genocide
Cambodian genocide
Persecution of Muslims