title: French Algeria

text: D. Huf, in his seminal work on the subject, argued that the use of torture was one of the major factors in developing French opposition to the war. Huf argued, "Such tactics sat uncomfortably with France's revolutionary history, and brought unbearable comparisons with Nazi Germany. The French national psyche would not tolerate any parallels between their experiences of occupation and their colonial mastery of Algeria." General Paul Aussaresses admitted in 2000 that systematic torture techniques were used during the war and justified it. He also recognized the assassination of lawyer Ali Boumendjel and the head of the FLN in Algiers, Larbi Ben M'Hidi, which had been disguised as suicides. Bigeard, who called FLN activists "savages", claimed torture was a "necessary evil". To the contrary, General Jacques Massu denounced it, following Aussaresses's revelations and, before his death, pronounced himself in favor of an official condemnation of the use of torture during the war.


title: French Algeria

text: In June 2000, Bigeard declared that he was based in Sidi Ferruch, a torture center where Algerians were murdered. Bigeard qualified Louisette Ighilahriz's revelations, published in the "Le Monde" newspaper on June 20, 2000, as "lies." An ALN activist, Louisette Ighilahriz had been tortured by General Massu. However, since General Massu's revelations, Bigeard has admitted the use of torture, although he denies having personally used it, and has declared, "You are striking the heart of an 84-year-old man." Bigeard also recognized that Larbi Ben M'Hidi was assassinated and that his death was disguised as a suicide.


title: French Algeria

text: A commission of inquiry established by the French Senate in 1892 and headed by former Prime Minister Jules Ferry, an advocate of colonial expansion, recommended that the government abandon a policy that assumed French law, without major modifications, could fit the needs of an area inhabited by close to two million Europeans and four million Muslims. Muslims had no representation in the French National Assembly before 1945 and were grossly under-represented on local councils. Because of the many restrictions imposed by the authorities, by 1915 only 50,000 Muslims were eligible to vote in elections in the civil communes. Attempts to implement even the most modest reforms were blocked or delayed by the local administration in Algeria, dominated by , and by the 27 representatives in the National Assembly (six deputies and three senators from each department).


title: French Algeria

text: Once elected to the National Assembly, became permanent fixtures. Because of their seniority, they exercised disproportionate influence, and their support was important to any government's survival. The leader of the delegation, Auguste Warnier (1810–1875), succeeded during the 1870s in modifying or introducing legislation to facilitate the private transfer of land to settlers and continue the Algerian state's appropriation of land from the local population and distribution to settlers. Consistent proponents of reform, like Georges Clemenceau and socialist Jean Jaurès, were rare in the National Assembly.


title: French Algeria

text: The bulk of Algeria's wealth in manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and trade was controlled by the . The modern European-owned and -managed sector of the economy centered on small industry and a highly developed export trade, designed to provide food and raw materials to France in return for capital and consumer goods. Europeans held about 30% of the total arable land, including the bulk of the most fertile land and most of the areas under irrigation. By 1900, Europeans produced more than two-thirds of the value of output in agriculture and practically all agricultural exports. The modern, or European, sector was run on a commercial basis and meshed with the French market system that it supplied with wine, citrus, olives, and vegetables. Nearly half of the value of European-owned real property was in vineyards by 1914. By contrast, subsistence cereal production—supplemented by olive, fig, and date growing and stock raising—formed the basis of the traditional sector, but the land available for cropping was submarginal even for cereals under prevailing traditional cultivation practices.


title: French Algeria

text: In 1953, sixty per cent of the Muslim rural population were officially classed as being destitute. The European community, numbering at the time about one million out of a total population of nine million, owned about 66% of farmable land and produced all of the 1.3 million tons of wine that provided the base of the Algerian economy. Exports of Algerian wine and wheat to France were balanced in trading terms by a flow of manufactured goods.


title: French Algeria

text: The colonial regime imposed more and higher taxes on Muslims than on Europeans. The Muslims, in addition to paying traditional taxes dating from before the French conquest, also paid new taxes, from which the were normally exempted. In 1909, for instance, Muslims, who made up almost 90% of the population but produced 20% of Algeria's income, paid 70% of direct taxes and 45% of the total taxes collected. And controlled how these revenues would be spent. As a result, towns had handsome municipal buildings, paved streets lined with trees, fountains and statues, while Algerian villages and rural areas benefited little if at all from tax revenues.


title: French Algeria

text: In financial terms Algeria was a drain on the French tax-payer. In the early 1950s the total Algerian budget of seventy-two billion francs included a direct subsidy of twenty-eight billion contributed from the metropolitan budget. Described at the time as being a French luxury, continued rule from Paris was justified on a variety of grounds including historic sentiment, strategic value and the political influence of the European settler population.


title: French Algeria

text: The colonial regime proved severely detrimental to overall education for Algerian Muslims, who had previously relied on religious schools to learn reading and writing and engage in religious studies. Not only did the state appropriate the habus lands (the religious foundations that constituted the main source of income for religious institutions, including schools) in 1843, but officials refused to allocate enough money to maintain schools and mosques properly and to provide for enough teachers and religious leaders for the growing population. In 1892, more than five times as much was spent for the education of Europeans as for Muslims, who had five times as many children of school age. Because few Muslim teachers were trained, Muslim schools were largely staffed by French teachers. Even a state-operated "madrasah" (school) often had French faculty members. Attempts to institute bilingual, bicultural schools, intended to bring Muslim and European children together in the classroom, were a conspicuous failure, rejected by both communities and phased out after 1870. According to one estimate, fewer than 5% of Algerian children attended any kind of school in 1870. As late as 1954 only one Muslim boy in five and one girl in sixteen was receiving formal schooling. The level of literacy amongst the total Muslim population was estimated at only 2% in urban areas and half of that figure in the rural hinterland.


title: French Algeria

text: Efforts were begun by 1890 to educate a small number of Muslims along with European students in the French school system as part of France's "civilizing mission" in Algeria. The curriculum was entirely French and allowed no place for Arabic studies, which were deliberately downgraded even in Muslim schools. Within a generation, a class of well-educated, gallicized Muslims — the (literally, the evolved ones)—had been created. Almost all of the handful of Muslims who accepted French citizenship were ; ironically, this privileged group of Muslims, strongly influenced by French culture and political attitudes, developed a new Algerian self-consciousness.


title: French Algeria

text: Reporting to the French Senate in 1894, Governor-General Jules Cambon wrote that Algeria had "only a dust of people left her." He referred to the destruction of the traditional ruling class that had left Muslims without leaders and had deprived France of (literally, valid go-betweens), through whom to reach the masses of the people. He lamented that no genuine communication was possible between the two communities.


title: French Algeria

text: The who ran Algeria maintained a dialog only with the . Later they thwarted contact between the and Muslim traditionalists on the one hand and between and official circles in France on the other. They feared and mistrusted the Francophone , who were classified either as assimilationist, insisting on being accepted as Frenchmen but on their own terms, or as integrationists, eager to work as members of a distinct Muslim elite on equal terms with the French.


title: French Algeria

text: Following its conquest of Ottoman-controlled Algeria in 1830, for well over a century, France maintained what was effectively colonial rule in the territory, though the French Constitution of 1848 made Algeria part of France, and Algeria was usually understood as such by French people, even on the Left.


title: French Algeria

text: With nine million or so 'Muslim' Algerians "dominated" by one million settlers, Algeria had similarities with South Africa, that has later been described as "quasi-apartheid" while the concept of apartheid was formalized in 1948.


title: French Algeria

text: This personal status lasted the entire time Algeria was French, from 1830 till 1962, with various changes in the meantime.


title: French Algeria

text: When French rule began, France had no well-established systems for intensive colonial governance, the main existing legal provision being the 1685 "Code Noir" which was related to slave-trading and owning and incompatible with the legal context of Algeria.


title: French Algeria

text: On 5 July 1830, Hussein Dey, regent of Algiers, signed the act of capitulation to the Régence, which committed General de Bourmont and France "not to infringe on the freedom of people of all classes and their religion".


title: French Algeria

text: Muslims still remain submitted to the Muslim Customary law and Jews to the Law of Moses; all of them remained linked to the Ottoman Empire.


title: French Algeria

text: That same year and the same month, the July Revolution ended the Bourbon Restoration and began the July Monarchy in which Louis Philippe I was King of the French.


title: French Algeria

text: The royal ""Ordonnance du 22 juillet 1834"" organized general government and administration of the French territories in North Africa and is usually considered as an effective annexation of Algeria by France; the annexation made all people legally linked to France and broke the legal link between people and the Ottoman Empire, because International law made annexation systematically induce a s. This made people living in Algeria "French subjects", without providing them any way to become French nationals. However, since it was not positive law, this text did not introduce legal certainty on this topic.


title: French Algeria

text: As French rule in Algeria expanded, particularly under Thomas-Robert Bugeaud (1841–48), discriminatory governance became increasingly formalised. In 1844, Bugeaud formalised a system of European settlements along the coast, under civil government, with Arab/Berber areas in the interior under military governance. An important feature of French rule was "cantonnement", whereby tribal land that was supposedly unused was seized by the state, which enabled French colonists to expand their landholdings, and pushed indigenous people onto more marginal land and made them more vulnerable to drought; this was extended under the governance of Bugeaud's successor, Jacques Louis Randon.


title: French Algeria

text: A case in 1861 questioned the legal status of people in Algeria. On 28 November 1861, the "conseil de l'ordre des avocats du barreau d'Alger" (Bar association of Algiers) declined to recognise Élie Énos (or Aïnos), a Jew from Algiers, since only French citizens could become lawyers. On 24 February 1862 ("appeal") and on 15 February 1864 "(cassation)", judges reconsidered this, deciding that people could display the qualities of being French (without having access to the full rights of a French citizen).


title: French Algeria

text: Napoleon III was the first elected president of the French Second Republic before becoming Emperor of the French by the 1852 French Second Empire referendum after the French coup d'état of 1851. In the 1860s, influenced by Ismael Urbain, he introduced what were intended as liberalizing reforms in Algeria, promoting the French colonial model of assimilation, whereby colonised peoples would eventually become French. His reforms were resisted by colonists in Algeria, and his attempts to allow Muslims to be elected to a putative new assembly in Paris failed.


title: French Algeria

text: However, he oversaw an 1865 decree ("sénatus-consulte du 14 juillet 1865 sur l'état des personnes et la naturalisation en Algérie") that "stipulated that all the colonised indigenous were under French jurisdiction, i.e., French nationals subjected to French laws", and allowed Arab, Jewish, and Berber Algerians to request French citizenship—but only if they "renounced their Muslim religion and culture".


title: French Algeria

text: This was the first time "indigènes" (natives) were allowed to access French citizenship, but such citizenship was incompatible with the "statut personnel", which allowed them to live within the Muslim traditions.


title: French Algeria

text: Later, Azzedine Haddour argued that this decree established "the formal structures of a political apartheid". Since few people were willing to abandon their religious values (which was seen as apostasy), rather than promoting assimilation, the legislation had the opposite effect: by 1913, only 1,557 Muslims had been granted French citizenship.


title: French Algeria

text: Special penalties were managed by the "cadis" or tribe head but because this system was unfair it was decided by a Circulaire on 12 February 1844 to take control of those specific fines. Those fines were defined by various prefectural decrees, and were later known as the "Code de l'indigénat." Lack of codification means that there is no complete text summary of these fines available.


title: French Algeria

text: On 28 July 1881, a new law ("loi qui confère aux Administrateurs des communes mixtes en territoire civil la répression, par voie disciplinaire, des infractions spéciales à l'indigénat") known as the "Code de l'indigénat" was formally introduced for seven years to help administration. It enabled district officials to issue summary fines to Muslims without due legal process, and to extract special taxes.


title: French Algeria

text: This temporary law was renewed by other temporary laws: the laws of 27 June 1888 for two years, 25 June 1890, 25 June 1897, 21 December 1904, 24 December 1907, 5 July 1914, 4 August 1920, 11 July 1922 and 30 December 1922. By 1897, fines could be changed into


title: French Algeria

text: Opportunities for Muslims improved slightly from the 1890s, particularly for urban elites, which helped ensure acquiescence to the introduction of military conscription for Muslims in 1911.


title: French Algeria

text: Napoléon III received a petition signed by more than 10,000 local Jews asking for collective access to French citizenship. This was also the desire, between 1865 and 1869, of the "Conseils généraux des départements algériens". The Jews were the main part of the population that desired French citizenship.


title: French Algeria

text: Under the French Third Republic, on 24 October 1870, based on a project from the Second French Empire, Adolphe Crémieux, founder and president of the Alliance israélite universelle and minister of Justice of the Government of National Defense defined with Mac Mahon's agreement a series of seven decrees related to Algeria, the most notable being number 136 known as the "Crémieux Decree" which granted French citizenship to Algerian indigenous Jews. A different decree, numbered 137, related to Muslims and foreigners and required 21 years of age to ask for French citizenship.


title: French Algeria

text: In 1870, the French government granted Algerian Jews French citizenship under the "Crémieux Decree", but not Muslims. This meant that most Algerians were still 'French subjects', treated as the objects of French law, but were still not citizens, could still not vote, and were effectively without the right to citizenship.


title: French Algeria

text: In 1919, after the involvement of 172,019 Algerians in the First World War, the Jonnart Law eased access to French citizenship for those who met one of several criteria, such as working for the French army, a son in a war, knowing how to read and write in the French language, having a public position, being married to or born of an indigène who became a French citizen. Half a million Algerians were exempted from the "indigénat" status, and this status became void in 1927 in the mixed towns but remained applicable in other towns until its abrogation in 1944.


title: French Algeria

text: Later, Jewish people's citizenship was revoked by the Vichy government in the early 1940s, but was restored in 1943.


title: French Algeria

text: Despite periodic attempts at partial reform, the situation of the "Code de l'indigénat" persisted until the French Fourth Republic, which formally began in 1946.


title: French Algeria

text: On 7 March 1944 "ordonnance" ended the "Code de l'indigénat" and created a second electoral college for 1,210,000 non-citizen Muslims and made 60,000 Muslims French citizen and with a vote in the first electoral college.


title: French Algeria

text: On 7 May 1946, the "Loi Lamine Guèye" gave French citizenship to every overseas national, including Algerians, giving them a right to vote at 21 years old.


title: French Algeria

text: The of the Fourth Republic conceptualized the dissociation of citizenship and personal status (but no legal text implements this dissociation).


title: French Algeria

text: Although Muslim Algerians were accorded the rights of citizenship, the system of discrimination was maintained in more informal ways. Frederick Cooper writes that Muslim Algerians "were still marginalized in their own territory, notably the separate voter roles of "French" civil status and of "Muslim" civil status, to keep their hands on power."


title: French Algeria

text: In the specific context following the second war, in 1947 is introduced the which granted a local status citizenship to the "indigènes" who became "Muslim French" ("Français musulmans"), while other French were "Français non-musulmans" remain civil status citizens. The rights differences are no longer implied by a status difference, but by the difference between the two territories, Algerian and French.


title: French Algeria

text: This system is rejected by some European for introducing Muslims into the European college, and rejected by some Algerian nationalists for not giving full sovereignty to the Algerian nation.


title: French Algeria

text: 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.


title: French Algeria

text: On 18 March 1962, the Évian Accords guaranteed of protection, non-discrimination and property rights for all Algerian citizens and the right of self-determination to Algeria. In France it was approved by the 1962 French Évian Accords referendum.


title: French Algeria

text: The Évian Accords offered French nationals Algerian civil rights for three years, but required them to apply for Algerian nationality. During the three years period, the agreement offer:


title: French Algeria

text: The European French community (the "colon" population), the "pieds-noirs" and indigenous Sephardi Jews in Algeria were guaranteed religious freedom and property rights as well as French citizenship with the option to choose between French and Algerian citizenship after three years. Algerians were permitted to continue freely circulating between their country and France for work, although they would not have political rights equal to French citizens.


title: French Algeria

text: In November 1830, French colonial officials attempted to limit the arrivals at Algerian ports by requiring the presentation of passports and residence permits. The regulations created by the French government in May 1831 required permission from the Interior Ministry to enter Algeria and other French controlled territories.


title: French Algeria

text: This May circular allowed merchants with trading interests easy access to passports because they were not permanent settlers?, and wealthy persons who planned to found agricultural enterprises in Algeria were also freely given access to move. The circular forbade passage to indigents and needy unskilled workers. During the 1840s, the French government assisted certain emigrants to Algeria, who were mostly urban workers from the Paris basin and France's eastern frontier and were not the agricultural workers that the colonial officials wanted to be sent from France. Single men received 68 percent of the free passages and only 14 percent of the emigrants were women because of varying policies about the emigration of families that all favored unaccompanied males who were seen as more flexible and useful for laborious tasks. Initially in November 1840, families were eligible only if they had no small children and two-thirds of the family was able to work.


title: French Algeria

text: Later, in September 1841, only unaccompanied males could travel to Algeria for free and a complicated system for families was developed that made subsidized travel almost unavailable. These emigrants were offered many different forms of government assistance including free passage (both to the ports of France and by ship to Algeria), wine rations and food, land concessions, and were promised high wages. Between 1841 and 1845, about 20,000 individuals were offered this assisted emigration by the French government, though it is unknown exactly how many actually went to Algeria. These measures were funded and supported by the French government (both local and national) because they saw the move to Algeria as a solution to overpopulation and unemployment; those who applied for assisted emigration emphasized their work ethic, undeserved employment in France, a presumption of government obligation to the less fortunate. By 1848, Algeria was populated by 109,400 Europeans, only 42,274 of whom were French.


title: French Algeria

text: A royal ordinance in 1845 called for three types of administration in Algeria. In areas where Europeans were a substantial part of the population, elected mayors and councils for self-governing "full exercise" communes (). In the "mixed" communes, where Muslims were a large majority, government was in the hands of appointed and some elected officials, including representatives of the (great chieftains) and a French administrator. The indigenous communes (), remote areas not adequately pacified, remained under the (rule of the sword).


title: French Algeria

text: By 1848 nearly all of northern Algeria was under French control. Important tools of the colonial administration, from this time until their elimination in the 1870s, were the (Arab Bureaus), staffed by Arabists whose function was to collect information on the indigenous people and to carry out administrative functions, nominally in cooperation with the army. The on occasion acted with sympathy to the local population and formed a buffer between Muslims and .


title: French Algeria

text: Under the , the had been permitted limited self-government in areas where European settlement was most intense, but there was constant friction between them and the army. The charged that the hindered the progress of colonization. They agitated against military rule, complaining that their legal rights were denied under the arbitrary controls imposed on the colony and insisting on a civil administration for Algeria fully integrated with metropolitan France. The army warned that the introduction of civilian government would invite Muslim retaliation and threaten the security of Algeria. The French government vacillated in its policy, yielding small concessions to the "colon" demands on the one hand while maintaining the "régime du sabre" to control the Muslim majority on the other.


title: French Algeria

text: Shortly after Louis Philippe's constitutional monarchy was overthrown in the revolution of 1848, the new government of the Second Republic ended Algeria's status as a colony and declared in the 1848 Constitution the occupied lands an integral part of France. Three civil territories — Alger, Oran, and Constantine — were organized as Departments of France (local administrative units) under a civilian government. This made them a part of France proper as opposed to a colony. For the first time, French citizens in the civil territories elected their own councils and mayors; Muslims had to be appointed, could not hold more than one-third of council seats, and could not serve as mayors or assistant mayors. The administration of territories outside the zones settled by colons remained under the French Army. Local Muslim administration was allowed to continue under the supervision of French Army commanders, charged with maintaining order in newly pacified regions, and the . Theoretically, these areas were closed to European colonization.


title: French Algeria

text: Even before the decision was made to annex Algeria, major changes had taken place. In a bargain-hunting frenzy to take over or buy at low prices all manner of property—homes, shops, farms and factories—Europeans poured into Algiers after it fell. French authorities took possession of the lands, from which Ottoman officials had derived income. Over time, as pressures increased to obtain more land for settlement by Europeans, the state seized more categories of land, particularly that used by tribes, religious foundations, and villages.


title: French Algeria

text: Called either (settlers), Algerians, or later, especially following the 1962 independence of Algeria, (literally, black feet), the European settlers were largely of peasant farmer or working-class origin from the poor southern areas of Italy, Spain, and France. Others were criminal and political deportees from France, transported under sentence in large numbers to Algeria. In the 1840s and 1850s, to encourage settlement in rural areas, official policy was to offer grants of land for a fee and a promise that improvements would be made. A distinction soon developed between the (great settlers) at one end of the scale, often self-made men who had accumulated large estates or built successful businesses, and smallholders and workers at the other end, whose lot was often not much better than that of their Muslim counterparts. According to historian John Ruedy, although by 1848 only 15,000 of the 109,000 European settlers were in rural areas, "by systematically expropriating both pastoralists and farmers, rural colonization was the most important single factor in the destructuring of traditional society."


title: French Algeria

text: European migration, encouraged during the Second Republic, stimulated the civilian administration to open new land for settlement against the advice of the army. With the advent of the Second Empire in 1852, Napoleon III returned Algeria to military control. In 1858 a separate Ministry of Algerian Affairs was created to supervise administration of the country through a military governor general assisted by a civil minister.


title: French Algeria

text: Napoleon III visited Algeria twice in the early 1860s. He was profoundly impressed with the nobility and virtue of the tribal chieftains, who appealed to the emperor's romantic nature, and was shocked by the self-serving attitude of the leaders. He decided to halt the expansion of European settlement beyond the coastal zone and to restrict contact between Muslims and the , whom he considered to have a corrupting influence on the indigenous population. He envisioned a grand design for preserving most of Algeria for the Muslims by founding a (Arab kingdom) with himself as the (king of the Arabs). He instituted the so-called politics of the to deal with the Muslims directly through their traditional leaders.


title: French Algeria

text: To further his plans for the , Napoleon III issued two decrees affecting tribal structure, land tenure, and the legal status of Muslims in French Algeria. The first, promulgated in 1863, was intended to renounce the state's claims to tribal lands and eventually provide private plots to individuals in the tribes, thus dismantling "feudal" structures and protecting the lands from the . Tribal areas were to be identified, delimited into (administrative units), and given over to councils. Arable land was to be divided among members of the over a period of one to three generations, after which it could be bought and sold by the individual owners. Unfortunately for the tribes, however, the plans of Napoleon III quickly unraveled. French officials sympathetic to the colons took much of the tribal land they surveyed into the public domain. In addition, some tribal leaders immediately sold communal lands for quick gains. The process of converting arable land to individual ownership was accelerated to only a few years when laws were enacted in the 1870s stipulating that no sale of land by an individual Muslim could be invalidated by the claim that it was collectively owned. The cudah and other tribal officials, appointed by the French on the basis of their loyalty to France rather than the allegiance owed them by the tribe, lost their credibility as they were drawn into the European orbit, becoming known derisively as .


title: French Algeria

text: Napoleon III visualized three distinct Algerias: a French colony, an Arab country, and a military camp, each with a distinct form of local government. The second decree, issued in 1865, was designed to recognize the differences in cultural background of the French and the Muslims. As French nationals, Muslims could serve on equal terms in the French armed forces and civil service and could migrate to France proper. They were also granted the protection of French law while retaining the right to adhere to Islamic law in litigation concerning their personal status. But if Muslims wished to become full citizens, they had to accept the full jurisdiction of the French legal code, including laws affecting marriage and inheritance, and reject the authority of the religious courts. In effect, this meant that a Muslim had to renounce some of the mores of his religion in order to become a French citizen. This condition was bitterly resented by Muslims, for whom the only road to political equality was perceived to be apostasy. Over the next century, fewer than 3,000 Muslims chose to cross the barrier and become French citizens. A similar status applied to the Jewish natives.


title: French Algeria

text: When the Prussians captured Napoleon III at the Battle of Sedan (1870), ending the Second Empire, demonstrations in Algiers by the led to the departure of the just-arrived new governor general and the replacement of the military administration by settler committees. Meanwhile, in France the government of the Third Republic directed one of its ministers, Adolphe Crémieux, "to destroy the military regime ... [and] to completely assimilate Algeria into France." In October 1870, , whose concern with Algerian affairs dated from the time of the Second Republic, issued a series of decrees providing for representation of the Algerian départements in the National Assembly of France and confirming control over local administration. A civilian governor general was made responsible to the Ministry of Interior. The Crémieux Decrees also granted full French citizenship to Algerian Jews, who then numbered about 40,000. This act set them apart from Muslims, in whose eyes they were identified thereafter with the "colons". The measure had to be enforced, however, over the objections of the "colons", who made little distinction between Muslims and Jews. (Automatic citizenship was subsequently extended in 1889 to children of non-French Europeans born in Algeria unless they specifically rejected it.)


title: French Algeria

text: The loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia in 1871 after the Franco-Prussian War, led to pressure on the French government to make new land available in Algeria for about 5,000 Alsatian and Lorrainer refugees who were resettled there. During the 1870s, both the amount of European-owned land and the number of settlers were doubled, and tens of thousands of unskilled Muslims, who had been uprooted from their land, wandered into the cities or to colon farming areas in search of work.


title: French Algeria

text: The most serious native insurrection since the time of Abd al Qadir broke out in 1871 in Kabylia and spread through much of Algeria. The revolt was triggered by Crémieux's extension of civil (that is, ) authority to previously self-governing tribal reserves and the abrogation of commitments made by the military government, but it had its basis in more long-standing grievances. Since the Crimean War (1854–56), the demand for grain had pushed the price of Algerian wheat up to European levels. Storage silos were emptied when the world market's impact was felt in Algeria, and Muslim farmers sold their grain reserves — including seed grain — to speculators. But the community-owned silos were the fundamental adaptation of a subsistence economy to an unpredictable climate, and a good year's surplus was stored away against a bad year's dearth. When serious drought struck Algeria and grain crops failed in 1866 and for several years following, Muslim areas faced starvation, and with famine came pestilence. It was estimated that 20% of the Muslim population of Constantine died over a three-year period. In 1871 the civil authorities repudiated guarantees made to tribal chieftains by the previous military government for loans to replenish their seed supply. This act alienated even pro-French Muslim leaders, while it undercut their ability to control their people. It was against this background that the stricken Kabyles rose in revolt, following immediately on the mutiny in January 1871 of a squadron of Muslim spahis in the French Army who had been ordered to embark for France. The withdrawal of a large proportion of the army stationed in Algeria to serve in the Franco-Prussian War had weakened France's control of the territory, while reports of defeats undermined French prestige amongst the indigenous population.


title: French Algeria

text: In the aftermath of the 1871 uprising, French authorities imposed stern measures to punish and control the entire Muslim population. France confiscated more than of tribal land and placed Kabylia under a (extraordinary rule), which denied due process guaranteed French nationals. A special (native code) listed as offenses acts such as insolence and unauthorized assembly not punishable by French law, and the normal jurisdiction of the "cudah" was sharply restricted. The governor general was empowered to jail suspects for up to five years without trial. The argument was made in defense of these exceptional measures that the French penal code as applied to Frenchmen was too permissive to control Muslims. Some were deported to New Caledonia, see Algerians of the Pacific.


title: French Algeria

text: In the 1890s, the French administration and military called for the annexation of the Touat, the Gourara and the Tidikelt, a complex that during the period prior to 1890, was part of what was known as the Bled es-Siba (land of dissidence)), regions that were nominally Moroccan but which were not submitted to the authority of the central government.


title: French Algeria

text: An armed conflict opposed French 19th Corps' Oran and Algiers divisions to the Aït Khabbash, a faction of the Aït Ounbgui "khams" of the Aït Atta confederation. The conflict ended by the annexation of the Touat-Gourara-Tidikelt complex by France in 1901.


title: French Algeria

text: In the 1930s, the Saoura valley and the region of Tindouf were in turn annexed to French Algeria at the expense of Morocco, then under French protectorate since 1912.


title: French Algeria

text: The French military expedition led by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Flatters, was annihilated by Tuareg attack in 1881.


title: French Algeria

text: The French took advantage of long-standing animosity between Tuareg and Chaamba Arabs. The newly raised "Compagnies Méharistes" were originally recruited mainly from the Chaamba nomadic tribe. The "Méhariste" camel corps provided an effective means of policing the desert.


title: French Algeria

text: Colonial troops of French Algeria were sent to fight in metropolitan France during the Battle of France in 1940. After the Fall of France, the Third French Republic collapsed and was replaced by the Philippe Pétain's French State, better known as Vichy France.


title: French Algeria

text: Many Algerians had fought as French soldiers during the Second World War. Thus Algerian Muslims felt that it was even more unjust that their votes were not equal to those of the other Algerians, especially after 1947 when the Algerian Assembly was created. This assembly was composed of 120 members. Algerian Muslims, representing about 6.85 million people, could designate 50% of the Assembly members, while 1,150,000 non-Muslim Algerians could designate the other half. Moreover, a massacre occurred in Sétif on 8 May 1945. It opposed Algerians who were demonstrating for their national claim to the French Army. After skirmishes with police, Algerians killed about 100 French. The French army retaliated harshly, resulting in the deaths of approximately 6,000 Algerians. This triggered a radicalization of Algerian nationalists and could be considered the beginning of the Algerian War.


title: French Algeria

text: In 1956, about 512,000 French soldiers were in Algeria. No resolution was imaginable in the short term. An overwhelming majority of French politicians were opposed to the idea of independence while independence was gaining ground in Muslim Algerians' minds. France was deadlocked and the Fourth Republic collapsed over this dispute.


title: French Algeria

text: In 1958, Charles de Gaulle's return to power in response to a military coup in Algiers in May was supposed to keep Algeria's status quo as departments of France as hinted by his speeches delivered in Oran and Mostaganem on 6 June 1958, in which he exclaimed (lit. "Long live French Algeria!"). De Gaulle's republican constitution project was approved through the September 1958 referendum and the Fifth Republic was established the following month with de Gaulle as its president.


title: French Algeria

text: The latter consented to independence in 1962 after a referendum on Algerian self-determination in January 1961 and despite a subsequent aborted military coup in Algiers led by four French generals in April 1961.


title: French Algeria

text: Relations between post-colonial Algeria and France have remained close throughout the years, although sometimes difficult. In 1962, the Evian Accords peace treaty provided land in the Sahara for the French Army, which it had used under de Gaulle to carry out its first nuclear tests ("Gerboise bleue"). Many European settlers () living in Algeria and Algerian Jews, who contrary to Algerian Muslims had been granted French citizenship by the Crémieux decrees at the end of the 19th century, were expelled to France where they formed a new community. On the other hand, the issue of the , the Muslims who had fought on the French side during the war, still remained unresolved. Large numbers of were killed in 1962, during the immediate aftermath of the Algerian War, while those who escaped with their families to France have tended to remain an unassimilated refugee community. The present Algerian government continues to refuse to allow and their descendants to return to Algeria.


title: French Algeria

text: On 23 February 2005, the French law on colonialism was an act passed by the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) conservative majority, which imposed on high-school (lycée) teachers to teach the "positive values" of colonialism to their students, in particular in North Africa (article 4). The law created a public uproar and opposition from the whole of the left-wing, and was finally repealed by President Jacques Chirac (UMP) at the beginning of 2006, after accusations of historical revisionism from various teachers and historians.


title: French Algeria

text: Algerians feared that the French law on colonialism would hinder the task of the French in confronting the dark side of their colonial rule in Algeria because article four of the law decreed among other things that "School programmes are to recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa." Benjamin Stora, a leading specialist on French Algerian history of colonialism and a pied-noir himself, said "France has never taken on its colonial history. It is a big difference with the Anglo-Saxon countries, where post-colonial studies are now in all the universities. We are phenomenally behind the times." In his opinion, although the historical facts were known to academics, they were not well known by the French public, and this led to a lack of honesty in France over French colonial treatment of the Algerian people.


title: French Algeria

text: In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron described France's colonization of Algeria as a "crime against humanity". He also said: "It's truly barbarous and it's part of a past that we need to confront by apologizing to those against whom we committed these acts." Polls following his remarks reflected a decrease in his support.


title: French Algeria

text: In July 2020, the remains of 24 Algerian resistance fighters and leaders, who were decapitated by the French colonial forces in the 19th century and whose skulls were taken to Paris as war trophies and held in the Musee de l'Homme in Paris, were repatriated to Algeria and buried in the Martyrs' Square at El Alia Cemetery.


title: French Algeria

text: In January 2021, Macron stated there would be "no repentance nor apologies" for the French colonization of Algeria, colonial abuses or French involvement during the Algerian independence war. Instead efforts would be devoted toward reconciliation.


title: French Algeria

text: In Paris, during the perennial traffic jams, adherence to the slogan was indicated by sounding a car horn in the form of four telegraphic dots followed by a dash, as "". Whole choruses of such horn soundings were heard. This was intended to be reminiscent of the Second World War slogan, "V for Victory," which had been three dots followed by a dash. The intention was that the opponents of were to be considered as traitorous as the collaborators with Germany during the Occupation of France.


title: Summer of Soul

text: Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is a 2021 American documentary film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, directed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson in his directorial debut. It had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival on January 28, 2021, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the documentary categories. It had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. by Searchlight Pictures on June 25, 2021, before expanding and being released for streaming on Hulu the next weekend.


title: Summer of Soul

text: The film received acclaim from critics, with particular praise given to the restoration of the footage used. It won numerous awards, including Best Documentary Feature at the 6th Critics' Choice Documentary Awards, where it won in all six categories in which it was nominated, Best Documentary at the 75th British Academy Film Awards, Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards, and Best Music Film at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.


title: Summer of Soul

text: The film examines the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, which took place on six Sundays between June 29 and August 24 at Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) in Harlem, using professional footage of the festival that was filmed as it happened, stock news footage, and modern-day interviews with attendees, musicians, and other commentators to provide historical background and social context. Despite its large attendance and performers such as Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mavis Staples, Blinky Williams, Sly and the Family Stone, and The Chambers Brothers, the festival is much less well-known in the 21st century than is Woodstock (which took place on the same weekend as one of the days of the Harlem Cultural Festival), and the filmmakers investigate this, among other topics.


title: Summer of Soul

text: At the request of festival organizer and host Tony Lawrence, television producer Hal Tulchin recorded about 40 hours of footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival on videotape, excerpts from which were packaged as two one-hour TV specials that were broadcast in 1969, one on CBS in July, and one on ABC in September. The tapes were then placed in a basement, where they sat for the next 50 years. Tulchin attempted to interest broadcasters in the recordings for several years, but had little success, though some of the footage of Nina Simone was eventually used in documentaries about her.


title: Summer of Soul

text: In 2004, Joe Lauro, a film archivist at the Historic Films Archive, discovered the existence of the footage and contacted Hal Tulchin, hoping to work on a film about the festival. He digitized and cataloged the footage and, in 2006, entered into a deal with Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville to make the film, but the project never saw the light of day, as Tulchin discontinued his agreement with Lauro. Producer Robert Fyvolent, who had originally sought to work with Lauro, then acquired film and television rights to the footage from Tulchin. Fyvolent began collaborating with producer David Dinerstein in 2016, and together they engaged RadicalMedia and editor Josh Pearson, and added a third producer, Joseph Patel.


title: Summer of Soul

text: Director Ahmir Thompson has expressed surprise that the footage sat for so long, and that he had never heard of the festival before the producers approached him about making the film. Discussing its obscurity, he said: "What would have happened if this was allowed a seat at the table? How much of a difference would that have made in my life? That was the moment that extinguished any doubt I had that I could do this."


title: Summer of Soul

text: The film premiered on January 28, 2021, at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the US Documentary Competition. It was acquired by Searchlight Pictures and Hulu, and was released in the United States at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles and the AMC Magic Johnson Harlem 9 multiplex in New York City on June 25, 2021, before expanding nationwide and being released for streaming on Hulu the next weekend. The film was set to be distributed internationally in theaters and on Disney+ Hotstar on July 30, 2021, and on Disney+ and Star+ on November 19, 2021, and was made available on the U.S. version of Disney+ on February 8, 2022, in time for Black History Month. It made its broadcast television premiere on ABC on February 20, 2022. On February 8, 2022, 20th Century Studios released a hard copy on Standard Definition DVD. In a bonus feature interview, Thompson mused about expanding the film with the wealth of material he had to cut for time.


title: Summer of Soul

text: On April 22, 2021, it was announced that Thompson would introduce the first trailer for the film during the 93rd Academy Awards, for which he served as music director. The trailer debuted on April 25, 2021.


title: Summer of Soul

text: "Summer of Soul" grossed $2.3 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $1.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $3.7 million.


title: Summer of Soul

text: In the film's first weekend in wide release, it grossed $650,000 from 752 theaters (for a per-venue average of $865).


title: Summer of Soul

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 99% (based on 206 reviews), with an average rating of 9.1/10; the website's critics consensus reads: "Deftly interweaving incredible live footage with a series of revealing interviews, "Summer of Soul" captures the spirit and context of a watershed moment while tying it firmly to the present." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 96 out of 100 (based on 38 critics), indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" average grade.


title: Summer of Soul

text: "Rolling Stone" praised the film as "the Perfect Movie to Kick Off Sundance 2021" and said it was "an incredible, vital act of restoration—and reclamation". "The Guardian" gave it five stars, writing that there is "a moment so striking and rich with power at the center of Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson's "Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)" that, while watching it, I actually forgot to breathe."


title: Summer of Soul

text: British critic Mark Kermode called the film "the best music documentary I've ever seen" in his review for Kermode and Mayo's Film Review on BBC Radio 5 Live.


title: Summer of Soul

text: On January 21, 2022, Legacy Records released an official soundtrack album. In an interview, Thompson said he considered including songs not in the film, but decided to stick with the music that had already been cleared for release. The digital version of the soundtrack contains 17 songs, while the physical version contains 16, as it does not feature Abbey Lincoln's and Max Roach's performance of "Africa".


title: Summer of Soul

text: On February 8, 2022, the film was released on Standard Definition DVD by 20th Century Studios. Bonus features include audio commentary by Thompson, who muses about reediting a longer version that would include footage he had to cut for time, and two behind-the-scenes featurettes ("Soul Searching" and "Harlem: Then & Now").


title: County Donegal

text: County Donegal ( ; ) is a county of Ireland in the province of Ulster and in the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Donegal in the south of the county. It has also been known as County Tyrconnell (), after the historic territory of the same name, on which it was based. Donegal County Council is the local council and Lifford the county town.


title: County Donegal

text: It has also been known by the alternative name County Tyrconnell, Tirconnell or Tirconaill (, meaning 'Land of Conall'). The latter was its official name between 1922 and 1927. This is in reference to the kingdom of Tír Chonaill and the earldom that succeeded it, which the county was based on.


title: County Donegal

text: County Donegal was the home of the once-mighty Clann Dálaigh, whose best-known branch was the Clann Ó Domhnaill, better known in English as the O'Donnell dynasty. Until around 1600, the O'Donnells were one of Ireland's richest and most powerful native Irish ruling families. Within Ulster, only the Uí Néill (known in English as the O'Neills) of Tír Eoghain (Tyrone) was more powerful. The O'Donnells were Ulster's second most powerful "clan" or ruling family from the early 13th century through to the start of the 17th century. For several centuries the O'Donnells ruled Tír Chonaill (Tyrconnell), a Gaelic kingdom in west Ulster that covered almost all of modern County Donegal. The head of the O'Donnell family had the titles "An Ó Domhnaill" (meaning "The O'Donnell" in English) and "Rí Thír Chonaill" (meaning "King of Tír Chonaill" in English). Based at Donegal Castle in "Dún na nGall" (modern Donegal), the O'Donnell "Kings of Tír Chonaill" were traditionally inaugurated at Doon Rock near Kilmacrennan. O'Donnell's royal or chiefly power was finally ended in what was then the newly created County Donegal in September 1607, following the Flight of the Earls from near Rathmullan. The modern "County Arms of Donegal" (dating from the early 1970s) was influenced by the design of the old O'Donnell royal arms. The "County Arms" is the official coat of arms of both County Donegal and Donegal County Council.


title: County Donegal

text: The modern County Donegal was shired by order of the English Crown in 1585. The English authorities at Dublin Castle formed the new county by amalgamating the old Kingdom of Tír Chonaill with the old Lordship of Inishowen. However, although detachments of the Royal Irish Army were stationed there, the Dublin authorities were unable to establish control over Tír Chonaill and Inishowen until after the Battle of Kinsale in 1602. Full control over the new County Donegall was only achieved after the Flight of the Earls in September 1607. It was the centre of O'Doherty's Rebellion of 1608 with the key Battle of Kilmacrennan taking place there. The county was one of those 'planted' during the Plantation of Ulster from around 1610 onwards. What became the City of Derry was officially part of County Donegal up until 1610.


title: County Donegal

text: County Donegal was the worst affected part of Ulster during the Great Famine of the late 1840s in Ireland. Vast swathes of the county were devastated, with many areas becoming permanently depopulated. Vast numbers of County Donegal's people emigrated at this time, chiefly through Foyle Port.


title: County Donegal

text: The Ballymanus mine disaster occurred on 10 May 1943 on a beach at Ballymanus, County Donegal, when local villagers attempted to bring ashore an unexploded marine mine. Eighteen men and boys between the ages of 13 and 34 were killed in the explosion.


title: County Donegal

text: The partition of Ireland in the early 1920s had a massive direct impact on County Donegal. Partition cut the county off, economically and administratively, from Derry, which had acted for centuries as the county's main port, transport hub and financial centre. Derry, together with west Tyrone, was henceforward in a new, different jurisdiction which remained within the United Kingdom, a jurisdiction officially called Northern Ireland. Partition also meant that County Donegal was now almost entirely cut off from the rest of the jurisdiction in which it now found itself, the new dominion called the Irish Free State (later called Ireland from 1937). The county is physically connected to the rest of the Republic by an internal border of only a few miles. The existence of a border cutting Donegal off from her natural hinterlands in Derry City and West Tyrone greatly exacerbated the economic difficulties of the county after partition. The county's economy is particularly susceptible, just like that of Derry City, to the currency fluctuations of the euro against sterling.


title: County Donegal

text: Added to all this, in the late 20th century County Donegal was adversely affected by The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The county suffered several bombings and assassinations. In June 1987, Constable Samuel McClean, a Donegal man who was a serving member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was shot dead by the Provisional Irish Republican Army at his family home near Drumkeen. In May 1991, the prominent Sinn Féin politician Councillor Eddie Fullerton was assassinated by the PIRA's opponent, the Ulster Defence Association at his home in Buncrana. This added further to the economic and social difficulties of the county. However, the greater economic and administrative integration with Northern Ireland, following the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 has been of benefit to the county.


title: County Donegal

text: It has been labelled the 'forgotten county' by its own politicians, owing to the perception that it is ignored by the government, even in times of crisis.


title: County Donegal

text: Located in the northwest corner of Ireland, Donegal is the island's northernmost county. In terms of size and area, it is the largest county in Ulster and the fourth-largest county in all of Ireland. Uniquely, County Donegal shares a small border with only one other county in the Republic of Ireland – County Leitrim. The vast majority of its land border (93%) is shared with three counties of Northern Ireland: County Tyrone, County Londonderry and County Fermanagh. This geographic isolation from the rest of the Republic has led to Donegal people maintaining a distinct cultural identity and has been used to market the county with the slogan "Up here it's different". While Lifford is the county town, Letterkenny is by far the largest town in the county with a population of just under 20,000. Letterkenny and the nearby city of Derry form the main economic axis in the northwest of Ireland. Indeed, what became the City of Derry was officially part of County Donegal up until 1610.


title: County Donegal

text: It is part of the Northern and Western Region (a NUTS 2 European statistical Region), within which it is part of the Border strategic planning area.


title: County Donegal

text: There are eight historic baronies in the county. While baronies continue to be officially defined units, they ceased to have any administrative function following the Local Government Act 1898, and any changes to county boundaries after the mid-19th century are not reflected in their extent. The last boundary change of a barony in Donegal was in 1851 when the barony of Inishowen was divided into Inishowen East and Inishowen West. The barony of Kilmacrennan covers a large portion of northwest Donegal and is the largest in the county. With an area of , Kilmacrennan is also the largest barony in Ireland, being roughly equal in size to County Monaghan. The smallest barony is Inishowen West, at .


title: County Donegal

text: Townlands are the smallest officially defined geographical divisions in Ireland. There are 2,787 townlands in Donegal and an additional 47 historic town boundaries. These town boundaries are registered as their own townlands and are much larger than rural townlands. The smallest rural townlands in Donegal are just 1 acre in size, most of which are either lough islands or offshore islets (Corragh Island, Bishop's Island, Juniper Island, O'Donnell's Island, etc.). The largest rural townland in Donegal is 6,053 acres (Tawnawully Mountains). The average size of a townland in the county (excluding towns) is 438 acres.


title: County Donegal

text: The county may be informally divided into a number of traditional districts. There are two Gaeltacht districts in the west: The Rosses (), centred on the town of Dungloe (), and Gweedore (). Another Gaeltacht district is located in the north-west: Cloughaneely (), centred on the town of Falcarragh (). The most northerly part of the island of Ireland is the location for three peninsulas: Inishowen, Fanad and Rosguill. The main population centre of Inishowen, Ireland's largest peninsula, is Buncrana. In the east of the county lies the Finn Valley (centred on Ballybofey) and The Laggan district (not to be confused with the Lagan Valley in the south of County Antrim), which is centred on the town of Raphoe.


title: County Donegal

text: The county is the most mountainous in Ulster consisting chiefly of two ranges of low mountains; the Derryveagh Mountains in the north and the Blue Stack Mountains in the south, with Errigal at the highest peak, making it the 11th-highest county top in Ireland. It has a deeply indented coastline forming natural sea loughs, of which both Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle are the most notable. Donegal boasts the longest mainland coastline of any county in Ireland, and has either the longest or third longest total coastline (including islands), depending on measurement. Length estimates of the Donegal coastline range from less than to . The official figure used by Donegal County Council is . The Slieve League cliffs are among the highest sea cliffs in Europe, while Malin Head is the most northerly point on the island of Ireland.


title: County Donegal

text: Two permanently inhabited islands, Arranmore and Tory Island, lie off the coast, along with a large number of islands with only transient inhabitants. The 129 km long River Erne, Ireland's ninth-longest river, enters Donegal Bay near the town of Ballyshannon. The River Erne, along with other Donegal waterways, has been dammed to produce hydroelectric power. A canal linking the Erne to the River Shannon was constructed between 1846 and 1860, creating Ireland's longest navigable waterway. The project was plagued with setbacks and closed in 1870, just ten years after its completion. A joint effort between the Irish and Northern Irish governments restored the canal in the late 20th century, and the Shannon–Erne Waterway reopened in 1994.


title: County Donegal

text: Historically, the boundary between the kingdoms of Tír Chonaill and Tír Eoghain was demarcated by the River Foyle. However, in the 17th century, an area of land west of the Foyle was given over to the newly established city of Derry, although the Foyle still demarcates a large section of Donegal's eastern boundary. To the south, the Drowes River forms a 9  km (6 miles) long natural boundary with County Leitrim.


title: County Donegal

text: Donegal has a population density of 34.2 people per square kilometre, the lowest in Ulster and the fifth lowest in Ireland. The county has an expansive network of wildlife and conservation zones, which includes 46 European Union designated Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and 26 Special Protection Areas (SPAs), as well as 14 Natural Heritage Areas (NHAs), 74 proposed Natural Heritage Areas, 145 Irish Geological Heritage Areas (IGHs) and Ireland's second largest national park, Glenveagh, which extends to over in northwestern Donegal.


title: County Donegal

text: Owing to its scenic landscape and ""world-class wilderness"", Donegal was named National Geographic's "Coolest place on the Planet" in 2017.


title: County Donegal

text: The forested area in the county extends to , the 4th highest total forest cover in Ireland. Historic deforestation left Donegal devoid of forest cover by 1900. Much of the county's forests are commercial timber plantations which were initially established in the 1930s as a way to create rural employment in areas with poor agricultural land and high rates of emigration. The county contains extensive tracts of blanket bog which are concentrated in western and upland regions. Blanket bog covers an area of , or roughly 30 percent of the entire county.


title: County Donegal

text: Donegal has a wide variety of habitats, and over half of Ireland's plant and animal species can be found within the county. Approximately 11.4 per cent of the county is covered in forest, which is about average nationally. Forest cover is not evenly spread across the county and some areas, such as Pettigo and around Lough Derg, are very heavily forested, while more exposed coastal and upland areas are virtually barren. Around 65 per cent of Donegal's forests are publicly owned.


title: County Donegal

text: Despite its northerly latitude and geographic isolation, Donegal also hosts two species of amphibian (common frog & smooth newt) and two reptile species (Leatherback turtle & viviparous lizard).


title: County Donegal

text: The native Irish red deer in Donegal went extinct around 1860 and were re-introduced in the 1890s. Due to interbreeding, most of the deer in the county are now a Sika-Red deer hybrid. The Wild Ireland wildlife park near Burnfoot showcases some of Donegal's historic animal species that were hunted to extinction, including brown bears, lynxes and gray wolves. In 2001, the golden eagle was re-introduced into Glenveagh National Park and is currently Ireland's only breeding population.


title: County Donegal

text: A survey of the macroscopic marine algae of County Donegal was published in 2003. The survey was compiled using the algal records held in the herbaria of the following institutions: the Ulster Museum, Belfast; Trinity College Dublin; NUI Galway, and the Natural History Museum, London.


title: County Donegal

text: The majority of Donegal has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfb), with upland areas in the Derryveagh and Blue Stack ranges classified as oceanic subpolar (Köppen climate classification: Cfc). The county's climate is heavily influenced by the North Atlantic Current. Due to the topography of western Donegal, it receives orographic rainfall, where the air is forced to rise on contact with its mountainous coastline and subsequently cools and condenses, forming clouds. The mountains of Donegal are among the cloudiest places in Ireland, and northern Donegal is the windiest. Irish monthly record wind speeds for March, June, July, September, November and December have all been set at Malin Head. The highest wind speed ever recorded in Donegal was 181 km/h (112 mph) on 16 September 1961, during Hurricane Debbie.


title: County Donegal

text: The Atlantic ocean has a significant cooling effect and, due to the county's long, thin shape and punctuated coastline, nowhere in Donegal is particularly far from the ocean, giving it a generally cooler climate that is more similar to western Scotland than the rest of Ireland. The average maximum temperature in July at Malin Head is just . However, due to its exposed coastal location, the climate at Malin Head is not representative of most of the county. Winds are much lighter in the county's interior and temperatures are cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. Annual rainfall in the county ranges from around in the lowlands of north-eastern Donegal to over in western mountainous areas. Precipitation exceeding 1 mm (0.04 in) will fall across all areas of Donegal on over 150 days per year.


title: County Donegal

text: While the prevailing wind direction in Ireland is south-westerly, which brings warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, a low-pressure Polar front regularly passes to the northwest of the island, bringing cold and unsettled weather to the region. The upland areas of Donegal will reliably receive some covering of snow every year. In lowland areas, snow - while still relatively infrequent - is more common than in the rest of Ireland. Despite its coastal location, Malin Head records an average of 20 days of snowfall per year. In contrast Valentia Island, a similarly placed coastal station in the southwest of Ireland records just 3.


title: County Donegal

text: Donegal can be divided into six main geological subdivisions. Of these, the most expansive sections are the Lower Carboniferous limestones and sandstones of south Donegal, the Devonian granite of the Donegal batholith, which extends for about 75  km northeast to southwest from Ardara to Fanad Head, and quartzo-feldspathic Dalradian rocks from the Precambrian era, which cover much of the rest of the county. The geology of Donegal is very similar to that of County Mayo, and both counties are located within the Grampian Terrane. The oldest rocks in Ireland are a granitic gneiss found on the island of Inishtrahull, located ca. north-east of Malin Head. They are 1.78 billion years old, making them Paleoproterozoic in age. The oldest rocks on mainland Donegal are a quartzo-feldspathic paragneiss found around Lough Derg, which have been dated to 1.713 billion years ago.


title: County Donegal

text: Donegal is the most seismically active part of Ireland. The Leenan Fault is a large strike-slip fault that bisects the county from Lough Swilly to Donegal Bay, and dozens of tremors have been recorded along the fault since the late 19th century, although none have been larger than a magnitude 3 on the Richter scale.


title: County Donegal

text: The county's landscape was carved out by glaciation at the end of the Pleistocene and the subsequent retreat during the early Holocene. Donegal contains one of Ireland's three glacial fjords (or fjards) at Lough Swilly, the others being Carlingford Lough and Killary Harbour. Lough Swilly is the county's largest inlet and forms the western boundary of the Inishowen Peninsula. The thick ice sheet that once covered the region carved out deep basins in the Donegal uplands and many tarns or corrie lakes developed in these depressions after the ice had melted, including Lough Maam below Slieve Snaght and Lough Feeane under Aghla More. Larger glacial lakes formed in the county's distinctive U-shaped valleys, such as Lough Beagh and Gartan Lough in Glenveagh, and Dunlewey Lough and Lough Nacung Upper in the Poisoned Glen. Valleys such as these were the last areas to retain glaciers as temperatures rose.


title: County Donegal

text: As the ice sheet thinned, topography became the dominant force driving the direction of ice and meltwater flow. Erosion by glacial meltwater carved out large channels in southern Donegal which directed water and sediment to outwash fans in Donegal Bay. The area south of Donegal town, where the River Eske flows into the bay, is an example of one of these outwash areas. Sea levels in the area began to stabilise around 5,000 years ago, and the balance of erosion and deposition along Donegal's coastline resulted in the development of many sandy beaches and spits interspersed with jagged sea cliffs.


title: County Donegal

text: Letterkenny is by far the largest settlement in Donegal, with a population of just under 20,000. It is the largest town in the Border Region and the 23rd largest urban area in the Republic of Ireland.


title: County Donegal

text: Under CSO classification, an "Urban Area" is a town with a population greater than 1,500. As of the 2016 Census, Donegal is the most rural / least urbanised county in Ireland, with less than one-third of the population (27.3 per cent) living in urban areas and over 70 per cent in rural areas.


title: County Donegal

text: The Donegal Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking area) is the second-largest in Ireland. The version of the Irish language spoken in County Donegal is Ulster Irish.


title: County Donegal

text: Of the Gaeltacht population of 24,744 (16% of the county's total population), 17,132 say they can speak Irish. There are three Irish-speaking parishes: Gweedore, The Rosses and Cloughaneely. Other Irish-speaking areas include Gaeltacht an Láir: Glencolmcille, Fintown, Fanad and Rosguill, the islands of Arranmore, Tory Island and Inishbofin. Gweedore is the largest Irish-speaking parish, with over 5,000 inhabitants. All schools in the region use Irish as the language of instruction.


title: County Donegal

text: Donegal County Council (which has been in existence since 1899) has responsibility for local administration, and is headquartered at the County House in Lifford. Elections to the County Council take place every five years. Thirty-seven councillors are elected using the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote (STV). For the purpose of elections, the county is divided into 5 Municipal Districts comprising the following local electoral areas: Donegal (6), Glenties (6), Inishowen (9), Letterkenny (10) and Lifford–Stranorlar (6).


title: County Donegal

text: Council elections are held every 5 years, with the next election due to be held in May 2024. The 2019 Donegal local election had a voter turnout of 54.4%. The highest turnout was at Donegal (62.7%) and the lowest was at Lifford–Stranorlar (49.0%).


title: County Donegal

text: Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin emerged as the two dominant parties in the 2019 local elections, holding 22 of the 37 seats between them. Fine Gael hold 6 seats, the Labour Party hold 1 seat and there are 8 independents. Donegal has traditionally been a stronghold for Sinn Féin, and despite their poor performance nationally in the 2019 Irish local elections, they retained their share of the vote in Donegal, dropping just 0.2%. Despite a nearly 3% increase in votes, Fine Gael did not win any additional seats in 2019.


title: County Donegal

text: Until 2014, there were town councils in Letterkenny, Bundoran, Ballyshannon and Buncrana. The town councils were abolished in June 2014 when provisions of the Local Government Reform Act 2014 was commenced and their functions were taken over by Donegal County Council.


title: County Donegal

text: The Dáil constituency of Donegal constituency (5 TDs) covers almost the entire county, with the exception of a small area in southern Donegal around Bundoran and Ballyshannon, which is part of the Sligo–Leitrim constituency.


title: County Donegal

text: Historically, the county was represented in the Parliament of Ireland through the Donegal Borough constituency, which lasted from 1613 to 1800, when the Irish Parliament was abolished. Following the Act of Union, the county was represented in Westminster through the Donegal constituency until 1885. Following this, the county was broken up into four separate constituencies – North Donegal, South Donegal, East Donegal and West Donegal – which persisted until independence. The Government of Ireland Act 1920 reformed the four constituencies into a single entity covering "the administrative county of Donegal". This was broken up into Donegal East and Donegal West from 1937 to 1977, and into Donegal North-East and Donegal South-West from 1981 to 2016.


title: County Donegal

text: Donegal voters have a reputation nationally for being "conservative and contrarian", and have often voted against amendments to the Irish constitution which received broad support in the rest of Ireland. Conversely, voters in the county have also supported several referendums which were not enacted. The trend first emerged in 1958, when voters in Donegal overwhelmingly voted to alter the electoral system from proportional representation to first-past-the-post in a referendum which was defeated nationally.


title: County Donegal

text: In 1968, voters in the county backed two separate bills which were also widely rejected nationwide. The first vote was to allow rural constituencies to elect a disproportionate number of TDs. Thirty-four constituencies voted against the amendment and four voted in favour, two of which were Donegal North-East and Donegal South-West. In the second vote, both Donegal constituencies again voted for the introduction of a first-past-the-post system, which was rejected.


title: County Donegal

text: The 23rd Amendment permitting the State to join the International Criminal Court in 2001 received the lowest support in Donegal, with just 55.8% of voters backing the proposal, compared with 64.2% nationally. Donegal is the only county to have voted against the Treaty of Lisbon twice, in 2008 and 2009. Voters in the county also rejected both the Fiscal Treaty and the referendum on children's rights and state care in 2012.


title: County Donegal

text: On the issue of abortion and right to life vs pro-choice, Donegal has consistently been the most conservative county in Ireland. In 1992, two referendums on the issue were held. The first was an amendment which specified that the State could not limit the freedom of travel of women seeking abortions abroad. The second specified that the distribution of information about abortion services available in other countries was not unlawful. In contrast to the rest of Ireland, Donegal voted decisively against these amendments.


title: County Donegal

text: The twenty-fifth amendment in 2002 to tighten the ban on abortion in Ireland received the most support in Donegal. Nationally, 50.42% of voters voted against the amendment, whereas 68.8% of voters in Donegal voted in favour of it. In May 2018, Donegal was the only county in Ireland to vote against the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution which had acknowledged the right to life of the unborn. In October 2018, 48.5% of voters in Donegal voted against repealing the offence of publishing or uttering blasphemous matter, the highest of any county and significantly above the national total of 35.15%.


title: County Donegal

text: The county is in the Midlands–North-West constituency (4 seats) for elections to the European Parliament.


title: County Donegal

text: The Freedom of Donegal is an award that is given to people who have been recognised for outstanding achievements on behalf of the people and County Donegal. Such people include Daniel O'Donnell, Phil Coulter, Shay Given, Packie Bonner, Pat Crerand, Seamus Coleman and the Brennan family.


title: County Donegal

text: In 2009 the members of the 28th Infantry Battalion of the Irish Defence Forces were also awarded the Freedom of the County from Donegal County Council "in recognition of their longstanding service to the County of Donegal".


title: County Donegal

text: An extensive rail network used to exist throughout the county and was mainly operated by the County Donegal Railways Joint Committee and the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Company (known as the L. & L.S.R. or the Lough Swilly Company for short). All these lines were laid to a 3-foot gauge, while the connecting lines were all laid to the Irish standard gauge of . This meant that all goods had to be transhipped at Derry and Strabane. Like all narrow gauge railways, this became a handicap after World War I, when road transport began to erode the railways' goods traffic.


title: County Donegal

text: By 1953, the Lough Swilly had closed its entire railway system and become a bus and road haulage concern. The County Donegal lasted until 1960 as it had largely dieselised its passenger trains by 1951. By the late 1950s, major work was required to upgrade the track, and the Irish Government was unwilling to supply the necessary funds, so 'the Wee Donegal', as it was affectionally known, was closed in 1960. The Great Northern Railway (the G.N.R.) also ran a line from Strabane through The Laggan, a district in the east of the county, along the River Foyle into Derry. However, the railway network within County Donegal was completely closed by 1960. Today, the closest railway station to the county is Waterside Station in the City of Derry, which is operated by Northern Ireland Railways (N.I.R.). Train services along the Belfast–Derry railway line run, via Coleraine railway station, to Belfast Lanyon Place and Belfast Great Victoria Street railway stations.


title: County Donegal

text: County Donegal is served by both Donegal Airport, located at Carrickfinn in The Rosses in the west of the county, and by City of Derry Airport, located at Eglinton to the east. The nearest main international airport to the county is Belfast International Airport (popularly known as Aldergrove Airport), which is located to the east at Aldergrove, near Antrim Town, in County Antrim, from Derry City and from Letterkenny.


title: County Donegal

text: The variant of the Irish language spoken in County Donegal shares many traits with Scottish Gaelic. The Irish spoken in the Donegal "Gaeltacht" (Irish-speaking area) is of the Ulster dialect, while Inishowen (parts of which only became English-speaking in the early 20th century) used the East Ulster dialect. Ulster Scots is often spoken in both the Finn Valley and The Laggan district of East Donegal. Donegal Irish has a strong influence on learnt Irish across Ulster.


title: County Donegal

text: Like other areas on the western seaboard of Ireland, Donegal has a distinctive fiddle tradition which is of world renown. Donegal is also well known for its songs which have, like the instrumental music, a distinctive sound. Donegal musical artists such as the bands Clannad, The Pattersons, and Altan and solo artist Enya, have had international success with traditional or traditional flavoured music. Donegal music has also influenced people not originally from the county including folk and pop singers Paul Brady and Phil Coulter. Singer Daniel O'Donnell has become a popular ambassador for the county. Popular music is also common, the county's most acclaimed rock artist being the Ballyshannon-born Rory Gallagher. Other acts to come out of Donegal include folk-rock band Goats Don't Shave, Eurovision contestant Mickey Joe Harte and indie rock group The Revs. In more recent years, bands such as in Their Thousands and Mojo Gogo have featured on the front page of "Hot Press" magazine.


title: County Donegal

text: County Donegal has a long literary tradition in both Irish and English. The Irish navvy-turned-novelist Patrick MacGill, author of many books about the experiences of Irish migrant itinerant labourers in Britain at around the start of the 20th century, such as "The Rat Pit" and the autobiographical "Children of the Dead End", is from the Glenties area. The MacGill Summer School in Glenties is named in his honour and attracts national interest as a forum for the analysis of current affairs. The novelist and socialist politician Peadar O'Donnell hailed from The Rosses in west Donegal. The poet William Allingham was also from Ballyshannon. Modern exponents include the Inishowen playwright and poet Frank McGuinness and the playwright Brian Friel. Many of Friel's plays are set in the fictional Donegal town of Ballybeg.


title: County Donegal

text: Authors in County Donegal have been creating works, like the "Annals of the Four Masters", in Irish and Latin since the Early Middle Ages. The Irish philosopher John Toland was born in Inishowen in 1670. He was thought of as the original freethinker by George Berkeley. Toland was also instrumental in the spread of freemasonry throughout Continental Europe. In modern Irish, Donegal has produced a number of (sometimes controversial), authors such as the brothers Séamus Ó Grianna and Seosamh Mac Grianna from The Rosses and the contemporary (and controversial) Irish-language poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh from Gortahork in Cloughaneely, and where he is known to locals as (Guru of the Hills).


title: County Donegal

text: County Donegal is known for its textiles, whose unique woollen blends are made of short threads with tiny bits of colour blended in for a heathered effect. Sometimes they are woven in a rustic herringbone format and other times in more of a box weave of varied colours. These weaves are known as donegal tweeds (with a small 'd') and are world-renowned.


title: County Donegal

text: There is a sizeable minority of Ulster Protestants in County Donegal, and most Donegal Protestants trace their ancestors to settlers who arrived during the Plantation of Ulster throughout the 17th century. The Church of Ireland is the largest Protestant denomination, with Presbyterianism second. The areas of County Donegal with the highest percentage of Protestants are The Laggan district of East Donegal, centred on Raphoe; the Finn Valley; and areas around Ramelton, Milford and Dunfanaghy – where their proportion reaches up to 30–45 per cent. There is also a large Protestant population between Donegal Town and Ballyshannon in the south of the county. In absolute terms, Letterkenny has the largest number of Protestants (over 1000).


title: County Donegal

text: People from Donegal have also contributed to culture elsewhere. Francis Alison was one of the founders of the College of Philadelphia, which would later become the University of Pennsylvania. Francis Makemie (originally from Ramelton) founded the Presbyterian Church in America. David Steele, from Upper Creevaugh, was a prominent Reformed Presbyterian, or Covenanter, a minister who emigrated to the United States in 1824. Charles Inglis, who was the first Church of England bishop of the Diocese of Nova Scotia, was the third son of Archibald Inglis, the Rector in Glencolmcille.


title: County Donegal

text: The area's attractions include Glenveagh National Park (formerly part of the Glenveagh Estate). The park is a 170 km (about 42,000 acre) nature reserve with scenery of mountains, raised boglands, lakes and woodlands. At its heart is Glenveagh Castle, a late Victorian 'folly' that was originally built as a summer residence. County Donegal was voted number one on "The National Geographic Traveller" (UK) 'cool list' for 2017,


title: County Donegal

text: The Donegal Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking district) also attracts young people to County Donegal each year during the school summer holidays. The three-week-long summer Gaeltacht courses give young Irish people from other parts of the country a chance to learn the Irish language and traditional Irish cultural traditions that are still prevalent in parts of Donegal. The Donegal Gaeltacht has traditionally been a very popular destination each summer for young people from Northern Ireland. Scuba diving is also very popular with a club being located in Donegal Town.


title: County Donegal

text: Higher education within the county is provided by the Letterkenny campus of the Atlantic Technological University (formerly the Letterkenny Institute of Technology, LYIT, popularly known locally as 'the Regional', established in the 1970s). In addition, many young people from the county attend third-level institutions elsewhere in Ireland, especially in Derry and also at the Ulster University at Coleraine (U.U.C.), Ulster University at Jordanstown (U.U.J.), Queen's University Belfast (Queen's), and NUI Galway. Many Donegal students also attend the Limavady Campus of the North West Regional College (popularly known as Limavady Tech) and the Omagh College of Further Education of South West College (popularly known as Omagh Tech or Omagh College).


title: County Donegal

text: The Gaelic Athletic Association (G.A.A.) sport of Gaelic football is very popular in County Donegal. Donegal's inter-county football team have won the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship title twice (in 1992 and 2012) and the Ulster Senior Football Championship ten times. Donegal emerged victorious from the 2012 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final on 23 September 2012 to take the Sam Maguire Cup for only the second time, with early goals from Michael Murphy and Colm McFadden setting up a victory of 2–11 to 0–13 over Mayo. In 2007, Donegal won only their second national title by winning the National Football League. On 24 April 2011, Donegal added their third national title when they defeated Laois to capture the National Football League Division Two, they added another Division Two title in 2019. There are 16 clubs in the Donegal Senior Football Championship, with many others playing at a lower level.


title: County Donegal

text: Hurling (often called 'hurley' within County Donegal), handball and rounders are also played but are less widespread, as is the case in other parts of western Ulster. The Donegal county senior hurling team won the Lory Meagher Cup in 2011 and the Nicky Rackard Cup in 2013.


title: County Donegal

text: There are several rugby teams in the county. These include Ulster Qualifying League Two side Letterkenny RFC, whose ground is named after Dave Gallaher, the captain of the 1905 New Zealand All Blacks touring team, who have since become known as The Originals. He was born in nearby Ramelton.


title: County Donegal

text: Ulster Qualifying League Three sides include Ballyshannon RFC, Donegal Town RFC and Inishowen RFC. Finn Valley RFC and Tir Chonaill RFC both compete in the Ulster Minor League North.


title: County Donegal

text: Finn Harps play in the League of Ireland and won promotion to the Premier Division in 2015 following a 2–1 aggregate win over Limerick F.C. in the playoff final. They retained their status in the Premier Division in the 2016 season. Harps' main rivals are Derry City F.C., with whom they contest Ireland's "North-West Derby". Finn Harps are Donegal's only League of Ireland club, with the county's other clubs playing in either the Ulster Senior League or the local junior leagues.


title: County Donegal

text: There are a number of golf courses such as Ballyliffin Golf Club, located in the Inishowen peninsula. Other courses of note are Murvagh (located outside Donegal Town) and Rosapenna (Sandy Hills) located in Downings (near Carrigart). The Glashedy Links has been ranked 6th in a recent ranking taken by Golf Digest on the best courses in Ireland. The old links were ranked 28th, Murvagh 36th and Sandy Hills 38th.


title: County Donegal

text: Cricket is chiefly confined to The Laggan district and the Finn Valley in the east of the county. The town of Raphoe and the nearby village of St Johnston, both in The Laggan, are the traditional strongholds of cricket within the county. The game is mainly played and followed by members of the Ulster Protestants of Co. Donegal. St Johnston Cricket Club play in the North West Senior League, while Letterkenny Cricket Club play in the Derry Midweek League.


title: County Donegal

text: Athletics has been one of the most successful sports in Donegal over the years with numerous athletes from County Donegal going on to represent Ireland at the international level, with at least five winning medals at major events. Such athletes include Danny McDaid in the World Cross-Country Championships in 1979, Bridie Lynch who won medals in the World Paralympic Games in 1992 and 1996, Gary Murray who came 8th in the European Junior Cross-Country Championship of 1999, and Mark English who won medals in the European 800m Championships in 2014, 2015, 2018 and 2019. Sommer Lecky also achieved silver in the World Junior High Jump 2018. Other notable athletes from Donegal include Paul Dolan, Caitriona Jennings and Brendan Boyce each of whom has represented Ireland at the international level.


title: County Donegal

text: Donegal's rugged landscape and coastline lends itself to active sports like climbing, mountain biking, hillwalking, surfing and kite-flying.


title: Colin McRae

text: Colin Steele McRae, (5 August 1968 – 15 September 2007) was a Scottish rally driver. He was the 1991 and 1992 British Rally Champion, and in 1995 became the first British driver and the youngest person to win the World Rally Championship Drivers' title, a record which stood for 27 years until Kalle Rovanperä took the 2022 season title just a day after his 22nd birthday.


title: Colin McRae

text: McRae's performances with the Subaru World Rally Team enabled the team to win the World Rally Championship Manufacturers' title three times in succession in 1995, 1996 and 1997. After four years with the Ford Motor Co. team, where McRae won nine events, he moved to Citroën World Rally Team in 2003 where, despite not winning an event, he helped them win their first manufacturers' title. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to motorsport in 1996. With 25 victories in the WRC, McRae held the record for the most wins in the series from 2002 to 2004, when Carlos Sainz beat his record.


title: Colin McRae

text: McRae was killed in a helicopter crash in 2007 near his home. His son and two family friends were also killed.


title: Colin McRae

text: McRae was born in Lanark, Scotland, to Jimmy and Margaret McRae. Jimmy McRae was the five-time winner of the British Rally Championship. McRae was the eldest of three brothers; his middle brother, Alister McRae, is also a rally car driver. McRae's maternal uncle Hugh "Shug" Steele was also a former rally driver. He attended Robert Owen Primary School and Lanark Grammar School and studied for a year at Coatbridge College. He worked at Archie's Autos then at his father's plumbing and heating business as a technician.


title: Colin McRae

text: McRae was married to Alison (née Hamilton), whom he met aged 19 when she acted as his co-driver, and had two children, Hollie and Johnny. McRae moved to the principality of Monaco in 1995, partly through his friendship with David Coulthard. However, as his young family grew up, he spent more time back at his home in Lanarkshire. The couple bought the 17th century Jerviswood House. McRae's nephew, Max McRae, is also a motorsport racer.


title: Colin McRae

text: In 1996, McRae was appointed a Member of the British Empire for services to motorsports in the Birthday Honours list.


title: Colin McRae

text: McRae began his competitive career in motorsport riding trial bikes at an early age, despite being more interested in four-wheeled machines rather than two-wheel bikes. He became the Scottish schoolboy motocross champion at the age of thirteen. At the age of sixteen, through the Coltness Car Club, McRae found autotesting, obtained a Mini Cooper and started competing. A year later, he began to negotiate with another club member to use a borrowed Hillman Avenger GT for the Kames Stages, a single-venue stage rally not far from McRae's home. McRae finished the event thirteenth; first in his class although he had run most of the event in a higher position.


title: Colin McRae

text: In 1986, driving a Talbot Sunbeam, McRae entered the Scottish Rally Championship with Ian Grindrod, his father's co-driver, as his co-driver, and soon made a name for himself with his speed and exciting style of driving. His driving style drew many comparisons to Finnish ex-World Rally Champion Ari Vatanen, whom McRae had always idolised.


title: Colin McRae

text: His first WRC event was the 1987 Swedish Rally in a Vauxhall Nova where he finished 36th overall, and again two years later, driving the Sierra and finishing 15th overall. In 1988 he took the Scottish Rally Championship series crown in his Vauxhall Nova. His next car was a Ford Sierra XR 4x4. In 1989, he finished 5th overall at Rally New Zealand in a rear wheel drive Sierra Cosworth. In 1990 McRae achieved sixth place in that year's RAC Rally, despite several accidents. In 1991, McRae turned professional as he was signed by Prodrive boss David Richards to his Subaru team in the British Rally Championship for an annual wage of approximately £10,000. McRae was British Rally Champion in both 1991 and 1992, soon graduating to the Subaru factory team at World Rally Championship level. In 1992, McRae made his debut in the British Touring Car Championship, with a one-off appearance for the Prodrive-run BMW factory team at the Knockhill round, where he collided with Matt Neal. Race officials found McRae to have caused an avoidable collision and subsequently disqualified him.


title: Colin McRae

text: On his promotion for 1993, McRae initially drove the Prodrive-built Group A Subaru Legacy alongside Finns Ari Vatanen, Hannu Mikkola and Markku Alén. McRae then won his first WRC rally in the car at that year's Rally New Zealand. It was also the first rally win for the newly formed Subaru World Rally Team, shortly before the Legacy was due to be pensioned off in favour of the new Subaru Impreza 555. Such were the rising fortunes of his young Subaru factory team as they competed against the frontrunning Toyota-powered Team TTE, who were excluded from the championship after the 1995 Rally Catalunya due to the use of an illegal air restrictor. It took only until 1995 for McRae to win the driver's title, which he secured with a victory in a straight contest with his double champion teammate, Carlos Sainz, on the season-ending Rally of Great Britain. Although still a winner with the outfit in individual rallies in succeeding years, including, increasingly, more specialised events such as the Acropolis Rally, Safari Rally and the Tour de Corse, McRae could not better second place in the standings in either 1996 or 1997, on both occasions behind Finland and Mitsubishi Ralliart's Tommi Mäkinen. He helped Subaru complete their run of three consecutive manufacturers' titles during this time. In what would turn out to be his final season with the team, in 1998 he won three more rallies and placed third in the standings, as well as winning the Race of Champions in Gran Canaria, the Canary Islands.


title: Colin McRae

text: After several years of varying success, McRae switched to the M-Sport-run Ford factory team for 1999, driving the new Ford Focus rally car. The deal saw McRae earning six million pounds over two years, which at the time made him the highest-earning rally driver in history. He immediately had two consecutive wins at the Safari Rally and Rally Portugal. The new car had many shunts and reliability issues for much of the rest of that season, however, which resulted in only sixth place in the championship standings overall. Moreover, a rare personal pointless run had begun for McRae that year which only stopped with a podium on the following February's Swedish Rally. McRae went on to be victorious on the asphalt turns of Catalunya and the gravel of Greece, and post 4th in the 2000 overall standings. Midway through the 2000 season, the lacking reliability of the Focus led to McRae threatening to leave the team if the problems continued. The upturn towards the end of the season resulted in him deciding to renew his contract with Ford for a further two years.


title: Colin McRae

text: McRae's intermittent success with Ford continued into 2001, where after failing to score in any of the first four rounds, including having momentarily led defending winner Tommi Mäkinen on the stages of the season-opening Monte Carlo Rally before being forced into retirement, he then went on to score three consecutive victories in Argentina, Cyprus and Greece to tie with Mäkinen at the top of the points table. However, having again led the championship outright entering the final round in Great Britain, McRae once more missed out on a possible second title, crashing out and finishing second in the driver's championship, two points behind Subaru's Richard Burns.


title: Colin McRae

text: With victory in the Safari Rally in 2002, McRae made the record books as the driver with most event wins in the World Rally Championship. His record was broken by Carlos Sainz. McRae's contract with Ford came to an end following the 2002 season, and after reportedly asking for wages of five million pounds a year, Ford decided against renewing the contract, reluctant to commit such a high amount of their budget to a driver's salary. The two parties split into amicable terms, with Ford's European director of motorsport Martin Whitaker stating "On behalf of all of us at Ford Motor Company I would like to publicly thank Colin and Nicky for their efforts during the past four years with the Ford team. I wish them both well in the future." McRae said of his time with Ford "It's been a very successful four years, we've achieved a lot of very good results and I'm quite happy that myself and Ford have had a very successful partnership."