The Fourth Republic had struggled with Algeria for four years; de Gaulle, with all his prestige and all the powers at his disposal, struggled on for another four. De Gaulle’s achievement, then, was less to have ‘granted’ independence than to have persuaded people that that is what he had done; to make them believe that he had controlled the process; and to create a compelling narrative that explained France’s disengagement from Algeria and turned it into a victory rather than a defeat.
