President Emmanuel Macron is right to want to face up to a dark chapter in French history

In a recent speech on Islamist extremism, Emmanuel Macron described France as “a country with a colonial past and traumas it still hasn’t resolved, with facts that underpin our collective psyche. The Algerian war is part of this.” Mr Macron has made similar remarks throughout his presidency. An estimated five million French residents have links of some kind to Algeria, and the shadow cast by the colonial experience is long and divisive. Nostalgic exiles and French military veterans, led by the ex-paratrooper Jean Marie Le Pen, were instrumental in the formation of the far-right Front National.

The Algerian diaspora in France has a rather different take on the age of empire. Previous presidents have simply steered clear of a war associated with national humiliation, savage violence and imperialist racism. But in a country with one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe, Mr Macron has concluded that this official amnesia has become untenable.

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Source: The Guardian