May 1958 Crisis

The May 1958 Crisis emerged from the Algerian War and mounting distrust between sections of the French Army, European settlers in Algeria and the government in Paris. On 13 May demonstrators and activists in Algiers seized government buildings and a Committee of Public Safety was formed with support from senior military officers, who demanded a government committed to keeping Algeria French.

The possibility that the army might extend the revolt to metropolitan France turned a colonial crisis into a constitutional emergency. Charles de Gaulle presented himself as the figure capable of restoring authority, became prime minister on 1 June and received powers to prepare a new constitution. The crisis led directly to the creation of the Fifth Republic, even though de Gaulle later moved towards Algerian self-determination.

This context is narrower than the Algerian War and should be used for fiction centred on the Algiers uprising, military intervention in politics, the collapse of the Fourth Republic and de Gaulle’s return. Jean Lartéguy’s The Praetorians fictionalises this civil–military confrontation and the fear among paratroopers that political leaders would abandon the results of counterinsurgency.