The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France and the European Community

Abstract

Megan Brown’s The Seventh Member State makes a bold and exciting contribution to our understanding of contemporary France, decolonization and European integration. Tracing the story of Algeria’s relationship with the nascent European Community, Brown recounts in lively prose how and why French officials pushed to have Algeria included in the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community (EEC), and how independent Algeria retained this ambiguous status as a ‘seventh member state’ of the EEC until 1976—fourteen years after gaining independence. The book is divided into three sections, with two chapters apiece. The first section deals with the origins of ‘Eurafrican’ ideology and the place of Algeria in the first post-war European initiatives, most notably the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) from which Algeria was specifically excluded. Brown also argues compellingly that the European Defence Community (EDC), an initiative proposed by France in 1950 only to be vetoed by the French National Assembly four years later, failed in part due to French insistence of minimizing external (namely German) influence on its colonial affairs.