Pied-Noir

Pied-Noir (French pronunciation: ​[pjenwaʁ], Black-Foot), plural Pieds-Noirs, is a term referring to people of French and other European (usually Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or Maltese) ancestry who were born or lived in French North Africa, namely French Algeria, the French protectorate in Morocco, or the French protectorate of Tunisia, often for generations, until the end of French rule in North Africa between 1956 and 1962. The term usually includes the North African Jews, who had been living there for many centuries but were awarded French citizenship by the 1870 Cremieux decree. More specifically, the term Pieds-Noirs is used for those European-descendent citizens who "returned" to mainland France as soon as Algeria gained independence, or in the months following.

The Europeans arrived in Algeria as immigrants from all over the western Mediterranean (particularly France, Spain, Italy and Malta), starting in 1830. The term is sometimes also used to include the indigenous Jewish population, who settled in the Maghreb long before 1830, but many of whom likewise emigrated after 1962. From the French invasion on 18 June 1830 until its independence, Algeria was administratively part of France (French departments in 1848) and its European population was simply called Algerians or colons (colonists), whereas the Muslim people of Algeria were called Arabs, Muslims or Indigenous.