Pied-Noir Pied-Noir Pied-Noir (, ""Black-Foot""), plural Pieds-Noirs, is a term primarily referring to people of European, mostly ethnic French origin, who were born in Algeria during the period of French rule from 1830 to 1962. More broadly, it can refer to other foreign-origin persons, both Christian and Jewish, from all parts of the Mediterranean whose families had also migrated under French occupation in the 19th and 20th centuries to French Algeria, the French protectorate in Morocco, or the French protectorate of Tunisia, where many carried on living for several generations but fled or were expelled at the end of French rule
Pied-Noir specifically, the term "Pied-Noir" is used for those of European ancestry who "returned" to mainland France as soon as Algeria gained independence, or in the months following. From the French invasion on 18 June 1830 until its independence, Algeria was administratively part of France, and its European population was simply called Algerians or colons (colonists), whereas the Muslim people of Algeria were called Arabs, Muslims or Indigenous. The term ""pied-noir"" began to be commonly used shortly before the end of the Algerian War in 1962. As of the last census in French-ruled Algeria, taken on 1 June 1960, there were