The "Indigénat" was created first to solve specific problems of administering France's North African colonies during the early to mid-nineteenth century. In 1685, the French royal "Code Noir" decreed the treatment of subject peoples, but it was in Algeria during the 1830s and 1840s that the French government began actively to rule large subject populations. They quickly realized that not only was this impractical in areas without a French population, but French experiences with large groups of subject people had convinced many that both direct rule and eventual assimilation were undesirable.