Napoleon III was the first elected president of the French Second Republic before becoming Emperor of the French by 1852 French Second Empire referendum after the French coup d'état of 1851. In the 1860s, influenced by Ismael Urbain, he introduced what were intended as liberalizing reforms in Algeria, promoting the French colonial model of assimilation, whereby colonised peoples would eventually become French. His reforms were resisted by colonists in Algeria, and his attempts to allow Muslims to be elected to a putative new assembly in Paris failed.