On July 2, 1957, US senator John F. Kennedy made his perhaps best-known senatorial speech—on Algeria.

Home to about 8 million Muslims, 1.2 million European settlers, and 130,000 Jews, it was from October 1954 embroiled in what France dubbed “events”—domestic events, to be precise. Virtually all settlers and most metropolitan French saw Algeria as an indivisible part of France. Algeria had been integrated into metropolitan administrative structures in 1847, towards the end of a structurally if not intentionally genocidal pacification campaign; Algeria’s population dropped by half between 1830, when France invaded, and the early 1870s. Eighty years and many political turns later (see e.g. Messali Hadj’s 1927 speech in this collection), in 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched a war for independence. Kennedy did not quite see eye to eye with the FLN.

As Kennedy's speech shows, he did not want France entirely out of North Africa. However, he had criticized French action already in early 1950s Indochina. And in 1957 he met with Abdelkader Chanderli (1915-1993), an unaccredited representative of the FLN at the United Nations in New York and in Washington, DC, and a linchpin of the FLN’s successful international offensive described in Matthew Connelly’s A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002). Thus, Kennedy supported the FLN’s demand for independence, which explains its very positive reaction to his speech, evidenced in the telegram sent to Kennedy printed here.

The French Ambassador to London reports that China is eager to open up diplomatic relations with Italy and Canada and to enter into negotiations with the United States.

French diplomat Lucien Paye assesses Chinese foreign policy in the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and speculates that China wishes to exploit differences within the NATO camp.

A circulating telegram to French diplomats outlinging the origins and meaning of the Cuban crisis, the unfolding and events of the crisis, and the consequences of the crisis.

Hervé Alphand, the French Ambassador in Washington, writes to Maurice Couve de Murville, the French Foreign Minister, that the United States (and President Kennedy in particular) does not believe the Cuban crisis is over, that Khrushchev was pushed to build nuclear bases in Cuba by his generals and that Cuba's behavior in this crisis represents a fundamental shift on the international stage of diplomatic relations.

A discussion of the public's reaction to the Cuban crisis and the propaganda and speeches concerning it.

General Charles de Gaulle and Dean Acheson discuss installation of U.S. blockade around Cuiba and Soviet missiles, as well as the political goals of each.