Ferhat Abbas (1899-1985) was the first president of the provisional government of the Algerian Republic. His political career reflected the failure of the middle-class moderate elements to dominate Algerian nationalism.

Ferhat Abbas was born on Oct. 24, 1899, at Taher in the department of Constantine, Algeria, into a pro-French family of provincial administrators and landowners. In 1924, while a student of pharmacy at the University of Algiers, he helped to found the Association of Moslem Students, over which he presided for 5 years. He graduated in 1932, opened a pharmacy in Sétif, and served on municipal and provincial councils in eastern Algeria.

Until World War II Abbas accepted the validity of the colonial system and became a major spokesman for political reforms and the assimilation of Algerians and the French. In 1936 he even wrote, "I will not die for the Algerian fatherland, because this fatherland does not exist," a point of...