You know what’s wild? The French government was overthrown in 1958 and nobody talks about it.

People say things like, “the Algiers crisis triggered the collapse of the Fourth Republic”, like this is something that just happened, not something people did.



The first time I heard about the “collapse of the Fourth Republic” I thought losing Algeria somehow invalidated the French constitution because, IDK, without MPs from Algeria parliament wouldn’t have a quorum or something.



But actually after the military coup in Algeria the French government more or less allowed itself to be overthrown to avoid a civil war. A new constitution was adopted through a process that was totally illegal under the old constitution.



And I’m not going to say the results were all good—the Algerian War dragged on for four more years—but it doesn’t seem to have done much long-term harm to French democracy.