The Great Wine Blight

France conquered algeria in 18 30. But the french really fell in love with it because of an ugly bug. Philoxera, as this pest is known, hitched a transatlantic ride and began doing what it likes to do, eating the roots of vines. The failure of the french crop opened up the french market. And within a generation, the morfise family were exporting heavily to france. By that time, algeria was by far and away the biggest wine exporter in the world,. shipping out some one a half billion litres a year. This from a moslem country. In formal terms, it wasn't a colony at all. It was part of