The imperial and post-colonial history of France has inspired an ever-growing body of literature in the last decade. Moving well beyond traditional political and economic narratives, these histories present a rich portrait of the policies, peoples, and perceptions that shaped the colonial and post-colonial experience in France and overseas. This article looks at how Arab communities and nations figure within the historiography on the period since the First World War. The first of three sections examines works devoted to culture and imperialism that span the twentieth century, with special emphasis on the differences between the scholarship emerging from French and Anglo-Saxon milieus. The second section looks at how recent histories have used the interwar years as a unit of analysis for understanding French colonialism in the Middle East and North Africa. Algeria, as the cornerstone of the empire and the theatre of the bloodiest colonial war for independence, forms the basis of the third section, which considers new conceptions of nationalism and decolonization.