The French colonial rulers changed the mode of ownership by seizing the public land (baylek), the communal land (arch), and most of the private land (melk) and distributing it between French and Spanish settlers. The new landlords, called les pieds noirs[2], destroyed the collective forms of land ownership in the communal and religious trust and introduced the capitalist mode of exploiting cheap indigenous workforce. Basically, the colonial entrepreneurs’ aim was to accumulate capital through the exploitation of land and people.