This study compares the expropriation and assimilation policies of the French and American governments towards the Algerian and Southeastern Indian peoples in the nineteenth century. It describes in detail the policies and techniques, including sequestration and removal, which were established to deprive the indigenous people of their land for the purpose of colonial development, and also examines the various responses to it by the Algerians and Indians. Having effected wholesale confiscations by the middle of the nineteenth century, the French and American governments subsequently developed more mature policies designed to break down the traditional political and economic structures through an attack on collective property in the Warnier Law of 1873 and the Dawes Act of 1887. After a brief introduction, the first two chapters examine the background to European colonization in the two societies, including an analysis of the native society and economy. The major expropriation phases in Algeria and the southern United States are examined in the following four chapters, with a particular emphasis upon Indian removal in the United States and upon the sequence of French land legislation up to and including the Senatus-Consulte of 1863. In the final chapter, the two assaults upon tribal collective property are analysed. A brief conclusion reviews and contrasts the two processes of expropriation.