Algeria is a huge country in Northern Africa. It covers 920,000 square miles (2,380,000 sq. km), making it more than three times the size of Texas, and the 11th largest nation on Earth. It shares borders with Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia, and Western Sahara, and has coastline on the Mediterranean.
People have been living in the region that is now Algeria, and the surrounding Maghreb, for more than 200,000 years. The first civilizations sprang up between 4000 and 8000 years ago, eventually forming a cohesive population, usually referred to collective as the Berber culture.
From about 900 BCE Algeria has been invaded repeatedly by various peoples, mostly from across the Mediterranean. First the Phoenicians came, trading along the coast and eventually establishing Carthage in nearby Tunisia and various outposts in Algeria. Then came the Romans, who conquered the Berbers more-or-less completely by 24 AD. By the 4th century Algeria had been converted to Christianity.
Beginning in the 8th century Algeria, and the greater Maghreb, became a strategic target for the expanding Islamic world. By the end of the first decade of the 8th century the Umayyads had conquered all of North Africa, including Algeria. Over the next few centuries Algeria converted to Islam and was Arabized dramatically.
In the 16th century Algeria came under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and became a center for Mediterranean piracy and privateering. It was in Algeria that the infamous pirate Red Beard (neé Barbarossa) eventually was based, as a provincial governor. During this period both Arabs and native Berbers saw their roles diminished, as Turkish became the national ******** and Turks became entrenched in most positions of power. Piracy continued to spread and become institutionalized in Algeria, as well as its neighbors, in a confederacy known as the Barbary States. In addition to capturing the wealth of European traders, these pirates also began capturing Christians as slaves, a turn of events that eventually led the young United States to enter into two of its earliest wars against the Barbary Coast.
In the early 19th century Algeria was conquered by the French, who began to settle and develop the region. Although infrastructure developed under French control, to the majority of the Muslim inhabitants of Algeria, France was seen as a harsh colonial power. Resistance and open revolt continued throughout all of the French occupation, but it began to grow substantially and develop during the 1930s. Although relatively peaceful attempts were made for a Constitution and more equality in the mid-1940s, these were met with no support by the French government.
By 1954 the situation had gotten bad enough that the citizenry revolted on a massive scale. The National Liberation Front was the main body of revolt, launching a full-scale civil war that would last for eight years. In that time nearly two million Algerians would die, and another two to three million were relocated. Independence was finally achieved in 1962, after one of the longest, bloodiest wars for independence in modern history.
Algeria was the cradle of many ancient civilizations. Discuss. تحضير بكالوريا
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