Algeria - History

Algeria - History

Algeria´s first inhabitants were Berbers, who still represent a significant minority. Algeria has been occupied many
times during its history by - Phoenicians and Romans among others -
but the Arab invasions of the 8th and 11th
centuries A.D. had the greatest cultural impact.

In
1492 Moors and Jews expelled from Spain settled in Algeria. Between
1518 and 1830 Algeria was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire.

In
1830 Algeria became a French territory and in 1848 was made a
département attached to France.
During this period political and economic power were held mainly by the
minority of white settlers, and the indigenous Moslem minority did not
have equal rights.

Moslems were killed before independence was declared on July
5, 1962. Later that year the Algerian provisional government
transferred authority to the Political Bureau of the FLN, the National
Constituent Assembly was
elected from a list of FLN candidates, and a republic was proclaimed
with Ahmed Ben Bella, one of the original leaders of the FLN, as
president. Nearly one million French and other Europeans (pieds noirs,
or black feet) left
the country when the French army withdrew.

During the 1960s and
1970s Algeria went through a difficult period of adjustment and change,
emerging as a
staunch socialist state: the Democratic and Popular Republic of
Algeria. Houari Boumedienne, who became president after a 1965 coup,
died in December 1978.

In February 1979 Chadli Bendjedid was named president. Chadli,
a former colonel, had played key roles in the war of independence and
in the military coup that brought
Boumedienne to power in 1965. Chadli´s government has vowed to root out
government corruption; affirm Algeria´s Arab-Islamic culture, Moslem
religion, and traditional social values; and liberalize the rigidly
structured socialist economy. Chadli was reelected to a third five-year
term in December 1988.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s the protracted struggle in Western Sahara
embittered Algeria´s relations with France, which supported the claims
of Morocco. Algeria also criticized French military intervention
elsewhere in Africa, while further grievances were the trade imbalance
in favour of the
former colonial power, and recurrent disputes over the price of
Algerian exports of gas to France; the French Government´s
determination to reduce the number of Algerians residing in France was
another source of contention.