Algeria, Century by Century

Before Numidia and modern borders, North Africa was already part of powerful civilizations. Leaders of Amazigh origin rose to prominence, including Sheshonq I, who ruled Egypt as a pharaoh and showed the deep roots of North African influence in the ancient world.

Long before Algeria carried a name on any map, its highlands, coast and desert were held by Amazigh peoples who farmed, herded, traded and fought on their own terms. Rock art in the Sahara records a greener world, and the Mediterranean coast drew in Phoenician traders who founded Carthage and a chain of harbours along the shore.

Contact with Carthage brought new goods, new writing and new wars. Amazigh cavalry became decisive in Mediterranean conflicts, and the tribal confederations of the interior grew wealthy and organised enough to negotiate with the great powers of the age rather than simply serve them.

Centuries before Algeria had a name, Berber tribes galloped across its plains on swift horses. From this world rose Numidia, a proud kingdom of clever kings and feared cavalry that helped decide the fate of empires.

Numidia was the first Algerian state in the fullest sense: a unified kingdom with a capital at Cirta, a minted currency, an army and a foreign policy. Massinissa turned rival confederations into one realm and encouraged settled agriculture across the plains, which made the kingdom rich as well as feared.

That success placed Numidia between Rome and its own independence. Jugurtha's long war against Roman power showed both the depth of local resistance and the limits of a kingdom facing an empire that could afford to lose battles and still win the war.

When Rome absorbed Numidia, golden wheat fields and silver olive groves turned the region into the empire's pantry. Marble cities like Timgad and Djemila rose from the plains, and a young man from Thagaste, Augustine, would one day reshape the Western mind.

Roman rule reorganised the land around cities, roads and grain. Timgad, Djemila and Tipasa were laid out with forums, theatres and baths, and the plains of eastern Algeria became one of the granaries of the empire. Local families entered Roman public life without ceasing to be North African.

This was also an age of ideas. Augustine of Hippo wrote from the Algerian coast works that still shape Western thought, while revolts such as that of Tacfarinas and later religious disputes showed that imperial order was never fully accepted. When the Vandals crossed into Africa, the province was already loosening.

In the 7th century, Arab horsemen crossed the desert carrying a new faith. Islam met Berber spirit, sparked dynasties, and lit up cities like Tlemcen and Béjaïa, where scholars debated, traders bargained, and a young Italian named Fibonacci first met Arabic numerals.

The arrival of Islam changed language, law and learning across North Africa, and it met determined resistance before it was absorbed and made local. Dihya's stand in the Aurès belongs to that first century of encounter, and the memory of it survived in oral tradition long after the political outcome was settled.

What followed was not a single empire but a succession of North African dynasties, from the Rustamids of Tahert to the Fatimids, the Hammadids, the Almohads and the Zayyanids of Tlemcen. Cities became centres of scholarship and trade linking the Sahara to the Mediterranean, and thinkers such as Ibn Khaldun wrote history that is still read as method rather than chronicle.

Ottoman Algeria was a powerful regency centered in Algiers. From the 16th century to 1830, it played an important role in Mediterranean politics, trade, and warfare. Local rulers, military elites, and Ottoman influence shaped the region long before French colonization began.

The Regency of Algiers was formally tied to the Ottoman sultan yet governed itself in practice. It kept a fleet, levied taxes, signed treaties with European states and defended a coastline that the great powers repeatedly tried to control. Algiers grew into a fortified maritime capital with its own institutions.

Power passed from the beylerbeys and pashas to the deys, elected by the ruling council. The Casbah, the corsair economy and the inland beyliks of Constantine, Titteri and Oran formed a working political order, but one that depended on naval strength at a moment when European navies were growing faster.

On a summer day in 1830, French ships appeared off Algiers and stayed for 132 years. Lands were taken, voices silenced, and yet resistance burned on, from Emir Abdelkader's desert campaigns to the mountain stand of Lalla Fatma N'Soumer.

Colonisation was not a single event but a long conquest. Land was confiscated, populations displaced and a legal order created in which the majority of Algerians were subjects rather than citizens. Emir Abdelkader built a state in resistance, Lalla Fatma N'Soumer led the mountains of Kabylie, and El Mokrani's revolt in 1871 was followed by heavy collective punishment.

In the twentieth century resistance changed form. Reformers such as Ben Badis worked on language, education and identity, while Messali Hadj built the first mass nationalist movement. Algerians fought in two world wars for a France that refused them equality, and the promises made in 1944 and 1945 were not kept.

Just after midnight on November 1, 1954, gunfire echoed through the Aurès Mountains, the FLN had risen. Eight years of sacrifice followed, until on July 5, 1962, Algeria stood free at last.

On 1 November 1954 the FLN launched coordinated attacks and published a proclamation calling for an independent Algerian state. The war that followed was fought in the mountains, in the cities and in international assemblies, and it reached every family in the country.

The Soummam Congress of 1956 gave the revolution a political structure, the Battle of Algiers brought it to the world's attention, and women carried messages, weapons and wounded at enormous risk. The Evian Accords of 1962 ended the war, and on 5 July 1962 Algeria became independent.