History of Mauritania

Architectural detail of an old mosque at Tîchît THE SAHARA HAS LINKED rather than divided the peoples who inhabit it and has served as an avenue for migration and conquest. Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of these migrants and conquerors. Berbers moved south to Mauritania beginning in the third century A.D., followed by Arabs in the eighth century, subjugating and assimilating Mauritania’s original inhabitants. From the eighth through the fifteenth century, black kingdoms of the western Sudan, such as Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, brought their political culture from the south. The divisive tendencies of the various groups within Mauritanian society have always worked against the development of Mauritanian unity. Both the Sanhadja Confederation, at its height from the eighth to the tenth century, and the Almoravid Empire, from the eleventh to the twelfth century, were weakened by internecine warfare, and both succumbed to further invasions from the Ghana Empire and the Almohad Empire, respectively. The one external influence that tended to unify the country was Islam. The Islamization of Mauritania was a gradual process that spanned more than 500 years. Beginning slowly through contacts with Berber and Arab merchants engaged in the important caravan trades and rapidly advancing through the Almoravid conquests, Islamization did not take firm hold until the arrival of Yemeni Arabs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and was not complete until several centuries later. Gradual Islamization was accompanied by a process of arabization as well, during which the Berber masters of Mauritania lost power and became vassals of their Arab conquerors. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, European contact with Mauritania was dominated by the trade for mauritania/mr_glos.asp#gum">gum arabic (see Glossary). Rivalries among European powers enabled the Arab-Berber population, the Maures (Moors), to maintain their independence and later to exact annual payments from France, whose sovereignty over the Senegal River and the Mauritanian coast was recognized by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Although penetration beyond the coast and the Senegal River began in earnest under Louis Faidherbe, governor of Senegal in the mid1800s , European conquest or "pacification" of the entire country did not begin until 1900. Because extensive European contact began so late in the country’s history, the traditional social structure carried over into modern times with little change. The history of French colonial policy in Mauritania is closely tied to that of the other French possessions in West Africa, particularly to that of Senegal, on which Mauritania was economically, politically, and administratively dependent until independence. The French policy of assimilation and direct rule, however, was never applied with any vigor in Mauritania, where a system that corresponded more to Britain’s colonial policies of association and indirect rule developed. Colonial administrators relied extensively on Islamic religious leaders and the traditional warrior groups to maintain their rule and carry out their policies. Moreover, little attempt was made to develop the country’s economy. After World War II, Mauritania, along with the rest of French West Africa, was involved in a series of reforms of the French colonial system, culminating in independence in 1960. These reforms were part of a trend away from the official policies of assimilation and direct rule in favor of administrative decentralization and internal autonomy. Although the nationalistic fervor sweeping French West Africa at this time was largely absent in Mauritania, continuous politicking (averaging one election every eighteen months between 1946 and 1958) provided training for political leaders and awakened a political consciousness among the populace. Nevertheless, when Mauritania declared its independence in 1960, its level of political as well as economic development was, at best, embryonic. Mauritania’s postindependence history has been dominated by regional politics (see unavail.asp"> fig. 1). Morocco and Algeria, vying for regional dominance, have continually influenced Mauritanian politics and fortunes. During the first nine years of independence, the regime of Moktar Ould Daddah was preoccupied with expansionist designs by Morocco, whose military strength constituted a perpetual threat to Mauritania’s territorial integrity. This threat was intensified by the support of some of Mauritania’s Maure population for unification with Morocco. In 1969, when Morocco finally recognized Mauritania’s ind