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| North Africa | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Area | |
• Total | 7,862,221 km² |
| Population | |
• Estimate | 280,223,607 |
North Africa, also known as al-Maghrib al-ʿArabī, spans the northern countries of the African continent, along the Mediterranean coast and extending south into the Sahara Desert. The region typically includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, and is commonly extended to include Mauritania, Sudan and the disputed territory of Western Sahara. With a population of over 280 million, North Africa occupies a strategic position at the crossroads of Africa, Europe, and West Asia, a geography that has made it a constant object of imperialist rivalry and class struggle for millennia.[1]
It stretches from the Atlantic coast of Morocco in the west to the Suez Canal in the east, spanning approximately 5,000 kilometers. Maghreb possesses vast natural wealth such as oil and gas in Algeria, Libya, and Egypt; phosphates in Morocco and Tunisia; agricultural land along the Mediterranean coast and the Nile despite this the mass of the population suffer under poverty, unemployment, and social deprivation as a result of colonial and neo-colonial exploitation, in which the region's resources have been extracted for the profit of foreign capital and a comprador ruling class.[1]
History[edit | edit source]
Ancient Egypt, unified around 3100 BCE, developed one of the world's earliest class societies along the Nile, with a highly stratified social order of pharaohs, priests, and officials presiding over a population of peasants and slaves. The architecture of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms was only possible by the systematic exploitation of agricultural labor and the concentration of surplus under state control.[1]
The Amazigh people established settled and semi-nomadic societies across the Maghreb. The Carthaginian Empire, founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BCE, established a commercial and military state centered on modern Tunisia. Carthage's rivalry with Rome produced the three Punic Wars, leading to Rome's destruction of Carthage and the establishment of the province of Africa Proconsularis. Rome occupied the entirety of the North African coast, from Egypt to Mauretania, integrating the region into the imperial economy as a major supplier of grain, olive oil, and other commodities extracted through slave labor and colonial taxation.[1]
The Vandal invasion of 429 CE and the Byzantine reoccupation under Justinian in the sixth century marked the transition from classical antiquity to the medieval period. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates incorporated North Africa into a caliphate stretching from Spain to Central Asia as the Amazigh population retained their distinct linguistic and cultural identities when they adopted Islam. Indigenous and semi-indigenous dynasties established themselves in the Maghreb such as the Idrisid Dynasty in Morocco, the Aghlabid Dynasty in Tunisia, Fatimid Caliphate which established their capital in Egypt, Cairo, Almoravid Dynasty spanning Morocco to southern Spain. [1]
The Ottoman Empire established itself over much of North Africa beginning in the 16th century, establishing itself over Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria while Morocco was under the Saadi Sultanate and later the 'Alawi dynasty. Most of these dynasties accumulated their wealth through agricultural production, trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and slaves, and Mediterranean commerce though this wealth was concentrated in the hands of ruling elites, religious establishments, and merchant oligarchies, while the mass of peasants, artisans, and slaves bore the burden of exploitation with this contradiction expressed in recurring revolts against taxation, conscription, and the despotism of local rulers. [1]
The French invasion of Algeria in 1830 marked the beginning of European imperialism, through a war of attrition, confiscating land, destroying traditional communities, and settling hundreds of thousands of European colonialists in an attempt to establish a settler colony in which the settlers stole the best agricultural land and subjugated the indigenous Muslim population as a privileged caste. The Berlin Conference in 1884 formalized the partition of the African continent among the imperial core with the conference summarized as: "the continent's rich resources and human labour were to be exploited for profits" and "its mountains, lakes, rivers, canals and coastlines were now geostrategic enclaves in the competition for world hegemony". [1]
France occupied Tunisia in 1881, Britain invaded Egypt in 1882, Spain claimed parts of Morocco in 1859 and Italy later attempted to colonize Libya in 1911. Egypt though part of the Ottoman Empire was under British occupation from 1882 onward. The British occupation was driven by their interest in controlling the Suez Canal. The Egyptian peasantry were subjected to the British regime of forced labor, taxation, and debt that enriched the British financiers and the Egyptian comprador aristocracy at the expense of the Egyptian working class. [1]
Morocco was partitioned between France and Spain in 1912, with France taking the larger part. The Spanish partition occupied the northern coast and the southern desert, with France occupying the interior. The Moroccan sultan retained symbolic authority but was stripped of real power. Libya was the last North African country to be occupied by the imperial core, specifically Italy after the Italo-Turkish War in 1911. Italian occupation was characterized by concentration camps for the Senussi resistance during the reign of the fascist regime of Mussolini with approximately half the population of eastern Libya murdered by the Italian colonialists during the Libyan Genocide in their attempt to establish an Italian settler colony in eastern Libya. [1]
The Algerian War of Independence between 1954 to 62 was the most important revolutionary struggle of North African decolonization. The National Liberation Front (FLN) launched their revolutionary struggle against French occupation on November 1, 1954, after France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. France deployed over half a million troops while using systematic torture, mass murder, and collective punishment. By the end of the war, over half a million Algerians had been murdered, and 1.7 million French soldiers had contributed to the repression though independence came in July 1962 as a result of the struggle. [1]
Tunisia and Morocco achieved independence through pressure and negotiated transitions in 1956 as France was stuck in the costly Algerian War of Independence on the losing side, Libya had been granted independence in 1951 as a comprador monarchy installed by Britain and the United States, in exchange for securing military bases in the country and access to Libyan oil. Egypt had formally been independent since 1922, but British occupation continued until the Free Officers' Revolution of 1952 overthrew King Farouk and established a real independent republic under Gamal Abdel Nasser.[1]