MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Algeria

ONE LAND · 6 ATLASES

Algeria, on the map of history

What was Algeria before it was Algeria? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Numidia (mod. Algeria) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

Numidia: Masinissa’s cavalry kingdom chose Rome before Zama and tormented Carthage into the Third Punic War. Jugurtha’s war against Rome (112–106 BC) made Marius’ career — and thus, indirectly, the client-army Republic-killer (Ch. 4). Later a granary province and the homeland of Augustine of Hippo, who watched the Vandals besiege his city as he died in 430.

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Algeria · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

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Algeria (French) · The Great War, 1914–1918

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Algeria · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

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Algeria · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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Algeria · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994

Algeria was the exception that explains the map: not a colony but, in French law, part of France, home to a million European settlers. The FLN’s war of 1954–62 — Sétif’s prelude, the Battle of Algiers, torture, the OAS’s scorched exit — cost perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives and brought down France’s Fourth Republic before winning independence in July 1962. A settler war fought to the bitter end, and a template studied across southern Africa.

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