Precolonial Mauritania

Precolonial Mauritania, lying next to the Atlantic coast at the western edge of the Sahara Desert, received and assimilated into its complex society many waves of Saharan migrants and conquerors.

Plinius wrote that the area north of the river Senegal was populated, during Augustus times, by the Pharusii and Perorsi Berbers moved south to Mauritania beginning in the 3rd century, followed by Arabs in the 8th century, subjugating and assimilating Mauritania's original inhabitants.

Islamization took place only gradually, much later than in the Sahel, over the course of the 12th to the 17th centuries by the expansion of the Beni Hassan. From the 15th century, there was also limited European trading activity, mostly in gum arabic.

The tensions between the tribal Berber groups which had established themselves before the arrival of Islam, and the Arabized and Muslim Beni Hassan came to a head in the Char Bouba war of 1644 to 1674. The resulting victory of the Beni Hassan sealed the fate of Mauritania as an Arabized Muslim territory, the last part of Africa to be acquired into the Muslim World before the Muslim expansion was checked by the European Scramble for Africa in the 19th century.

There was French presence at the Senegal River from the 17th century, and by 1840, Senegal became a permanent French possession. The colonisation of Mauritania was an expansion of the area of French control over Senegal, beginning in the form of punitive expeditions against the Maures. The colonial period of Mauritania lasted for a mere two generations, from 1904 to 1960. The French authorities had difficulty in maintaing order in view of the numerous and complicated conflicts among the area's numerous factions and sub-factions. They attempted to abolish slavery in 1905, but with very limited success. Mauritanian independence was granted in 1960, following a 1958 referendum under the French Fifth Republic.