history of Mauritania

This discussion focuses on the history of Mauritania since European contact. For a more complete treatment of the country in its regional context, see western Africa, history of.

…administered jointly by Morocco and Mauritania. By early 1976 the last Spanish troops had departed, leaving Morocco to struggle with a growing Sahrawi guerrilla group named the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Río de Oro (Polisario Front), actively supported by Algeria and later by Libya.

…an insurgency (based in neighbouring Mauritania) against Spanish control of Western Sahara. After Spain withdrew and Morocco and Mauritania partitioned Western Sahara between themselves in 1976, the Polisario Front relocated to Algeria, which henceforth provided the organization with bases and military aid. Mauritania made peace with the Polisario Front in…

…border dispute between Senegal and Mauritania erupted into serious ethnic violence; several hundred Senegalese were massacred in Mauritania, and both countries expelled tens of thousands of expatriates. Senegalese merchants took over many of the businesses previously owned and operated by Mauritanians in Senegal. Tensions have remained high ever since, despite…

…region was under de facto Mauritanian administration in the south and Moroccan occupation in the north. The presence of both countries was contested by guerrillas of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (Polisario Front). In 1979 the Mauritanian government abandoned any claim to…

…further complicated by newly independent Mauritania’s claims to the province in 1960, and in 1963 huge phosphate deposits were discovered at Bu Craa in the northern portion of the Spanish Sahara, which made the province a potentially economically valuable prize for any country that could firmly establish possession of it.…

…government-in-exile and fought Morocco and Mauritania for control of the territory. In 1979 Mauritania made peace with the Polisario Front and abandoned its territorial claims, whereupon Morocco annexed Mauritania’s portion and claimed the whole territory. A referendum on whether the territory should remain part of Morocco or become independent was…

…guerrilla struggle among Moroccan and Mauritanian claimants and the Polisario movement backed by Algeria. The Somali invasion of the Ogaden, Libyan intrusions into Chad and Sudan, and Uganda’s 1978 invasion of Tanzania exemplified a new