It is a country that is not 100 years old. The French, permanently established in West Africa, dominating Morocco and Algeria, wanted to control the buffer and little-known region between the north of the Senegal River and the Maghreb Sahara. This arid space, crossed by caravans, was named Mauritania, in reference to the Moors who inhabit it, and administered from Saint-Louis from 1904. In 1957, the territory benefited from the Defferre law and Mauritania was born in 1960. It was above all a means for France to deprive the Moroccan kingdom of its dream of “Greater Morocco”, limiting its extension to the south by creating a Mauritanian state.
An article to be found in the N61. Overseas: France with 13 time zones.
Thus Nouakchott, which until then was only a fort run by a village, was chosen as the capital for its strategic position. In the center, on the Atlantic coast, neither too close to Morocco nor too far away, where Moorish tribes and black peoples coexist.
With its 5.3 million inhabitants, twice the size of France, Mauritania has the fragility of a State that must unite two distinct ethnic and geographical spaces.
The country is mainly populated by Moors (75%), who are divided into two large families. Some, black Moors, are mainly Haratines, descendants of former captives and farmers, attached to oases and camps. The others, white Moors, from whom the country’s intellectual elite comes, are linked by their origins to Arabized Berber tribes as well as certain Arab lineages from the north. An Arabic language unites them: Hassaniyya.
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The Fulani, a black people of pastoralists, constitute the second largest community in the country in terms of number, and one of the most widespread on the African continent. The Soninkés, settled in the southeast, are distinguished by a tradition of migration. The Wolofs, established mainly on both banks of the Senegal River, represent nearly a tenth of the population. As for the Bambaras, they rarely appear as a distinct group. Present especially in the east, they mixed with other peoples and were often assimilated.
Although there are four natural regions, Mauritania is mainly arid. The coast, open for 800 km to the breezes of the ocean, enjoys relative warmth; the sea winds temper the heat of the sun. Further south, the fertile valley of the Senegal River provides beneficial humidity and forms the country’s agricultural belt with the eastern plains, suitable for pastures. In the extreme south and southeast, on the outskirts of the Sahel, where vegetation is scarcer, the blast of Khamsin or Harmattan frequently sweeps away crops and destroys villages. The interior of the land, an empire of dunes, deserts of stones and endless landscapes, is nothing but Saharan immensity. Imposing elevations, like the Kedia of Idjil, at 915 meters high, dominate these silent spaces.
In the center extends the basin of Hodh El Chargui, bordered by the sandstone plateaus of Adrar and Tagant.
Despite the aridity of its territory and its ethnic complexity, Mauritania has established itself as a stable, credible and rather dynamic mediator between the countries of the Maghreb and those of West Africa, for a continent in search of balance.
