Description
This course surveys the political and economic origins and development of modern Algeria. It will trace the origins of Algeria from before the Ottoman
regency, through the long transforming trauma of the period of French colonization, through to the establishment of the modern independent state.
The state-building policies of independent Algeria's first two presidents, Ahmed Ben Bella and Houari Boumedienne, will be considered as will be the growing economic difficulties of the 1980s and their political consequences. The crisis of 1988 and the subsequent period of political liberalization (1989-1992) will be examined, along with the drift into the serious social and civil conflict of the 1990s. The course will conclude with an analysis of the return to more authoritarian policies and the search to find social and political peace in the new millennium.