Mauritania's position provided a link between North Africa and West Africa. Yet although the country served as a geographical bridge, crisscrossed by merchants transporting gold, salt, and slaves between the northern and southern edges of the Sahara, it also marked a cultural boundary between sedentary farmers of sub-Saharan Africa and the nomadic Arab-Berber herders from the Maghrib. Throughout Mauritania's history, the interaction between the two cultures has been charged with social and political conflict that has defined and will continue to define Mauritanian politics. Even Islam, to which virtually the entire population adhered after the ninth century, provided but a veneer of unity.
In the 3rd century of the Christian Era, Berbers moved into Mauritania and controlled trade routes between Koumbi Saleh, Aoudaghoust and Timbuctu (today's Mali). Their most important "products," as noted above, were slaves, gold, ivory, copper and salt.
In 1445, this area's first contact with Europeans began when Portuguese traders set up a trading base on Arguin Island in northern Mauritania. The main trading product was acacia tree gum.
Northern Mauritania was conquered by the Beni Hassan Arabs and the Berber language and identity was eventually replaced.
Since 1677, the Arabs won a battle with the Berbers, putting Arabs in control, with Berbers in the middle (divided into 2 groups: religious scholars called zawiyas and farmers and herders called znaga), and the blacks on the bottom (also divided into 2 groups: former slaves called haratani and slaves, abid).
Other Europeans became interested in Mauritania only in the second half of the sixteenth century. French traders at Saint Louis in what is now Senegal purchased gum arabic from producers in southern Mauritania. Until the mid-nineteenth century, and then for only a short period when French forces occupied the Trarza and Brakna regions in southern Mauritania, Arabs and Berbers paid little heed to the Europeans. The French, English and Dutch traders fought for control over the gum trade, while the Portuguese were losing their influence. Soon the slave trade also became very important to the French, and for the Mauritanians as it developed into an important source of income: they sold black slaves to the French in exchange for firearms, cloth and sugar. Dutch traders pulled out by 1727.
During the early 19th Century, civil war broke out between the emirates, with France playing an important part in strengthening tensions and, in 1814, with the Treaty of Paris, France obtained territorial rights over Mauritania, as part of an agreement with other European states and, of course, without any agreement from the Mauritanians.
Weekly News and Chronicle, March 11, 1854
London, United Kingdom
The Mediterranean cruiser that sails along the coasts of Mauritania and Numidia hails the classic kingdoms of larba, of Dido, of Juba, of Jugurtha, of Siphax, and of Massinissa. The traveller while pacing its sunny shore recalls the glories and the heresies of the North-African church; its Cyprian, its Augustine, its Hippo Regius, and its Cirta. Passing the supposed site of the ruins of Utica, his mind dwells on the heroic death of Cato, the last Republican, whose lofty spirit preferred a violent death, rather than bend to the general oppression ol the empire; standing on the ruins of Carthage, he reflects on the revolutions of empires, the Scipios, Hannibal, and llegulus. The image of the gentle, saintly king of France floats before him, as he lies on his couch of ashes on that pestilential shore. Crossing to Goletta, the fort of Tunis, he sees the walls and towers that be ir witness to the Christian zeal and valour of a Spanish emperor and a British admiral. In one place he crosses a river in whose turbid stream the veteran Massinissa found his last home; farther on, he reaches the spot where Genseric and his Vandal host, descending from Spain on the devoted land, proceeded to convert the granary of Rome into a howling wilderness. Not far hence he views the plain where the Greek army of the gallant Belisarius levelled the Vandal pride with the dust. Or if he visits the crumbling battlements of Kairwan, Tlemsen, or Fez, his mind reverts to the days of Arab glory, when the gallant hand of Islam flashed like a meteor over the valleys and plains of Mauritania, and plunging on their fiery chargers into the Western Ocean, threatened to reduce the stormy sea into subjection to the Crescent. A melancholy grandeur hovers over this historical land, and the shades of might; hosts and nations long since gathered to their fathers seem still to linger and haunt its spectral cities.
By 1857, after commercial slavery had officially been abolished (1820), but not necessary honored by all nations, British traders pulled out of Mauritania and established themselves in Gambia, leaving Mauritania in the hands of the French. The French occupied the country in close cooperation with Maur religious leaders. Mauritania became a nation after the destruction of the kingdoms of Fouta Toro and Walo Walo and the Arab-Berber emirats of Trarza, Brakna, Taganet, and Adrar. The most important common denominator has become Sunni Islam.
The New York Times, March 19, 1882
New York, New York
ENTIRE RACES EXTINCT
Animals That Have Disappeared in Recent Times
THE EXIT OF THE GREAT AUK--
THE LAST OF A RACE AND HOW HE WAS
TREATED--
THE MOA, THE DODO, THE MAMMOTH AND THE REST.
. . . One of the moat interesting of recent cases is that of the Great auk, or Alca-impennis. Tbe skins or bones are so rare that each individual has its history and price; the latter might be quoted at $1,000 or more, as only 60 specimens are known in the world. No living specimen has been obtained for 40 years. In 1860 tbe Museum of Natural History at Central Park purchased one in London for $750, and the bird and egg, both fine
specimens, can be seen there. The auk was about three feet in height, its wings only three or four inches long. It was an inhabitant of the very highest latitudes, and at one time extremely common in the Arctic seas. The ancient shell-heaps on the Atlantic coast show abundant remains of this bird as far south as tbe New-England coast. Vuttall, in 1834, records the birds as then breeding in great numbers. "As a diver he is unrivaled," he says," having almost the velocity of birds of the air. They breed in the Faroe Islands and in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, nesting among tbe cliffs, laying but one egg each. They are so unprolific that if this egg is destroyed no other is laid during the season. It is sometimes known to lay at St. Kilda and in Papa Wastra." The last seen alive were at the Funks, a small island off the coast of Newfoundland. In 1844 the last known to be alive on the eastern continent were seen at Iceland. In 1870 a dead, frozen specimen was found at Labrador, which, though in poor condition, was sold in London for $1200. The only specimens in this country are one at Central Park, Vassar College, Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, Cambridge University, and the National Museum. The single egg that the great auk yearly deposited was evidently not enough to insure its preservation, and year after year it became less abundant, perhaps killed by the Indians along our coast. Finally, the last one was destroyed, and in 200 years more its existence will be a legend, and the steel engravings of the present specimens the only reminders of the giant of the auks.
. . . Two hundred and fifty years ago, a number of curious birds abounded in the Island of Mauritius, and were so common that sailors killed them in wanton sport; while to-day a good specimen would bring several thousands of dollars. In 1612 they were found in great numbers, but in 1712, when the French took possession of the island, not a dodo was round. This and the Solitaire have totally disappeared In this brief period. The former waa a sluggish bird weighing about 50 pounds—a gigantic pigeon. It is evident that the dodo was not killed to eat, and, indeed, some of the old works state that the sailors destroyed them for the curious polished stone found In their crops. At this, or probably an earlier time, there lived in tbe Island of Madagascar a race of gigantic ostrich-like birds known as the Epinornis. In a report to tbe French Academy of Sciences M. St Hillaire described some of their eggs. The Captain of a merchant vessel trading to Madagascar one day observed a native using for domestic purposes a vane, which much resembled an auck and, upon examination proved to be one. The native stated many such could be obtained in the interior of the island and eventually procured the bones and eggs exhibited by M. St. Hillaire before the Academy. The bird was about 19 feet in ehgiht, judging by its bones, and the eggs were 18 inches or 12,000 humming birds' eggs, and holding by actual measurement two gallons of water.
