First Contact

The coast of North Africa, particularly where modern day Algeria is, was the obsession with early antiquity. The coast of North Africa was a hot spot for agriculture. Further, the Carthaginian civilization was booming in Carthage and threatened Roman interests in the island of Sicily. These factors set up the first contact between the Western world and North Africa.

Possibly the very first contacts between the Western world and North Africa are lost to history. There is evidence of a possible settlement in Cyrene which is from Greek origin: "A fourth-century inscription relating to the establishment of the settlement at Cyrene in North Africa, which allegedly preserves the original wording of an original decree of the seventh century, required one of every two brothers to relocate from Thera to the new foundation..." (Garland, 43). However, the true lasting contact between North Africa and the Western world was with the great Roman Republic.

Before the First Punic Wars, Rome signed three treaties with the Carthaginians which proved to be the first lasting contact with the Romans. The main contention with which the treaties were concerned with had to do with trade: "So the treaty of 508 BC was precisely drawn up to delimit the sphere of commercial activities of the Romans, who were excluded from trading along the African coast west of Carthage" (Fields, 58-59). The Carthaginians were then a powerful entity on the Mediterranean and tried to exercise economic control over the budding Roman Republic. These treaties were some of the first interactions between the two nations.

The influence of these first talks were dramatic. Eventually, the trading disputes continued to blow up. This would go on to a series of wars called the "Punic Wars" which saw the Romans flex their international muscle and military prestige. The First Punic War was merely a prolonged warning using military force; the second was much more dramatic. The Carthaginian General Hannibal gathered a force that threatened Rome herself. He was defeated. During the Third Punic War, Rome sieged Carthage itself and saw her destruction. From then on, Carthage, and North Africa, was a colony of Rome.

Bibliography

Garland, Robert. Wandering Greeks : The Ancient Greek Diaspora from the Age of Homer to the Death of Alexander the Great. Princeton, US: Princeton University Press, 2014. Accessed October 6, 2016. ProQuest ebrary.

Fields, Nic. Roman Conquests : North Africa. Barnsley, US: Pen and Sword, 2011. Accessed October 6, 2016. ProQuest ebrary.