ABSTRACT
Much of the history of north-west Africa is the history of foreigners. Its civilizations have been imposed on its indigenous people largely from outside, and it was usually conquered from outside. Yet they have endured with considerable vigour. The Arabs, for instance, have dominated North Africa and its people since the seventh century AD; their religion and language survive to this day. The Phoenicians arrived at the beginning of the first millennium BC and remained its most powerful inhabitants—although a tiny minority—until the second century BC. Their maritime empire under the Carthaginians lasted nearly four centuries—longer than the land empire of Alexander the Great. Their influence, like that of the Arabs after them, survived for centuries afterwards, even when their power had been completely destroyed, and Carthage itself had been obliterated by the Romans.
