On the western coast of Africa, bordering the Saharan desert and Algeria, lies the republic of Mauritania. By land size it is quite large – about as big as Texas and New Mexico combined – but 80% of that land is barren desert. The majority of its people live in the capital, Nouakchott, on the North Atlantic coast. Likely because such large swaths of it were useless to France, which colonized all of West Africa in the 1800s, Mauritania was not ruled directly, but through local Muslim leaders. Like the rest of Western Africa, it regained independendence well after WW II.

On this day, November 28, in 1960, with France’s blessing Mauritania declared independence, setting Nouakchott, then just a small village, as the new capital.

Unlike some of its neighbors, Mauritania’s politics remained relatively stable for decades, free from coups or the rise of military juntas. Mauritania had a short-lived annexation attempt of Western Sahara, aborted in the face of guerilla fighter pressure, but peace was restored by the 1980. Trouble started brewing after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, as local Islamists complained of oppression. In 2005 a coup overthrew the government, and in 2008 a military junta arrested the president elected just a year before. That junta currently rules Mauritania.