What defines the Algerian Border?

Try as hard as I might I cannot find any specifics as to what defines nearly any border in Africa, let alone most of the world. Is there some sort of site that has this information? I'm looking for specifics, like a geographical feature or a border treaty defining parallels.

I merely chose Algeria at random, but any site that explains the reason behind borders would be fantastic. I'm aware of both the 1830 Conquest and the Berlin Conference but I still don't understand why the border is like it is and what legal document actually states that this is what the border is.
 
Try as hard as I might I cannot find any specifics as to what defines nearly any border in Africa, let alone most of the world. Is there some sort of site that has this information? I'm looking for specifics, like a geographical feature or a border treaty defining parallels.

I merely chose Algeria at random, but any site that explains the reason behind borders would be fantastic. I'm aware of both the 1830 Conquest and the Berlin Conference but I still don't understand why the border is like it is and what legal document actually states that this is what the border is.

Well the European powers didn't look into the EXTREME ethnic diversity in Africa, and Algeria won its independence through war and seeing as its neighbors had artificial borders, it had to adopt them as well.
 
Well the European powers didn't look into the EXTREME ethnic diversity in Africa.

The concept of monoethnic states is actually a pretty Western-centric concept: and even then, it took Europe around a century of violence and ethnic cleansing to achieve that. Traditional African states such as the Buganda Kingdom, Kingdom of Kongo, Sokoto Caliphate, etc. were all ethnically diverse. So while European states definitely didn't care about ethnic divisions when they created borders, the fact that they included multiple ethnicities in the same state is pretty logical in an African context, even if unintentional.

However, there is an actual issue relating to ethnicity and borders, which is how certain groups which were united in the pre-colonial era were split up, i.e. the Bakongo are split between the ROC, DRC, and Angola. Even that isn't completely weird because there were also multiple states of the same ethnicity historically, like the Bakongo had Loango, Kongo, and a few other states. But it's still created tensions, as shown by groups like Bundu dia Kongo.
 
Try as hard as I might I cannot find any specifics as to what defines nearly any border in Africa, let alone most of the world. Is there some sort of site that has this information? I'm looking for specifics, like a geographical feature or a border treaty defining parallels.

I merely chose Algeria at random, but any site that explains the reason behind borders would be fantastic. I'm aware of both the 1830 Conquest and the Berlin Conference but I still don't understand why the border is like it is and what legal document actually states that this is what the border is.

Algeria's southern borders are chosen pretty randomly, defined by latitude and longitude. But the border with Morocco follows natural features, mostly the interior Atlas Mountains and various escarpements and watershed boundaries. Several rivers like the Oued Kiss and the Draa form the border in various parts. Algeria's border with Tunisia is more arbitrary in the Sahara, but from the Chott el Djerid it appears to mostly follow watershed boundaries and ridges within the Atlas. So not the best setup, but not horrible either. IMO the Romans did a better job, since the Romans divided Mauretania Tingitana (with most of modern Morocco) from the rest of Mauretania with the Moulouya River (Malva in Roman times), which IIRC is one of the larger rivers of the region. Of course, "Morocco" as it is now does not include many parts historically ruled by Moroccan states. "Algeria" itself is pretty artificial, given the area tended to be divided between states centered in Ifriqiya and states in Morocco since the Roman Empire (Mauretania vs Africa).

A lot of African borders are nowhere near as bad as they're stereotyped to be, given that they often follow geography. The problem is most of those geographical features never divided an area but instead the opposite--they served as a point of unity.

The concept of monoethnic states is actually a pretty Western-centric concept: and even then, it took Europe around a century of violence and ethnic cleansing to achieve that. Traditional African states such as the Buganda Kingdom, Kingdom of Kongo, Sokoto Caliphate, etc. were all ethnically diverse. So while European states definitely didn't care about ethnic divisions when they created borders, the fact that they included multiple ethnicities in the same state is pretty logical in an African context, even if unintentional.

What helped is that Europeans lumped many potential ethnic groups in their own countries under one header. For instance, a peasant from the Tyrol and a peasant from Mecklenburg are both Germans, even if they could hardly understand each other. Some countries got really successful at this, like how France got Gascons and Picards to both become Frenchmen.
 
What helped is that Europeans lumped many potential ethnic groups in their own countries under one header. For instance, a peasant from the Tyrol and a peasant from Mecklenburg are both Germans, even if they could hardly understand each other. Some countries got really successful at this, like how France got Gascons and Picards to both become Frenchmen.

It took a lot of violence and repression for Europeans to achieve that. To assimilate the Gascons and Picards, for instance, France banned Occitan and punish children caught using it at school. It was effective, but definitely not a method of building national unity that should ever be repeated.
 
Algero-moroccan border:
The northern part of the border, from the coast to Figuig, is the old and natural border between Morocco and Tlemcen and later the Ottomans. Everything south of that was actually a forced landgrab by the french. This is why in Morocco there are a lot of maps where the border from Figuig to Mauretania is not drawn.
 
the African borders tend to be pretty odd especially the Sahara bordering states. i have tried to do an alt history where the historical kingdoms and ethnic groups are taken into account when the Europeans colonised, but it still just looks odd.
 

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the African borders tend to be pretty odd especially the Sahara bordering states. i have tried to do an alt history where the historical kingdoms and ethnic groups are taken into account when the Europeans colonised, but it still just looks odd.

But where else to put Saharan borders, given in many cases there are no natural features to divide them and the natives never lived under a state which cared much about borders before colonisation. In the Algeria-Mali, Algeria-Libya, and Niger-Chad borders, you can see various ridgelines and other natural features of the Sahara used to draw the border in places (check the topography on Google Earth, it lines up perfectly).

Why'd you include the Congo Pedicle in your map, given that it's one of the best examples of poorly-drawn borders in Africa (and to this day plays havoc in Africa given the issues of the Congo Pedicle road).
 
But where else to put Saharan borders, given in many cases there are no natural features to divide them and the natives never lived under a state which cared much about borders before colonisation. In the Algeria-Mali, Algeria-Libya, and Niger-Chad borders, you can see various ridgelines and other natural features of the Sahara used to draw the border in places (check the topography on Google Earth, it lines up perfectly).

Why'd you include the Congo Pedicle in your map, given that it's one of the best examples of poorly-drawn borders in Africa (and to this day plays havoc in Africa given the issues of the Congo Pedicle road).

i wasn't aware that that the Sahara had such features. the reason why i kept the Congo Pediclee was mostly laziness, since i kept Cecil Rhodes and southern African history mostly the same. i decided to edit the rest of Africa to fit into a more informal empire scenario and it seemed logical to keep the border in that area the same since the history was pretty much unchanged. if i was doing a history without Rhodes i would have added all the kingdoms that inhabit the area there and changed the map.
 
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