European colonial conquest of North Africa began with Napoleon's 1798 invasion. [fact]

    European colonial conquest of North Africa began with Napoleon's 1798 invasion. [fact]
  

With Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, we witness the beginning of serious European attempts to conquer Muslim lands in North Africa and the Middle East. Napoleon's efforts failed, in part as a result of British intervention, but the French would succeed in invading and occupying Algeria in 1830. Algeria became the first permanent European colony in North Africa, and its conquest marked the beginning of a long, tumultuous, and at times bloody conflict between colonizer and colonized.
Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 172