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Traditionally, the region around Lake Chad was a focal point for trans-Saharan trade routes. Arab traders penetrated the area in the 7th cent. A.D. Shortly thereafter, nomads from North Africa, probably related to the Toubou, entered the region; they eventually established the state of Kanem, which reached its zenith in the 13th cent. Its kings converted to Islam, the religion also practiced by the successor state of Bornu. The Wadai and Bagirmi empires arose in the 16th cent.; they warred with Bornu and in the 18th cent. surpassed it in power. By the early 1890s all of these states, weakened by internal dissension, fell under the control of the Sudanese conqueror Rabah el ZobaIr.
French expeditions advanced into the region in 1890, and French sovereignty over Chad was recognized by agreements among the European powers. In 1900, French forces defeated Rabah's army, and by 1913 the conquest of Chad was completed; it was organized as a French colony in French Equatorial Africa and remained under military rule. Chad was later linked administratively with Ubangi-Shari (now the Central African Republic), but in 1920 it again became a separate colony. It was granted its own territorial legislature in 1946. In the French constitutional referendum of 1958, Chad chose autonomy within the French Community. Full independence was attained on Aug. 11, 1960, with Ngarta Tombalbaye as the first president.
Tombalbaye steadily strengthened his control over the country, and by 1965 it had become a one-party state. Chad suffered severely from the W African drought of the late 1960s and 1970s. Discontent among northern Muslim tribes with the increasing power of Tombalbaye's southern-dominated government evolved into a full-scale guerrilla war in 1966. French troops helped battle the revolt, which ended in 1973. However, the main Muslim guerrilla group, the Chad National Liberation Front (FROLINAT), figured prominently in fighting between Chad and Libya throughout the 1970s and 80s. During this period, Libya occupied various parts of Chad and supplied FROLINAT (which initially did not oppose Libyan expansionism) with arms.
Tombalbaye was killed in a coup in 1975. In 1979 a coalition government headed by Goukouni Oueddei, a former rebel from the north, assumed power, ending control of the government by southern Chadians, but he was overthrown in 1982 by the forces of former prime minister HissEne HabrE. In 1987, the combined forces of FROLINAT and the Chadian government (with French and U.S. military aid) drove Libya from the entire northern region with the exception of the Aozou Strip and parts of Tibesti; in 1994 the International Court of Justice rejected Libya's claims and returned the area to Chad.
In 1990, Idriss DEby, leader of the Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS), overthrew the government and promised democratic reforms and a new constitution. A national democracy conference in 1993 established a transitional government with DEby as interim president and called for free elections within a year. Armed rebel groups continued to challenge the government, which, for its part, repeatedly postponed the elections. Multiparty presidential elections were finally held in 1996; DEby was returned to office, and the MPS also triumphed in the 1997 legislative elections.
The late 1990s saw renewed fighting in the north and other parts of the country. The president was again returned to office in 2001 in a disputed election, and the following year the MPS again won the legislative elections. A peace accord was signed with rebels in the north in May, 2002, but fighting erupted there again in Jan., 2003. The same month the government signed a peace agreement with rebels in E Chad.
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