page_title: Sétif
section_title: Colonization
hierarchical_section_title: Sétif / History / Colonization
caption_attribution_description: Sétif (Algeria). - Grand Hôtel de France.
context_page_description: Sétif is an Algerian city and the capital of the Sétif Province. It is one of the most important cities of eastern Algeria and the country as a whole, since it is considered the trade capital of the country. It is an inner city, situated in the eastern side of Algeria, at 270 kilometers east of Algiers, at 131 km west of Constantine, in the Hautes Plaines region south of Kabylie. The city is at 1,100 meters of altitude.
  The city was part of the ancient Berber kingdom of Numidia, the capital of Mauretania Sitifensis under the rule of the Roman Empire before becoming Muslim during the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb.
  It is considered as the starting point of the May 8th, 1945 protests, which was a crucial factor to the start of the Algerian War.
context_section_description: In the mid-eleventh century this development stopped abruptly, and a defensive wall was built around the city. Nothing more is known of Sétif until the ruins of the town were used by the French army, who built their own fortress on the site in 1848, using the line of the medieval city wall and the Byzantine fortress.
  On 8 May 1945, the day of the formal end of World War II in Europe, an uprising against the occupying French forces in Sétif and the nearby towns Guelma and Kherrata resulted in the deaths of 104 pieds-noirs. The uprising was suppressed through what is now known as the Sétif massacre. Estimates of Algerian casualties vary widely from 2,000 to 40,000 (see Sétif and Guelma massacre).
caption: Sétif during colonization
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