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Algeria's agonies of economic adjustment and chronic civil war are excessive by Mediterranean standards. Algeria illustrates the pernicious problems that scholars often ascribe to oil rents: a distorted economy, civil strife and authoritarian government. The 'resource curse' literature suggests that such economies suffer from a sort of geological predetermination: mineral wealth is a form of original sin. This essay examines the connection between oil wealth and Algeria's descent into turmoil in the 1990s and compares Algeria with neighbouring Tunisia, which shares many characteristics but is less dependent on oil. It concludes that the original sin was not hydrocarbons but a primitive form of French colonialism. Before oil revenues took off in the 1970s, Algeria's trajectory was conditioned already by the intensity of the colonial occupation, the trauma of national liberation, the destruction of civil society and political intermediaries, and a lingering identity crisis. The state remained alien and bereft of legitimacy - at best, a source of rents for political profiteers. Oil wealth may have compounded Algeria's difficulties, but the decimation of the country's intermediaries better explains how the problems arose and why they are now so acute compared with neighbouring countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]