This paper develops a theory of control for distributed systems (i.e., those defined by systems of constant coefficient partial differential operators) via the behavioral approach of Willems. The study here is algebraic in the sense that it relates behaviors of distributed systems to submodules of free modules over the polynomial ring in several indeterminates. As in the lumped case, behaviors of distributed ARMA systems can be reduced to AR behaviors. This paper first studies the notion of AR controllable distributed systems following the corresponding definition for lumped systems due to Willems. It shows that, as in the lumped case, the class of controllable AR systems is precisely the class of MA systems. It then shows that controllable 2-D distributed systems are necessarily given by free submodules, whereas this is not the case for n-D distributed systems, n greater than or equal to 3. This therefore points out an important difference between these two cases. This paper then defines two notions of autonomous distributed systems which mimic different properties of lumped autonomous systems. Control is the process of restricting a behavior to a specific desirable autonomous subbehavior. A notion of stability generalizing bounded input{bounded output stability of lumped systems is proposed and the pole placement problem is defined for distributed systems. This paper then solves this problem for a class of distributed behaviors.