France's colonisation of Tunisia (1881)

01France's colonisation of Tunisia (1881)

Why French expansion was easy

• Seizing Algeria was part of a great French project to build a French empire in North Africa.
• Neither the Karamanli family in Tripoli nor the Beys of Tunisia had the capacity to confront French colonialism.
• The Ottoman state took negative positions towards the French colonisation of Algeria, until it saw that French greed was reaching beyond that, and so it worked to save Tunisia and Tripoli by restoring direct rule over both.
• The Sultan succeeded in 1835 in expelling the Karamanli family from Tripoli and governing the country directly, and in 1836 he sent naval warships to Tunisia.
• France objected, claiming that Tunisia had an independent entity in whose affairs the Sultan had no right to interfere — a step preparing the way for France to act alone in Tunisia.
• Nor was this easy for France, because Tunisia was also the target of other great powers — England and Italy — the latter having moved to build a colonial empire after the Italians achieved their unity (1859–1870).

The colonial competition over Tunisia

• Among the signs of the competition: the race of the three states to win agents inside the high Tunisian administration and to obtain as many investments as possible.
• The high administration was eager to cooperate with the great powers to modernise the country politically, economically, culturally and militarily.
• Bey Muhammad (1855–1859) issued the Covenant of Security (Ahd al-Aman), by which citizens became equal before the law, and Bey Muhammad al-Sadiq issued a constitution in 1861.
• In his time railway and telegraph lines and ports were carried out by French and English companies.
• Every time one foreign state won a concession from the Tunisian government, the other great powers got the same concession — so France, England and Italy obtained the right to own land in Tunisia.
• As happened in Egypt, Tunisia was pushed into the trap of foreign loans until it went bankrupt, at a time when international competition over colonising the Arab lands was rising.

The Congress of Berlin 1878 and France acting alone

• The international balance was upset when Russia defeated the Ottoman state in 1878 and imposed the treaty of San Stefano, which produced an oversized Bulgaria that was Russia's claw.
• The other great powers refused, and Europe stood on the brink of a major war; Bismarck, chancellor of the German Reich, invited the competing states to settle their problems at the table of the Congress of Berlin (1878) at the expense of "the Sick Man of Europe", the Ottoman state.
• During the congress Britain snatched Cyprus from the Ottoman state in exchange for a promise to defend it; France flew into a rage, and Britain concurred in letting France act alone in Tunisia.
• Italy, greedy for Tunisia, left angry and in 1882 joined the alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary against France.
• The French harnessed Tunisia to French interests and even sought to distort its Arab-Islamic identity; but Tunisia was more capable of preserving its identity: it clung to the Islamic solidarity launched by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and adopted by Sultan Abdulhamid II, and national parties were formed to struggle and demand independence.