History of Tunisia under French rule

Major developments and improvements were undertaken by the French in several areas, including transport and infrastructure, industry, the financial system, public health, administration, and education.

"For most of their tenure [both began in 1855], Richard Wood and Léon Roches, the consuls respectively of Britain and France, competed fiercely with each other to gain an economic or political edge in Tunisia.

"[9] The Congress of Berlin, held in 1878, convened to discuss the Ottoman Empire, the "sick man" of Europe, following its decisive defeat by Russia, with a focus on its remaining Balkan possessions.

The documents provided that the Bey continue as head of state, but with the French given effective control over a great deal of Tunisian governance, in the form of the Protectorat français en Tunisie.

Already by 1884 the Compagnie du Bône-Guelma had built a rail line running from Tunis west 1,600 km to Algiers, passing through the fertile Medjerda river valley near Beja and over the high tell.

Eventually rail lines were built all along the coast from the northwest at Tabarka to Bizerte, to Tunis and Sousse, to Sfax and Gabès; inland routes went from the coastal ports to Gafsa, to Kasserine, and to El Kef.

Here, the French did no more than passively introduce into Tunisia the fruits of advanced production techniques, and then let neutral market forces wreck their destruction on the local merchants, who could not compete on price.

Hospitals were built, the number of medical doctors increased, vaccinations became common, hence fatalities due to epidemics and other ills decreased; the per annum death-rate dropped dramatically.

Among the areas of study that were sought for their practical value were agriculture, mining, urban sanitation, business and commerce, banking and finance, state administration, manufacture and technology, and education.

Also, the reforming prime minister Khair al-Din had at Tunis in 1875 established Sadiki College, a secondary school (lycee), which from the first taught a curriculum oriented toward the modern world, instruction being in Arabic and also in several European languages.

[41] During the French Protectorate, the goals of Tunisian educators in general developed, so as to include more the introduction of modern fields of study, namely, those leading toward the utilitarian knowledge practiced in Europe.

This took place in the political context of the Protectorate, of course, affecting the existing Muslim institutions of learning,[44] secular Tunisian advancement, and the instruction of young French colons.

Zitouna education continued to expand, running four-year secondary schools at Tunis, Sfax, and Gabes, and also a program at the university level, while remaining a traditional Islamic institution.

Yet this new version of constitutional monarchy, perhaps more liberal, did not resolve the persistent social conflict between (a) the traditional royalists (now divided), (b) the arrived and courted middle class, and (c) the neglected republicans (called "neo-Jacobins" after the French Revolution).

[63] Although for a time democracy replaced royalty, the voters remained conservative, still fearful of instability from the republican left, and under the sway of traditional social hierarchies.

[73][74] During the 1920s Habib Bourguiba while studying for his law degree at the University of Paris astutely observed first hand how French politicians formulated and strategized their domestic agendas.

[82] Long before the recent rise of Europe, and for centuries sharing this distinction with distant China, Muslim Arab civilization led the world in the refinement and in the prosperity of its citizens.

[96] 'Abduh cultivated reason and held the controversial view that in Muslim law the doors of ijtihad were open, i.e., permitting the learned to make an original interpretation of sacred texts.

By the eve of the First World War (1914–1918), Tunisian 'nationalists' had developed and it adherents encountered an opportunity to publicly define themselves, in terms not only domestic but in light of widespread trends and foreign events.

[144][145][146][147][148] "The intellectuals, the bourgeoisie, the students and the proletariat reacted against the French administration and economic measures; they defended their right of work against the immigrants; they demanded legal equality with strangers; they wanted to maintain the principle of Tunisian sovereignty.

The settlers organized themselves into interest groups in order to maintain their leading position, to protect their engine of money-making and the source of Tunisia's relatively rapid development.

Settler interests could be diverse across the gamut of social issues at home in France, while in North Africa they united for the struggle to defend their common advantages and privileges.

Tunisian Jews, many families resident since late antiquity, others relatively recent immigrants from Italy, often seemed to occupy a precarious position in between the established local traditions and the new European modernity.

Various causes and/or justifications were proposed during the period of the Protectorate as its self-explanation: for revenue and natural resources, for export markets, for cultural expansion and national prestige, for career opportunities and jobs for the arriving colons, or as a frontier for the military.

Meanwhile, the German Afrika Korps with the Italian Army retreated from Egypt westward to Tunisia and set up defensive positions at the Mareth Line south of Gabès.

"[206] Habib Bourguiba, the leading figure in the Neo-Destour party, imprisoned in Vichy France, had been taken to Rome by the Germans, and feted there to further Italian designs on Tunisia; then he was repatriated to his Axis-occupied homeland.

Due to the lack of significant progress during 1954 armed groups of Tunisians, called Fellagha, began to muster and conduct operations in resistance to French rule, beginning with attacks in the mountains.

[226][227] Ultimately faced with simultaneous defeat at Dien bien Phu in Vietnam, and the upsurge of revolution in Algeria, France agreed to the end of the Protectorate in Tunisia.

The young graduate is offered a position, the public servant a higher rank, the businessman substantially lower taxes, the industrialist raw materials and labor at attractive prices."

"[235] "There are other Muslim nations [beside Iran] which have had varying degrees of attachment to their pre-Islamic legacies--the Egyptians to the Pharaonic, the Lebanese to the Phoenicians, the Tunisians to the Carthaginian, and the Iraqis to the Babylonian.