Tunisia

Introduction

The geographic entity that is modern Tunisia was the onetime Roman province of Ifriqiya, breadbasket of the empire, whose name was later given to the entire continent of Africa. Carthage was its most famous city. Steeped in mythological traditions, from the travails of Aeneas to the land of the Lotus Eaters in Homer’s Odyssey, Tunisia has traditionally stood at the crossroads between East and West, the Mediterranean and Arab Islamic world. This tie to the classical past served as one ideological justification for French colonial intervention, an irredentist mission to rescue the heritage of classical civilization from the Arab tribal hordes who had supposedly devastated the country over the intervening centuries. Due to the costly experience of directly incorporating neighboring Algeria’s settler colony into the French mainland, in 1881 modern Tunisia became a protectorate that kept the indigenous dynasty of rulers in place as figureheads until independence in 1956. Real power, however, lay in the hands of the French resident general. Tunisia’s long tutelage has caused it to be regarded by Middle Easterners as a country of pseudo-Arabs and much too French, with little connection to the Ottoman and Islamic past, suspended between and Mediterraneanism and Orientalism. Colonial history was a product of its sources, mostly travelers’ accounts and official consular archives. Travelers and officials treated Tunisia’s indigenous populations as culturally backward, disorderly, and fanatical and the administration as hopelessly corrupt. Fanaticism and xenophobia were attributed to Islam, acting as a force of obscurantism. Against this backdrop, progress-driven narratives of modernity have animated both colonial and nationalist historiographies. The architect and founding father of modern Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, took the reins of power in 1956, ruling continuously until his ouster in 1987 by his prime minister, Zine al Abidine Ben Ali, in a bloodless medical coup that put the aging leader under house arrest until his death in 2000. Both leaders showed early promise to usher in democratic reforms that never materialized. Bourguiba set Tunisia’s course as a secular Western-style republic with one of the most liberal legal codes regulating the status of women in the Muslim world. But in 1975 he declared himself president for life. Likewise, Ben Ali liberalized the markets, creating the “Tunisian economic miracle,” and talked the rhetoric of human rights, all while he ran a police state and used state coffers as his and his family’s personal bank account. The situation exploded in December 2011, when a fruit seller set himself on fire after the confiscation of his cart deprived him of his livelihood. The act touched off the “Jasmine Revolution,” whose popular protests forced Ben Ali to flee the country. This bibliography analyzes the sources and historical trajectory of Tunisia from the 18th century to the 2011 revolution.

General Overviews

For a basic if somewhat politically focused narrative account of North African history, ʾAbun-Nasr 1987 is indispensable reading, as it was the first survey of the region in English. Although less well-known, Morsy 1984, also available in English, is a highly readable synthesis documenting local events not normally mentioned elsewhere. Boldly conceived, it includes both Egypt and Sudan in a history of North Africa to underscore the interconnectedness of the events and geographies but also to suggest that the Maghreb is as much a political as a geographic construct. (Most political constructions of the Maghreb include Mauritania, but history books have been slow to catch up with political developments.) Magali Morsy is thus able to establish connections between Egypt and North African Ottoman provinces, specifically Tunisia. Connections include the pattern of 19th-century reform under the Ottoman Tanzimat (meaning reorganization), economic links in the trans-Saharan caravan and slave trades, and the movement of Sufi orders along with the circulation of ideas of the early Islamic modernists. A detailed textbook account much more focused on the particulars of colonial history is Bensamoun and Chalak 2007. Available only in French, the text is indispensable for beginning students interested in colonialism or new to North African history and historiography. It includes biographical information in footnotes and definitions of unfamiliar or technical terminology. Paginated cross-referencing of important terms, agents, movements, and ideas make this text user-friendly. Rejecting the paradigms of Eurocentric modernization theory, Hermassi 1975 uses the state as an analytic tool to compare the histories of the region, critiquing and superseding anthropological models of Maghrebi society. Like Hermassi 1975, Anderson 1986 presents a comparative and longitudinal analysis of the state-led reform projects that produced such different historical trajectories in Tunisia and Libya, both of which had once been Ottoman provinces. For an in-depth and comparative analysis of nationalist movements in French North Africa and the intransigent response of the colonial administrations attempting to hold on to power against an increasingly restive population clamoring for independence, Julien 2002 is invaluable. Concentrating exclusively on Tunisia, Perkins 2004 and Alexander 2010 provide highly readable narratives. Alexander focuses on more contemporary history and internal regime politics; Perkins gives the most comprehensive narrative account of the history of modern Tunisia from the liberal experiment of the 1850s beginning with the reforms of Ahmed Bey ben Mohamed Chérif to the Zine al Abidine Ben Ali era. Perkins 2004 is particularly detailed on the liberation, early nationalist struggles, and the Bourguiba era. That overview traces common development patterns while pointing out useful contrasts in precolonial, colonial, national liberation, and consolidation periods.

ʾAbun-Nasr, Jamil M. A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511608100Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based on the author’s classic 1971 book A History of the Maghrib (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), this was the first historical survey of the region available in English. This edition is a basic narrative starting point, adding information on the 7th-century Arab invasions and 11th-century Hilalian invasions. It also expands the sections on colonial and nationalist history, contextualizing and comparing the history of North Africa, defined as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
Find this resource:
Alexander, Christopher. Tunisia: Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb. Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Survey of state reform efforts with particular attention to the inner-party politics and squabbles of the Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali eras.
Find this resource:
Anderson, Lisa. The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830–1980. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Comparative account of the precolonial and nationalist eras for the 19th-century Ottoman regencies that eventually became Tunisia and Libya. The comparative framework is illuminating, but it is state-centered, and the analysis is driven by modernization paradigms. The author’s thesis, that nationalism is the result of top-down projects of state intervention, leaves little room for any indigenous push from below or for the agency of nonelites.
Find this resource:
Bensamoun, Yvette Katan, and Rama Chalak. Le Maghreb: De l’Empire Ottoman a la fin de la colonisation française. Paris: Editions Belin, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Useful for both students and seasoned scholars. Excellent source for what became the French Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Includes cross-references of sociological and or cultural terms and internal cross-references of recurring themes.
Find this resource:
Hermassi, Elbaki. Leadership and National Development in North Africa: A Comparative Study. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Landmark comparative study of nationalism and national culture in North Africa using the state as the unit of analysis, from the precolonial period to the consolidation of regional nation-states. Includes Morocco and Libya. Critiques many of the anthropological concepts explaining the social and political life of tribal populations.
Find this resource:
Julien, Charles-André. L’Afrique du Nord en marche: Nationalismes musulmans et souveraineté française. Paris: Omnibus, 2002.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Originally published in 1952 and prescient in its analysis of rising independence movements across North Africa, this authoritative text demonstrates how nationalist movements influenced one another and how the French colonial government perceived its mission and the challenge of granting self-governance. Useful for understanding interconnections between movements.
Find this resource:
Morsy, Magali. North Africa, 1800–1900: A Survey from the Nile Valley to the Atlantic. London: Longman, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This event-driven narrative includes local struggles not normally discussed in other histories. Useful introduction to principal players and includes both Egypt and Sudan. Accepts the segmentary theory of tribal society and falls back on its major tenets to explain rebel movements.
Find this resource:
Perkins, Kenneth J. A History of Modern Tunisia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Survey history of modern Tunisia that is particularly comprehensive on the nationalist period but thin on the Ben Ali era. Focuses on Tunisia, examining the recurring process of reform as well as persistent authoritarianism. Excellent coverage of the formation of the Tunisian General Labour Union and the struggle between the two Dustur (Arabic for constitution) parties and Habib Bourguiba’s struggle with his early political rival Zaida Ben Yusuf.
Find this resource:
Reference Works

Pouillon 2008 examines French production of knowledge of the Orient broadly conceived, including the Far East. It includes entries written by prominent historians recounting the story behind the personalities, organizations, centers, magazines, periodicals, and even paintings and photographs generating regional knowledge in French from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. It is not exhaustive but is, however, particularly strong on Algeria and the Levant. More localized in scope, Perkins 1997 presents Tunisia’s interconnected history from the founding of Carthage in 814 BCE and to Tunisia’s official recognition of Israel in 1996. It contains an introduction to physical and human geography and an economic profile. For the historian of colonialism, it includes a chronological list of colonial residents general. The dictionary places Tunisia at the crossroads of European, Middle Eastern, African, and Mediterranean civilizations.

Perkins, Kenneth J. Historical Dictionary of Tunisia. London: Scarecrow, 1997.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Covers political history and figures arranged in alphabetical order but also includes definitions of Islamic institutions and their evolution over time. Entries are cross-indexed. Bibliography is over a hundred pages and covers several languages. Includes literature on women and gender. Will serve the scholar interested in sub-Saharan Africa, the Near East, Europe, the greater Maghreb, and the Mediterranean world.
Find this resource:
Pouillon, François, ed. Dictionnaire des orientalistes de la langue française. Paris: Karthala, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Alphabetically arranged entries written by prominent practitioners in the field place knowledge production about the Middle East and North Africa in historical context. It will serve scholars interested in the sociology of knowledge and intellectual and social history and those merely looking for context.
Find this resource:
Primary Sources

Tunisia has extensive documentary collections in its national archives and at the Higher Institute of National History at Tunis, which houses many documents from French archives on microfilm. The works listed here are essential readings for key periods in Tunisian history. The main source for the precolonial period is Ibn abi al-Diyāf 1963, whose title, translated as Present to the people of our age: Chronicles of the kings of Tunis and the security pact, narrates the history of the Husaynid Dynasty to 1871. Aḥmad Ibn abi al-Diyāf argues that royal absolutism was the cause of decline, which could be curbed by the rule of law limiting executive power. Brown 2005 is the English translation of the introduction to the Ibn abi al-Diyāf chronicle and sets up the aims of the work. Grandchamp 1935 provides a multiarchive documentary collection covering the revolt of 1864, known locally as the revolt of ’Alī ibn Ghadhāham, which ended the constitutional experiment. Although it makes no mention of the 1864 revolt, Khayr al-Dīn’s treatise The Surest Path, originally written in 1867 and later translated in Brown 1967, clearly has its devastating consequences in mind as it outlines the reform path for the survival of Muslim states. Khayr al-Dīn refutes objections that liberal reforms were contrary to Sharia law because they were based on an alien civilization. He further argues that liberal constitutional reform alone could serve as a basis for political stability that would foster modernizing change. The goal was the establishment of a strong government that would preserve Muslim autonomy against European encroachment. Bayram 1989 presents the views of another 19th-century reformer, a member of the scholarly class. Tha’ālbī 1920 is a political tract that provides the program for Tunisia’s first nationalist party, the Dustur. Husni and Newman 2007 is a book on the condition of women that provided the underpinning of Tunisia’s liberal attitude toward gender equality, institutionalized in the personal status code (see Sfeir 1957, cited under Women at the Crossroads of Modernity and Identity). Bourguiba 1979 is an autobiography that offers invaluable insight into the personality of Tunisia’s first president.

Bayram, Muḥammad Ibn Mustafa. Ṣafwat al-i’tibār bi-mustawda’ al-amsār wa-al-aqṭār. Edited by Abdelhafidh Mansour, ’Alī’ Chenoufi, and Riyadh Marzouki. Tunisia: Beit al-Hikma, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Abridged travel narrative from a 19th-century Muslim reformer, member of the ulema, and editor of the country’s first newspaper. Provides contextual information on the Tunisia of the late 19th century and various locations in the Mediterranean. Full volume available only in Arabic.
Find this resource:
Bourguiba, Habib. My Life, My Ideas, My Struggle. Tunis: Ministry of Information, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bourguiba’s memoirs give an invaluable clue to his view of the state, his concept of Tunisian identity, and the place of Islam in the new Tunisia and psychological insights into his personality and worldview. His speeches are collected under the title Discours and are available in numerous volumes not mentioned here.
Find this resource:
Brown, Leon Carl, trans. Consult Them in the Matter: A Nineteenth-Century Islamic Argument for Constitutional Government. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Translation of the introduction of Ibn abi al-Diyāf 1963. Invaluable resource presenting the argument that the 19th-century reformer had to limit beylical power and implement liberal reform. The introduction, which sets up the rationale for the succeeding eight volumes, attempts to place liberal reforms in a Muslim context.
Find this resource:
Brown, Leon Carl, trans. The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a Nineteenth-Century Muslim Statesman; A Translation of the Introduction to The Surest Path to Knowledge concerning the Condition of Countries, by Khayr al-Dīn Al-Tunisi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Essential reading for scholars interested in 19th-century North African and Middle Eastern history, political modernization, and social change. Al-Tunisi also published his treatise in French, as evidence that he could bridge two political cultures. Includes notes explaining specialized terminology.
Find this resource:
Grandchamp, Pierre. Documents relatifs à la revolution de 1864 en Tunisie. 2 vols. Tunis: Aloccio, 1935.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Collection of documents from European, beylical, and Ottoman archives. Includes excerpts from travel accounts covering the revolt of 1864.
Find this resource:
Husni, Ronak, and Daniel L. Newman, eds. Muslim Women in Law and Society: Annotated Translation of al-Tāhir al-Ḥaddād’s Imra’ ̕tunā fi ’l-sharī’a wa ’l-mujtama’, with an Introduction. London: Routledge, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The original title translates as “Our woman in the Sharia and society,” written by the early 20th-century Tunisian author and reformist al-Ṭāhir Ḥaddād (Taher Haddad). Popularly hailed as one of the first Muslim feminists, he advances the thesis that Muslim society and traditions inhibit women.
Find this resource:
Ibn abi al-Diyāf, Aḥmad. Itḥāf ahl al-zamān bi-akhbār mulūk Tūnis wa-’ahd al-amān. 8 vols. Tunis: Dar Tūnsiyya lil-Nashr, 1963.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Also known as Ibn Diyāf, the author was a secretary to five successive beys. His account, written in secret during the 1860s and published posthumously after independence, has become the authoritative source for the precolonial period and the history of the beylicate. For an annotated French translation of Books 4 and 5 with a biographical dictionary, see André Raymond, Itḥāf ahl al-zamān bi-aḫbār mulûk Tûnis wa ʻahd al-amān: Chapitres IV et V; Règnes de Ḥusaïn Bey et Muṣṭafā Bey (Tunis: Alif/Les Editions de Méditerranée, 1994).
Find this resource:
Tha’ālbī, Abdelazziz. La Tunisie martyre: Ses revendications. Paris: Jouve, 1920.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Political tract by a member of the ulema. Argues for the restoration of the 1861 Tunisian constitution, the creation of an elected assembly and independent judiciary, education, and the safeguarding of individual liberties. Demands evolved into the first political party, the Dustur (Constitution).
Find this resource:
Letters and Narrative Accounts

The most often cited accounts of travelers, invaluable for the study of European Muslim relations, testify to the colonizing “gaze” of Europeans in the encounter with indigenous populations. All are available for free download on Google Books. Arranged chronologically, social changes, social structure, and the details of daily life become easier to study. Observations have implications for historiographical debates on the onset of “civilizational decline,” regional integration, customs and mores, the purported absence of rule of law, religion, and persistent European stereotypes of the “Muslim other.” The English doctor Thomas Shaw (see Shaw 1738) traveled during a period of relative prosperity at the beginning of the Husaynid Dynasty. Because the author was looking for potential investments during a time of European upheaval, MacGill 1811 focuses on handicrafts and markers of industry as well as customs and mores. Temple 1835 offers the first traveler account in English after the French takeover of neighboring Algeria and includes observations on other Muslim-majority Mediterranean countries of the time. J. A. Peysonnel (Peysonnel 1987), a traveler physician, recorded his impressions of the two regencies, Tunis and Algiers. Written by an officer turned consul in the French Algerian administration, Pellisier 1980 gives impressions of the Tunisian hinterland and coastal towns. Perry 1869 chronicles the aftermath of revolt, and the German physician Gustav Nachtigal describes the trade and social ties to greater Africa in Nachtigal 1971.

MacGill, Thomas. An Account of Tunis: Of Its Government, Manners, Customs, and Antiquities; Especially of Its Productions, Manufactures, and Commerce. Glasgow: Hedderwick, 1811.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Written by a Scotsman on behalf of England during the Napoleonic period, the work describes the economy, mores, and government during the reign of Hamuda Pasha (r. 1782–1814), often called the “beylick’s golden age.” Useful for portrayal of the transition from Ottoman province to semiautonomous principality.
Find this resource:
Nachtigal, Gustav. Sahara and Sudan. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Impressions of a German doctor traveling through the Sahara. Includes information on desert nomads, emphasizing the connection with greater Africa, Sufi orders, and specifically the Sanusiyya. Available in French: Sahara et Soudan (Paris: Hachette, 1881) and German, Sahărâ und Sûdân: Ergebnisse sechsjähriger reisen in Afrika (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1889). Many other excerpts of precolonial primary sources and traveler accounts are included in the issues of La Revue Tunisienne. Originally published in 1881.
Find this resource:
Pellisier, E. Description de la regence de Tunis 1840–1842. 2d ed. Tunis: Editions Bouslama, 1980.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A captain and aide-de-camp in the conquest of Algeria, Pellisier was later director of Arab affairs, a member of the scientific mission, and a government functionary in various consular roles in the city of Sousse, 1843–1848. Chapters are introduced by short summary descriptions of content; contains information on population. Tribes are treated as “ethnic groups.” There is a focus on the ruins of ancient Carthage and Numidia, and the book contains chapters on Roman collections, inscriptions, and numismatics. Originally published in 1853.
Find this resource:
Perry, Amos. Carthage and Tunis, Past and Present: In Two Parts. Providence, RI: Providence Press, 1869.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An American ambassador and noted abolitionist presents his observations on the government, administration, and social customs of the regency of Tunis. Particularly useful when compared to other accounts by the consuls of major powers of the time, France and Britain.
Find this resource:
Peysonnel, J. A. Voyage dans les regences de Tunis et d’Alger. Paris: La Découverte, 1987.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Useful for studying comparisons between the two regencies at a time when the “pacification” of Algeria had not yet been completed.
Find this resource:
Shaw, Thomas. Travels; or, Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant. Oxford: Theatre, 1738.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Observations of an English physician traveling in the early Husaynid era. Useful for baseline comparisons with later periods.
Find this resource:
Temple, Grenville T. Excursions in the Mediterranean: Algiers and Tunis. 2 vols. London: Saunders and Otley, 1835.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Useful observations of institutions and decline in maritime power.
Find this resource:
Journals

The paradigms used to analyze changes in the region are changing, as are the questions that frame the research. Revue Tunisienne and Revue Africaine were colonial journals that collapsed after World War II. The pages of Revue Tunisienne were dedicated to archaeology, numismatics, the search for classical inscriptions, and charting the newly conquered territory. Cahiers de Tunisie and Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes both publish historical and literary material. Rawāfid: Majallat al-Maʻhad al-Aʻlá li-Tārīkh al-Ḥarakah al-Waṭanīyah is a journal of historical topics published by the institute for the research on the national movement at the University of Manouba in Tunis. Revue d’Histoire Maghrebine publishes articles on all periods of North African history. Maghreb-Machrek focuses on the connections between the eastern and western sides of the Islamic world, and Jeune Afrique deals with contemporary topics in economics and politics with a focus of the African continent. Journal of North African Studies is peer-reviewed and publishes interdisciplinary scholarly articles and book reviews in English about the Maghreb at large, including Mauritania.

Cahiers de Tunisie.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published by the Tunisian Faculty of Letters. Focused on historical and sociological works. Successor publication to Revue Tunisienne.
Find this resource:
Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
History, literature, and sociology journal run by the Catholic White Fathers, who were early supporters of Tunisian independence.
Find this resource:
Jeune Afrique.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Covers African affairs. Similar in content and scope to the Economist.
Find this resource:
Journal of North African Studies.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Interdisciplinary Anglo-American journal published by Taylor and Francis. Political and economic topics are frequently represented here.
Find this resource:
Maghreb-Machrek.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Launched in 1964 by La Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Centre d’Études des Relations Internationales, Section Afrique du Nord et la Direction de la Documentation, in Paris. Sample issues are available online.
Find this resource:
Rawāfid: Majallat al-Maʻhad al-Aʻlá li-Tārīkh al-Ḥarakah al-Waṭanīyah.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published by the Institut Superieur d’Histoire du Mouvement National (al-Maʻhad al-Aʻlá li-Tārīkh al-Ḥarakah al-Waṭanīyah). Offers historical articles, sometimes arranged by themes in special volumes. Also contains documentary collections.
Find this resource:
Revue Africaine. 1856–1962.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The main colonial journal in North Africa published in Algeria by the Société Historique Algérienne. Full catalogue available online. Superseded by La Revue de la Méditerranée (Université d’Alger), which survived in Aix-en-Provence under the title Revue de l’Occident Musulman et Méditerranéen, the antecedent of Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée.
Find this resource:
Revue d’Histoire Maghrebine.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Tunisian and Maghrebi history journal published by the independent research institute Fondation Temimi. Treats historical topics, with a heavy emphasis on Andalusian, Ottoman, and precolonial periods. Some volumes are multilingual. Particularly good on the review of local scholarship produced by Tunisian historians and students.
Find this resource:
Revue Tunisienne. 1894–1948.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published historical, ethnographic, and scientific research in and on North Africa with a focus on Tunisia. Published by the Institut de Carthage, the journal was financed by the colonial government. A complete catalogue is available online. Like its older sister publication in Algeria, Revue Africaine, Revue Tunisienne was tied to the colonial enterprise and did not survive independence.
Find this resource:
Historiographical Controversies

Much of the Maghreb’s history has been narrated by foreign sources deeply implicated in the colonial project of control and domination. Using imported categories that implicitly compare local realities to a European model of historical transition, colonial narratives seek to explain “what is not there” according to the expectations raised by the model (e.g., the absence of democracy in a liberal transition). This “anthropology of lack” is bound up in the political project that implanted colonialism and the nationalist endeavor to create states and economies according to Western and Eurocentric patterns. Historians of the postcolonial era have therefore called for the creation of histories that seek to understand local realities on their own terms as a project of liberation and decolonization. Laroui 1977 offers a scathing critique of contemporary historiography on the Maghreb that the author claims has not broken through colonial categories and master narratives. He argues that secondary material based on colonial sources is simply repetitive in the citation process and does not add much, because the field lacks practitioners with knowledge of Arabic capable of using indigenous sources. Taking on aspects of the Laroui 1977 project, Ahmida 2000 is a collection of essays that serves as a kind of reckoning, exploring the ideological and political legacies of French colonial historiography on the history of the region. The essays identify some of these colonial paradigms, analyzing the teleology of nationalism still undergirding many historical explanations and accounts. Although it can also be considered a reference, Abdesselem 1973 engages critically with local sources, demonstrating for Tunisian historiography the value of interrogating indigenous sources: the author understands them not as accounts of “objective truth” but as products deeply involved in and marked by the political struggles of their time.

Abdesselem, Ahmed. Les historiens des XVIIe, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles: Essai d’histoire culturelle. Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1973.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Historiographical essay about Tunisian historians writing in Arabic from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Particularly strong on Aḥmad Ibn abi al-Diyāf. Full of contextual information, it is a reference, a history of historiography, and a documentary of source criticism.
Find this resource:
Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif. Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghrib: History, Culture, and Politics. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Collection of essays comparing the project of decolonizing history in both the Maghreb as a region and the individual countries.
Find this resource:
Laroui, Abdallah. The History of the Maghrib: An Interpretive Essay. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Critical essay that surveys the major tropes of colonial historiography from the ancient world to the nationalist project. Urges a decolonization of history. Originally published as L’histoire du Maghreb: Un esai de synthèse (Paris: Maspero, 1970).
Find this resource:
The Regency of Tunis and European Encroachment

Outside of the romantic connection with the classical past, one of the justifications for French colonialism was the ruling power’s inability to control both finances and internal tribal opposition. This particular literature is structured around the existence or nonexistence of a precolonial state that legitimately controls violence, borders, and populations within a territory. Multiple explanations have been advanced to explain the slide into French colonialism. Emerit 1952 examines macro systemic factors, namely the penetration of European capital that gave European goods a competitive edge, assumed as a natural outcome of superior technology and cheaper mass-production methods. Broadley 1882 attributes the colonial takeover to politics, diplomatic intrigues, corrupt business practices in an unregulated climate, and French opportunism, while D’Estournelles de Constant 1891 defends colonialism as a rescue mission to restore order to administrative chaos. Ganiage 1959 recasts Paul Henri Benjamin D’Estournelles de Constant’s narrative of French colonial conquest but includes direct quotes from multiple primary sources, including official consular and commercial archives from various countries. Like Alexander Meyrick Broadley, Jean Ganiage examines the corruption of the business class and its double-dealing strategems but defends the French civilizing mission that greater commercial ties made possible. Mahjoubi 1977 deals with the colonial fait accompli, taking an analytic approach to the implantation of the colonial order. The author examines administrative changes that transformed law, restructured finances, and transferred power to the resident general while keeping the bey as a figurehead responsible for the collection of taxes, which had been a sovereign function. Fitoussi and Bénszet 1931, however, explores the legitimacy of the Tunisian state as a stable legal entity through time.

Broadley, Alexander Meyrick. The Last Punic War: Tunis Past and Present. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1882.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Narrative account of events leading to the imposition of French rule in Tunisia from the perspective of a British lawyer and London Times correspondent. Broadley’s account is highly critical of what he views as French opportunism. Particularly thorough on the immediate events and responses of the 1881 invasion.
Find this resource:
D’Estournelles de Constant, Paul Henri Benjamin. La politique française en Tunisie: Le protectorat et ses origines (1854–1891). Paris: Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1891.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents French colonialism as redemptionist and inevitable. Particularly useful in exposing French colonialist views of “natives.”
Find this resource:
Emerit, Marcel. “La penetration industrielle et commerciale en Tunisie et les origines du protectorat.” Revue Africaine: Société Historique Algérienne 96 (1952): 196–219.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Brings macro forces into the analysis of protectorate origins.
Find this resource:
Fitoussi, Élie, and Aristide Bénszet. L’état tunisien et le protectorat français: Histoire et organisation (1525 à 1881)/(1881 à 1931). Paris: Rousseau et Cie, 1931.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Originally published as a doctoral dissertation, L’état tunisien, son origine, son développement et son organisation actuelle (1525–1901): Étude d’histoire politique, de droit public et de droit international (Tunis: Picard et Cie, 1901). This tract, with its defense of the Tunisian state as an independent, stable legal entity through time, is an early example of nationalism understood juridically in the context of a developing canon of international law.
Find this resource:
Ganiage, Jean. “La crise des finances tunisiennes et l’ascension des Juifs de Tunis (1860–1880).” Revue Africaine Publiée par la Société Historique Algérienne (1955): 152–173.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An analysis of the Jewish community and its linkages to finance and the fiscal crisis.
Find this resource:
Ganiage, Jean. Les origines du protectorat français en Tunisie (1861–1881). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the first studies to incorporate European archival evidence from Great Britain, France, and Italy. Useful for detailed information on European diplomacy, including shady government-business dealings and robber baron corruption. Language of the text is often tinged with patriarchal and deprecatory references to indigenous Muslim Tunisians and Jews. Includes a comprehensive 19th-century biographical dictionary.
Find this resource:
Mahjoubi, Ali. L’établissement du protectorat français en Tunisie. Tunis: Faculté des Lettres, 1977.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Account of the early years of colonial administration imposed as an economic and a legal in addition to a political order. Useful for a theoretical understanding of colonial rule.
Find this resource:
Ottoman Province under the Beys (1705–1881)

The regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, named for their capital cities, were Ottoman provinces during the first thirty years of the 19th century, before the French takeover of Algeria in 1830 and the 1835 reimposition of direct Ottoman rule in Tripolitania. Since 1705 Tunisia (or the regency of Tunis) functioned as a dynastic state ruled by a provincial governor known as a “bey.” Normally appointed by the Porte, the bey’s ruling authority by 1705 and until the end of the colonial era in 1956 was both hereditary and subject to the oath of allegiance of local tribal and notable populations. The literature on the beylicate focuses on the nature of its ties to the Ottoman Empire, whether it was indeed a state or a quasi-state, and the type of authority the bey could exert on subject populations. All of these questions had implications for subsequent colonial rule. European consuls manipulated the ambiguity of the regency’s political status for their own ends, wresting concessions when it suited European strategic and regional goals and thwarting initiatives toward full independence. Mantran 1959 and Moalla both stress the Ottoman character of the regency and its institutions during this time, Moalla claiming that any suggestion of political autonomy was premature, anachronistic, and served the 20th-century interests of nationalist historiography. Examining the origins of the Husaynid Dynasty by analyzing the political career and power bases of its founder, Cherif 1984–1986 takes a more nuanced approach to the issue of autonomy, as does Chater 1994, which tracks the changes of the Husaynid state. Instead of focusing on the state, Kraiem 1973 and Demeerseman 1996 zero in on society, demonstrating the existence of a culture and a social milieu contrary to the assertions of European consuls, travelers, and soldiers who only depicted division and disorder. Chater 1984 gives perhaps the most thoroughly documented account of the political and economic pressures under which the Husaynid Dynasty existed, caught as it was in the cross fire of empires.

Chater, Khalifa. Dépendance et mutations précoloniales. Tunis: Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Tunis, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Extensively researched narrative of the reform and constitutional period that maintains the tension between the regency of Tunis as both a province of the Ottoman Empire (even if nominally) and a quasi-independent state. Demonstrates that Tunis was an integrated economic “space” before 1815. Locates dependency incorporation into the world and regional economy in the 1850s. Text can be considered an answer to Anderson 1986 (cited under General Overviews), which dates the precolonial transition into dependency to the 1820s.
Find this resource:
Chater, Khalifa. “Introduction à l’étude de l’établissement tunisien: L’État makhzen Husseinite et ses mutations.” In La Tunisie: Une dynamique de mutation, 1–18. Cahiers de la Méditerranée 49. Nice, France: Centre de la Méditerrannée moderne et contemporaine, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Uses the zones of dissidence and incorporation to define beylical power. Falls short of calling the regency a state.
Find this resource:
Cherif, Mohamed Hédi. Pouvoir et société dans la Tunisie de Ḥusayn Bin Alī (1705–1740). 2 vols. Tunis: Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Tunis, 1984–1986.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focuses on the development of the regency’s quasi-independence despite its nominal provincial status. Refines the binary theory of maghzen–siba (dissidence) to precolonial power (zone of incorporation and submission to central state authority versus zone of tribal dissidence) into three zones based on geographic distance from the center.
Find this resource:
Demeerseman, André. Aspects de la société tunisienne d’après ibn Abî Dhiyaf. Vol. 33. Tunis: Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines 19th-century precolonial Tunisian society and social categories extracted from a close reading of Aḥmad Ibn abi al-Diyāf’s entire chronicle. Includes manners and mores. Treatment of the topic is a bit technical due to close textual analysis and may be most useful to senior researchers with a solid background in the literature of Islamic institutions. Demeerseman was a Catholic White Father and early supporter of Tunisian nationalists.
Find this resource:
Kraiem, Mustapha. La Tunisie précoloniale. 2 vols. Tunis: Société Tunisienne de Diffusion, 1973.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Detailed account of political, social, economic, and cultural institutions entirely derived from Aḥmad Ibn abi al-Diyāf’s text. Emphasizes increasing autonomy from the Ottoman Porte throughout the course of the 19th century. More readable than Demeerseman 1996, which treats the same subject.
Find this resource:
Mantran, Robert. “L’évolution des relations entre la Tunisie et l’Empire Ottoman du XVIe au XIXe siecle: Essai de synthèse.” Les Cahiers de Tunisie, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines à Tunis 26–27 (1959): 319–333.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Situates the regency as an Ottoman province that became quasi-independent toward the last half of the century.
Find this resource:
Moalla, Asma. The Regency of Tunis and the Ottoman Porte, 1777–1814: Army and Government of a North-African Ottoman Eyâlet at the End of the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge Curzon, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Narrative takes into account 18th- and 19th-century historiographical trends and debates; reemphasizes ties to larger Ottoman imperial order, reinforcing Arab-Islamic ties. Traces the survival and utility of Ottoman institutions in the 18th-century beylicate.
Find this resource:
Precolonial Economy on Land and Sea

Rather than withering in isolation on the European and Oriental periphery, Tunisia’s precolonial economy was nourished by caravan trade on land and shipping and corsairing on the high seas. The Barbary States that comprised the regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were notorious hubs of Mediterranean piracy in the 19th century. Indeed, with the shift in geopolitics, the revenue derived from exacting tribute or ransom money for captives from European shipping became part of the precolonial maritime economy. Lane-Poole and Kelley 1890 takes a long-range view of the phenomenon from 1500 to the 1880s, attributing its demise to developments in the law of the sea while downplaying European participation in the practice. Tracking the regencies’ maritime decline in the early part of the century, Panzac 2005 also links the end of the once-profitable institution to imperial developments in the international order and the need to protect shipping by a legal regime. The literature on corsairing points out connections between Europe and the Barbary States sharing its southern shores. Cherif 1968 examines the introduction and use of Spanish currency as legal tender and a point of contact resulting from Spain’s brief colonial occupation. Chater 1987, Henia 1980, and Henia 1999 examine the overland caravan trade and internal practices of generating revenue and taxation. Regimes of property, land tenure, and tax indicate that property was in fact governed by local laws and customs and was not the unsystematized morass that foreign consuls claimed it was. Valensi 2009 shifts attention to the countryside, analyzing the economic relations of peasants and tribal populations.

Chater, Khalifa. “Le commerce caravanier au Maghreb et ses mutations au cours de l’ère précoloniale.” Maghreb Review 12.3–4 (1987): 99–104.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Provides descriptions and maps of the Saharan caravan trade with estimated travel times.
Find this resource:
Cherif, Mohamed Hédi. “Introduction de la piastre espagnole (“ryal”) dans la regence de Tunis au début du XVIIe siecle.” Les Cahiers de Tunisie, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines à Tunis 16 (1968): 45–53.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Deals with the introduction of the money economy pre-1815 via the Spanish occupation to refute the argument that interior trade was based on barter between tribes and that Tunis was isolated from larger Mediterranean trends in the regional economy.
Find this resource:
Henia, Abdelhamid. Le Ǧrīd: Ses rapports avec le beylik de Tunis (1676–1840). Tunis: Université de Tunis, 1980.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Documents how property and land-tenure practices in the southern date-growing region were incorporated by the beylical government in Tunis in its centralization efforts.
Find this resource:
Henia, Abdelhamid. Propriété et stratégies sociales à Tunis à l’époque moderne: XVIe–XIXe siècles. Tunis: Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales de Tunis, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines property relations in precolonial Tunisia, looking for nuance in concepts of collective and individual property. Counteracts the idea that there are no notions of dynamism in the economy. Examines the waqf (an institution in which properties are held in trust for a designated purpose in perpetuity; called habus in North Africa) and covert practices of usury among Muslims.
Find this resource:
Lane-Poole, Stanley, and J. D. Jerrold Kelley. The Story of the Barbary Corsairs. New York: Putnam, 1890.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Primary source examining, in a historical survey from 1500 to the 1880s, how the problem of privateering in the Mediterranean was viewed by European countries and the international legal regime developed to first criminalize the actions of privateers and then contain them. Useful comparison to present-day piracy issues in East Africa and elsewhere.
Find this resource:
Panzac, Daniel. Barbary Corsairs: The End of a Legend, 1800–1820. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents Barbary corsairing as an economic institution distinct from piracy. The practice of corsairing had profound implications on the development of the law of the sea and the emerging international and diplomatic order. The text is laden with figures and statistical data.
Find this resource:
Valensi, Lucette. Tunisian Peasants in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Deals with the transformation from interior wheat production to coastal oleoculture (olive oil) production in the 19th century. This trend is important in the analysis of later social movements and the development of a provincial elite class. First published in 1985.
Find this resource:
Political Space of Urban Notables

Colonial historiography frequently asserted that there was not a politically conscious “people” or even society to speak of in the Maghreb, just isolated kin groups living divided existences as either town or city dwellers or nomads. These readings explore the different facets of the sociology of political space at the elite level, avoiding the notion of the state as an institution as we know it. Nouschi 1970 identifies the teleological subtext behind much of the literature on social classes in the precolonial period, identifying or denying the transition from tribe to state to nation. Nouschi 1992 supplies the criteria according to indigenous conditions for distinguishing between elites as a category of analysis. Ben Achour 2003 takes up an analysis of the princely class by demonstrating, contrary to the colonial historiography, that such a class actually existed. Likewise, Ben Achour 1992 explores the exterior distinguishing marks of the urban upper classes. Ben Achour 1989 discusses the impoverishment of Muslim notables living in the capital, while Henia 2006 expands on the concept of notability per se, supplying its characteristics both in the provincial and in the rural settings. Green 1978 rounds off the discussion with an exploration of the religious scholarly class and the incorporation of the provincial ulema into the religious establishment in the capital, which congregated around the Zaytuna mosque-university complex.

Ben Achour, Mohamed al-Aziz. “Situation précoloniale et coloniale et paupérisation musulmane: L’endettement des milieux notables et baldis à Tunis.” In Catégories de la société tunisienne dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siecle. By Mohamed al-Aziz Ben Achour, 283–335. Tunis: Institut National d’Archéologie et d’Art, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Social history exploration of the effects of the debt crisis on Muslim urban notable classes. It is assumed that usury was not practiced, since it was not religiously sanctioned, but clearly people borrowed from Jewish and European creditors. See Henia 1999 (cited under Precolonial Economy on Land and Sea) for an expanded account of interest-bearing loan practices among Muslims.
Find this resource:
Ben Achour, Mohamed al-Aziz. “Les signes extérieurs de la notabilité citadine au début du siècle à Tunis.” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 45 (1992): 105–116.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Explains the external markers of members of the elite classes residing in the capital, which in the 19th century was a port city world unto itself, distinct from the coastal provinces and the interior.
Find this resource:
Ben Achour, Mohamed al-Aziz. La cour de bey de Tunis. Tunis: Espace Diwan, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Exploration of the rites, rituals, and sources of legitimacy behind the Tunisian princely class.
Find this resource:
Green, Arnold. The Tunisian ’Ulama: 1873–1915. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1978.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Traces the incorporation of provincial religious notables into a Tunisian baldi (urban/city) class through the institution of the mosque (zawiya) and ulema (religious scholarly) class. Excellent biographical appendix: a veritable who’s who among 19th-century Tunisian ulema.
Find this resource:
Henia, Abdelhamid. Être notable au Maghreb: Dynamique des configurations notabiliaires. Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose, 2006.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Edited volume that explores the many configurations of notability in North Africa.
Find this resource:
Nouschi, André. “Espace et vie politique dans le Maghreb contemporain de la tribu à l’état et à la nation.” In Atti della Settimana Maghribina: Cagliari, 22–25 maggio 1969, 129–147. Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1970.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents the fundamental political transformation from tribe to state to a nation united by state projects and common imaginaries.
Find this resource:
Nouschi, André. “Qu’est-ce qu’un bourgeois, qu’est-ce qu’un notable?” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 45 (December 1992): 229–247.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Defines the concepts of “bourgeois” and “notable” as they are used in the literature. The term “bourgeois” connotes the existence of an industrializing social milieu.
Find this resource:
Rural Elites, Peasants, and Tribes

The majority of 19th-century Tunisian citizens lived in the rural areas and would technically be classified as (seminomadic) tribes or peasants. Gellner and Micaud 1972, among others, attempts to describe the transition from tribe to nation in North Africa based on anthropological categories, most of which deny the existence of a central state authority and theorize an unstable political order structured by spaces of rebellion and dissidence (siba) and obedience to the center (maghzen). These categories have been purportedly adopted from the 14th-century text of Ibn Khaldūn (see Ibn Khaldūn 1969 for an English translation) but also derive from anthropological work based exclusively on Morocco. Berque 1974 attempts to bring some nuance to the rigidly conceived antinomian relationship between tribe and state. Chater 1977 explains the Khaldūnian concept of assabiyya (kinship solidarity) that gives these groups social cohesion and its potential application for the Tunisian context. Cherif 1980 asserts that concerted political action between the tribes and the towns was indeed possible and analyzes the different types of social movements that tribal populations were involved in during the course of the 19th century. The social movements were not limited to anticolonial resistance. Analyzing the tribe and town connection beyond moments of rebellion, Valensi 2009 provides an anthropologically informed description of the lifeworld of rural populations and their interconnection with the towns.

Berque, Jacques. “Qu’est-ce qu’ une ‘tribu’ Nord-Africaine?” In Maghreb: Histoire et sociétés. By Jacques Berque. Gembloux, France: Duculot, 1974.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Seminal essay tracing the specificities of North African tribes and their complicated relationship to the state via taxation and binding, if sometimes short-lived, oaths of allegiance.
Find this resource:
Chater, Khalifa. “Élements pour une approche de certains phénomènes de ‘açabiya’ dans la Tunisie du XIXe siècle (Sahel et basses steppes).” Les Cahiers de Tunisie, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines à Tunis 25 (1977): 61–73.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Uses and expands the Khaldūnian concept of kin-based solidarity to analyze relations between coastal townspeople and seminomads.
Find this resource:
Cherif, Mohamed Hédi. “Les mouvements paysans dans la Tunisie du XIXème siècle.” Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée 30.2 (1980): 21–56.
DOI: 10.3406/remmm.1980.1888Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Documents the economic transformation in the tribal interior in the 19th century, emphasizing agency and attempts at social change. Provides a useful classification of protest movements. Uses local Arabic sources, although the work is published in French. Particularly detailed information on the 1881 anticolonial insurrection although thin on the 1864 revolt.
Find this resource:
Gellner, Ernest, and Charles A. Micaud. Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1972.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based on research in Morocco and promotes the theory of the Berber as an original and separate ethnicity, which is not applicable to Tunisia, because so few Berbers remain. However, the volume is useful in understanding how anthropological categories and segmentary theory still underpin some historical research. Some essays are critical of Ibn Khaldūn.
Find this resource:
Ibn Khaldūn. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Edited by N. J. Dawood. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although written in the 14th century, this early example of historical sociology and world history is still useful as a source for the categories of rural and tribal society in the Maghreb. Distinction of blad al-maghzen versus blad as-siba (central city-state control versus zone of tribal dissidence) derived from Ibn Khaldūn’s work.
Find this resource:
Valensi, Lucette. Tunisian Peasants in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Using an interdisciplinary anthropological-historical approach, the book documents the interaction of both nomads and peasants in the hinterland with the economy of the towns. Discusses the importance of food production and consumption in religious festivals, weekly markets, and fairs as a cultural and economic link between sedentaries and nomads.
Find this resource:
Sufi Brotherhoods

The popular masses of precolonial Tunisia existed as members of large kin groups often with associational ties to religious brotherhoods (Maraboutic or popular forms of often mystical Islam that held saintly figures in high regard as intercessors, as opposed to the textually linked formality of the ulema classes). These brotherhoods (or Sufi orders) often formed the crux of anticolonial resistance across North Africa. Consequently, colonial authorities had a vested interest in documenting their numbers and activities. Although compiled for use in Algeria, Rinn 1884 has the most extensive survey of the 19th-century brotherhoods. ʿAbun-Nasr 2007 gives an account of the inner ritual and belief system of different Sufi tariqas (brotherhoods). ʿAbun-Nasr 1965 provides an in-depth study of one of these groups, the Tijaniyya, that unexpectedly proved to be accommodationist in its stance toward both indigenous central and colonial authorities. Bachrouch 1989 analyzes these religious elites as a class in the Tunisian milieu, while Clancy-Smith 1994 examines the Sufi orders, notably the Rahmaniyya, in the desert oases between Algeria and Tunisia during periods of intense anticolonial resistance accompanying the pacification of Algeria.

ʿAbun-Nasr, Jamil M. The Tijaniyya: A Sufi Order in the Modern World. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Historical account of the Tijani Sufi order, one of the main brotherhoods (tariqas) operating in Tunisia originating from Algeria in the 18th century. Unlike the Rahmaniyya, the Tijaniyya worked with central authorities, often becoming their clients.
Find this resource:
ʿAbun-Nasr, Jamil M. Muslim Communities of Grace: The Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Empathetic survey of Sufi brotherhoods as an extension of a rich religious tradition.
Find this resource:
Bachrouch, Tawfiq. Les élites tunisiennes du pouvoir et de la devotion: Contribution a l’étude des groupes sociaux dominants (1782–1881). Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A sociological study of 19th-century ulema or religious scholars and their interactions with the beylical state. Based on the trope of prince versus saintly figure.
Find this resource:
Clancy-Smith, Julia A. Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Text for graduates or advanced undergraduates due to its many obscure actors, places, and thick descriptions. Set in the borderland desert between what would become Tunisia and Algeria as the latter succumbed to French colonization and pacification, the study challenges boundaries between precolonial and colonial. Traces the oppositional role of religious orders (Rahmaniyya) in challenging the colonial power. (Compare to the accommodationist Tijaniyya discussed in ʿAbun Nasr 1965.)
Find this resource:
Rinn, Louis. Marabouts et Khouan: Étude sur l’Islam en Algérie. Algiers, Algeria: Jourdan, 1884.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Extensive survey of brotherhoods written by a military officer. Rinn was based in Algeria and was in charge of controlling religiously motivated and transborder political resistance.
Find this resource:
The Power of Consular Diplomacy

In precolonial Tunisia the aggressive action of foreign consuls both in negotiation and in “gunboat diplomacy” produced increasing political and economic dependency, ultimately resulting in colonial military intervention. The subtext behind the literature on consular practice is therefore the precarious issue of sovereignty. The topic of sovereignty opens the debate over the nature of the regency as a political entity, whether it was a vassal state or province of the Ottoman Porte or an independent state recognized by the outside world as such. The issue is important in light of both colonial politics and historiography. (Was Tunisia en route to develop as a distinct nation-state with its own internal dynamics, in which case colonialism arrested this development? Or did colonial intervention actually spark the country’s stagnant political evolution? In the latter case, colonial intervention became a necessary step in the transition to nationhood.) By analyzing Tunisian diplomatic contacts with European capitals, Windler 2001a illuminates the evolving relationship between Christian and Muslim powers. Windler 2001b contextualizes international diplomacy as a cultural practice shaped by the local context. (In the case of the Tunisian regency, diplomatic practice was shaped by interactions with a tribal and segmentary society.) Tunger-Zanetti 1996 traces the ties to the Ottoman Porte even after the establishment of the International Financial Commission, and Smida 1991 documents the conditions under which these diplomatic missions of the regency actually existed. Contacts with European power brokers, officials, and businesspeople resulted in a series of joint commercial ventures, such as the telegraph, railroads, and public works projects. For example, Smida 1979 examines the conditions and the struggles behind the creation of the first newspaper, al-Rā’id al-Tunisi. Using the reform period with all its economic activity as his departure point, Bdira 1978 examines the history of consular practice and the projects these agents of foreign governments advocated. He concludes that dependency and conquest, as opposed to the liberal claims of universalist civilization, was the real intent behind so-called development or modernization projects.

Bdira, Mezri. Relations internationales et sous-développement: La Tunisie 1857–1864. Studia Historica Upsaliensia. Uppsala, Sweden: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1978.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Traces European diplomatic efforts to control different aspects of the reform effort. Offers an especially detailed analysis of public works projects and banking.
Find this resource:
Smida, Mongi. Aux origines de la presse en Tunisie: La fondation du “Raïd.” Tunis: Imprimerie Officielle de la République Tunisienne, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines multiple aspects of the creation of the regency’s first newspaper. For scholars interested in the implementation of 19th-century liberal reforms or histories of the press in the Middle East.
Find this resource:
Smida, Mongi. Consuls et consulats de Tunisie au 19e siècle. Tunis: Imprimerie de l’Orient, 1991.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Covers the regency’s diplomatic missions and participation in international venues and expositions and supports the quasi-independent view of the precolonial state.
Find this resource:
Tunger-Zanetti, Andreas. La communication entre Tunis et Istanbul 1860–1913: Province et Métropole, Histoire et Perspectives Méditerranéennes. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Explores the continued connections with the Ottoman Porte in the latter half of the 19th century, after the constitutional experiment, internal revolt, the loss of the regency’s fiscal independence, and the early years of the French protectorate.
Find this resource:
Windler, Christian. “Diplomatic History as a Field for Cultural Analysis: Muslim-Christian Relations in Tunis, 1700–1840.” Historical Journal 44.1 (2001a): 79–106.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
By concentrating on the evolving culture of diplomacy and diplomatic contacts, this study challenges the notion that Muslims and Christians were by nature enemies occupying polarized worlds.
Find this resource:
Windler, Christian. “Representing a State in a Segmentary Society: French Consuls in Tunis from the Ancien Régime to the Restoration.” Journal of Modern History 73 (June 2001b): 233–274.
DOI: 10.1086/321024Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Self-reflective analysis of diplomacy as cultural practice. Represents the tribal society using the segmentary theory. Useful in understanding nuances of tribe and state relations and the evolving conventions of 19th-century diplomacy as impacted by the periphery.
Find this resource:
Era of Liberal Reforms, Rebellion, and Bankruptcy: Colonial Tunisia (1881–1956)

The main source for information for the entire precolonial period, especially the liberal experiment and reform (1840s–1870s), is Aḥmad Ibn abi al-Diyāf, the secretary to five successive beys, whose chronicle, Itḥāf ahl al-zamān bi-akhbār mulūk Tūnis wa-’ahd al-amān, was published by a special commission during the nationalist period (Ibn abi al-Diyāf 1963). The title, translated as “Present to the people of our age: Chronicles of the kings of Tunis and the security pact,” establishes a connection with emergent constitutionalism and Muslim literature on political ethics and statecraft. The text advocates for the rule of law and separation of powers in a constitutionalist interpretation of Islamic history. Ibn abi al-Diyāf argues that royal absolutism was the cause of decline, which could be remedied by the rule of law limiting executive power. Brown 2005 has made the introduction to the eight-volume chronicle available in English. In the introduction, patterned after Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqqadimah, Ibn abi al-Diyāf sets out his belief in the rule of law and the principle of limited government, which was achieved, at least in theory, with Tunisia’s adoption of the first liberal constitution in the Muslim world in 1861. Like Brown 2005, Jdey 1996 guides readers through the specialized vocabulary and thought of this 19th-century reformer. Leaders of the reform era featured in the Itḥāf chronicle, notably Ahmed Bey ben Mohamed Chérif (Brown 1974), set out to modernize both the army and elite educational systems as a means of staving off European encroachment. The dilemma of reform and its implications for nominal sovereignty are also sketched out in Brown 1974. A popular antitax insurrection in 1864, narrated in Slama 1967, ended the constitutional experiment and further entrenched the fiscal crisis. After the declaration of state bankruptcy, a new period of reform under European fiscal tutelage was initiated by Prime Minister Khayr al-Dīn in the 1870s. Khayr al-Dīn wrote an important treatise dealing with the urgency and dilemma of modernization for Muslim states facing imperialist European nations (see Khayr al-Dīn 1868 and Khayr al-Dīn 1896). After ascending to and losing the prime ministership in the regency, Khayr al-Dīn served as grand vizier of the Ottoman Porte. Mzali and Pignon 1971 collects many of Khayr al-Dīn’s writings, especially during this latter period, while van Krieken 1976 offers a detailed biography of the Muslim statesman.

Brown, Leon Carl. The Tunisia of Ahmed Bey, 1837–1855. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although heavily influenced by modernization theory, this is an indispensable guide through stages and politics of the reform effort under Ahmed Bey, who comes to be treated as a megalomaniac tragic figure.
Find this resource:
Brown, Leon Carl, trans. Consult Them in the Matter: A Nineteenth-Century Islamic Argument for Constitutional Government. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2005.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Translation of the introduction of Ibn abi al-Diyāf’s Itḥāf. Invaluable resource that emphasizes the arguments the 19th-century reformer presents to limit beylical power and implement liberal reform. The introduction, which sets up the rationale for the succeeding eight volumes, attempts to place liberal reforms in a Muslim context.
Find this resource:
Ibn abi al-Diyāf, Aḥmad. Itḥāf ahl al-zamān bi-akhbār mulūk Tūnis wa-’ahd al-amān. 8 vols. Tunis: Dar Tūnisiyya lil-Nashr, 1963.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Part memoir, part social history and political analysis, the Itḥāf covers the history of the Husaynid Dynasty from 1705 to 1872 from the point of view of a liberal reformer. As Abdesselem 1973 (cited under Historiographical Controversies) points out, the text was written in secret between 1861 and 1872 and later compiled by a special committee appointed by President Habib Bourguiba.
Find this resource:
Jdey, Ahmed. Ahmed Ibn Abi Dhiaf, son oeuvre et son pensée: Essai d’histoire culturelle. Zaghouan, Tunisia: Fondation Temimi pour la Recherche Scientifique et l’Information, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Extensive source commentary on Ibn abi al-Diyāf’s writings, including but not limited to the Itḥāf. Readers may find chapters covering term-by-term analysis too technical.
Find this resource:
Khayr al-Dīn. Réformes nécessaires aux états Musulmans: Essai formant la première partie de l’ouvrage politique et statistique intitulé; La Plus sûre direction pour connaître l’état des nations. Paris: Imprimérie Administrative de Paul Dupont, 1868.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Original French version written by the author of the 19th-century classic reformist tract. Useful for tracking Khayr al-Dīn’s understanding of French political thought and European history. See Brown 1967 (cited under Primary Sources) for an English translation.
Find this resource:
Khayr al-Dīn. “Réformes nécessaires aux états Musulmans.” Revue Tunisienne (1896): 501–522.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Abridged version of the classic text published by the colonial journal Revue Tunisienne.
Find this resource:
Mzali, Mohamed Salah, and Jean Pignon. Khéredine: Homme d’état; Mémoires. Documents historiques annotés. Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de L’Édition, 1971.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Edited collection of writings by the 19th-century reformer after his tenure as vizier in the Ottoman Empire, translated into French.
Find this resource:
Slama, Bice. L’insurrection de 1864 en Tunis. Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de l’Édition, 1967.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Narrative account of 1864 revolt. Contains a topical catalogue of Tunisian government archives arranged by carton.
Find this resource:
van Krieken, Gerardus Samuel. Khayr al-Dîn et la Tunisie. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1976.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Sympathetic biographical portrait of the reformer.
Find this resource:
Colonial Tunisia (1881–1956)

The colonial project and civilizing mission in Tunisia had multiple dimensions that transcended economic or political goals. These works discuss the colonial order in some of its social, psychological, and discursive complexity. François-Martin 2003 is a good narrative entry point. Despite the title, it presents the colonial period on its own terms without being an explanation of incipient nationalism. Gallagher 1983 and O’Donnell 1979 analyze the imperial discourses of science through medicine and the missionary church under Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, who was intent on reviving the see of Carthage. Although written with Algeria in mind, Lorcin 1995 expands the analysis of the discursive power of science in the French colonial imaginary. Interdisciplinary scientific research carried on mostly by military officers turned scholars supported theories of racial hierarchies that seeped into a purportedly universalist civilizing mission. These hierarchies are powerfully explored at the level of the individual psyche in Memmi 1965, a classical analysis of the colonial social order. The colonial question is taken up and complicated from the perspective of the colonizer in Clancy-Smith 2011 and Choate 2008, which both deal with the emigrant European population and demonstrate that privileged status for Europeans was not always to be assumed.

Choate, Mark I. Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Legal regime and nationality analyzed in practice with regard to the largest European resident population, which was not the French but the Italians.
Find this resource:
Clancy-Smith, Julia. Mediterreneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Theoretically innovative exploration of transnational economic networks focused on the capital Tunis. Conclusions derived from the methodology centered on Tunis and focused on European marginal and Tunisian elites may not be applicable to the rest of Tunisia. Ignores rural and tribal Tunisia.
Find this resource:
François-Martin, Jean. Histoire de la Tunisie contemporaine: De Ferry à Bourguiba, 1881–1956. Paris: L’Harmattan 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Narrative of colonial society in Tunisia without nationalist teleology.
Find this resource:
Gallagher, Nancy Elizabeth. Medicine and Power in Tunisia, 1780–1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523984Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines the link between medical authority and colonial power. Presents the thesis that the transition from Muslim to European medical authority was not stimulated by recurrent epidemics but was part of European political domination.
Find this resource:
Lorcin, Patricia M. E. Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial Algeria. London: Tauris, 1995.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although conclusions are derived from research in Algeria, presents colonialism as a political, economic, epistemological project depending on racialized knowledge production. (To see Lorcin’s thesis operating in practice, consult the index of titles in the colonial journals Revue Tunisienne and Revue Africaine online catalogues (see Journals).
Find this resource:
Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. New York: Orion, 1965.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Classic psychosocial portrait of the colonial order reprinted in English.
Find this resource:
O’Donnell, Joseph Dean. Lavigerie in Tunisia: The Interplay of Imperialist and Missionary. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1979.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes the role of the Catholic Church in the Tunisian colonial project.
Find this resource:
Independent Tunisia, Reform Revisited (1956–Present)

Tunisia gained its independence through a negotiated gradual process that left France in control of various government agencies. During this interim period, the hero and leader Habib Bourguiba served as interlocutor with the French. Eventually he took the reins of power and the presidency following a bitter struggle with rivals for the direction of the newly independent nation and after dissolving the 150-year-old monarchy. Bourguiba consolidated state power in a single political party, the Neo-Dustur, and set about modernizing the country. The political scientist Charles A. Micaud, Leon Carl Brown, and Clement Henry Moore (see Micaud, et al. 1964) analyze multiple aspects of Bourguiba’s modernization and reform program. Charismatic, iconoclastic, and unconventional in issues from Islam to Israel, the Tunisian president showed early promise of setting the country on a democratic footing. This hope did not materialize, as authoritarian patterns of rule and clientelism continued despite economic liberalization and the implementation of social engineering projects. Zartman 1991 examines the political economy of reform. Although he also raised expectations, Zine al Abidine Ben Ali, Bourguiba’s successor, fared no better and reinscribed authoritarian modes of rule. Toumi 1989 is an example of a study that found optimism in the new regime. Murphy 1999 analyzes the reasons the expected transition to democracy did not take place, placing the blame on corporatist factors. Using a localized study in one of Tunisia’s northwestern towns, King 2003 examines land redistribution efforts and concludes that they strengthen culturally inscribed patterns of domination. Hazbun 2008 uses tourism, independent Tunisia’s main industry, to explain the paradox of failed democratic expectations. Much of the academic literature on Tunisia’s reforms and political development assumes that economic development is a basic driver of democratic change. When the change fails to materialize according to the model or the expected course goes awry, culturalist factors are called into play.

Hazbun, Waleed. “Fordism on the Beach: Tunisia and the International Division of Leisure.” In Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The Politics of Tourism in the Arab World. By Waleed Hazbun, 77–132. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
See also the next chapter, “Images of Openness, Spaces of Control: Tourism in Tunisia’s New Era” (pp. 133–188). Uses tourism, the main industry of independent Tunisia, as an example of the paradox of economic openness and authoritarian political control hampering true democratic development.
Find this resource:
King, Stephen J. Liberalization against Democracy: The Local Politics of Economic Reform in Tunisia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Localized study of land redistribution efforts in the town of Tebourba. Concludes that liberalization strengthens and may actually reinscribe traditional patron-client forms of domination, accounting for the persistence of authoritarianism.
Find this resource:
Micaud, Charles A., Leon Carl Brown, and Clement Henry Moore. Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization. London: Pall Mall, 1964.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Presents multiple aspects—political, economic, psychosocial, and cultural—of the modernization process in Tunisia during the first decade of its independence.
Find this resource:
Murphy, Emma. Economic and Political Change in Tunisia: From Bourguiba to Ben Ali. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999.
DOI: 10.1057/9780333983584Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Using a corporatist model with Tunisia as a case study, this book examines the relationship between economic liberalization and political reform, explaining why the Tunisian state could not turn economic liberalization into meaningful progress toward greater political freedom.
Find this resource:
Toumi, Mohsen. La Tunisie de Bourguiba à Ben Ali. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analysis of the Bourguiba regime in later years and an optimistic evaluation of the bloodless coup that toppled the first president.
Find this resource:
Zartman, I. William, ed. Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Edited volume on various political and economic aspects of the reform process. Excellent bibliography.
Find this resource:
Bourguiba Era (1956–1987)

Hero of national liberation, founding father of the Tunisian state, and later self-proclaimed autocratic president for life, Habib Bourguiba (b. c. 1901–d. 2000) was the founder of Tunisia’s ruling party and architect of the nation as its first president. Bourguiba ruled Tunisia for over three decades, until 1987, when his prime minister, Zine al Abidine Ben Ali, ousted him from power in a medical coup, declaring the aging leader unfit to rule. To understand Tunisia’s political development and the personality cult its first president fostered, one must first understand the man. Hopwood 1992 and Salem 1984 give complete biographical portraits explaining Bourguiba’s early traumas and ideological engagements; his complex relationship with secular Western and French philosophy, Islam, and traditional mores; his liberal attitude toward women; his commitment to modernization; and his iconoclastic stance toward taboo subjects. Moore 1965 peppers such personal details with a first-rate academic study of the inner workings of the Neo-Destour political party that Bourguiba founded, later renamed the Socialist Destourian Party, and its social engineering projects. Tahar Belkhodja, who was one of Bourguiba’s former ambassadors and ministers, offers an insider’s perspective, although he does not discuss Bourguiba’s oppositional struggles with his chief rivals (Belkhodja 1998). The former minister’s memoir provides useful insight into key moments of the presidency. Bourguiba’s death following thirteen years under virtual but comfortable house arrest prompted a number of works assessing his legacy. Brown 2001 provides the most concise assessment. Mohammed Mzali, Bourguiba’s exiled former prime minister, also offers an insider’s perspective (Mzali 2004). The most comprehensive and nuanced assessment of the Bourguiba legacy is Camau and Geisser 2004. Despite promises of modernization through national integration and the jihad against underdevelopment, the Bourguiba era favored development in coastal cities and urban centers and reproduced regional prejudice and inequalities. Duvignaud 1977 offers a snapshot of the internal disparity of cultures between the urban Westernized upper middle classes and the traditional rural village. Ignorance of these disparities in the interior proved critical to the downfall of Bourguiba’s successor Ben Ali in 2011. In contrast, Abu Zahra 1982 is an ethnography that provides a nuanced analysis of urban life in a coastal village. Although some information relies on stereotypes (the insularity of the village and professed “xenophobia” of the inhabitants) and some details of ritualized ceremonies no longer apply, this is nevertheless a landmark study in relations of power, prestige, conflict, the binding role of gift exchange, and the world of social obligations at the village level.

Abu Zahra, Naria. Sidi Ameur: A Tunisian Village. London: Ithaca, 1982.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based on field research conducted in 1965–1966 in two villages linked to the lodge (zawiya) of Sidi Ameur near the coastal city of Sousse, this ethnography, written by an Egyptian anthropologist, provides in-depth analysis of social dynamics, power, and prestige in a rapidly urbanizing post-independence space.
Find this resource:
Belkhodja, Tahar. Les trois décennies Bourguiba. Condé-sur-Noireau, France: Arcantères/Publisud, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Memoir written by one of Bourguiba’s ministers of the interior. Provides insight into the inner workings and dilemmas of the ruling party.
Find this resource:
Brown, Leon Carl. “Bourguiba and Bourguibism Revisited: Reflections and Interpretation.” Middle East Journal 55.1 (2001): 43–57.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Concise yet thorough introduction to Bourguiba the man and his political vision. Footnotes provide excellent references.
Find this resource:
Camau, Michel, and Vincent Geisser, eds. Habib Bourguiba: La trace et l’héritage. Paris: Karthala, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Excellent collection of essays analyzing the multifaceted legacy of the Bourguiba era, from positive achievements and ideological commitments to repression and future prospects.
Find this resource:
Duvignaud, Jean. Change at Shebika: Report from a North African Village. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Record of a five-year university project designed to confront urban and Westernized students with the complex disparities of marginalized rural areas in their own country. Portrait of life in Shebika, the target village, is anecdotal, unsystematic, and occasionally stereotyped. Originally published in 1970. Adapted as a documentary film, Ramparts of Clay (1970).
Find this resource:
Hopwood, Derek. Habib Bourguiba: The Tragedy of Longevity. London: Macmillan, 1992.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Biography of Bourguiba written after his ouster in 1987.
Find this resource:
Moore, Clement Henry. Tunisia since Independence: The Dynamics of One-Party Government. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In-depth analysis of the ruling party and the mechanisms of control and decision making.
Find this resource:
Mzali, Mohammed. Un premier ministre de Bourguiba témoigne. Paris: Jean Picollec, 2004.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Memoir of the Bourguiba era by a former prime minister ousted in the Ben Ali coup.
Find this resource:
Salem, Norma. Islam and the Creation of Tunisia. London: Croom Helm, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Biography of Bourguiba, but the relationship of the president to Islam is superficially treated.
Find this resource:
Ben Ali Era (1987–2011)

The readings on the Ben Ali regime and the literature on Tunisian political evolution since independence are structured around the assumption that economic development is a basic driver of democratic change. Zine al Abidine Ben Ali’s bloodless coup and his liberalization of the market raised expectations for greater political freedom and a clear transition to democracy. The expected change did not take place, leading scholars and journalists to explain why. Written in the first flush of this optimism, Lombardo 1998 presents a positive picture of the Ben Ali era. By contrast, the journalistic account Beau, et al. 1999 attacks Ben Ali’s human rights record, comparing the “new Tunisia” to a large prison. Published in Paris, the book was an early exposé of the abuses of power, especially against Islamist dissidents and other opponents. Beau, et al. 1999 claims that behind the veneer of enlightened rhetoric was a ruthless dictatorship. Beau and Graciet 2009 takes the regime to task for corruption and mafia-like cronyism. Focusing on the president’s wife (a former hairdresser), the incendiary book Beau and Graciet 2009 was banned in Tunisia. (It was later claimed that this book fueled the discontent that erupted into the Jasmine Revolution.) More scholarly and rigorously analytic in tone is Erdle 2010. Steffen Erdle traces the parallels between both Tunisian presidencies, explaining the persistence of authoritarianism as a strategy in state-led modernization. Also analyzing the lack of progress on the democratic front, Hibou 2011 explains fear as both an instrument of power and the source of popular complicity with the regime, effectively stifling freedom and greater democratization in the everyday struggle for survival.

Beau, Nicolas, and Catherine Graciet. La régente de Carthage: Main basse sur la Tunisie. Paris: Découverte, 2009.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Trenchant exposé of government corruption under Ben Ali and his family. Especially detailed on Layla Ben Ali, the president’s wife, and the family’s record of corruption.
Find this resource:
Beau, Nicolas, Jean-Pierre Tuquoi, and Gilles Perrault. Notre ami Ben Ali: L’envers du “miracle tunisien.” Paris: Découverte, 1999.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Scathing critique of Ben Ali’s democratization efforts.
Find this resource:
Erdle, Steffen. Ben Ali’s “New Tunisia” (1987–2009): A Case Study of Authoritarian Modernization in the Arab World. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Published dissertation that focuses on elite culture involving the president, the party, and state bureaucracy to explain the persistence of authoritarianism in postcolonial Tunisia. Prescient in its conclusions, it documents the corruption and official kleptomania of the Ben Ali regime. Establishes continuities with Habib Bourguiba’s cult of personality.
Find this resource:
Hibou, Béatrice. The Force of Obedience: The Political Economy of Repression in Tunisia. Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2011.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Using a Foucauldian framework, this study explores mechanisms of popular co-optation and complicity in authoritarianism and corruption. Preface contextualizes the fall of Ben Ali but does not explain it, possibly because theorerical commitment to Michel Foucault in analyzing the exercise of power cannot adequately explain revolutionary ruptures in the system. Brilliant exposition of links between economic ties and the exercise of political power.
Find this resource:
Lombardo, Salvatore. Un printemps Tunisien: Destins croisés d’un peuple et de son président; Récit. Marseille, France: Editions Autres Temps, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Generally positive assessment of the Ben Ali era in terms of the growth of civil society, the discourse of human rights, and constitutionalism.
Find this resource:
Islam as a Political Force in Independent Tunisia and Politics

Islam became a political force in Tunisia in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the rise of the Movement for Islamic Tendency (MTI). The MTI later morphed into a political party, al-Nahdha, under the leadership of Rachid Ghannouchi, a southerner from the city of Gabes. In neighboring Algeria the 1991 democratic victory of the Islamist party and the civil war resulting from state efforts to nullify the election results put the issue of Islamist opposition front and center, alarming Tunisian authorities. Written with the Algerian Civil War as a backdrop, the essays collected in Ruedy 1994 offer a comparative analysis of the dialectic between secularism and Islamist movements in North Africa. Burgat and Dowell 1993, in a comparative analysis of North African Islamist movements, includes larger regional developments, such as Khomeinism and ideological ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Written a bit earlier, Chater 1988 and Salem 1984 trace the engagement of Islamic values and institutions in Tunisia’s political culture and state-building processes. Fearing contagion with Algerian civil unrest, both Habib Bourguiba and Zine al Abidine Ben Ali brutally repressed Islamist opposition. Focusing on al-Nahdha, Ḥāmidī 1998 traces the politicization of Tunisia’s Islamist party. Collins-Dunn 1994 characterizes this mobilization as an extremist threat possibly linked to Khomeinism with potential for violence, while Tamimi 2001 advances the view of most scholars that al-Nahdha is a moderate force willing and able to play by the rules of the democratic process.

Burgat, François, and William Dowell. The Islamic Movement in North Africa. Austin: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1993.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes the development of Islamist movements from the 1970s with the rise of Khomeinism to the 1990s in North Africa.
Find this resource:
Chater, Khalifa. “Islam et réformes politiques dans la Tunisie du XIXème siècle.” Maghreb Review 13.1–2 (1988): 77–83.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Traces the influence of Islamic principles and values on Tunisia’s liberal reforms in the 19th century.
Find this resource:
Collins-Dunn, Michael. “The al-Nahdha Movement in Tunisia: From Renaissance to Revolution.” In Islamism and Secularism in North Africa. Edited by John Ruedy, 149–166. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Analyzes the development of the Islamist party in Tunisia as increasing militancy presented a challenge to the state.
Find this resource:
Ḥāmidī, Muḥammad al-Hāshimī. The Politicisation of Islam: A Case Study of Tunisia. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Historical and analytic study of al-Nahdha’s interaction with the state written by an insider.
Find this resource:
Ruedy, John, ed. Islamism and Secularism in North Africa. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Collection of essays outlining the history of Islamic-secular encounters, presenting a comparative analysis of late-20th-century Islamist movements across the region and detailing multiple state responses to the Islamist challenge.
Find this resource:
Salem, Norma. Islam and the Creation of Tunisia. London: Croom Helm, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Traces the connection between Islam, identity, and the creation of a largely secular Tunisia under Bourguiba. Does not deal in-depth with the Islamists.
Find this resource:
Tamimi, Azzam. Rashīd Ghannouchi: A Democrat within Islamism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Sympathetic portrait of the al-Nahdha (Islamist party) leader Rashid Ghannouchi. Advances the thesis that Islam is compatible with democracy.
Find this resource:
Women at the Crossroads of Modernity and Identity

The bedrock of Tunisia’s modern identity and social development program is its stance toward women. Patriarchal customs embedded in tribal social forms and traditional notions of the family with its religiously sanctioned roles have regulated the position of women in Muslim societies, often institutionalizing gender-based inequality. Based on secular Western models of the social order, Habib Bourguiba’s vision of a new Tunisia inscribed a new, more egalitarian status with legal safeguards for women in the constitution. Since its independence, Tunisia has one of the most progressive legal attitudes toward women in the Muslim world, largely due to its personal status code (Sfeir 1957 is an English translation). Among other issues, the code bans polygamy, covers inheritance rights, and protects against repudiation. The role and the position of women were discussed even in the early nationalist period with the publication of al-Ṭāhir Ḥaddād’s controversial book (Ronak and Newman 2007). Ideas of female liberation began to emerge during the colonial era with the creation of opportunity for schooling. The DeMontety 1958 ethnography of women in different parts of Tunisia offers a glimpse into the revolutionary project of redefining and “modernizing” women’s place in society post-independence through education and gainful employment in the formal economy. Bakalti 1996 documents the attitude of the colonial government toward the education of Muslim girls. Explaining Tunisia’s liberal stance in the region, Charrad 2001 deconstructs the relationship between postcolonial legal regimes, the tribal order, and the status of women. Murphy 2003 examines state-sanctioned feminism in the service of single-party rule and the economics of neoliberal reforms. With the redrafting of the constitution after the 2011 revolution, the status of women under Tunisian law is once again a subject of national renegotiation.

Bakalti, Souad. La femme tunisienne au temps de la colonisation: 1881–1956. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
History of French colonial establishment attitudes toward women with particular attention to their education.
Find this resource:
Charrad, Mounira M. States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines women’s rights and family law, claiming that state formation and the degree of tribal integration were instrumental in shaping family law. Equating women’s rights to family law may imply that the agency of women is only defined within the structure of the family.
Find this resource:
DeMontety, Henri. Femmes de Tunisie. Paris: Mouton, 1958.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This ethnography documents post-independence social engineering projects focusing on women from different regions of Tunisia, rural and urban, presented as “types.” Excellent analysis of the marriage ceremony that (now much changed) still structures the social lives of Tunisians during the summer months. Useful as a baseline for analysis of early 21st-century conditions.
Find this resource:
Husni, Ronak, and Daniel L. Newman, eds. Muslim Women in Law and Society: Annotated Translation of al-Tāhir al-Ḥaddād’s Imra ̕tunā fi ’l-sharī’a wa ’l-mujtama’, with an Introduction. London: Routledge, 2007.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The original title translates as “Our woman in the Sharia and society.” Written by the early 20th-century Tunisian author and reformist al-Ṭāhir Ḥaddād (Taher Haddad), this work can arguably be called a feminist tract written by a male questioning the role of women in traditional Islamic society. Includes a biography, an introduction placing the work in its historical context in contemporary reform movements grounded in the emancipation of Muslim women, and an analysis of its impact.
Find this resource:
Murphy, Emma. “Women in Tunisia: Between State Feminism and Economic Reform.” In Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society. Edited by Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Marsha Pripstein Posusney. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Examines state-sponsored feminism through incorporation of women in the labor market and the ruling party.
Find this resource:
Sfeir, George N. “The Tunisian Code of Personal Status (Majallat Al-Ahwaal Al-Shakhsiyah).” Middle East Journal 11.3 (Summer 1957): 309–318.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
English translation of the personal status code that has made independent Tunisia one of the most progressive of Muslim countries. Includes a ban on polygamy, inheritance rights for women, and protection against repudiation.
Find this resource:
Ethnic Groups (Jews, Europeans, Africans)

The notion of Tunisia as a homogeneous society competes with the narrative of Tunisia as a crossroads for African, Mediterranean, Arab, and European civilizations. The idea of a native Berber population that was supplanted by the Arab (Hilalian) invasions of the 7th and 10th centuries does not gain as much traction in Tunisia as it does in other parts of the Maghreb (notably in Morocco and Algeria), because the Berber population is so small or has been largely Arabized. In the precolonial period dealt with in this bibliography (see Ottoman Province under the Beys [1705–1881]), a number of ethnic minorities made their residence in the regency of Tunis. Kraiem 1973 documents the ethnic distinctions and self-identifications of precolonial social groups living in Tunisia from all over the Ottoman Empire. Among the Europeans who took residence in the regency, the largest population (even after the French takeover) was the Italians, who themselves managed to unite and declare an independent nation-state in the 1860s. The Maltese were a close second. Many Europeans who settled in the coastal towns were the undesirables of Europe’s revolutions. Clancy-Smith 2011 documents the economic and political activity of these European migrants. More importantly, internally from ancient times Tunisia has been home to a large indigenous Jewish community, whose history Sebag 1992 traces. The Jewish community was not at all homogeneous, as Gottreich 2010 shows. The most prosperous Jews were the Livorno Jews, known collectively as grana. In addition, there were Andalusian Jews who, along with Andalusian Muslims, were known as Moors and dated their history from the Spanish expulsion of the 15th century. In the contemporary era Udovitch and Valensi 1984 provides a rich and vivid overview of all the major aspects of local life in one of the last surviving Jewish enclaves on the island of Jerba. Survival of the Jewish community is presented as an act of resistance against the pressures of exclusivist nationalisms both on the part of the Zionist movement laying claim to its identity and loyalty and a Tunisian state increasingly identified with an Arab Islamic heritage. Rahal 2000 studies the cultural heritage of African slave populations imported via the Saharan trade routes with Sudan and the Fezzan (now part of Libya), most of whom gained their freedom after the official end of slavery in 1846.

Clancy-Smith, Julia. Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Longue durée account of the networks and economic lifeworlds of Mediterranean migrants arriving in 19th-century Tunis.
Find this resource:
Gottreich, Emily, ed. Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Edited work whose essays offer penetrating, nuanced views on the Jewish community in North Africa in all its multiple manifestations. Includes essays that revise stereotypical notions of homogeneity among North African Jews.
Find this resource:
Kraiem, Mustapha. La Tunisie précoloniale. 2 vols. Tunis: Société Tunisienne de Diffusion, 1973.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Volume 1 (chapter 2) and Volume 2 (on culture and society) expand the notion of ethnic diversity in precolonial Tunisia to include Italians, Maltese, Andalusian Muslims, and Jews—offspring of mixed Ottoman and local parentage, Europeans, and Africans. Highly readable social history.
Find this resource:
Rahal, Ahmed. La communauté noire de Tunis: Thérapie initiatique et rite de possession. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Focuses on the black African community imported mainly as slaves. Traces the syncretization of African religious practice from Niger into the saintly cults of popular North African Islam in the form of stambali (possession rituals) that served as a therapeutic rite. The syncretism occurred through the figure of Bilal in Muslim tradition, the first black African convert to Islam.
Find this resource:
Sebag, Paul. Histoire des juifs de Tunisie: Des origines à nos jours. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Classic work offering a longue durée historical account of the Jewish communities in Tunisia.
Find this resource:
Udovitch, Abraham L., and Lucette Valensi. The Last Arab Jews: The Communities of Jerba, Tunisia. London: Harwood Academic Press, 1984.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Ethnography by two historians that is remarkable for its rich descriptive detail and pictorial representations of Jewish daily life, including economic, political, familial, and religious aspects. Text emphasizes Jewish community’s separation and isolation from the Muslim majority, sometimes overlooking points of contact and syncretism.
Find this resource:
The People’s Revolution (2011)

The self-immolation of a fruit seller protesting the confiscation of his cart sparked nationwide peaceful popular protests that, in the course of eighteen days, toppled the twenty-three-year dictatorship of President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali on 15 January 2011. With slogans such as “shughul, hurriyya, karama w-wataniyya” (work, freedom, dignity, and patriotic nationalism) the masses that led the so-called Jasmine Revolution critiqued the policies of authoritarianism, neoliberal reforms, and official corruption that had become institutionalized since liberation from France. At stake was a renegotiation of the social contract from below, breaking the pattern of reform dictated from above by the state and the ruling-party elites. Revolution gave way to free elections in October 2011. Islamists led by Rachid Ghannouchi of the al-Nahdha (Renaissance) Party won a majority in the Constituent Assembly that will redraft the constitution of postrevolutionary Tunisia and renegotiate the place of Islam in the nation. The revolution was indeed televised with video archive accessible on Nawaat and Al Jazeera and on many YouTube sites. Scholarly articles covering the meaning of both the Tunisian revolution and the series of uprisings it set off (collectively known as the Arab Spring) can be found in the Internet journal Jadaliyya.

Al Jazeera.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Arab network’s English homepage. See also the original Arabic homepage online.
Find this resource:
Jadaliyya.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Ezine published out of George Mason University with contributions by prominent academics writing on current events topics.
Find this resource:
Nawaat.
Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Has the largest repository of documents (including WikiLeaks cables), blog posts, circulars, and documentary footage of the Tunisian or Jasmine Revolution filed in three languages. See also the video archive online. During the revolution these videos were fed to the Arab network Al Jazeera, which rebroadcast them on the ground.
Find this resource: