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Ahmed Bey

The French occupation of neighboring Algeria in 1830, displacing the Ottoman regency there, was not a cause for alarm in Tunisia. It was considered a temporary measure and for a time held out the promise that Husseinid princes would be called on to rule in Oran and Constantine. French annexation of Algeria four years later, coupled with the reassertion of Turkish sovereignty in Tripoli in 1837, discouraged Tunisian optimism, however. The overriding concern of Ahmed Bey (1837-55) was to avoid giving an excuse for foreign intervention in Tunisia. Slavery was completely abolished and privateering suppressed in response to European objections, while steps were taken to put the beylicate's sovereignty and Tunisian autonomy beyond challenge.

The key to nationbuilding was the modernization of Tunisian institutions. Reformism, however, was an elite movement, totally lacking in popular support. Lacking as well the resources to finance reform or the machinery to manage it, the political elite had no clear idea of what its goals ought to be. Without considerable success, administration was strengthened in an effort to bring all areas of the country under the control of the government in Tunis and to provide a more efficient tax collection system. Building a modern army was seen as an appropriate and realizable starting point for the reform movement. A military academy was established at the beylical palace at Bardo to provide officers, still predominantly of Turkish background, for a 26,000-man army that was intended to stand as a symbol of Tunisia's sovereignty. The new army was modeled on the recently re-organized Turkish army and was trained by French officers. The bey's government took out large loans from French banks to pay for the military buildup.

Ahmed Bey's mentor was his prime minister and treasurer, Mustafa Khaznader, who survived the bey and served continuously as head of the Tunisian government from 1837 to 1873. A Greek by origin, he had been carried off as a small child from Khios by the Turks when they ravaged that island during the Greek war for independence. Raised as a Muslim, Mustafa Khaznader had been Ahmed Bey's companion since their boyhood together and encouraged his master in debilitating debauchery. Occupying a position of trust in the beylicate, Khaznader was an embezzler on a large scale who ultimately led Tunisia into bankruptcy and opened the door for French economic and political penetration. Encouraged by the French, he promoted an ambitious public works program and accumulated an immense personal fortune by arranging loans to pay for it at exorbitant rates of interest in collusion with French banking houses.

Despite the bolstered armed forces and reformed administration that his regime offered as evidence of its modernity, Ahmed Bey's fear that Tunisia would be swallowed up by France or Turkey dictated the content of his foreign policy. The greater the threat from France was perceived to be, the closer Tunisia drew toward its nominal suzerain, the Ottoman sultan. The more persistent Turkey's pressure on Tunisia for formal recognition of the sultan's suzerainty, the more avidly French support was cultivated.

Foreign policy was an issue that divided Turkish and Arab elites within the reform movement. France encouraged Tunisia's assertion of its independence from the Ottoman Empire, a policy favored by the Turks in Tunis because it assured the continuance of the hey's authoritarian regime and their privileged position with it. During the same period, however, Britain backed the formal restoration of Ottoman sovereignty in Tunisia. Committed to propping up the Ottoman Empire as a barrier against Russian expansion, the British not only guaranteed its territorial integrity but also looked for opportunities to draw parts of the diffuse empire toward Constantinople and away from the influence of other European powers. Tunisia's Arab elite preferred the British approach, believing that the connection with a reformed and revitalized Ottoman Empire would promote internal reform in their own country that would extend to them greater participation in government.

Ahmed Bey pawned the family jewels to send 4,000 Tunisian troops to the Crimean War (1854-56) and to become in one stroke an ally of all the contenders for influence in his country. Tunisia was represented at the peace conference in Paris, where the Ottoman Empire agreed to further constitutional and legal reforms proposed by its European allies, Britain and France, whose consuls in Tunis picked up the theme by recommending extension of similar reforms to Tunisia "so as to be" - in the words of the British consul - "as modern as Turkey."

Tunisian reformers were receptive and saw in suggestions for the constitutional restructuring of the government a means for achieving rapid modernization and economic development. Unquestionably, however, the immediate purpose of the European consuls in proposing specific legal reforms was to make it easier for European commercial interests to function in a country where Islamic codes prohibited equal application of the law to non-Muslims engaged in business there. In this divergence of interests lay the essential contradiction in the reform movement. For the Tunisian elite, reform was necessary to maintain the country's independence. But reform and modernization also led inevitably to greater European participation in Tunisia's political and economic affairs.