• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Kherredin Pasha

Mustafa Khaznader's policies and the corruption of his government had by 1864 plunged Tunisia into an economic crisis. When money became scarce, new currency was issued that was so devalued that foreign traders refused to accept it as a medium of exchange. Devaluation depressed the export price of Tunisian grain and at the same time made it impossible for Tunisian buyers to import necessities. These difficulties were compounded by bad harvests, famine, and plague, which afflicted the country in 1867 and for several years thereafter. By 1868 Tunisia was bankrupt, and the government was unable to meet its financial commitments abroad. That same year, the hey agreed to the establishment of the International Financial Commission (IFC) in Tunis, whose members included French, British, and Italian controllers charged with reorganizing Tunisia's finances to ensure payment of the country's existing debt and to curb further expenditures. Kherredin served as the Tunisian representative on the commission.

In 1871 Tunisia reaffirmed the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, thereby obtaining a British guarantee of its territorial integrity. Control of foreign relations was surrendered to the Porte. Although the IFC retained jurisdiction over economic affairs, absolute authority over all other internal matters was left to the bey and his ministers. Mustafa Khaznader was finally removed in 1873 from the office that he had held for over 36 years and was succeeded as prime minister by his son-in-law and long-time political rival, Kherredin. Kherredin had begun his career in Tunisia as a soldier and, after rising rapidly in the beylicate's administration, was entrusted with diplomatic missions abroad. He was already a leader of the reform movement when chosen to draw up the constitution and, after its suspension, wrote a learned treatise dealing with the question of political and social reform in Muslim states. Positive in his expectations of what could be achieved, Kherredin was also realistic in his aims for Tunisia.

As prime minister, Kherredin faced the problem of satisfying the European powers represented on the IFC, while working to preserve Tunisia's independence and, although he was a modernizer, the Muslim character of its society. Like Ahmed Bey, he was concerned with maintaining the army as a symbol of sovereignty, but he also saw the practical need for overhauling the bureaucracy. Perhaps the outstanding achievement of his regime was the founding of the Sadiki College, a secondary school with a modern curriculum intended to train candidates for the civil service.

Cooperating closely with the IFC, Kherredin introduced fiscal reforms that markedly improved Tunisia's financial position, but European opposition stymied other essential reforms. Tunisia's export trade in grain was locked into the European market system and was monopolized by French and Italian merchants. Land exploitation by foreigners, allowed after 1857, was capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive and had led to the eviction of peasants from their farmsteads, resulting in severe rural unemployment.

Kherredin's efforts at agrarian reform to correct the situation drew him into conflict with entrenched European landowning interests. Having spent his life as a professional servant of the state dependent on the hey's patronage, Kherredin was without a political base of his own in the country. As a reforming prime minister he met with opposition from the followers of Mustafa Khaznader, whom he had deprived of office, and from traditionalists who had marked him as the candidate of the Europeans. Kherredin had indeed been given a mandate by the European powers to make Tunisia safer for foreign investment, but when he appeared to be succeeding all too well in modernizing the country's political and economic structure, they cooled toward his regime and finally withdrew support. Under French pressure, Kherredin was dismissed from office in 1877 and replaced by Mustafa ben Ismail, a French puppet who compounded corruption with incompetence in office. Kherredin was called to Constantinople, where he was made grand vizier to the Ottoman sultan, Abd al Hamid. It is one of the ironies of the history of Tunisia that a Circassian Mamluk came to be regarded as the father of Tunisian nationalism.