Tunisian Independence from France
Tunisian nationalism organised earlier and more coherently than in most of French North Africa. Habib Bourguiba and colleagues broke from the older Destour Party in 1934 to found the Neo Destour, a disciplined mass party built on cell organisation and alliance with the trade union movement (the UGTT), which pursued self-rule through a mix of political agitation, diplomacy and, from 1952, an armed resistance (the fellagha) after the French arrested Bourguiba and other leaders and suppressed the party. The escalating costs of simultaneous colonial conflicts — Indochina had just been lost in 1954, and Algeria's war was beginning — pushed the new French prime minister Pierre Mendes France to reverse course. In July 1954 he travelled to Tunis and announced that France would grant Tunisia internal autonomy, opening two years of negotiation over the terms of full sovereignty. Those negotiations concluded with the Franco-Tunisian Protocol, signed in Paris on 20 March 1956, by which France recognised Tunisia's independence and Bourguiba, released from detention and returned to lead the Neo Destour, became the new state's prime minister under the nominal rule of Bey Muhammad VIII al-Amin. The monarchy proved short-lived: in July 1957, Bourguiba's National Constituent Assembly abolished the Beylical system and proclaimed the Tunisian Republic, with Bourguiba as its first president, a position he would hold for the next three decades.
- Year: 1956 CE
- Category: Independence
