Tunisian Independence from France
France recognised Tunisian independence on 20 March 1956 after two years of guerrilla war and one of negotiation. The protectorate dated from 1881 and had preserved the bey as nominal ruler while a French resident-general governed, and some 250,000 European settlers held much of the best land. The Neo-Destour party under Bourguiba had been organising since 1934 on a base of the young, the unions and the provincial towns, and its leader had spent about a decade in French prisons. The armed phase began in 1952 with the fellagha in the countryside and colonial reprisals, and it was a small war by the standards of what was happening in Algeria. That comparison is the reason it ended when it did. Mendès France, the French prime minister, went to Tunis in July 1954 and offered internal autonomy, on the calculation that France could not fight in Indochina, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria at once and that Tunisia was the one that could be settled. Bourguiba accepted the autonomy against opposition from his own party's radical wing under Ben Youssef, who was expelled and later assassinated in Frankfurt. Full independence followed within a year, negotiated rather than fought for, and the French administrative structure was inherited intact. The bey was deposed in 1957 and a republic declared with Bourguiba as president. The personal status code abolishing polygamy came within months. The comparison with Algeria is the whole explanation. Algeria had a million settlers and was legally part of France, Tunisia had a protectorate and a negotiable elite, and France conceded the second in order to concentrate on the first, which it then lost anyway.
- Year: 1956 CE
- Category: Independence
